Golems: how do I make them work?

[Juzza]

You're using them the wrong waaay! think about it, age-less, Reliant compared to most mages, 0 encumbrance, give them

Rune Smasher, crystal tower shield, star shine skullcap, boots of the messenger, amulet of penetration and a girdle of might.

4 astral, 0 encumbrance, 10 reinvigoration, and just ahve them at the back casting soul slay or enslave mind. That's how I do it!

[Valandil]

Isn't that awfully expensive for a standard astral spell chucker? I mean, starspawn are nearly as good as that.

[Micah]

Shovah's on the right track...of course your golem's gonna die with 6 prot and a horrible defense score. Marble armor gets you 23 body prot and something like 18 on the head...add in body eth and luck and you're pretty much set against any raiding force or PD. Though all of the talk about reinvig items is kind of not worth it on a golem, since they're 0-enc and you'll only get a bit of fatigue casting buffs (generally I just script BE and luck, leaving out astral shield, since crossing 30 fatigue is a bad idea, possibly worth it vs some low MR troops though)

Just to cover the basics all you need are a brand, a skullcap, and marble armor...add perks as needed for resists. Bone armor/marble boots gives you soul vortex, but is generally very much overkill.

Things you should do with your golem: Raid, kill enemy raiders, abuse the fact that they can cast teleport. Abuse lifeless/mindless (hitting blood hunters is great, since life for a life and leech won't work). Abuse the fact that they're immune to most remote spells (barring a whole bunch of seeking arrows)

Things you should NOT do with your golem: Go near most enemy mages, especially skel spammers or astral mages. Hold still. Think that he's an SC. Attack anything that might take longer than 50 turns to kill. Make it easy to guess where you're going.

Golems are excellent units, and some of the hardest to use properly IMO. They're the best raider in the game, but they are NOT SCs.

And Juzza, if you want to burn 100 gems on a golem and have him run around with your army so he can die to a random magic duel then be my guest...there's no sort of cost efficiency there whatsoever. Loading a couple of em up with eyes/smashers/skullcaps/crystal coins and having them be a mind hunt squad safe at home could work if you can't come up with astral mages any other way though. (Assuming an S/E pretender that can make some golems of course.)

The stupid Crystal Shield is also 8 points of fatigue per spell cast, dropping it for a Power of the Spheres cast (33 fatigue at S3) will pay itself back in fatigue in 6 combat rounds, and at one pearl/battle it'll be a long while before you'll lose out on gems. Also not sure how you get 10 reinvig from boots of the messenger (4) and a girdle of might (3)

[Kuritza]

Ha, ha. Imho you just dont make them work as SC, they are thugs. With quickness etc you can bring Golem's low attack/defense to a decent level and use them as teleporting raiders, which can be damn effective sometimes (though expensive).
I had some fun with golems equipped with just starshine scullcap and eye of the void, scripted for soul slay. They accompanied my Helheim army - my national (or indie) mages couldnt cast soulslay, so my Golems were invaluable to me.
Also, they killed an Archdevil SC who tried to raid my lands. I dropped three golems on him, one of them with a lifelong protection to distract Archdevil with imps. SC removal is where Golems shine.

P.S.
The above poster summed it up very nicely.

[RonD]

If you're facing a lone SC (or an SC without too much backup army), there's always the old classic dom2 Golem:

2x Sword of swiftness
Starshine cap
Jade armor
Boots of flying
2x Stone bird

Two of these guys teleporting onto an SC foolishly left out in the open field somewhere can wreck your opponent's day.

Not as good as in dom2 of course, with no astral weapon, but they still work often enough to keep them in mind.

And my favorite (though obviously something you can't plan on every game):

Sickle Whose Crop is Pain
Shield of Gleaming Gold
Skullcap
Jade Armor
Flying boots
Whatever you want in misc slots

This guy turns all you barbarian attack events into 20-30 death gem events. He turns your neighbor's militia / zealot events into death gems (either with or without splitting the haul, depending on your relations).

He also often gets in the HoF. In one MP game "Super-Golem" had ~220 HP thanks to heroic toughness.

[Morkilus]

Gee, I thought the whole point of golems was to teleport them on top of fleeing sages and Lore Masters

[Baalz]

I've found boots of the behemoth work best for PD raiding (a thug's sweet spot). Something like charcoal shield, shield of gleaming gold, marble armor, boots of the behemoth, starshine cap. Script body ethereal, personal luck, attack. Teleport into your opponenent's back lands and stomp around avoiding armies - you should be able to wipe up almost any non-giant PD. If your opponent is likely to teleport a response team onto your golem (magic duel most likely) send him out with an astral pearl and after the first fight script returning - he'll be back at home and ready to teleport again the next turn. Can only attack every other turn, but virtually immortal if you're careful and you're taking enemy provinces at a cost of one teleport and one returning.

[Shovah32]

Just to clarify, I tend to use my Golems - including those equipped as I said - as teleporting raiders. My previous post was more of a basic improvement than how to turn Golems into full blown SCs.

[Zenzei]

Thanks for the replies guys, this is great advice. Indeed, my mistake was that I tried to use my golems for pretty much all the purposes Micah listed I shouldn't be using them for

But now that I've started to use them as raiders of lightly defended and hard to reach provinces they are working great! Can't wait to use them in mp.

As for the equipment, I hadn't realized,up until now, that marble armor gives additional protection as per stoneskin spell. I always viewed it as pretty sucktacular armor but obviously I was wrong. Very wrong. Heh.