Reanimate balance looping?

[Kyso4ek]

So im new in the game. Reanimate long dead warriors basically nets you free warriors every turn. with no gold cost. Do they cost upkeep?

So with some undead friendly empire (undead / necro priests) you can sit a priest and animate long dead every turn? Then, every temple could build priest every turn which in turn reanimates long dead every turn?

Do the reanimated dudes cost upkeep or anything.

Pls explain how this isnt a balance loop maybe i just dont understand how it works.

[Unrelatedpants]

You sure can, and they're free!

Then you can watch then get melted en masse by a few priests spamming banishment.

[commiesocialist]

No, the basic longdead don't cost upkeep.

The priests do, however. Their temples cost to set up. If you don't fort the temples, they're vulnerable to raiders. If you do, well, you just more than doubled your undead production costs.
In addition, every fort-priest you recruit is a mage you don't recruit. This cuts into your research and power projection abilities. Furthermore, basic longdead just aren't that great. They're good addition to the nations that can use them, but they aren't an I-WIN button.

The two nations that can perhaps most easily do this, EA Lanka and MA Sceleria, aren't top-tier nations because of that. Sceleria is merely good with limited mage paths, though a great player can do some awesome stuff with them. And while Lanka could be said to be a really great nation, it's not because of their reanimation. It's because of their reanimation, cheap blood mages and awesome sacreds, both recruitable and summonable throughout the blood tree.

TLDR:
While the longdead are technically free, there is a significant opportunity cost to get them in the first place. Gold that you put into temples and priests could be going into forts and mages instead.

[amuys]

They do not cost any upkeep, and are thus a great asset for nations like Lemuria, Ermor, Sceleria, Lanka, Asphodel, and Nazca.
However, like any undead their are plenty of counters against them. Also remember, you may not be able to build temples that can recruit priests in every province.

[Tomsdeli]

while everyone has listed opportunity costs i feel that it is mearly half of the equation. as well they neglected to mention the cost of protecting provinces with a temple and a bunch of priests vs any raiders.

to work with such a strat you not only have the cost of infrustructure and what that gold could be used on but also gold spent protecting temples and masses of priests from raiders and thugs. the other half is critical mass. critical mass is where you are able to pump so many undead each turn that you basically steam roll with a tide of them.

what breaks the balance loop is the time and gold needed to hit X ( X is your critical mass) number of undead made each turn while holding a defensive line until that point.

undead are basically really weak with several counters to them specifically. to make a massive number of them each turn is a massive undertaking. give it a try with the nations listed above to see the strength of them to get a good guage on what kinda numbers a critical mass would be.

[Kyso4ek]

Yeah ive been playing sceleria. So you re saying competitive matches in the multiplayer dont allow you to hog undead hordes for free. Basically you die before the hordes become significant?

Its still a viable strat vs AI right.

[commiesocialist]

Oh it's definitely viable in MP, it's just not so overwhelmingly unbeatable as you make it sound in the opening post.

[Kyso4ek]

Well no after some restarts with sceleria i just do the following:

Build as many temples and priests in them as i can until i start having upkeep problems, every turn i set the new priests on reanimate longdead. The conveyor starts chugging funny amounts of undead.

and now i know where to spend all the money ))

[Tomsdeli]

yeah i wouldnt call it unviable. but it certainly has its pitfalls.

like do your neighbors have great mages who are also H3 priests. or priest mages as their go to recruit guy. also can you get critcal mass and hold it before someone decides to just go to war with you.

[Kyso4ek]

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/26221462460936014/0037881AF40BBFFDCC611650FB9CDD2AF4C2AA32/

Thats vs normal computers. The pitfall against computers is that at some stage you cant have enough people to take all the undeads to the frontline / or it takes too much effort. Ofc after you re getting Gateway this may be a bit easier to handle. But effective gateways are also difficult: need astral caps (construction 6 magic hat +1 astral) and lucky higher theur-mage which got extra astral (for 5 total). This can be your pretender, but he s often busy finding gems(rainbow).

It also takes a lot of effort to handle. Basically you have your priest farms, then the labs in the same hex. You craft 3-5 of those necromantic staffs (+50 undead command or smth like that with disease). You pack your undeads inside the priests wielding these staffs (65 each) and move them wherever needed.

[commiesocialist]

For three death gems you can summon mound kings (Ench-2) who can lead 80 undead. I reckon that would be cheaper than having priests do it with leadership boosters. There are a few other summons, but I'm fairly sure mound kings are your most efficient gems per UD leadership.

Also every point of death magic grants 30 UD leadership, so your grand thaumaturgs (particularly D randoms) can lead large amounts of undead, though they're much slower than the longdead so you'll be suffering some mobility loss if you go that route.

[Kyso4ek]

ok got it

[Tzyder]

I mod my game to give this spell reduced gem cost and even with the greater numbers they get owned by any army with a capable priest. I use them defensively to deter invasion with their numbers but in reality they are a paper dragon.

[Tomsdeli]

yeah revive king is a go to spell for any and all undead nation in order to lead troops around.

if your going to ench 3 for skele spam you can always make a revenant or two and have them do nothing but churn out kings. little pricey at 9 death gems a peice but your other mages dont have to do spend the rest of the game making kings that way.

[Shinuyama]

In MP, research is a tick-down timer to the point where the really big spells start hitting the game. Stuff that wipes out whole battlefields at once but slowly starts coming online in midgame (turn 30ish), and stuff that wipes out whole battlefields in one shot starts coming online in lategame (50+).

In lategame, you will find people with mage stacks dropping half the battlefield-effecting buffs and destruction spells in the game, summoning endless torrents of undead from communions, dropping a first turn mass shimmering fields bombard, or dropping battlefield kills like Rain of Stones, Earthquake, Flame Storm, Wrathful Skies, that will wipe out your undead horde despite it's numbers.

For smaller armies of raiding undead, even a few h1 priests behind PD can generally kill less than 100 undead, so it's of limited usefulness.

Undead are great for a lot of stuff, but reanimating longdead is mostly something you do when you want cheap chaff/siege fodder, and even then you mostly want to be using soulless for that. Chaff die in place to give your mages/archers time to work, they don't win battles.

[Shinuyama]

The main use of longdead is the Skeleton Horde spell in ench 5. That, combined with Raise Dead, causes a neverending stream of undead which can all die every battle without costing you anything at all, so kind of like regenerating chaff. Running out of chaff is a serious concern, so.