Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions
Moderator: Moderators
Death magic, finished
People want a write up for death, and I have been thinking of ways to spend my massive income in revenge, so this is a short primer. One thing to keep in mind with death is that there is no "summon death power" equivalent spell, any caster will have what he has an no more. The other general point I want to make is that it is very easy to go from "occasional D1 mage" to "serious death power" because there are a lot of options for summoning death mages with several types of gems.
Death is possibly the easiest path to get in to if you do not recruit death mages. A D1 mage can cast the site searching spell, and you can summon D3 mages with a spell that takes D3 to cast. So if you are not a death power, you will spend your initial death income on casting Dark Knowledge (Conjuration 2, 3 gems) and then casting Summon Mound Fiend (Conjuration 7, 28 gems). Mound Fiends can then do your heavy D lifting, and are worth looking into even for strong death factions; as they are one of the few non-national spells which summons a priest, and undead priests can raise the dead. Which gives you free patrollers and chaff to block for your mages in the late game.
From their you will forge the death boosters, one of which is a badass itemspam helmet (Skullface, Construction 6, 25 gems). Given it's expense and utility as a booster, you will rarely use it for itemspam, but if you do choose to, remember to include at least one leader with undead leadership otherwise the spell will create immobile and useless chaff. Other death gear is generally less interesting, there is a brand (Shadowbrand, Construction 6, D2 E1) which is both higher research and more expensive than the frost or fire varieties. It's unique gimmick is to have a larger AoE with a MR negates AN damage effect. This means that the brand's own user will sometime be hit. The best death item for a thug is the Horror Helmet (Construction 4, 10 gems), it is an alright helmet statwise but its main draw is that it's user gets fear (or more fear if it already has some), which is a tremendously effective ability (fear can both route troops, and, in combination with awe, deflect attacks). If death gems didn't have so many good ways to spend your gems, this would be the only helmet I would ever use.
Most of the other items are a bit niche. If you took drain on your pretender, it is generally a good idea to forge Skull Mentors (Construction 4, 10 gems) if you are able. The skull mentor is more expensive than a lightless lantern per RP, but it generates 9 research by itself. If you can afford to produce more than 1 a turn in year 2, you can easily blow your competition away in research. The other death item I will mention is the Duskdagger (Construction 2, D1 S1) it deals AN damage with an attack bonus and low length, in the hands of a thug with high strength, these can easily shred SCs.
As a sorcery path, death excels at making units. At low levels, you have the ability to make ethereal units like shades (Conjuration 3, 4 for 5 gems) or shade beasts (Conjuration 4, 15 for 20 gems), which a little more than chaff, but with their ethereality and cold+poison immunity they play very well into a fatigue or poison based strategy. At mid to high levels you have some of the best troops in the game. Legion of Wights (Conjuration 9, 20 for 30 gems) summons very heavy infantry with high Str, Att, and a magic weapon. Even without buffs, they are scary; with spells they are almost thugs. Speaking of scary, we also have ghosts (Conjuration 6, 2+ for 9 gems). Stacking fear effects is extremely badass, and anything with moral of less than 30 will route in a few rounds at most while fighting ghosts. Ghosts are also much powerful if you buff their protection, so laying down marble warriors or wooden warriors is advisable.
But don't think that death cannot be leveraged on the battlefield. In the early game, skellispam (raise skeletons and raise dead, Enchantment 3, D2 40 fatigue) can drown smaller forces in enough chaff to fatigue out and kill them, bring enough mages and you can destroy large armies. In the vein of summoning stuff, you have Summon Lammashtas (Conjuration 4, D2, 100 fatigue), which gets you badass flying ethereal units with a good amount of HP and a magic weapon, at 2 per cast, it is a great deal; the only problem is that they don't exclusively attack your enemy, like horrors, they are neutral, but they will sometimes attack mages and cause havoc, so they have a niche. The other low research option is to spam fear effects (Frighten and Terror, Thaumaturgy 1 and 4, death 1 and 2, negligible fatigue), generally you cannot make the critical mass of mages to do this easily, but if someone is attacking a fort you hold, you can drive them away with nothing but a small amount of starting chaff, raise skeletons, fear, and your tower weapons.
As your research matures, more options start to open to you. Shadow Blast (Evocation 5 D2, 100 fatigue) costs a gem each time you cast it, but the effects are dramatic. AN damage and a paralysis in a decent AoE can destroy any force that isn't almost solely undead. Disintegrate (Alteration 8, D2, 10 fatigue) instantly slays a target that fails an MR check. Note: a death/fire mage can cast Banefire (Evocation 6, D3 F1, 30 fatigue), which is worth a mention because it deals a lot of damage and there is no way to resist it. Though few nations meet the requirements easily, Banefire is an SC killer and worth your time to cast. Soul Vortex (Alteration 6, D3, fatigue is a nonissue) is possibly the best buff spell in the game, it damages anyone around the caster and gives that damage back to the caster as bonus HP and removes the caster's fatigue. SV is great for SCs, but also has a use for any caster you want to run forever, stick some trolls or other beefy regenerators on guard commander orders and let their excess HP get converted into less fatigue for your Undead Mastery caster or something.
If you are basing your plan on undead mages and troops, you should cast Rigor Mortis (Enchantment 6, D4, 1 gem to cast) in every battle. It makes all non undead get a chance at additional fatigue every round, so not only does it make you win, but if you do, the enemy doesn't even get to retreat most times. Be sure you have enough force to kill the enemy as all mindless units die on turn 50. And if you are bringing undead to the fight, you might as well throw up darkness (Alteration 6, D4, 400 fatigue), which makes everyone that isn't 1) undead, 2) a demon, 3) 100% darkvision take crippling stat penalties (1/2 att, def, 1/4 precsion).
Speaking of undead, death magic has some of the best tools for killing or otherwise dealing with them. Wither Bones (Thaumaturgy 6, D3, 50 fatigue) kills undead in a large (and path level dependent) AoE without checking armor or MR. Its little brother Dust to Dust (Thaumaturgy 1, D1, 20) has a smaller AoE and less damage, but because it is so easy to research, it can destroy the most popular SC pretenders (Lich, Prince of Death, Awakened Oracle, Ghost King).
Death also has a number of things you can do to disrupt someone's army and economy. Bane Venom Charms (Construction 4, D2) cause pop death and disease units in the province in which they reside. The downside is that they disease the unit that carries them, so stick them on a Black Servant (Conjuration 1, D2, 5 gems) and run them into the land of a person you will soon attack or are at war with. A lategame upgrade to that strategy is to summon a Harvester of Sorrows (Conjuration 7, D4, 20 gems) Who has a built in bane venom charm on a flying stealthy raider chasis (don't expect it to take large armies of unsupported troops, it has no protection and no body or feet slots to boost it).
If you want your diseased enemies without summoning or the tedium of moving units, Leprosy (thaumaturgy 6, D5, 10 gems) can make up to half of the units in a province suddenly sick. It is best as part of the opening rounds of a war, to make slower moving mages or units get afflicted into uselessness or die before you even fight them. If you want to kill the enemy more directly though, Manifestation (Conjuration 8, D5, 4 gems) will go through the commanders in a target province and flip a coin for them one by one, the first flip to come up wrong will cause the selected commander to have a fight with an Ashen Angel, who stands a reasonable chance to kill poorly scripted mages. The downside is that if the game decides that all the commanders in the province are not going to get a fight today, the angel instead comes to kill the caster.
But how will death hit him where he will really feel it, in the provinces? Well, depending on your research you have 3 good options. Arouse Hunger (Alteration 4, D3, 5 gems) is the weakest, it summons a bunch of ghouls in a far away province to do battle with the PD. Ghouls are shit, and so this has a real chance of being driven off by even a handful of PD, but for someone that bought 1 PD all over, this can really bleed them for provinces in the opening rounds of a war. The other two options require a lot of research to pull off, but they are able to take even well defended provinces. Ghost Riders (Conjuration 9, D6, 5 gems) is the best remote in the game for taking away provinces, you get a lot of longdead horsemen and a thuggish wraith lord in a province of your choosing. These guys will take all but the heaviest PD. The drawback is that they do not stick around or claim the province for you, so the first guy to walk in will get it (which can lead to fierce indy scout on indy commander battles). It still has a lot of uses for territory denial, and if you take a province that the enemy was moving through or moving to with it, you can stop the movement of a ground based army (Yes Frank, I tested, and you can). The last option is Army of the Dead (Enchantment 9, D5, 10 gems) which gets a ton of longdead and soulless to fight for you in a distant province, while not as capable as the force you get with Ghost Riders, the upside is that you get to keep the province (and maybe the force? Someone confirm?).
But this isn't enough you say, you want to attack the WHOLE WORLD at once. No problem, death has you covered. There are 3 globals in death that fuck over the entire world, while astral can wish for the end times, and blood can make casting suicide, no one makes the world quite as fucked, quite as fast, as death. Burden of Time (Thaumaturgy 5, D5, 70+ gems) makes everything, everywhere, age and die rapidly. If you are a long lived, or undead, nation, you can laugh while the humans and abbysians waste away under it. It also has a niche against blood nations as it makes it harder to find good blood hunting provinces. Even items that make the user immune to the aging checks in winter are not supposed to work against it. Foul Air (Thaumaturgy 6, D5 A1, 75+ gems) is weaker but still annoying. It causes worldwide unrest which can wreck the economies of your enemies (also you) and it causes anyone wounded anywhere to get a disease affliction. This can be a real double edged sword, and the only nation that gets real leverage from this is LA Ermor, but if you already have burden and want to hurt the world more, this is only a hop, skip and jump away.
The final fuck the world, I wanna get off global is Utterdark (Alteration 9, D9, 100 gems). And boy is it ever a kick in the teeth. It reduces everyone's income to 10% of what it was, and makes all fights happen under darkness. If you are prepared and your enemies are not, having this up for even a few turns can make them penniless and devoid of any chaff that needs payment. Of course if you have armies of demons, you get even more benefit from this as you don't have to cart around a powerful death mage to cast darkness for you (demons also won't dessert you so they can stumble around in the dark). The downside is that you will also be broke and the global is kinda easy to dispel what with it's very high casting requirements and initial cost. If someone cast this, you can at least be happy that that was not another 10 tartarians running around.
I saved the best for last, one thing that death does better than any other path is make mages and commanders. Death is the king of summoning stuff that you care about, from early game thugs, to midgame mages, to late game SCs.
In the early game, the death summons that should stand out to you are Black Servant (see earlier) and Revive Bane Lord (Conjuration 5, D4, 12 death gems) both can fill the role of cheap thugs. The Bane Lord can clear pretty much endless PD with just a brand sword and a good shield, his weakness is that low level undeath counters really ruin his day so any caster support can be deadly and he isn't the most mobile of thugs. The Black Servant really needs armor and a shield (Blacksteel will do, Construction 0, E1), and even then he is really only useful against small amounts of weaker PD. His main advantage is that he is extremely cheap (around 10 gems [hammer] with the gear I outlined, you can skip the shield against some enemies) and can be deployed in year one. That is really the only good thing about him, he hits the field on like turn 5 and can take a few provinces in an early war while your army crushes resistance (after that you can make him a prophet and get some longdead out of the deal).
Now on to the good stuff. I already discussed Summon Mound Fiend, but you have a few other options for making death mages with death gems. First is Summon Spectre (Conjuration 6, D3, 20 gems) which gets you a stealthy mage with the possibility of E D W and S. Though they have decent stats, they are kinda expensive for thugging. The primary use of specters is to get you astral of last resort. The astral is stealthy though, so probably the most common use it to boost to S3 and sit where you expect mind hunts to fall. Given the expense, these guys should only get used if you need diversity in some or all of the paths they cover. Next up is the big mage spell in death, Lichcraft (Enchantment 8, D5, 30 gems) you get an immortal Demilich with D4 base, which is enough to cast pretty much anything short of Utterdark with off the rack boosters. If you are bootstrapping, this is your end goal.
Now there are a couple of ways to turn death gems into SCs. One is to cast Call Wraith Lord (Conjuration 7, D5, 40 gems) which gets you an immortal, ethereal, and decently tough undead with D3 (enough to cast soul vortex). Which is alright, and if all you have is D should be a goto, but there is a better option.
Tartarian Gate (Conjuration 9, D7, 10 gems) gets its own paragraph. As you can see it is very cheap, and it spits out a 150+ hp undead pretender chasis with highly random paths. Some are better than others (male titan and lightening cyclops are the best), but almost all can take provinces on their own with no gear, and with gear are full SCs. And 10 gems is damn cheap...well, there is a catch. Most tarts are troops (1 in 5 are commanders) and need to get a Gift of Reason (Thaumaturgy 4, N4, 20 gems [nature often becomes a bottleneck]) to start taking land on their own, and beyond that most are heavily afflicted. This is a problem as normal healing doesn't work on undead, you need either the Chalice (which is an artifact and unique) or Gift of Health (which is a global enchantment, visible to everyone and might as well say. "I have tarts and am a huge threat to win the game!" so while it won't draw wars like the forge, or Arcane Nexus, it will make people uneasy and is a heavy target for overwrites). Tartarian are also insane from long imprisonment in Tartarus and have a 25% chance to stand around and do something stupid each turn, this is a huge disadvantage and can easily get them killed. But Tarts are still worth the investment, they can break you into any path you lack and form a powerful corps of late game casters even if you don't use them as SCs. And I really cannot overstate how cheap 10 D is. If you have a lot of death in the endgame, your goal is to spend it cranking out tarts.
There are a lot of ways to make death casters without death gems, here is a list, I will not go into them as they are not part using death magic:
Contact Lamia Queen (Conjuration, Nature)
Bind Helliophagus (Blood, Blood [2 of 4])
Curse of Blood (Blood, Blood)
Streams from Hades (Conjuration, water)
Hidden in Snow (Enchantment, Water)
Hidden in Sand (Enchantment, Earth [needs a wasteland province to cast])
Ether Gate (Conjuration, Astral)
People want a write up for death, and I have been thinking of ways to spend my massive income in revenge, so this is a short primer. One thing to keep in mind with death is that there is no "summon death power" equivalent spell, any caster will have what he has an no more. The other general point I want to make is that it is very easy to go from "occasional D1 mage" to "serious death power" because there are a lot of options for summoning death mages with several types of gems.
Death is possibly the easiest path to get in to if you do not recruit death mages. A D1 mage can cast the site searching spell, and you can summon D3 mages with a spell that takes D3 to cast. So if you are not a death power, you will spend your initial death income on casting Dark Knowledge (Conjuration 2, 3 gems) and then casting Summon Mound Fiend (Conjuration 7, 28 gems). Mound Fiends can then do your heavy D lifting, and are worth looking into even for strong death factions; as they are one of the few non-national spells which summons a priest, and undead priests can raise the dead. Which gives you free patrollers and chaff to block for your mages in the late game.
From their you will forge the death boosters, one of which is a badass itemspam helmet (Skullface, Construction 6, 25 gems). Given it's expense and utility as a booster, you will rarely use it for itemspam, but if you do choose to, remember to include at least one leader with undead leadership otherwise the spell will create immobile and useless chaff. Other death gear is generally less interesting, there is a brand (Shadowbrand, Construction 6, D2 E1) which is both higher research and more expensive than the frost or fire varieties. It's unique gimmick is to have a larger AoE with a MR negates AN damage effect. This means that the brand's own user will sometime be hit. The best death item for a thug is the Horror Helmet (Construction 4, 10 gems), it is an alright helmet statwise but its main draw is that it's user gets fear (or more fear if it already has some), which is a tremendously effective ability (fear can both route troops, and, in combination with awe, deflect attacks). If death gems didn't have so many good ways to spend your gems, this would be the only helmet I would ever use.
Most of the other items are a bit niche. If you took drain on your pretender, it is generally a good idea to forge Skull Mentors (Construction 4, 10 gems) if you are able. The skull mentor is more expensive than a lightless lantern per RP, but it generates 9 research by itself. If you can afford to produce more than 1 a turn in year 2, you can easily blow your competition away in research. The other death item I will mention is the Duskdagger (Construction 2, D1 S1) it deals AN damage with an attack bonus and low length, in the hands of a thug with high strength, these can easily shred SCs.
As a sorcery path, death excels at making units. At low levels, you have the ability to make ethereal units like shades (Conjuration 3, 4 for 5 gems) or shade beasts (Conjuration 4, 15 for 20 gems), which a little more than chaff, but with their ethereality and cold+poison immunity they play very well into a fatigue or poison based strategy. At mid to high levels you have some of the best troops in the game. Legion of Wights (Conjuration 9, 20 for 30 gems) summons very heavy infantry with high Str, Att, and a magic weapon. Even without buffs, they are scary; with spells they are almost thugs. Speaking of scary, we also have ghosts (Conjuration 6, 2+ for 9 gems). Stacking fear effects is extremely badass, and anything with moral of less than 30 will route in a few rounds at most while fighting ghosts. Ghosts are also much powerful if you buff their protection, so laying down marble warriors or wooden warriors is advisable.
But don't think that death cannot be leveraged on the battlefield. In the early game, skellispam (raise skeletons and raise dead, Enchantment 3, D2 40 fatigue) can drown smaller forces in enough chaff to fatigue out and kill them, bring enough mages and you can destroy large armies. In the vein of summoning stuff, you have Summon Lammashtas (Conjuration 4, D2, 100 fatigue), which gets you badass flying ethereal units with a good amount of HP and a magic weapon, at 2 per cast, it is a great deal; the only problem is that they don't exclusively attack your enemy, like horrors, they are neutral, but they will sometimes attack mages and cause havoc, so they have a niche. The other low research option is to spam fear effects (Frighten and Terror, Thaumaturgy 1 and 4, death 1 and 2, negligible fatigue), generally you cannot make the critical mass of mages to do this easily, but if someone is attacking a fort you hold, you can drive them away with nothing but a small amount of starting chaff, raise skeletons, fear, and your tower weapons.
As your research matures, more options start to open to you. Shadow Blast (Evocation 5 D2, 100 fatigue) costs a gem each time you cast it, but the effects are dramatic. AN damage and a paralysis in a decent AoE can destroy any force that isn't almost solely undead. Disintegrate (Alteration 8, D2, 10 fatigue) instantly slays a target that fails an MR check. Note: a death/fire mage can cast Banefire (Evocation 6, D3 F1, 30 fatigue), which is worth a mention because it deals a lot of damage and there is no way to resist it. Though few nations meet the requirements easily, Banefire is an SC killer and worth your time to cast. Soul Vortex (Alteration 6, D3, fatigue is a nonissue) is possibly the best buff spell in the game, it damages anyone around the caster and gives that damage back to the caster as bonus HP and removes the caster's fatigue. SV is great for SCs, but also has a use for any caster you want to run forever, stick some trolls or other beefy regenerators on guard commander orders and let their excess HP get converted into less fatigue for your Undead Mastery caster or something.
If you are basing your plan on undead mages and troops, you should cast Rigor Mortis (Enchantment 6, D4, 1 gem to cast) in every battle. It makes all non undead get a chance at additional fatigue every round, so not only does it make you win, but if you do, the enemy doesn't even get to retreat most times. Be sure you have enough force to kill the enemy as all mindless units die on turn 50. And if you are bringing undead to the fight, you might as well throw up darkness (Alteration 6, D4, 400 fatigue), which makes everyone that isn't 1) undead, 2) a demon, 3) 100% darkvision take crippling stat penalties (1/2 att, def, 1/4 precsion).
Speaking of undead, death magic has some of the best tools for killing or otherwise dealing with them. Wither Bones (Thaumaturgy 6, D3, 50 fatigue) kills undead in a large (and path level dependent) AoE without checking armor or MR. Its little brother Dust to Dust (Thaumaturgy 1, D1, 20) has a smaller AoE and less damage, but because it is so easy to research, it can destroy the most popular SC pretenders (Lich, Prince of Death, Awakened Oracle, Ghost King).
Death also has a number of things you can do to disrupt someone's army and economy. Bane Venom Charms (Construction 4, D2) cause pop death and disease units in the province in which they reside. The downside is that they disease the unit that carries them, so stick them on a Black Servant (Conjuration 1, D2, 5 gems) and run them into the land of a person you will soon attack or are at war with. A lategame upgrade to that strategy is to summon a Harvester of Sorrows (Conjuration 7, D4, 20 gems) Who has a built in bane venom charm on a flying stealthy raider chasis (don't expect it to take large armies of unsupported troops, it has no protection and no body or feet slots to boost it).
If you want your diseased enemies without summoning or the tedium of moving units, Leprosy (thaumaturgy 6, D5, 10 gems) can make up to half of the units in a province suddenly sick. It is best as part of the opening rounds of a war, to make slower moving mages or units get afflicted into uselessness or die before you even fight them. If you want to kill the enemy more directly though, Manifestation (Conjuration 8, D5, 4 gems) will go through the commanders in a target province and flip a coin for them one by one, the first flip to come up wrong will cause the selected commander to have a fight with an Ashen Angel, who stands a reasonable chance to kill poorly scripted mages. The downside is that if the game decides that all the commanders in the province are not going to get a fight today, the angel instead comes to kill the caster.
But how will death hit him where he will really feel it, in the provinces? Well, depending on your research you have 3 good options. Arouse Hunger (Alteration 4, D3, 5 gems) is the weakest, it summons a bunch of ghouls in a far away province to do battle with the PD. Ghouls are shit, and so this has a real chance of being driven off by even a handful of PD, but for someone that bought 1 PD all over, this can really bleed them for provinces in the opening rounds of a war. The other two options require a lot of research to pull off, but they are able to take even well defended provinces. Ghost Riders (Conjuration 9, D6, 5 gems) is the best remote in the game for taking away provinces, you get a lot of longdead horsemen and a thuggish wraith lord in a province of your choosing. These guys will take all but the heaviest PD. The drawback is that they do not stick around or claim the province for you, so the first guy to walk in will get it (which can lead to fierce indy scout on indy commander battles). It still has a lot of uses for territory denial, and if you take a province that the enemy was moving through or moving to with it, you can stop the movement of a ground based army (Yes Frank, I tested, and you can). The last option is Army of the Dead (Enchantment 9, D5, 10 gems) which gets a ton of longdead and soulless to fight for you in a distant province, while not as capable as the force you get with Ghost Riders, the upside is that you get to keep the province (and maybe the force? Someone confirm?).
But this isn't enough you say, you want to attack the WHOLE WORLD at once. No problem, death has you covered. There are 3 globals in death that fuck over the entire world, while astral can wish for the end times, and blood can make casting suicide, no one makes the world quite as fucked, quite as fast, as death. Burden of Time (Thaumaturgy 5, D5, 70+ gems) makes everything, everywhere, age and die rapidly. If you are a long lived, or undead, nation, you can laugh while the humans and abbysians waste away under it. It also has a niche against blood nations as it makes it harder to find good blood hunting provinces. Even items that make the user immune to the aging checks in winter are not supposed to work against it. Foul Air (Thaumaturgy 6, D5 A1, 75+ gems) is weaker but still annoying. It causes worldwide unrest which can wreck the economies of your enemies (also you) and it causes anyone wounded anywhere to get a disease affliction. This can be a real double edged sword, and the only nation that gets real leverage from this is LA Ermor, but if you already have burden and want to hurt the world more, this is only a hop, skip and jump away.
The final fuck the world, I wanna get off global is Utterdark (Alteration 9, D9, 100 gems). And boy is it ever a kick in the teeth. It reduces everyone's income to 10% of what it was, and makes all fights happen under darkness. If you are prepared and your enemies are not, having this up for even a few turns can make them penniless and devoid of any chaff that needs payment. Of course if you have armies of demons, you get even more benefit from this as you don't have to cart around a powerful death mage to cast darkness for you (demons also won't dessert you so they can stumble around in the dark). The downside is that you will also be broke and the global is kinda easy to dispel what with it's very high casting requirements and initial cost. If someone cast this, you can at least be happy that that was not another 10 tartarians running around.
I saved the best for last, one thing that death does better than any other path is make mages and commanders. Death is the king of summoning stuff that you care about, from early game thugs, to midgame mages, to late game SCs.
In the early game, the death summons that should stand out to you are Black Servant (see earlier) and Revive Bane Lord (Conjuration 5, D4, 12 death gems) both can fill the role of cheap thugs. The Bane Lord can clear pretty much endless PD with just a brand sword and a good shield, his weakness is that low level undeath counters really ruin his day so any caster support can be deadly and he isn't the most mobile of thugs. The Black Servant really needs armor and a shield (Blacksteel will do, Construction 0, E1), and even then he is really only useful against small amounts of weaker PD. His main advantage is that he is extremely cheap (around 10 gems [hammer] with the gear I outlined, you can skip the shield against some enemies) and can be deployed in year one. That is really the only good thing about him, he hits the field on like turn 5 and can take a few provinces in an early war while your army crushes resistance (after that you can make him a prophet and get some longdead out of the deal).
Now on to the good stuff. I already discussed Summon Mound Fiend, but you have a few other options for making death mages with death gems. First is Summon Spectre (Conjuration 6, D3, 20 gems) which gets you a stealthy mage with the possibility of E D W and S. Though they have decent stats, they are kinda expensive for thugging. The primary use of specters is to get you astral of last resort. The astral is stealthy though, so probably the most common use it to boost to S3 and sit where you expect mind hunts to fall. Given the expense, these guys should only get used if you need diversity in some or all of the paths they cover. Next up is the big mage spell in death, Lichcraft (Enchantment 8, D5, 30 gems) you get an immortal Demilich with D4 base, which is enough to cast pretty much anything short of Utterdark with off the rack boosters. If you are bootstrapping, this is your end goal.
Now there are a couple of ways to turn death gems into SCs. One is to cast Call Wraith Lord (Conjuration 7, D5, 40 gems) which gets you an immortal, ethereal, and decently tough undead with D3 (enough to cast soul vortex). Which is alright, and if all you have is D should be a goto, but there is a better option.
Tartarian Gate (Conjuration 9, D7, 10 gems) gets its own paragraph. As you can see it is very cheap, and it spits out a 150+ hp undead pretender chasis with highly random paths. Some are better than others (male titan and lightening cyclops are the best), but almost all can take provinces on their own with no gear, and with gear are full SCs. And 10 gems is damn cheap...well, there is a catch. Most tarts are troops (1 in 5 are commanders) and need to get a Gift of Reason (Thaumaturgy 4, N4, 20 gems [nature often becomes a bottleneck]) to start taking land on their own, and beyond that most are heavily afflicted. This is a problem as normal healing doesn't work on undead, you need either the Chalice (which is an artifact and unique) or Gift of Health (which is a global enchantment, visible to everyone and might as well say. "I have tarts and am a huge threat to win the game!" so while it won't draw wars like the forge, or Arcane Nexus, it will make people uneasy and is a heavy target for overwrites). Tartarian are also insane from long imprisonment in Tartarus and have a 25% chance to stand around and do something stupid each turn, this is a huge disadvantage and can easily get them killed. But Tarts are still worth the investment, they can break you into any path you lack and form a powerful corps of late game casters even if you don't use them as SCs. And I really cannot overstate how cheap 10 D is. If you have a lot of death in the endgame, your goal is to spend it cranking out tarts.
There are a lot of ways to make death casters without death gems, here is a list, I will not go into them as they are not part using death magic:
Contact Lamia Queen (Conjuration, Nature)
Bind Helliophagus (Blood, Blood [2 of 4])
Curse of Blood (Blood, Blood)
Streams from Hades (Conjuration, water)
Hidden in Snow (Enchantment, Water)
Hidden in Sand (Enchantment, Earth [needs a wasteland province to cast])
Ether Gate (Conjuration, Astral)
Last edited by Akula on Tue Apr 26, 2011 3:07 am, edited 4 times in total.
A couple of things to also remember:
There is a death artifact that is the best booster in the game, giving an incredible +3 to death. This lets even a relatively weak Death mage cast stuff like Tartarian Gate. Get the Scepter of Dark Regency if you can.
And they also tie for the second best booster, which gives +2 death and casts Rigor Mortis as part of the item's effect. You can only put the Jade Mask on Lamia Queens though, but they're nice Death/Nature casters anyway.
There is a death artifact that is the best booster in the game, giving an incredible +3 to death. This lets even a relatively weak Death mage cast stuff like Tartarian Gate. Get the Scepter of Dark Regency if you can.
And they also tie for the second best booster, which gives +2 death and casts Rigor Mortis as part of the item's effect. You can only put the Jade Mask on Lamia Queens though, but they're nice Death/Nature casters anyway.
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Avoraciopoctules
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It depends. I'm not a big fan of shades, ghosts, and other Death summons in the early going because you need to summon them in small groups, which eats up precious commander-turns. Legion of Wight in particularly is fantastic not just because Wights are good (otherwise you'd summon them one at a time much earlier in the game), but because you can summon 20 of them in one turn.
If you're looking for non-commander meatshields, there are probably other better options. Like Vine Ogres (get 4 for 2 gems with an Ivy King), Mechanical Men, or those weak Frankenstein things that can be produced at 16 per turn with an artifact.
If you're looking for non-commander meatshields, there are probably other better options. Like Vine Ogres (get 4 for 2 gems with an Ivy King), Mechanical Men, or those weak Frankenstein things that can be produced at 16 per turn with an artifact.
Death summons depend on what exactly your needs are. Remember that the general rule of summing is that the results are either slow, expensive, or shitty.
I'm a big fan of Pale Riders as a spell that occupies a nice middle ground. When you need chaff quick, it makes 20 in a turn. You get at least 2 guys per gem, which is pretty nice. And they're not totally worthless because they have lances.
But, if you don't care about one of those dimensions, there are more specialized options. Spirits suck hugely, but you get 3+ etheral guys per gem, quickly. Reanimate gives you a lot of chaff for the price, but is mage-intensive and requires you to go where the corpses are.
I'm a big fan of Pale Riders as a spell that occupies a nice middle ground. When you need chaff quick, it makes 20 in a turn. You get at least 2 guys per gem, which is pretty nice. And they're not totally worthless because they have lances.
But, if you don't care about one of those dimensions, there are more specialized options. Spirits suck hugely, but you get 3+ etheral guys per gem, quickly. Reanimate gives you a lot of chaff for the price, but is mage-intensive and requires you to go where the corpses are.
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Avoraciopoctules
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I've played with it before, and generally liked it. The mod comes prepackaged with a test nation so you can try out the various units.
There is some concern about there already being a number of valid endgame strategies and the mod changing the validity of these, but I think overall I like what the mod adds to the game.
There is some concern about there already being a number of valid endgame strategies and the mod changing the validity of these, but I think overall I like what the mod adds to the game.
Yes and no, it adds some stuff. Some of which is too cheap, like the grendelkin. Some of which is useless, like treants and ettins. And some of which is just good, like shishis. The problem is that it is still uneven, and still limits the endgame to a handful of spells and SCs. While it reduces reliance on tarts, it doesn't make the endgame magically diverse or more interesting. It needs troop summons, and pure mage summons, and remote attacks, maybe even some battlemagic, before it really diversifies the end game.Zinegata wrote:Is the EDM mod any good? It supposedly adds a couple of high-level summons for all types of magic so that the end game is more than just Tartarians.
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Avoraciopoctules
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Username17
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The premise of EDM is horse shit. The entire justification for the thing is that everyone relies on Tartarians because only super combatants matter and Tartarians are the best Super Combatants. Neither one of those is actually true.
In the game as Pangaea that tragically lacked a win scenario written in to the setup, in one of my latest battles I crushed an army with more than twenty Tartarians in it with an army of mostly maenads. Because battle-wide spells that cost gems are a really fucking big deal and you can just kill double digit Tartarian hordes with freespawn troops if you give them Weapons of Sharpness, Strength of Giants, Fog Warriors, and Mass Regeneration.
The thing that's really cool about Tartarians is that they break you into other magics and (especially) weird combos since they have linked randoms. Not that they can single handedly kill late game armies, because they can't. If you really wanted to add late game diversity, you'd add more ways to summon guys with weird random magic, or you'd add some really high level very cheap mid-grade thugs. Or even just throw in some high level army summons that give you toughish troops in large numbers. 50 gems for 60 Mechanical Men at Construction 9, or similar package deals. That would change the dynamic of the late game. I'm not sure how many Vine Ogres you'd have to get with a single casting at Enchantment 9 before it would change the way you thought about life, but it's a number.
Consider the different colors and what they provide late game:
So obviously you could throw in some late game bad-ass summons of many different types for Air or Fire and t would make the late game a lot different. And there really aren't any late game things that live in the Sleeper/Banelord slot - but there should be. If I could pay 8 gems for something that was about the level of a Banelord with level 9 Research, it would change the late game a lot.
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In the game as Pangaea that tragically lacked a win scenario written in to the setup, in one of my latest battles I crushed an army with more than twenty Tartarians in it with an army of mostly maenads. Because battle-wide spells that cost gems are a really fucking big deal and you can just kill double digit Tartarian hordes with freespawn troops if you give them Weapons of Sharpness, Strength of Giants, Fog Warriors, and Mass Regeneration.
The thing that's really cool about Tartarians is that they break you into other magics and (especially) weird combos since they have linked randoms. Not that they can single handedly kill late game armies, because they can't. If you really wanted to add late game diversity, you'd add more ways to summon guys with weird random magic, or you'd add some really high level very cheap mid-grade thugs. Or even just throw in some high level army summons that give you toughish troops in large numbers. 50 gems for 60 Mechanical Men at Construction 9, or similar package deals. That would change the dynamic of the late game. I'm not sure how many Vine Ogres you'd have to get with a single casting at Enchantment 9 before it would change the way you thought about life, but it's a number.
Consider the different colors and what they provide late game:
| Magic | Super Combatants | Magic Diversity | Monsters | Armies |
| Air | Yes | No | No | No |
| Earth | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Fire | No | No | No | No |
| Water | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Astral | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Nature | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Death | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Blood | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
So obviously you could throw in some late game bad-ass summons of many different types for Air or Fire and t would make the late game a lot different. And there really aren't any late game things that live in the Sleeper/Banelord slot - but there should be. If I could pay 8 gems for something that was about the level of a Banelord with level 9 Research, it would change the late game a lot.
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Can troops really fight through mass-kill spells like Earthquake or Rain of Stones to reliably kill masses of SCs? I recall that the guy with the 20 tarts had scripting issues.
I can see massed troops kill SCs that are just relying on a Gold Shield and Fire Brand, but even with Fog Warriors I'm kinda worried that a couple castings of Earthquake are gonna just wipe a whole army out.
tl;dr: How do you get armies to survive in the face of battlefield annihilation spells?
I can see massed troops kill SCs that are just relying on a Gold Shield and Fire Brand, but even with Fog Warriors I'm kinda worried that a couple castings of Earthquake are gonna just wipe a whole army out.
tl;dr: How do you get armies to survive in the face of battlefield annihilation spells?
Last edited by Zinegata on Sat May 07, 2011 11:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Army of Gold makes you laugh in the face of earthquake, Gaia's Warriors cuts all elemental damage spells in half, Antimagic blocks MR resist spells, Will of the Fates makes half of all attacks plain not work, etc.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
Air Queens can cast Mistform and are ethereal, making them a damn sight better SCs than all the other elemental royalty. The ability to fly and cast Cloud Trapeze are secondary. The extra AN attacks above and beyond weapon attacks and glamour don't hurt either.Akula wrote:AQs are a world better than EKs or FKs. The ability to teleport and fly are both very big deals. I still wouldn't really say that air can make supercombatants though.Orion wrote:What's this about Air supercombatants? You can't mean Air Queens, because you didn't mention Fire or Earth SCs.
Last edited by K on Sun May 08, 2011 8:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
Army of Gold protects against Earthquake? I know Army of Gold gives Fire resistance and extra protection, but isn't the Earthquake damage a roll against defense and not Protection?
Army of Gold would protect against Rain of Stones, but unless I'm reading Earthquake wrong then it wouldn't do much against Earthquake.
Edit: Oh, wait, it's just 8 Armor Piercing damage for Earthquake. Yeah, 20 Prot is gonna fuck Earthquake up.
But yeah, I would agree AQs would count as decent SCs. I think Frank left out mass battlefield buffs though - of which Air arguably has the best.
Army of Gold would protect against Rain of Stones, but unless I'm reading Earthquake wrong then it wouldn't do much against Earthquake.
Edit: Oh, wait, it's just 8 Armor Piercing damage for Earthquake. Yeah, 20 Prot is gonna fuck Earthquake up.
But yeah, I would agree AQs would count as decent SCs. I think Frank left out mass battlefield buffs though - of which Air arguably has the best.
Last edited by Zinegata on Sun May 08, 2011 10:57 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Username17
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There are things that the different magic paths do at the high end. Fire has two of the better battlefield destruction spells (Heat From Hell / Flame Storm). And they stack. Fire has the best overland army melter in the whole flames from the sky deal. But the EDM is just summons, so I was only addressing things that could be plausibly summoned.
And my point there was that EDM completely misses the boat by just printing up a pile of expensive monsters and super combatants for various gem types. And that basically isn't going to do anything to the late game at all. Because it doesn't actually fill a void that people actually have.
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And my point there was that EDM completely misses the boat by just printing up a pile of expensive monsters and super combatants for various gem types. And that basically isn't going to do anything to the late game at all. Because it doesn't actually fill a void that people actually have.
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TheNotSoEvilNecromancer
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Depends on what you are resisting. If it's something like Banishment spam for a refenning undead or demon unit, then do it. If you are trying to avoid Charm spam, you will go down eventually.TheNotSoEvilNecromancer wrote:Is it worth it to boost really low MR to slightly higher but still low MR (i.e. 12 to 16 with an ama) or am I just better off just accepting that that commander is going to be fucked no matter what if anyone casts a resistable spell and just give him something else.