Death Magic on the Battlefield

[thejeff]

Raise skeletons works wonders against the AI.

Unless heavily massed, a dozen mages or more, it'll be ineffective against a decent player. Good troops or thugs cut through skeletons like butter, priests are cheaper than death mages and banish doesn't use fatigue.

It's good, but not a long term solution. The real strength of death is in summons.

[Sombre]

Shadow Blast is great if you can stand a little micro (very little, really) and your opponent is using massed elites.

Shadow bolt can actually be half decent against expensive troops too.

Fear and terror,.. not generally much good.

Darkness is a total killer of mundane armies. Darkness + skelspam will take down almost any mundane army.

[Twan]

Death has some better AE spells costing 0 gem in higher levels if you can have D4 or more powerful mages. Namely the two cloud spells, Cloud of Death and Leaching Darkness. Their precision is low and they often kill some of your own troops but they offer a good synergy with the spam of skeletons, as your undeads are totally expandable and their numbers should block your ennemy in the clouds. Their fatigue cost is so small you can easily cover all the front with 2 D4 mages.

There is also disintegrate usefull to kill ennemy thugs or high hp units, when you reach alteration 8 (of course if you have astral mages rather search thaum 5 for soul slay).

But the main strength of death on the battlefield is the battle enchants like Darkness (all ennemy archers become useless, and living ennemies without darkvision become crappier troops than your undead chaff), and Rigor Mortis (unresistable fatigue for all non undead being).

There is also Bone Grinding (3 dammage to all units on the battlefield + a possible "crippled" affliction) very good if your own troops are ethearal like ermorian vestals (as it's mundane dammage they have 75% chance to resist) or if you have a powerful air mage to cast fog warriors on your army (your troops take 1 dammage per cast of Bone Grinding, when the ennemies take 3).

[Shovah32]

If you can get a high death mage(preferably 7 or higher), perhaps with a communion or your pretender, shadow bolt can get insane. If you also give the caster a spell focus, eye of the void(assuming he has enough precision to take the hit from losing an eye), skullface and runesmasher+shield or a skull staff then things get... fun.

The damage, AoE and range and penetration(I think D6 gives +2 penetration and D8 gives +3) all scale nicely, so if you end up with a D7-D10 caster you can decimate any non-undead without insane magic resistance. And if you happened to use it against massed ulmish infantry... any square hit would end up empty.

D8, spell focus, eye of the void and runesmasher grants +8 penetration. Anything that survives that must be either undead or have crazy MR. That's the point at which you pull out wither bones and drain life.

This works great with skelespam too, as they are immune to friendly fire from this spell.

[K]

Drain Life is probably the best Death spell as it removes fatigue from the mage(or skull Standard user) as it kills units, meaning in a long battle you are casting it every round.

Summon Skeleton is best for those times when you are tossing down big evocations (which can be Leeching Darkness). you want dumb chaff to slow down the enemy while AoE spells are raining down and killing everyone. Also, as a defense in castle sieges, it can plug up the entrance indefinitely.

Shadow Blast is a desperation tactic as it blows Death gems, but it can be an effective way to kill a large army.

Terror is a good spell as long as you don't mind facing your enemies later rather than now. Like most players, I usually prefer to kill an enemy now rather than fight them later.

The battle spells like Darkness, Rigor Mortis, Winds of Death, Wailing Winds, and Bone Grinding are nice, but they are only really good for very specific kinds of armies.

If you can get a little Fire together, Banefire is an awesome killer of things like Super Combatants (SC).

Disintigrate is Death's SC killer, so most death nations shoot for it. Its great for big low Mr things like elephants and Dark Vines.

[Lingchih]

Nether Bolts are nice, but they hardly ever hit the Commanders that you want them to hit. When they hit in the middle of an army, they usually only take out a couple of troops. If you are facing a lone SC though, you can spam them with a bunch of mages and hope that a few hit (chance of feeblemind).

And I agree, Shadow Blast is only effective facing a large army. The cost is high, but several cast into a large army can cause devastating damage. Against SCs, it is a waste of gems, since it usually misses badly.

[Shovah32]

Nether Bolt isn't great, and is usually much less effective, but it can be great against troops with big shields(nether darts can be stopped like arrows).

A few nether darts casters with decent precision(and possibly penetration items), particularly behind skele spammers, can really hurt enemy SCs relying on buffs from their own magic. Nothing like feeblemind a Seraph or elemental royalty. Nether Darts in general is a really nasty spell - particularly at higher levels, and since anyone who can cast it can be in a communion...
I love MA Ermor.

[AreaOfEffect]

I love death magic. Mainly because I find battlefield uses for it in all stages of the game, even when skill in death is low.

Skill Level 1 Death Magic:

• Versus the Undead use Dust to Dust (Thaumaturgy 1)
• Versus low moral units (such as elephants] use Frighten (Thaumaturgy 1)
• Versus anything use Ghost Grip (Conjuration 5)

Skill Level 2 Death Magic:

• Versus Super Combatants and Tramplers use Disintegrate (Alteration 8)
• versus the undead you can use Control Dead (Thaumaturgy 5)
• Versus most other things spam raise Skeletons (Enchantment 3)

And don't get me going on the wonders of Death 3. Every level of death up till Death 4 brings you something new and wonderful.

Shadow Blast is a great spell but don't use low level casters. The spell scales in both damage and on area of effect, so it is meant to be used by high level death mages, which is actually rather easy with some death gems and research into Construction.

Possibly my favorite spell in the whole of Dominions is Ghost Grip. It is easy to spam and can be deadly against anything when the fight is drawn out. Also, don't be shy about using it against the undead, it effects them too.

Good luck and die well.

[MaxWilson]

Lingchih said:
Nether Bolts are nice, but they hardly ever hit the Commanders that you want them to hit. When they hit in the middle of an army, they usually only take out a couple of troops. If you are facing a lone SC though, you can spam them with a bunch of mages and hope that a few hit (chance of feeblemind).

And I agree, Shadow Blast is only effective facing a large army. The cost is high, but several cast into a large army can cause devastating damage. Against SCs, it is a waste of gems, since it usually misses badly.

Many Death nations also have access to either Air or Nature (EA C'tis, Helheim, Lanka come to mind). Aim and Eagle Eyes benefit Shadow Blast/Cloud of Death significantly. Waiting a couple of rounds for them to advance into your chaff and/or skelly spam is also potentially advantageous. Consider that the main advantage of artillery spells is to thin out formations so your troops can gang up and overwhelm defenses.

-Max

[moderation]

How do Raise Skeletons and Raise Dead compare to each other? I get the rough impression that Raise Dead provides higher HP units and more of them, but you need create some corpses by getting some units killed first.