I'm not "getting" the Necromancer.

[jaredhkline]

I can beat this pretty reliably against dual 5s, no special factions, as a regular human player.

I feel like I'm not understanding how to play the Necromancer. I understand that a weaker static defense is part of the point, but even playing against a single strength 5 AI it feels like I have to keep running back to my necropoli to defend, and I'm not getting that much more offensive oomph than I am with the normal human player.

Should I be investing a lot in totems or something? That feels off: if I wanted to build lots of turrets, I'd be playing the regular human team.

[Strategic Sage]

Necromancer spits on Human Empire when it comes to offensive firepower. Absolutely spits on it. I think the main question here is why it doesn't feel that way to you. If we can resolve that, I think it will go a long way towards helping you get more of the experience.

You do want to often run back to your Necropolis to defend, but that's a good thing. Your ships need 'food' - that is, they need to fight as often as possible to keep their numbers up. But you don't need to run back with everything.

There isn't 'one right way' per se, but what I would suggest is to invest mostly in ships, some in totems but not a lot. Don't use essence to upgrade until you've expanded to a few more planets. If you add a second fleet and have most of your effort going into that one, while keeping a smaller fleet to defend, then you can both attack and defend at the same time.

The question then becomes about expanding your fleet capabilities. Think about what you use your hacking points for (Rifts, Amplifiers, etc.) Each necropolis only has so many hexes to use, so there comes a point where you want to start upgrading them to get more hexes in concert with hacking more ship types, rather than just hacking for a bunch of ship types that you can't build the structures for anyway.

Keep in mind that any planet at all can have a necropolis built on it; if it's a minor or major it contributes more to your offensive fleets. It doesn't need any special capturable like an ARS or a Fleet with a Human Empire game to do that. I'm not suggesting spamming necropolis everywhere - going high-AIP will cause you problems if you're not ready to handle the resistance, just as in a Human Empire game. But you're not limited on your assets in that way, and once you upgrade them, a single planet contributes a massive amount of firepower to your cause.

When handled well, Necromancer are massively stronger than Human Empire.

[Lord Of Nothing]

I felt similar to you when I first tried necromancer, it takes some getting used to.

To try and answer your question: Totems are pretty utility-based, they don't provide a ton of raw protection. They're useful for backing up a defensive fleet and covering a few eventualities, but they're not good at defending alone.

If you want to defend a necropolis early on without needing a fleet, my go-to answers are the mummy summoning module on the necropolis itself, along with lightning towers. Two lightning towers with a mark or two in that tech should put a very large dent in difficulty 5 attacks until AIP rises. They're less effective against elderlings, though, if one of those takes exception to your necropolis early you'll probably have to go back and defend. Templar attacks also contain some nastier things.

It can also be worth building a single major necropolis just to have a second fleet to defend, though. Just having the necromancy occur makes things a lot stronger defensively, even if the defensive fleet doesn't have a fancy or high level flagship, or many supporting buildings.

As you enter the midgame, you can start to control where attacks come from by sabotaging warpgates using necro's unlimited supply of hacking. (Once you reach higher difficulty you should be hacking the gates on planets you actually take right from the start, for the AIP reduction, but on lower difficulties there might not really be enough templar attacking you to support the hacking outlay.) You then couple this mass warpgate hacking with the use of defensive necropoli on chokepoints, which are very strong. A single treacherous totem and a few lightning towers can hold down a surprising number of enemies in conjunction with a mummy summon module. Once you control where the enemy attacks come from to this degree, your normal major and minor necropoli don't need as much of a defense at all, despite the rising level of enemy aggression. After a point, though, you may get that you need a permanent flagship covering your defensive zones, i.e. at least within one hop, in order to get necromancy on all the enemies coming in.

In the really late game, you switch to mass skull piles, which are insanely good once you upgrade past mark 6, but not very good at all before that. Plus a defensive fleet on every chokepoint world full stop.

If this seems very resource intensive... yeah, it kindof is, but you won't need to worry about a lot of it until you get to later in the game, and the resource avalibilty scales. more templar attacking you means more science and hacking. more elderlings means more essence. more ai ships means more skeletons and wights. Difficulty does play a factor, though, and necro's resource structure means lower difficulties can feel quite tricky with regard to resource management early on.

On the offense... this might be a difficulty thing, or it might be early-game. Necro's offense is *really* snowball-y once you get going. But early game at difficulty 5 the AI also isn't chucking many wights at you, so you're not reaching your full potential easily unless you're quite careful with them. This also means that going back to defend is a key source of food to re-max your fleet in more favourable conditions, mind.

TL, DR: Try chain lightning towers on the defense, and the summon-mummy module. (Marking up enough for the summon mummy module might feel a bit expensive at your difficulty.)

Quite a bit of this originally comes credit to Corpserule on the AIW2 discord, who is a better necro player than me.

[ka0z69]

im not gonna lie i had to do over a phew games just to understand all there mechanics right away.i have also played many different human types against 2 7ais with other specails.if u find it hard for defence add the civilian mod they help shore up the lines.

[Strategic Sage]

To each their own, but I would advise against that. If you want to play a game with strong defenses, why not just stick with Human Empire? I would say a large part of the point of playing Necromancer is that it *isn't* that, it's a different experience. Embrace that.

[MadArtillery]

Main thing with Necromancer is how incredibly busted lightning towers are. You will sometimes have to slow down a bit to wait on elderlings to give you more essence but as long as you don't overextend your defences you should end up pretty unbreakable.