First fun run with a Dark+Necro build, however...

[CrUsHeR]

So i did another run with a Necro, even in a suboptimal underground version. Was pretty fun.

However: This class needs a full rework.

What i did was to play Dark with Powerful Evokers and Ruthless Raiders, and the Tome of Frost. The entire playstyle revolves exclusively around a Caster-specced Wizard King, and 4-5 Warlocks, optionally one AOE-capable extra magic unit (e.g. Fairy). So all you do is spam spells at max range, summon zombies, hammer them with Sundering Curse. As for any Necro-specific elements, it still benefits from all the passives for being Undead and other tome-related effects (decay etc).



The actual problem isn't the viability of the class, but the entire unit roster.
The units you get:

1) Skeleton - this would be okay, if there was an actual way to get this on the fly while roaming the world. Also being locked to spearmen is bad as it is redundant and obsolete with the Dark T2 lancers. What the build really needed were armored 1h+shield units, and possibly archers for the style.

2) Bone Golem - very annoying to play against due to spawning a skeleton on death, but a huge armored crab being a squishy shock unit doesn't make any sense. Also redundant with the T1 Dark shock unit.
The massive issue with this unit is that it cannot be resurrected by a Necromancer. You can transform two skeletons into one Bone Golem, but you cannot get new skeletons out in the field. So this intended synergy is a complete failure in its current iteration.

3) Necromancer - Simply a very bad T3 unit. Has to spend one turn to buff one unit with haste and strengthen, which is worse than simply adding another Warlock or Frost Witch.
Can resurrect, but costing 3 action points with 4 range is too restrictive.
Can raise one zombie but only after a target is dead, and the zombie cannot move on the same turn which is de facto another wasted turn.

4) Banshee - A unbelievably poor replacement for the AOW3 Banshee. The original Banshees were spammable T2 Frontline units, hard to kill with a couple of XP levels. Amazing synergy for themselves and the entire Undead roster due to the Wail / Despair and other passive effects. Distant teleport, wide-range Wail, being able to lock down units however you please.
This AOW4 Banshees brings practically nothing to the table which a Warlock couldn't do better. Short range teleporting Battlemage unit, minimal damage short-range wail with little impact, mediocre positional range damage. Too expensive summon and upkeep costs.

5) Reaper - I literally cringed when first reading the unit stats. It is a T5 unit costing hundreds of souls to summon, with exactly one borderline-useless ability. Just compare this to the original AOW3 Reaper:

> Fearsome, Life Drain, Energy Drain, Inflict Curse, Exploit Despair, Necromantic Aura, Incorporeal, Mind Control Immunity, True Sight, Pass Wall, Flying, Monster, and Invoke Death which actually works in synergy with Inflict Despair from your Banshees and Reanimators.

The AOW4 version of this unit is just shamefully bad in every possible way. Also would explain why the model artwork was changed from a signature "Avatar of Death" to a masked androgynous fetish lady.

6) Lesser Frost Spirit - Redundant alone due getting its proper T3 summon from a later Frost Tome. Again this is a wasted slot in your army if you can have a universally useful Warlock instead.
Also redundant because you can research the Frost Witch in the same Tome, which is a battlemage with all related buffs and a reliable freeze attack.

7) Frost Witch - Can actually be used instead of a 5th Warlock in your main stack. However once your Lord learns the Summon Undead signature skill, another Warlock would be more effective.

8) Frost Spirit - Perhaps there's finally one unit you could consider. Solid T3 with damage and utility. Main problem is that the entire T3 Frost Tome is in competition with the Tome of Teleportation, which gives a free Blink to all your battle mages and Lord/Heroes (among other much better stuff). And again it cannot be Undead.

9) Living Fog? - N/A haven't taken that tome. IMHO the whole shadow&void magic should get its own branch without overlapping frost / necro stuff.



Opinions?

[SQW]

I made the same mistake trying to build a traditional undead faction.

One: the dark tomes are more about weakening units than raise dead.
Two: the dead you do raise require your better units to die first and you don't keep the raised units after the battle either so terribly inefficient.
Three: you don't need to be undead to pick the raise dead hero skills - even faith ones can do it too.
Four: the best horde perk you'd usually associate with an army of undead is in the chaos affinity tree.

[badger vortex]

Originally posted by KellyR:

They're a tier 1 unit. You can produce them at any city, even a brand new one with no buildings. Just slap an outpost down near anything you're planning to assault, turn it into a city, and crank out skeletons. Later you can release it as a vassal if you want.

That's not a good thing though, having to use a city or teleporter/outpost combo to reinforce your army is not always realistic. The assumption here is that the enemy isn't contesting/destroying that outpost or whatever unit you want to make it with.

Originally posted by KellyR:

Also skeletons are insanely cheap to make, so just bring like 10 armies of them when you're at the point in the game where you're actually assaulting other factions' cities. If you lose them it just... doesn't really matter. Have every city cranking them out. Time to reinforce isn't really a big deal, you're winning through attrition because every unit you kill costs more than your units. Lost xp? Doesn't matter. You'll only have a few real armies, which will probably be at max level for most of the game because you just never change them out. And you have disposable skeletons to prevent losing those units you actually care about.

What good is it to bring 10 armies of mostly chaff, if the enemy is taking barely any losses from your armies? You can get into 3v3 battles max, so the idea of overwhelming with numbers just doesn't come into play and your opponent isn't using disposable units, but likely heavily enchanted and more experienced units that he has kept alive the whole game.

The army setup you described earlier was that you'd have an army of strong mages then lots of armies full of skeletons with 1 necro per - this would mean you're only really bringing 1 strong army (the mage one) into a 3v3 fight, thus starting off already at a disadvantage

Originally posted by KellyR:

Which means every battle is a win for you, because you don't care about your losses, and the enemy does care about theirs. They cost more resources, they actually invested time and effort into leveling them up, and they can't easily replace high level units, but you can trivially replace your skeletons.

Your goal is to always outnumber the enemy at LEAST 2 to 1. Ideally more. And you can actually accomplish that with this approach.

You should care about losing the mages though, right? I assume you'll be bringing them into the 3v3 fight, or that the enemy could easily choose to attack them head on. So at that point are these weak skeleton armies really going to be enough to protect them? If the enemies armies has no chaff and are much stronger on a 1 to 1 ratio than the skeletons.