Is Pangea - Carrion Woods balanced?

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by odd_enuf:
actually, other then a holy 4 prophit, carrion lord and ladies reanimate roughly the same number of critters. I did a test on this once, reanimating in provinces with no dominion for 10 turns, if I remeber corectly centairs averaged 3-5, ladies and lords 13-15, and the holy 4 prophit 32. This is becuase the formula divides the unholy power in half and rounds down. so 2 and 3 have the same value. So use revenats for reseach, ladies to reanimate, and lords to lead the armies, giving a lord a crystal shield if you can forge one will help alot too, letting you cast the best unholy spells. As for the centairs, they can be used to round up the auto spawns, but not much else.

Interesting - I never did tests with the ladies vice lords, though I did know there was some question whether the lord was better than the lady, because of rounding.

I definately agree about the centaurs - okay for rounding up spawns, but the enchantment-2 Mound King has seemed like a better deal for 3 death gems, albeit they can't reanimate while defending temples the way a centaur can.

I still prefer the carrion lords to the ladies though - huge HPs for a mage (52?), and their N3 magic makes them much more worthwhile in combat and out, imo. Being able to cast Mend the Dead is very nice also, as they can heal themselves, the carrion elephants, and also the Carrion Dragon pretender very well.

Glad to hear the Unholy 4 Prophet reanimates so well - I've been trying to get my prophet killed off in one game to make a Carrion Lord the pretender, but in the meantime, planted the Sword of Injustice on one and set him to reanimating at unholy 4.

Which reminds me - my feeling is that it's best to make the initial centaur commander the prophet right away, in order to reanimate, to help push dominion, and also so he can lead carrion critters. If you don't do this, he leads the satyrs, okay, but I've found it unprofitable to recruit normal troops with CW, making him fairly worthless unless you make him the prophet.

(One alternative I've played with is recruiting a Panic Apostate the first turn, making him the Prophet the second. The main benefit to this, imo, is that it has a sizable effect on upkeep, lowering the Pan's ongoing cost by over 10. Money being tight for CW, this helps a lot - since you don't want to 'waste' your pretender by keeping him at home summoning carrion commanders, you need a Pan fairly early.)

After you get going awhile, the centaur doesn't cut it - you'd much rather have a carrion lord (or possibly the ettin hero) for a prophet. Happily, most games the centaur gets killed off before turn 30 or so.