Carrion Woods

[cleveland]

@TheJeff: Yup, 6N and 3D gems per turn. This is ridiculously helpful, especially early on. Plus Banes are like 2D in CBM - with 80 undead leadership, they're great for corralling those freespawn AND can be pressed into frontline service in a pinch...certainly a wise investment for those D gems.

@DonCorazon: Whoops, yeah Conjuration for the Queens & Tarrasques (& Tartarians, though I had to go for the D boosters for my Lamia Queens first). Hehe...truth be told, your dispel timing was perfect...I had just spent some huge number of N gems on a bunch Treelords Staffs or some such nonsense, and actually had to alchemize to put CW back up next turn. But I figured putting it back up immediately & gloating about my huge, phony gem stockpile would discourage another dispel attempt. A feebleminded acolate could have dispelled it...

In the interest of full disclosure, Tarts can regen normally (I think it's the "lifeless" tag that prevents it), but it gives those Carrion Ladies something to do & keeps a slot open on the Tart. BUT, things like longdeads & soulless (hint: Carrion Reanimation) that Do Not Heal benefit tremendously from Regrowth.

Undead Mastery is indeed your worst enemy, and will relegate your carrion to Defense only. Which is kinda stupid really. BUT, when you're on defense...

1st round Late Game casting sequence:
Carrion Growth X 3 (use Carrion Lords)
Fog Warriors (use a Faery Queen)
Army of Lead
Quickening (use Naiads)
Mass Flight
Darkness (use a Lamia Queen)
Foul Vapors
Weapons of Sharpness
Strength of Giants
Gaia's Blessing

2nd round:
laughter

[Meglobob]

Just for anybody who has not got the full spell description. Not in rulebook.

GLOBAL ENCHANTMENTS: ADDENDUM
NATIONALS: Pangaea

School Spell Path Gems
Ench 8 Carrion Woods N6D5 90

Description

This enchantment affects all provinces under Pangaea’s dominion. It kills off human population at a fast rate and turns the dead into undead Manikins that will fight for Pangaea. Forest provinces will provide undead beasts and forest temples may provide holy creatures for the army. This reanimation works better in provinces with death scales. The enchantment also yields 6 nature gems and 3 death gems per month.

In CBM lvl 0 and just 50N which makes it interesting.

[DonCorazon]

Yeah, I knew tarts could regenerate, but didn't know that Pangean spell worked on anything but mannikins. I am playing Pan now and after checking your post noticed one of my Tarts (big head, no misc slots) was regenerating from the Regrowth spell. Pretty nifty since that particular Tart has a ton of HPs and no other way to regenerate. I will now try to keep undead priests with the Tarts for added pwnage.

BTW Your gloating was quite effective at deterring another dispel, but had the secondary effect of helping convince the world you were the devil !

[Fantomen]

I´ve used it many times in SP. It wont ruin your provinces if you have 3 growth. I also think you could live with having it dispelled as long as you´ve had it up long enough to get a respectable horde of manikins.

I´m leaning towards a good scales strategy with this nation, the troops seem exellent with or without bless. Perhaps your transformation trick from MA oceania could be used partially to lower upkeep? You´d be swimming in money.

Is awake SC neccessary? I´d say no, better to go dormant for great scales, minor bless and magic diversity and Carrion woods as soon as he wakes up.

I tried a dormant master lich o3p2h2g3m2d2 dom5 s4d6n6

The centaurs get 3 regen and so does the dryad commanders due to nature magic. The death blessing makes black centaurs good against thugs.

A thing I´m using is Black dryad "thugs" with reinvig items/shield and mandragora/manikin bodyguards spamming tunes of growth/fear/dancing death on the front lines. Works great in synergy with the quickened sleep vines (from quick roots). Script something like blessing/quick roots/barkskin/tune of X/tune of X/spells. Also doable with normal dryads w rod of the leper king. The disease isn´t too much of a problem with recup+regen.

Forty harpies can patrol for 200% tax and is affordable on turn one. Huge income boost. Can be used in many provinces and also great when blood hunting.

Both the Minotaur commanders and dryads make ok frontline thugs I think

Tune of growth+trampling is nice too.

I have yet to play this nation in MP so take with a grain of salt.

[Fantomen]

Also early game a dryad with a few (like 5) dryad hoplite bodyguards can take most indies if given a hide shield (preferably two) and scripted bless/barkskin/hold/hold/spells or a bit later bless/protection/protection/hold/hold/spells. The dryad will cast mostly tune of fear which makes your awed units near untouchable and eventually routs the enemy. Just watch out for crossbows.

Thats the most effective expansion force I´ve managed at least and you can make one per turn quite early.

[JimMorrison]

I think it's a fair assumption that the poploss is equal to 1% per turn, it makes sense that it is a nice round number like this. In my experience, with 3G scale, your poploss is not dramatic at all, and in fact if it is 1%, then 2 years of 3G scale before casting, will yield you 3 years of Carrion before your pop even drops back to baseline figures.

I haven't tried it, but since Death scale does increase results, it makes me wonder if a good strategy could be built around say 2D - which would yield a fairly painful 1.4% poploss with CW up, but I wonder how many units would spawn, and if you would start pushing into better forms - from what I've seen, with 3G you get almost entirely just regular "Mannikins", which are alright, and <10% Mandragora.

One other thing to note - Carrion Ladies are only a small fraction more efficient at Reanimation than Carrion Lords, but are also only a small fraction as useful in combat. Carrion Lords have immense HPs (SCable, in no stretch of the imagination), and are 3N/3H.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

I haven't tried it, but since Death scale does increase results,

Isn't it GROWTH scale that gives more manikins?

[JimMorrison]

You know I thought that as well, but someone stated Death a few posts back, and I was too lazy to doublecheck. I thought it sounded reasonable just because I always use 3G (coulda sworn part of the reason being CW, actually!), but then, the amount of spawns I get is nice, but not incredible. With a high scales strat, you might get better overall results buying N gems from people to summon more Lords, and just avoiding the global altogether.

[Fantomen]

It is growth scales and forests that increase freespawn rate and forest temples that gives better chance of more powerful creatures. So the more forest provinces with temples the better.

That is according to the spell description and it seems correct from my test games.

[Lingchih]

Actually, you don't need Carrion Woods to field nice armies of manikins, and you don't need to make a pretender to cast it, if you decide to cast it at all.

For a pretender, I always take an awake Gorgon with 9E and awe. Put a rawhide shield on it (to counter the stray indie missle) and it's a province taker from turn 2. No normal indies can stand against it, and if it gets wounded, it has recuperation.

As far as getting manikins, you start off early on with your Carrion Centaurs reanimating. In your cap if necessary, but I usually move them to a nice forest with a temple. Both of those things help you reanimate more and better manikins. Granted, the centaurs don't animate very good manikins, but it's a start. And this is going to be a long haul.

Once you get the Carrion ladies, start using them along with the centaurs to reanimate. They get better manikins, and are decent mages as well. But when you get Carrion Lords, by all means drop summoning the ladies. The Lords summon the best manikins, and are awesome thugs on their own.

So, while you have been doing all this summoning and reanimating, your Gorgon has been killing indiscriminately, and hopefully your prophet has been kicking *** too with the incredibly buffed sacred Hoplites. Your enemies are not worried about manikins... they're worried about those girls. It's a bonus if you can keep your reanimation forest secret, but not essential, since they never seem to move.

About midgame things may be getting tough for you. You are Pan, after all... not a real powerhouse. This is when you unleash the 1000+ manikins, led by your Carrion Lords. It should come as a bit of a surprise, and force your enemies to change tactics drastically. Keep reanimating though. Those manikins are great, but they die like flies.

Towards the late game, if your strategy is working, then think about casting Carrion Woods. You'll have so many N gems you won't know what to do with them, and you can easily boost up a Black Pan to do the casting. If it goes down, no biggee. You are still reanimating them like crazy, and you can probably even cast it again if you like.