Carrion woods

[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.

Your dominion will tear down your homeprovince so quick it will be hard to recruit many later in the game (when you need them the most). You would have to rely on taking provinces that can stand your destructive dominion, spend the gold and turns to create a castle then recruit them. While not inconcievable, harpies die quite quickly and you'll need a good clip of them to create the effect you need (attacking the back).

What I'm saying is don't rely on anything you can build, think of it as 'bonus' and not as 'standard'.

[Norfleet]

Personally, I find Carrion Woods to be a very bad theme, because it essentially wastes a huge number of points: You're required to take Growth for it, yet you will gain nothing from having this Growth, since your population all dies anyway. As opposed to the Ashen Empire or Soul Gate themes, where the required Death scale is free points: Your population all dies anyway, so Death-3 for free points is simply beating a dead horse.

[Pillin]

Ah I see your point Zen.
Can anyone confirm that I dont get better og bigger reanimations by using someone with a higher unholy skill?

[PrinzMegaherz]

I prefer playing carrion woods with the carrion dragon.

on Indi 7 he is capable of conquering most provinces alone. You can get into other magic paths very easy by using your nations heroes. My pretender started with death 9 nature 5, and this has not prevented me to get my hands on an archangel or that king of fire (whatever his name is). Turmoil 3 luck 3 is a must for carrion woods. Especially the harpy hero will give you free harpies that you can use to boost your commanders maximal leadership (full undead + some harpies)

[Norfleet]

Turmoil/Luck is a good combo for any empire that doesn't particularly care about losing its population: Carrion Woods, Ashen Empire, Soul Gate, Desert Tombs, etc. Ordinarily, Turmoil/Luck would give you so many horrible events that you'd wish you'd gone with Order/Misfortune instead, but when you don't care about losing population (Oh, no! I just lost 1/4th of my zero population! Whatever will I do?), it's totally win/win. Turmoil has no effect on the dead, and there are very few negative events when nobody is alive to care about their effects. Feel free to take Sloth, too. +120 free points, no harmful side effects. You get 2 resources for 0 population whether you have sloth 3, or productivity 3.