PBEM Game: King of the Hill 2 (Closed)

[Alneyan]

I think the only redeeming feature of CW is the ability to kind of play them like Broken Empire: they can mix living troops and their undead minions without *too* much trouble (they have a fairly slow Dominion pop loss, 30.000 pop in the capital, and resources aren't really linked to population). Problem is, I don't think the undead troops are that good to warrant the trouble, and mages aren't the greatest thing in the world either.

It is possible to do very well with base Ulm (Entwined Destiny, if nothing else), but I have yet to see an example of Carrion Woods doing well in a game where more than one player is involved (a rush could work for them... maybe).

[Cainehill]

I've had good success with CW, winning one small blitz game, and being in a winning position on a long term game on the cradle map. In fact, CW was what I was going to be using this game only Tauren got Pan.

[The_Tauren13]

You cant really build any normal troops, though. The upkeep kills you too quickly. By about turn 20, you are down to 10k pop in your capitol. And you need all your money for mages, and even then can only get a couple, once again due to the upkeep. Because of this, you will get almost no research until you get specters, unless you put the carrion lords on research instead of reanimate, in which case you will get absolutely no troops.

So, Im curious, Cainehill, what did your winning Carrion Woods pretender designs look like? The best I came up with was a golden naga with every magic school except death and nature. She could both solo-creep (even against lvl 9 indies, with alt 3) and site search. Then, once I got specters and enough construction, I could forge boosting items with the naga, and actually start doing some usefull stuff.

My mistake this game was getting a pretender incapable of taking indies, and since carrion beasts suck completely for that, I was unable to get any territory. Taking order 3 was a waste, too. I could have traded that order 3 for turmoil 3 and then gotten the naga with the same magic paths as the damn crone, and then even have had points left over.

[Cainehill]

Golden Naga with no nature or death? Mistake IMO. You need a pretender that can expand and site search, not to mention casting to summons carrion lords, etc. By not taking D/N you need someone else to search for those, and you _have_ to have at least one Panic Apostate to do your summonings, chewing up your gold income. Also, if you don't take Nature-4 on the pretender, you need a lot of research before you'd be able to cast Mother Oak - with N4 you only need const-2 to do the +1 booster, otherwise you need const-6 for the staff, and chew up a lot more nature gems.

You can have 3 kinds of expansion pretenders, all of which can work well with CW. The supercombatant - Carrion Dragon is probably the perfect one for CW; with Zen's mods the Medusa is also possible.

A summoner - enough death magic to bring forth enough skeletons to take provinces. IMO, the lich is the only one worth doing this with, both because of cheap death magic and reincarnation for when it doesn't work.

Artillery - slower for CW because of the required research, but potentially better in the late game.

In any case - for CW I'd never take a pretender that didn't have at least 3 or 4 fire magic, probably 2 or 3 earth, plus the death and nature and depending on my whim, 2 more paths. One reason I feel fire/earth is mandatory - site searching for gems to turn to gold, which is only used to get mages or buildings, never troops.

Starting strategy : One choice is to prophetize the centaur to immediately start generating carrion, since he's not going to be much use otherwise. Another choice, and probably your best choice if you didn't take death/nature on the pretender, is to buy your one and only Panic leader for casting Carrion Lord, and prophetize him to save ... 12 gold a turn on upkeep? Or you cast your first Carrion Lord and prophetize it to give the battlefield wide regrowth, even if it doesn't affect most of your carrion because of good MR vice "easily resisted".

If the indie setting is 6 or less, you can usually take a province or two with your starting satyrs, especially if you can bring some carrion along. The point isn't just to take provinces - it's to get your satyrs killed for upkeep reasons.

And, not even counting successful finding of nature sites, you continue casting Carrion Lord every 4 turns. Each Lord is turned to reanimating 90% of the time. Temples get build in every forest province for more & better carrions to be spawned there. Research and cast Mother Oak as soon as possible to afford more Carrion Lords, also later Lamia Queens for better magic availability.

Also, some of those nature gems should go towards vine men / ogres to mix with the carrion, and for castings of Swarm. Both the vine men and the swarms help reduce the casualties for the carrion.

And in the meantime, you do a lot of site searching, hoping for mages with strengths you don't have. If you find 'em, you don't buy too many (unless, heh! You have a healthy enough income) - just enough for forging, summoning, and remote site finding spells.

That, with no-brainer cookie-cutter dominion for CW, has been enough to let me do very well with CW in general, presuming I don't screw up with getting my pretender killed.

[Cainehill]

Double post bug popped up.

And yes - you messed up taking Order-3, it's pointless and counterproductive with CW. Max magic, max luck, and everything else goes to build a better beast of a pretender.

[Cainehill]

What, no comments, Tauren? Were you already using CW somewhat as I describe, and still having no luck, or somewhat different?

[Molog]

How do you use carrion dragon well? Everytime I've tried the carrion dragon it performed rather poorly.

[Cainehill]

200 HP of carnivorous carrion and it didn't perform well??? You simply treat it as you would most SCs - put on a bit of a range of magics, research something along the lines of Enchantment-1 and Alteration-3, park it in the back corner of the battlefield to cast some buffs before it charges into battle. If the paths are low, you might have it in the 2-legged form casting 4 buffs, then changing shape and attacking.

Buffs like fireshield, Breath of Winter, Mistform, Ironskin, Body Ethereal, Personal Luck, Quickness, etc, are all highly recommended depending on the magic you put on the dragon, and depending on what it's going against. Crossbows you might add Air Shield to the list, for example. Another trick is to send a carrion lady along with the dragon to cast carrion regrowth and retreat - that way the dragon gets regeneration. Since the lady retreats, she doesn't die and cause the dragon to retreat.

[The_Tauren13]

The Carrioin Dragon has 80 points per new path, does it not? Are you seriously going to spend 240 points to get water, air, and fire on it?
Thats why I typically went with the naga; I wanted a sturdy chasis with low new magic paths cost (20 points). And it seems to me the only way to properly site search is having all the needed paths on your pretender. The reason I didnt feel the need to get death and nature was because the pans can search those. It seems to me the only reason to get any would be to get it at really high levels, like if you wanted to get like 4-5 nature to cast mother oak immediately.
Your plan doesnt seem to have much of a way to research, which to me is the biggest problem with Pan CW, and why I decided going for specters was the best bet.
I guess I never thought about getting vine ogres. That sounds like a pretty good idea; the vine ogres can stand a hell of a beating while the carrion beasts dish it out.

[Cainehill]

Yes, and you have 425 points to spend once you do CW's scales, even with a healthy 6 dominion. Carrion Woods is almost like Ermor's dying themes : you want the worst scales possibly, with the exceptions of luck and magic, and of course CW is forced to take 1 growth.

That's enough to get Fire-4, 2 of the other 3 elementals at 2, Death 3, and Nature-4, for just one example. You might choose to drop 1 or 2 elements (keeping fire) and take astral instead.

Research : I buy a dryad a turn until the gold runs out, if I don't find sages or some such first. With magic 3, that's 6 research for 110 gold, upkeep of 3.8 or so. If you don't waste gold buying and paying upkeep for a Panic Apostate, you can easily get 1 dryad a turn for most of the first 10 turns. That's 60 research a turn, _and_ your carrion dragon has been adding 20 for at least 5 of those turns. Not great - but adequate for CW Pangaea.

At some time after turn 10, you can be getting revenants for research (6 research per, 9 death gem cost), or save those gems for Conjuration 6, when you note the superior spectres, as well as lamia queens. Another option is to get some Carrion Ladies to do some research early on, and to ferry carrion / guard temples later.

Things are a bit tougher if you aren't using Zen's mods, since the balance mod actually makes Luck a good thing (most of the time) - without it, way too many of your events are outright bad, or crappy "good" - like getting militia. With the mod, Turmoil 3 / Luck 3 can wind up giving a _lot_ of gold. The test I just ran while writing this, buying a dryad per turn, at turn 11 I have 876 gold left, 30+ elemental gems, a magic item, and I haven't bothered to take a province yet, which would have given better gold income and possibly gem income or better researchers.

And yes - being able to cast Mother Oak immediately (or almost immediately, adding Const-2 for the Thistle Mace) is a good thing with Carrion Woods, considering that your nature income is the constraining factor for building your carrion hordes. If you concentrate solely on alteration at first, you can cast it between turn 10-14, at which point you can get an extra Carrion Lord every 2.5 turns, compared to one every 3.8 turns on the base nature income. That's over doubling your accumulation of carrion lords, thus essentially also doubling your carrion growth.

As far as using Panic Apostates to search for nature & death : one Apostate costs more than 3 dryads, delivering 10 research vice 18 research for over twice the gold upkeep - and if you use it for site searching, you aren't getting the research, which you say "is the biggest problem with Pan CW" : of course it is, if you're using so much gold for site searching while still missing a good chunk of the best death/nature sites.