any tips on playing necromancer

[Saica-Fox]

main issues i have is they go mad all the time. and i loose 1 to 3 turns. never have hands of glory very few. and idk if its a bug but if i do raise dead or raise dead animals and there are non around it takes all movement or if they are around and i did wrong one it still takes all movement away AP that is

[Draken]

Use the apprentice to raise the dead.
Get another commander with him and assign him to that commander when he is sane. This will allow you to drag the apprentice around even when he's uncontrollable.
Some eras have more or less sites with hands of glory, what era did you choose? I think the empire and monarch ones with a lot of cities are good for that. The first era with lots of farms and ancient forrest not so much.

[forrestomintero]

Once you reach lich, and learn the planar swap spell, you can epically troll your enemies. Walk to the equivalent hades tile where you know an enemy army is standing on the primary plane, and cast planar swap. You'll swap places with the enemy army, and they'll die in hades. Any unit that stays in hades without being undead will take damage every turn until they die. Now you know the most effective way to win fights as a necromancer: don't even bother to fight them XD

[Flap]

Necromancer endgame is unfair and fun.

I turned into a demilich once. That was insanely fun.

[Falaris]

1: You need a decent era. Agriculture, empire, monarchy are my favourites but I don't know if they're 'best'. (AGriculture gives more small villages for vampries and ghouls to munch on without ruining hands of glory production.
2: Remember to trade for Hands.
3: As others said, and tooltips say, you're like sith: There is always a master an an apprentice. ANd the apprentice gets the crap job of going nuts for raising dead.
4: Learn the spell and ritual descriptions. Note that where casting cost of raise dead is listed, it is a few shoes - that's action points. It costs AP's to cast it, wether it succeeds or not.
5: Again 4. You need the small print on spells. (Right click on them). You don't want a entire battlefield disease effect if you have living troops, for instance.
6: You real strength is in rituals. Rituals like twiiceborn, blood rite, etc. can really add a new dimension to the game, turning your lord or apprentice(s) into proper undead - vampires, ghosts, lich, wraith, wights, ghost, etc. They get POWERFUL that way.
7: And to be fair, the good old raise? lesser undead rite - and its bigger cousins - can get you some real good stuff cheap.
8: Soulless you leave to defend your places. You really dont' want to drag those around because they're slow.

I find Necromancer my go-to fun faction. It has a lot of, frankly, real cool stuff, and it has a lot of depth, too.

[Primagen]

Necromancer is best faction. Fallen Empire is another fun age to play in. You get less hands of glory production but you get easy access to temples and old castles as well as old Battle fields. The raise legion spell is underrated, probably the best summon for cost in the game.

[Karlito]

Apprentices can learn Twiceborn, so when they get too insane you can get them killed and they'll slowly regain sanity as undead.

[LostSemplex]

Originally posted by Draken:

Use the apprentice to raise the dead.
Get another commander with him and assign him to that commander when he is sane. This will allow you to drag the apprentice around even when he's uncontrollable.
Some eras have more or less sites with hands of glory, what era did you choose? I think the empire and monarch ones with a lot of cities are good for that. The first era with lots of farms and ancient forrest not so much.

Any chance you can explain how to assign the apprentice to another commander? I find when he is insane- it stops both from moving and I'm unable to drag the apprentice along. I've tried to find out in the manual and google, but have had no luck figuring out how to assign, other than control clicking both commanders.

[Karlito]

Originally posted by LostSemplex:

Originally posted by Draken:

Use the apprentice to raise the dead.
Get another commander with him and assign him to that commander when he is sane. This will allow you to drag the apprentice around even when he's uncontrollable.
Some eras have more or less sites with hands of glory, what era did you choose? I think the empire and monarch ones with a lot of cities are good for that. The first era with lots of farms and ancient forrest not so much.

Any chance you can explain how to assign the apprentice to another commander? I find when he is insane- it stops both from moving and I'm unable to drag the apprentice along. I've tried to find out in the manual and google, but have had no luck figuring out how to assign, other than control clicking both commanders.

You can only assign him (or unassign) on a turn when he's sane.

[Falaris]

Originally posted by Karlito:

You can only assign him (or unassign) on a turn when he's sane.

Exactly, and that's a bit unfortunate for him, but for you, it's a bit of an opportunity. At the time he's more insane than not, he's out...lived his usefulness. Promote him with twiceborn, blood rites, or whichever way you feel appropriate.

For necromancers, death is promotion, and their next iteration is both interesting and can be quite powerful.

Note that the two best promotions, IMO - lich and vampire - are both good, and both end up with lvl 3 spells. The lich can cast two spells per round, which is awesome, while the vampire is much stronger and capably physically. In fact, he's a bit of a powerhouse, especially with a couple of magic items. Both are immortal, which is just insanely powerful.

(Immortal means, if they die they just pop back up on the building they were turned into a lich/vampire. You want that sucker fortified more than any other location in the game. That's actually one advantage with the vampire - an old castle is a lot easier to fortify than a temple.

The vampire can be promoted to a vampire count, while the lich can be promoted to a demilich, but ... that comes with severe drawbacks, I'm not sure it's worth it.

[niddhoger]

Originally posted by Falaris:

The vampire can be promoted to a vampire count, while the lich can be promoted to a demilich, but ... that comes with severe drawbacks, I'm not sure it's worth it.

Oh it is VERY much worth it. The teleporting, invulnerable, immortal, double-casting decay bomb is so much fun to play. Demis become reusable atomic bombs that you can keep dropping on citadels until you win the battle of attrition... which won't take long as you only need a fraction of a single turn's worth of special resource to send the Lich back for another mass-decay/disease bomb.

While they are imprecise, you can always raise that overwhelming amount of undead and summon/recruit a commander on site to lead them. Then teleport away to the next location and repeat.

On smaller maps I guess this isn't worth it, as you can probably get more use out of thug armies of vampires flying around, but I like to play on enormous maps where the range available to the Demilich is simply unparalleled.

Oh, as for general Necro tips, Banefire Archers are OP. Extremely cost effective for a set of 5 decay spammers bought for a bargain. In fact, the first few dozen Hands you collect should always go towards banefire archers. While the decay dot may not seem like much damage, any target hit by decay is already dead. Even if you win, a decayed target still dies. The only counter is regeneration, but even then, disease halves regeneration's healing factor which allows decay to overwhelm such targets. This is why fighting necromancers can be so scary. The disease + decay means even when you win, you'll lose most of your army anyway.