pan cw : formulas for freespawns/reanimations. quite finished . with guide too

[Boron]

Originally posted by djtool:
if you're writing up a guide to CW I'd like to suggest that you throw that medusa in that pot of good gods to take. I've used her a number of times for CW and she's pretty tough.

Also for me I usually reasearch alt 6 then cont 4/ench 5 in either order. That's for mass protect (car lords are rdy to cast it), pale riders and the skull staff to cast them. I like the pale riders vs. some of the conjuration bits because I don't need a ton of gems to get them going (meaning constructing SC's), you get alot and they fall right in line with any kind of mad rush you want to put on the rear units (since your horsey's and doggies are so fast).

nice suggestions . if you want you can just write them as variation .
i myself are just so content with my vq for pan cw that i have no expierience with a medusa .
the built in aegis effect is surely very cool . i just love the immortality of the vq .
your medusa is surely a very good sc too .
now i am curious :
when can she start indep conquering with indy settings of 7-9 ?
because of pangeneas early cash shortage and few freespawns i think you need to expand via sc pretender earlygame and a rainbow is a bad choice for pan cw while it can be a very good one for ermor .

[Cainehill]

Another thing in favor of having some carrion cuties - carrion lords aren't very cost effective for shuttling the roadkill from province to province.

Now, arguably mound kings or revenants are more cost efficient than carrion ladies, especially as they come from another pot of money, so to speak - death gems vice nature. However, the carrion lady can be used to round up 20-40 auto-spawned carrions, take them to a province, build a temple and then sit there reanimating while guarding the temple.

Sure, if you could afford it you'd want to build a fortress to protect your temples - but CW wants a lot of temples, generally a lot more temples than it can afford to build fortresses on top of.

Also - the carrion lady should survive a seeking arrow with close to a 90% chance of survival; with good carrion critters set as bodyguards, has a good chance of surviving most assassins, but is rather a bit vulnerable to fires from afar.

[djtool]

did you post your scales when using that VQ? cause I dunno how you use her. Or was that because your using dominion rating of 3 or 4? I guess with a dominion that low I can understand. I like 8 or more.

oh yeah give me her magic Ratings too please?

[ July 31, 2004, 21:28: Message edited by: djtool ]

[Boron]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Another thing in favor of having some carrion cuties - carrion lords aren't very cost effective for shuttling the roadkill from province to province.

Now, arguably mound kings or revenants are more cost efficient than carrion ladies, especially as they come from another pot of money, so to speak - death gems vice nature. However, the carrion lady can be used to round up 20-40 auto-spawned carrions, take them to a province, build a temple and then sit there reanimating while guarding the temple.

Sure, if you could afford it you'd want to build a fortress to protect your temples - but CW wants a lot of temples, generally a lot more temples than it can afford to build fortresses on top of.

Also - the carrion lady should survive a seeking arrow with close to a 90% chance of survival; with good carrion critters set as bodyguards, has a good chance of surviving most assassins, but is rather a bit vulnerable to fires from afar.

hm i myself do the following in midgame when i have huge enough hordes carrion beasts :
1 carrion lord in every major army for puppet mastery
in my main 1-2 armies i furthermore use 1-2 banelords . they have 125 undead leadership .

i build 3-5 driads in midgame for temple building . they just sneak with the attacking army and then can build a temple + castle when i have enough money .

because a carrion lady might get killed by a seeking arrow while a carrion lord doesn't .
and the bane lord doesn't get killed by seeking arrow too and is not hurt much by a chest wound .

so the bane lords can shuffle around .
if i equip some of them slightly as thugs mid-lategame doesn't hurt either .

[Boron]

Originally posted by djtool:
did you post your scales when using that VQ? cause I dunno how you use her. Or was that because your using dominion rating of 3 or 4? I guess with a dominion that low I can understand. I like 8 or more.

oh yeah give me her magic Ratings too please?

the dominion rating of 3-4 was a guess for how gandalf will probably play cw and outrun his dominion then


my vq pan cw build :
scales with explanation :

turmoil 3
sloth 3
cold 3 ( you could take heat 3 too but in cold 3 according to spell description my breath of winter shield does more damage in cold 3 + bane lords have chill aura which is stronger in cold area too iirc )
growth 1 ( forced minimum by cw theme otherwise i would take death 3 there )
fortune/misfortune 0 ( can be modified , for weaker dominion or only magic 2/1 instead of magic 3 you can take luck 2-3 , for more brutal vq misfortune -2/3 )
magic 3 ( pan cw already worst researcher i know )

castle : watchtower ( because of 0 points + cheapest castle )

dominion 8 ( can be modified again , on big maps dominion 6 may be enough , but on standard karan mp you will have small positive dominion in neighbor provinces fast , so you can conquer them without danger by your unequipped vq .)
midgame with dominion 8 you will have 5 temples so dominion 9 you can do some scale wars with neighbor enemy/ies then .

now vq :
my path with the listed settings first :
A3W3E3D5B2 .
this way exactly 4 points are left . so almost perfect efficiency with pretender design .

now the crucial paths of the vq with explanation :
A2
this way you can : mistform + mirrorimage for indykilling
cloud trapeze invaders .
W2
quickness + breath of winter
E3
invulnerability (30 base protection)
once you have this up expect by antivq thugs/sc's the vq is already quite hard to kill
(expect by holy pyre/dust to dust/wither bones , for that no protection exists expect other undeads as fodder)
D1(because with that the vq starts)
but D3 is nice to have , this way you can cast midgame soul vortex + summon bane lords without empowering )
B2(because vq starts with B2 , as pan cw unfortunately no need for B2)

an alternative vq pan cw build could include 1-3F . this way you will find many fire sites when you sitesearch with her , so more income for pan cw ( gold is always short ) and you can cast fire shield . this kills attacking fodder undeads like skelletons and other fodder (maenads , any cheap crap national units like militia , phantasmal warriors etc. quite quick).


finally early game strat :

research enchantment 1 (breath of winter , fire shield ) + alteration 3 first .
this will be finished turn 4-5 on normal research .
then place the vq rearmost on the battle order setup map and script her to the following :

quickness , ironskin , mistform , breath of winter , mirror image , attack enemy archers .

if you have fire replace mirror image with fire shield .

midgame when you research alteration 6 :
-replace ironskin by invulerability
-replace mirror image by soul vortex
new script :
quickness , invulnerability , soul vortex , mistform , breath of winter , a fitting attack order , attack enemy archers / rearmost is in most cases the best because it gives you a slight chance to even kill 1-2 enemy mages and at least kill enemy archers .
if your enemy has e.g. a virtue as pretender , uses that in combat and has no other fliers and you know that then script the vq for that special battle attack enemy fliers .
this way you have a good chance to kill the virtue

with the vq you can either from turn 4-5 on :
-take 1 indep province solely / turn (about 95% win chance , only special indies with fliers e.g. can screw you. but even if that happens the worst which happened you wasted 1 turn but the vq reappears in your capitol ( thnx to immortality ))
-or take 1 indep province and sitesearch it .
with your semirainbowpathes you find about 50% of the sites. ( my above listed personal built at the moment finds about 60% and surely every death site you would find by searching with dark knowlegde )

so either 1 province / turn or 1 searched province / 2 turns .

with the indykilling your vq will have 5 stars xp very quick too. main benefit : +ca 5. att/def .

some tips against enemies :
-beware of caelum . if you attack them with your vq only 5-10 storm guards/ice clads alone are probably enough to kill an unequipped vq .
-any enemy fliers scripted to attack fliers are a problem.
-vanheim with valkiries is the only other nation which has fliers available from start . but normally you don't build valkieries as vanheim .
( at least i wouldn't ).
-wither bones , dust to dust and holy pyre are your WORST enemies because 95% of your army are undead , even your pretender .

so with marignon , caelum , ctis , ermor and abysia you should only go to war once you are sure you are prepared .
you can hurt especially caelum + marignon + abysia great if you can spread your dominion to them . you should always consider pillaging rich farmlands you conquer from your enemy and where you still have no own dominion .

finally : each time you have 400 cash : build a new castle + a temple in the castled province

my main reasons why i take the vq with pan cw are :
-riskless indy expansion
-early - midgame against about 50-60% of the possible nations a unequipped vq is still a threat . especially with the ability to pick the battles you would like via cloud trapeze .
-mid - lategame the vq is a great equipment forger , summoner
-mid - lategame if you equip the vq and give her support (e.g. carrion hordes , bane lord thugs , wraith lords ) she is still a horrible opponent .
-no need to worry about battle afflictions
-if you get killed in friendly dominion the worst that happens is you lose all your items
-with pan cw bad scales don't hurt you so you can afford a quite strong vq


if you have any questions left djtool feel free to ask

[djtool]

i have a hard time believing in the turmoil 3 and normal luck approach. I'm going to give it a SP shot and see how it works out. I'm just thinking it's good to squeeze as much cash out of those as you can, while you can. I have had a game where I've lost units to upkeep (I found some fire mages of some sort).

I like her immortality and flying though. Your dominion ends up spreading pretty fast so she'll have good 'reach'.


someting else I wanted to add. I believe in making your harpy your prophet on turn one. A car lord prophet makes a good general, but its seems to me you'll get more summons with making your harpy your prophet. Also as a stealth preacher she can fly. meaning of course that she covers more ground, and retreats better if busted. Not to mention I could stomach losing a harpy over a lord a little better

[Boron]

Originally posted by djtool:
i have a hard time believing in the turmoil 3 and normal luck approach. I'm going to give it a SP shot and see how it works out. I'm just thinking it's good to squeeze as much cash out of those as you can, while you can. I have had a game where I've lost units to upkeep (I found some fire mages of some sort).

I like her immortality and flying though. Your dominion ends up spreading pretty fast so she'll have good 'reach'.


someting else I wanted to add. I believe in making your harpy your prophet on turn one. A car lord prophet makes a good general, but its seems to me you'll get more summons with making your harpy your prophet. Also as a stealth preacher she can fly. meaning of course that she covers more ground, and retreats better if busted. Not to mention I could stomach losing a harpy over a lord a little better

you get more carrions because the harpy spreads dominion . so you get 1-2 freespawns every turn guaranted when you reach 100 or more % after my mentioned formula .

when you get your carrion ettin mandragora hero he is my favourite prophet .

as i mentioned you can modify like you want luck 3 is good too . just replace e.g. make magic 1 instead magic 3 and slightly smaller dominion than dominion 8 and you have about 120 points for luck 3 .

i myself like at the moment luck 0 and stronger vq though so she can summon even wraithlords unbuffed + forge almost all deathitems .
but you can easily have luck 3 and weaker vq or only magic 1 .

[Molog]

Don't know how useful this is, but I like to research enchantment with carrion woods.
Gives you mound kings to round up and lead undead.
Create revenant for research. I usually take magic 3 as it's supposed to increase the chance of getting the more powerfull carrion beasts.
Twiceborn to turn pans into wight mages, saves you around 20 gold a turn for each pan and there is a chance that they'll recieve an extra level in death magic. Have them cast personal regeneration to reduce the possibility of getting afflictions.
Gift of health can be cast early by carrion woods. If you get taurotyrannus, he can forge a thistle mace and armor of thorns with construction 4 to become a level 5 nature mage.
Foul vapors can be fun too.

Thematurgy 3 for haruspex and panic.

I don't bother much with the mass regrowth spell. I just have dryads cast the area 1 regrowth spell, covers units with more hp first. I also have a dryad follow around my undead pretender and have them cast regrowth for extra regeneration.

I like carrion dragon and ghost king more than vampire queen.

Also temples in forests have an increased chance to reanimate sanguine carcasses since the latest patch.

[Boron]

that's really useful information thnx molog .

a good other strategy i just wrote my choice as example but your one is very interesting too
do you try to outrun your dominion in your strat to get more money ? whats your starting dominion strength ?

[djtool]

Originally posted by Molog:
I usually take magic 3 as it's supposed to increase the chance of getting the more powerfull carrion beasts.

really?