Carrion Woods Reanimations

[Kristoffer O]

Has anyone played CW before and after 2.11. I would like to get some feedback. The changes are somewhat limited. Are they noticeable at all?

Reanimations
Dominion based reanimation
Survivability of manikin
Power of manikin
Power of unholy spells
Research - reanimate trade off

Comparisons with Ermor

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Reanimations

Slightly quicker, though not better. Using a Carrion Lord to Reanimate still seems like an exercise in futility.

Dominion based reanimation

This has been another minor increase I haven't seen much in the way of making this work. I also haven't seen any leaders reanimated to drag over some of these Manikins for free.

Survivability of manikin

I have not seen this change at all, they are still on par with skeletons as far as getting destroyed enmasse.

Power of manikin

To be quite honest Manikins rarely are able to survive long enough to gauge this.

Power of unholy spells

Did not notice a difference with these.

Research - reanimate trade off

Still nearly crippling slow even with Magic 3. If you don't recruit a Dryad every turn and get a secondary fortress or find a Library you will be behind most other nations except those in Drain enviroment.

Comparisons with Ermor

Much better than it was, still nowhere near either Theme of Ermor, which is a good thing. Maybe an idea or suggestion to make the reanimation fall more in line as the game progresses is to have provinces under CW Dominion revert to Forest after a period of time. Thus increasing it's overall ability to produce more and more free manikins.

[Kristoffer O]

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

There are only changes in the reanimation, but I wanted some general feedback as well.

A worthy addition might be a CW only spell that requires 2N that is Raise Manikins, replacing Raise Skeletons. Or if you'd rather, 1D1N, so it was fairly Carrion Specific. This is another distinct advantage that a Death Nation has over CW. Along with Drain Life (if there was something equivilant as far as damage/effect for CW it would be appropriate).

Or alternatively you could give them much better Tangle Vine(typish) Theme specific spells. (I.E. Carrion Vine, lifedraining Tangle Vines)

[ April 28, 2004, 19:29: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Oh, BTW, any common undead (soulless, longdead) benefits from regeneration when the ad hoc unholy prayer is cast. It sure doesn't make CW overpowered, but is it a wanted feature or an oversight?

So far, I can't say I saw any good reason to pick Growth+3 instead of +1. (1) It costs points (2) The few extra manikins you might get aren't enough to compensate the fact invaders get extra supplies from your higher Growth scale (I'm not 100% positive on this, but I think they get extra supplies from it)

Otherwise, I second Zen's comments on every point.

And I really like his suggestion about turning provinces into forests.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Sorry, I wasn't very clear.

There are only changes in the reanimation, but I wanted some general feedback as well.

Sorry, I missed that.

>Reanimations

Some are nice, some are really nice, but this is a very slow way to build an army (and expensive in nature gems, which could be used to summon things as Pangaea usually do, except CW can't), and conventionnal troops eat up your treasury fast.

>Dominion based reanimation

Seems weak with a low dominion, I haven't tried otherwise yet.

>Survivability of manikin

On par with your basic undead. Better than completely unarmored soulless or longdead though.

>Power of manikin

The stun damage is great vs heavies. Otherwise nothing to write home about.

>Power of unholy spells

I find the battlefield-wide prayers more than OK, and I like the fact that the small area regen prayer seems to target big critters first (hmmm, regenerating Carrion tramplers).

>Research - reanimate trade off

No real issue here since I use Dryads for research and Carrion leaders to reanimate and lead armies.

>Comparisons with Ermor

Much much weaker. Can't get wet on top of that.

Some more suggestions.

1) All nature gems are used to summon carrion priests, so death magic is in fact the main school of CW. I've never been able to cast Mother Oak or even Call of the Wild...

2) Curiously, death magic gives no "national" units to CW, unlike Ctis and Jotun.
IMHO Reanimation, Animate Skel. and Raise Skel. sould give manikins. Animate/Raise Dead should give mandragoras. Undead Horde should give both. Pale Riders sould give carrion cavalry. Carrion Reanimation should give mandragoras (yes that's powerful, but Ench 7 is a long term target for CW). Maybe 10% of stronger carrion beasts, like the undead giants of Jotunheim.

3) The price of carrion priests seems too high and should be slightly reduced IMHO. They are mostly used to reanimate and to cast unholy spells. Nature magic is thematic but practically useless and should not count in their price.
Or give indep priests unholy powers, instead of holy powers (like Ermor IIRC). But who will summon the expensive (in gems) carrion priests then ?
And I suggest to add some death magic to the carrion Lords. They are dead after all. What about, say, 3xUnholy + 2xDeath + 1xNature ? Still in the theme, and not higher than the Apostate.

4) Minor problem : other vine units (vine men/ogre and dark vines) should logically benefit from the special unholy spells.

5) Manikins are good when in large numbers. 3/1 seems a minimum against human HI, and archery fire can decimate them at long range. But autosummoning is very slow, even with a strong dominion. No problem if you control a large empire. Exemple : 20 provinces (including 5 forests) in a strong dominion can give you every turn about 20 manikins + 1 mandragora + 5 carrion beasts (including 1 powerful stuff every 4 turns or so). OTOH 5 Carrion Ladies can give you 2x less manikins but 4x more powerful beasts, even on a small map. So I always give priority to reanimation, over autosummoning.

Cheers