Carrion woods

[Pillin]

Theres not much of a hurry really, cant summon a carrion lord untill i have 25 nature gems, and i get 5 a turn. So should have plenty of time to get myself a panic apostle.

[Windreaper]

I've only been toying around the theme a little but I think I can give you _some_ pointers. First, I'd certainly make a magically versatile pretender so that you can rely on some good summons (behemoths, yay!) when all the living dudes have deceased from your kingdom. You're going to run out of living troops very soon and you really can't be relying on masses of undead, either (you don't get bucketloads of people as with ermor). In other words, I'd make as many dryads/panic apostates (whichever you prefer, pans might be better since you won't have other good uses for the money, anyway - black centaurs are bit too expensive to my tastes) as I can and have them research to get to those good summons. I'd steer clear of Vine Ogres here, however. They're good summons but I really don't want my 320/350gp (depending on theme) Pans to sit home summoning.

Btw, has anyone managed to figure out how the unholy levels contribute to the kind of stuff you can reanimate. I assume you need 3 levels to reanimate carrion elephants and probably 4 for that ettin dude. But other than that, I noticed no major difference in quantity. I thus suppose that it's rather safe to assume that carrion centaurs are the way to go if you want lots of small stuff. Those movement 20+ beasts can also attack the enemy right off the bat with the quickening spells (I laughed my *** off at the first battle - "heck, never thought the dead guys could go _that_ fast"). Ok, you might find this weird but you should actually consider the undead guys your elite troops . Mandragoras are probably some of the most underappreciated units in the game. You should thus consider using some fodder to protect them. Casting swarm in the first round can really prolong the (un-)life span of your troops. Spirit mastery is another spell you should seriously consider. You get 15 fodder for just 4 gems, best bang for the buck as far as summoning spells go. Ghosts/shades are ok too but more gem-intensive.

PS. I know I'll be playing against you in that game but this is what I think is the best way to play the theme atm, honest. :>

[Strages Sanctus]

Hmm my text didn't appear ... It was useless info anyway... Since I am the opposition

In that particular game you would be crazy not to get as many different magic paths in order to utilize the huge magic site frequency.

I'd steer clear from Nature and Death since you have a perfectly acceptable mage of Nature and Death in the Pandemoniac. (Maybe take Nature up to 4, for getting Nature Gems ASAP, but death isn't a priority)

I'd look towards Air (since you can't make harpies), Astral (Magic Resistance and magic resistance gear is key) and then whatever else you prefer.

Use death summons like Banes for commanders (if you don't use pans) and other mages for summonable 'elite' units. Depending on what army you have your Mandragoras in (The Unholy 4 Commander) you will need other more survivable troops since most of your units, even the Behemoth looking ones, and the Ettin looking ones, have bad MR and lategame you will be staring large Groups of powerful mages in most armies.

[Pillin]

Im trying the theme out a little, my carrions seems to die if you give them a hard look tho. they get massacered against LI.. The bigger carrions are pretty nice tho, especially the trampler (75 hp).
However, when I try playing pan on a non cw theme I do expand atleast twice as fast as cw, I have more versatile mages and fast armies. Not sure if I really want to sacrifice that for the cw theme :/

[Pillin]

I actually still get harpies, they are so inexpensive that i can still build them without much difficulty.

[LordArioch]

I'd probably mess your scales up to get lots of pretender magic and rely on the high site frequency to give lots of gems for not only carrion but also other spells...your population dies anyway, so the scales won't matter long term. Maybe you can convince Ulm to build high res troops and spare you some money in the beginning.