Raising an undead army is too good

[jeem9000]

The undead army thing needs to get reworked. As it is now, you don't ever need more than the 1st Shadow tome (Necromancy) and you'll be able have a massive undead army at your disposal. There needs to be more investment in the Shadow tome upgrades in order to achieve this. I think there should be some sort of limit of undead units you can have based on the number of Shadow affinity points you have, and if you go above that cap, then the undead upkeep costs will increase by a certain amount (gold/magic/souls, right now there's no souls upkeep costs), like how you get penalized when you go over the city cap. Each Shadow affinity point can support something like 20 undead units, if you research the T5 Shadow tome, then the cap will be removed.

[cernodan]

You're wrong.

[Partholonian]

Undead cost a lot of upkeep and the basic ones are not very strong unless you have specific other tomes' enchantments that apply to them (which raises the upkeep even more). Raising armies can be useful sometimes but I don't think it's overall more powerful than what you could do with different tomes. Even if your enemy doesn't have a specific counter to them.

Also, raising more undead troops is gated by soul income, which is fairly hard to raise, one soulwell per city (which takes up a province and doesn't give resources to the city AND you have to pay to build it - several things about necromancy effectively tax your living subjects) and that one global enchantment (which also costs upkeep, so you paid research and the up front mana cost just to *convert* one resource type to another).

Once you research higher tier undead you probably want to stop spending souls on the weak ones anyway, you need those souls for reapers and Wightborn if you're going for it. And of course you only get 18 slots in a major battle which you don't want to fill up with weaklings. (Unless you're going necromancy + Mighty Meek, which I should try sometime even if it's just for lolz). They're even worse for wonder exploring.

[VoiD]

Skelly rush is pretty neat but later on they are just not useful.

One big lava spell or a few AoE hits can demolish your entire army in a single turn, it's just not worth the cost.

Bone Dragons are very neat though.

[Sifer2]

In the rework they front loaded the necromancy line more. But I would still say it's a waste to pick if you don't intend to grab the entire necro tome line.

[Ananym]

What
The t1 skeletons are terrible and mostly a waste of souls
The bonehorrors are profoundly underwhelming, only really useful in attrition circumstances
Corrupt souls are just barely functional
Reapers are the only undead unit that actually competes

[CrUsHeR]

Also, raising more undead troops is gated by soul income, which is fairly hard to raise, one soulwell per city

Well you kind of need to play Dark as a proper Necromancer.
Their stability buildings scale the mana income from heroes in your crypt, so you can have something like +1000 mana just from that. Then you convert this mana into Desecrate Structure.

Lost Tomb ancient wonders generate an extra +1 souls per hero in the crypt. Annex more of these, with Outposts if necessary.

Eldritch Sovereigns can generate 30 souls from 3 thralls and 45CP. In my current game i could use this about 4-5 times per turn.

And of course, battles. Apply Soulbound on everything. Don't let routing units escape, you need the souls. Dark always has the Ice Shackles for that purpose.

[TirAsleen]

Skellies are good, but only for the brutal difficulty necromancy A.I. Rulers.

They raise their Skellies at legendary rank or quickly boost it to that rank by passive xp gains. So you see lowly skeleton mages, but with near 100hp and some damage upgrades + unit enchantments and more or less useful race form traits.

Thats not really an option for a human player, you cannot afford these massive stacks easily nor can you level them all up to legendary rank as easy, if you don't have constant fights, draining xp from more useful units at higher Tiers.

Meanwile players can just build a smith's guild, use profilic swarmer and scions of evil and draft 2 legendary Tier 1 units / turn.

I think you should look into this T1 draft build, you may notice some "unbalance" with it, especially on small + medium sized maps.

https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/FactionCreator.html?u=35:1a,23,31,183,56,4f,79,bb,000000,s,a,h,n:r

Build a Dark Forge SPI and Smith's Guild

Secondary Tomes are based on what you face, if its necromancy A.I. take the Tome of Pyromancy for Fiery Arrows and Searing Blades, if its the demon prince A.I. Tome of Cyromancy Frost Arrows and Frost Blades.

The other A.I. rulers are not a challenge, and rank after Umbral Raid Parties and Gold Infestations/Toll of Seasons.

[Ananym]

Remember, clearing with a large number of units *actively* works against you because you're dramatically cutting your hero exp, and getting exp on disposable skeletons is worthless. Running around with big stacks of t1 skeletons is just counterproductive - the only reason to do that is to rush a player, and every other rush build in the game is much better at that.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

snip

You can also completely ignore necromancy tomes and take some more useful shadow tomes, like cyromancy get its summon and white witch + enchants and research SPI.

Its very easy to max mana and research adjancent bonuses early with arctic adaption and its snow terraform spell. Frostspire gives addional research for snow provinces thats very easy to do and max out.

And do this in 5-7 cities you own, together with Doomdepth Trench, which rewards pure evil players, keeping a proper classic necromancer theme.

You see all these top SPIs are in cold tomes only and the necromancy tomes only got the soulwell SPI, thats a too high opportunity cost for poor eco and only useful for brutal A.I.s that have no eco issues, especially Noctus a presence necromancer A.I. with higher research rates than anyone else. Brutal presence A.I.s are not equal and very different in what bonuses they get.

The moment you unlock Tome of the Reaper you swim in souls, granted you have enough cities for it 5-7 are allright.

You cast harvest population on all of them thats +30 souls per city so you get at least 150-210 souls per turn just from this spell, passively. At this point you do not really need pop growth as much, either as you are about to finish the game.

The souls from the crypt will also activate.

Soulwells will add another 25-35 souls / turn, you may want this tome just for decay magic and T2 necromancers, but it can be skipped.

I don't use desecrate structure, its a bit expensive and i skip the entire Tome of Great Transformation - Fetid Legion is the only useful spell in that Tome.

The race transformation to undead is a negative at higher A.I. presence rulers like demon prince brutal with major combat advantage, you can't heal 1 shots. And you quickly notice how useful demonkin is, with its high crit bonus, frenzy + flying. It also adds some counterplay with fire resistant culture troops compared to the fire weak undead summons.

Problem just is, if you are deep into Astral and Shadow, like every necromancer worth his salt, you gonna have some trouble getting a T4 chaos tome - usually play with unbound tomes - the affinity point requirements are silly.

Would have been better to hard limit magic tomes/affinity empire trees something similar should have been done as in the previous games, but thats another story for another day.


Maybe you wonder why i rather prefere late game necromancy.

it only has advantages:

1. The high Tier undead units are much stronger, skellies are very weak weaker than culture T1 units and they drain your eco once you use unit enchantments.

2. Surprising the enemy, thats not needed in SP, but PvP. In PvP you don't play undead or only undead.
If you do that you will lose the game quickly, the negative spirit and fire resistances are to easy to exploit - but high Tier undead units have way higher resistances and you could get them quickly with harvest population.

So you can quickly overrun another player with stacks of reapers empowered by cosmic overdrive or any kind of A.I. does not matter.

To make this very effective better get 2,5K research/ turn quickly, possible with mystic potential, arctic adaption and mystic + cold tome SPIs.

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by Ananym:

Remember, clearing with a large number of units *actively* works against you because you're dramatically cutting your hero exp, and getting exp on disposable skeletons is worthless. Running around with big stacks of t1 skeletons is just counterproductive - the only reason to do that is to rush a player, and every other rush build in the game is much better at that.

Its bad to rush a player with that crap and not used in PvP, its rather go reaper or go home.

Skellies were great in Vanilla AoW4 in SP when you had tactical combat vs node guards.

Skellies had the same stats as other T1 culture units, after the necromancy rework the skellie stats were nerfed across the board.

And you cannot build them in your cities anymore with draft as culture race form unit.

So you cannot have skellie pole arms with tough, resistant, hardy or strong and athletics. They did cost only like 10 mana and 20 draft not sure anymore, but a lot less than any other T1 culture unit or T1 summon + had a low upkeep.

They used to be good, but no more.

Still skellie spam by a brutal necromancy A.I. ruler is obnoxious due to decay magic and legendary ranks all over.

[jeem9000]

I say it's too good in the sense it provides too much value just with one tome. You obviously would not be using these skeletons in your main fighting armies, but they provide too much support and utility for a single T1 tome. I am only talking about SP, not PvP.

[Ananym]

I mean it's the same thing. If you're wasting exp by putting it on skeletons you're just losing value. If you're wasting souls by spending them on skeletons instead of corrupted souls, reapers and wightborn, you're just losing value. If you're hamstringing your economy by spending a ton of upkeep on skeletons that don't let you do anything you couldn't do anyway, you're wasting value.

There are much better tomes than t1 necro.
And like. If you're playing singleplayer and you think the tome is too strong. Don't take it?

[TirAsleen]

Originally posted by jeem9000:

I say it's too good in the sense it provides too much value just with one tome. You obviously would not be using these skeletons in your main fighting armies, but they provide too much support and utility for a single T1 tome. I am only talking about SP, not PvP.

Just for SP:

Tome of Cyromancy gives you the same control in combat, a good summon to clear nodes and evolves to T3 and a research SPI on top of that.
It also gives you very valuable enchantments whenever you face the demon prince the strongest A.I. ruler in the game, who is weak against frost damage.

Tome of Necromancy is certainly not *too* good, its in no way better than Tome of the Tentacle as a starter tome. Good, but there are better options.

I usually skip Tome of Necromancy and take Tome of Souls instead as a second Tome. Soulbinders is really easily one of the best enchantments in the game: 20% damage, more souls and the chance to turn an unit into a zombie + Bone Horrors/corrupt souls are more worth their upkeep than lowly skellies.

And this Tome can be researched right after your starter tome and again, Cyromancy improves your research rate *and* helps with early combat.

If i see any A.I. with nature affinities, Tome of Necromancy, could possibly my 3rd Tome for the decay enchantment, otherwise its good to take a different tome.

[jeem9000]

Originally posted by Ananym:

I mean it's the same thing. If you're wasting exp by putting it on skeletons you're just losing value. If you're wasting souls by spending them on skeletons instead of corrupted souls, reapers and wightborn, you're just losing value. If you're hamstringing your economy by spending a ton of upkeep on skeletons that don't let you do anything you couldn't do anyway, you're wasting value.

There are much better tomes than t1 necro.
And like. If you're playing singleplayer and you think the tome is too strong. Don't take it?

My whole point is you don't need to go up the Shadow ladder, just take a T1 tome and be done. There's no need to bother with units like Corrupt Souls, they are terrible anyway. Reapers are the only decent undead unit but it's too late and too slow, not worth going up the ladder for. Shadow Empire tree offers alot of nice skills you'd want to spend Imperium points on, but most tomes are lacking. Just get the Necromancy tome early and be done with it, as you'll get much of the benefits without needing to invest more into Shadow.

[Pantagruel]

Skeletons are for a plan of 'overwhelm them with legions of trash'... but 'overwhelm them with legions of trash' just doesn't work against mid to late game armies.