Can anyone post some tips? I'm just starting out. It seems that Vladimir (resurrection) and the Vampira princess hero are the best combination to start out the game.
Also I've read that people will just not bother with zombies, are they not useful as "meat fodder" ?
I'm looking for build order tips for the first 2 weeks? Just starting on "normal".
Right now I'm trying to get a capitol asap and from there I find I have to wait a LONG time before I can safely win battles vs. the non-ore/non-wood defended mines..
Necropolis Strategy
Get skeleton archers as soon as possible. You can't go straight for capitol anymore because you need to get some troops to get enough city level.
If you have a lot of Sulphur available, get the mage guild, get the pillar of bones, and get the liches, (ranged troops help you avoid losses). You might as well get zombies because they're needed for the town hall. They're a substandard meatshield compared to other races, but I'd still rather lose them than skeletons.
Pick up eternal servitude as soon as you can, it allows you to replace skeletons zombies and ghosts which you lose. Ghosts make a good retaliation eater, since sometimes they take no damage.
Naadir makes a good hero to play as he gets a ghost stack when another stack is killed. That can come in handy for eating retaliation, when you can only kill off one stack. The raise dead hero is also great, because raise dead and 20+ mana, usually means you can take on decent neutrals and take no losses.
If you have a lot of Sulphur available, get the mage guild, get the pillar of bones, and get the liches, (ranged troops help you avoid losses). You might as well get zombies because they're needed for the town hall. They're a substandard meatshield compared to other races, but I'd still rather lose them than skeletons.
Pick up eternal servitude as soon as you can, it allows you to replace skeletons zombies and ghosts which you lose. Ghosts make a good retaliation eater, since sometimes they take no damage.
Naadir makes a good hero to play as he gets a ghost stack when another stack is killed. That can come in handy for eating retaliation, when you can only kill off one stack. The raise dead hero is also great, because raise dead and 20+ mana, usually means you can take on decent neutrals and take no losses.
~ Rapier.
-
Wolfshanze
- Marksman
- Posts: 407
- Joined: 06 Jan 2006
- Location: Florida, USA
The problem with zombies is that they are just too slow in both initiative and speed. They're okay in a "meat shield" sorta way for just sitting there and blocking attacks on your skeleton archers, but because of how slow they are (in more ways then one), they're just not much fun. They can sit in your army with no harm done (they don't slow you down on the adventure map like they did in H3), but I wouldn't waste much gold on buying them!
As has been mentioned, get the skeleton archer and eternal servitude upgrades as soon as you can. Avoid useless skills like Leadership (since undead have no moral), and max-out death magic and summoning magic as soon as you can. Remember, "Raise Dead" is a summoning not death magic spell, so you need to be good at summoning magic if you want to raise huge stacks from the dead. Death magic is great for things like "Curse of the Netherworld", and mass-slow to even things out (with your slow undead).
The first half of any battle, I usually do damage and slow spells on the enemy with my hero... the last half of the battle I always spend raising the dead of my fallen... if you play your cards right, you NEVER leave any battle weaker then when you started... even against stacks of enemy Titans! This kind of tactic ADDS UP QUICKLY for your archers and other undead!
As has been mentioned, get the skeleton archer and eternal servitude upgrades as soon as you can. Avoid useless skills like Leadership (since undead have no moral), and max-out death magic and summoning magic as soon as you can. Remember, "Raise Dead" is a summoning not death magic spell, so you need to be good at summoning magic if you want to raise huge stacks from the dead. Death magic is great for things like "Curse of the Netherworld", and mass-slow to even things out (with your slow undead).
The first half of any battle, I usually do damage and slow spells on the enemy with my hero... the last half of the battle I always spend raising the dead of my fallen... if you play your cards right, you NEVER leave any battle weaker then when you started... even against stacks of enemy Titans! This kind of tactic ADDS UP QUICKLY for your archers and other undead!
Tips: [More for hero building]
1. Get a starting hero with good skills -- IMHO skills are more important than specialties [with some obvious exceptions]. Ideally you want one with Necromancy and either Summoning or Dark Magic. Dierdre, Naadir, and of course Vladimir all have fine sets of starting skills. The specialties [except for Vlad] are weak but I think getting good initial skills is a bigger bonus.
2. Take the abilities Raise Skeletal Archer and Eternal Servitude ASAP. This way you won't have to go back to your castle to upgrade skeletons into archers AND you will get back some creatures that die in combat.
3. Given the above it will likely be necessary to raise Necromancy to Expert Level ASAP so you will have enough Necromantic skill to get Raise Archers and Eternal Servitude.
4. By the time you have expert Necromancy and the 2 main Necromantic abilities you will have built at least a L2 mage guild. If you have Raise Dead as a spell in the guild or starting spell then I would max the Summoning Skill and get Master of Life as soon as you can.
5. If you don't have Raise Dead then try to max out Dark Magic and get Master of Curses, Master of Mind, and Spirit Link. This will let you cast good mass spells and Spirit Link will help you regenerate mana. Note that Necros have VERY low knowledge scores so anything that adds mana or regenerates it in combat is very useful.
6. Hopefully by now you have Expert Dark & Expert Summoning Magic along with some nice skills. When you get a chance I would advise taking the Summoning ability Master of Conjuration [esp. if you have a Summon Elementals spell in your spell Guild.
7. By this time you're probably L14 or so. Hopefully you've found one or two knowledge shrines and/or some +knowledge artifacts. If so [and you have Raise Dead] you should be virtually unbeatable.
8. After this almost any of the other non-spell skills will be nice. I personally prefer Offense with the Archery and Frenzy abilities as nice buffs to your skeletons. Defense isn't bad with Vitality, Protection, and Evasion.
Town building tips: I can't give an exact build order because that depends on your starting resoures, what you find early in resource piles, what creatures are guarding mines, etc... I can give some tips though:
1. Build the skeletal archer upgrade ASAP!!
2. Build your economic structures as soon as they become available.
2a. Build up the first couple of levels of the spell tower when you can so you can see what skills to take for your hero.
2b. If you are running low on resources take the time to build something cheap like a Marketplace so you can at least make SOME build that turn. Note if you are saving $ for an economic structure this advice doesn't neccessarily apply.
3. Build up L1-L4 creature buildings before you go to Citadel.
4. Build a Castle when you get a chance. Usually I would build the Castle before the Wraith buildings.
5. You shouldn't plan on having Liches soon because you'll probably want to spend about 15-20 sulfer before you can even get to Liches. When you can build them do so.
6. Most of the time I wouldn't bother building Dragons [sometimes don't even bother with Wraiths & Liches] ... just buy out what you can and go kill something.
Helpful combat hints [exploits]: Creatures that are low intiative, speed 4, and are melee only are PRIME targets. If you have some ghosts then split one or two off into 1 creature stacks. You can use the ghosts to lure these slow melee creatures around the map. With care you should be able to wipe out lots [or more] fairly early and very easily. AI wants to kill the ghosts so badly they will ignore your hero attacking and your skeletons shooting the crap out of them. If you are lucky and even if you get caught you should only lose 1 or 2 ghosts while wiping out VERY high number of slow creatures that you couldn't beat in a stand-up fight.
Once you have a large number of skeletal archers and an awesome raise dead you should consider not including the rest of your army in many battles .... just use the skeletons. This way you only have to worry about raising one stack instead of several. As long as the enemy can't do more damage than you can raise then you'll be virtually guaranteed of no losses.
1. Get a starting hero with good skills -- IMHO skills are more important than specialties [with some obvious exceptions]. Ideally you want one with Necromancy and either Summoning or Dark Magic. Dierdre, Naadir, and of course Vladimir all have fine sets of starting skills. The specialties [except for Vlad] are weak but I think getting good initial skills is a bigger bonus.
2. Take the abilities Raise Skeletal Archer and Eternal Servitude ASAP. This way you won't have to go back to your castle to upgrade skeletons into archers AND you will get back some creatures that die in combat.
3. Given the above it will likely be necessary to raise Necromancy to Expert Level ASAP so you will have enough Necromantic skill to get Raise Archers and Eternal Servitude.
4. By the time you have expert Necromancy and the 2 main Necromantic abilities you will have built at least a L2 mage guild. If you have Raise Dead as a spell in the guild or starting spell then I would max the Summoning Skill and get Master of Life as soon as you can.
5. If you don't have Raise Dead then try to max out Dark Magic and get Master of Curses, Master of Mind, and Spirit Link. This will let you cast good mass spells and Spirit Link will help you regenerate mana. Note that Necros have VERY low knowledge scores so anything that adds mana or regenerates it in combat is very useful.
6. Hopefully by now you have Expert Dark & Expert Summoning Magic along with some nice skills. When you get a chance I would advise taking the Summoning ability Master of Conjuration [esp. if you have a Summon Elementals spell in your spell Guild.
7. By this time you're probably L14 or so. Hopefully you've found one or two knowledge shrines and/or some +knowledge artifacts. If so [and you have Raise Dead] you should be virtually unbeatable.
8. After this almost any of the other non-spell skills will be nice. I personally prefer Offense with the Archery and Frenzy abilities as nice buffs to your skeletons. Defense isn't bad with Vitality, Protection, and Evasion.
Town building tips: I can't give an exact build order because that depends on your starting resoures, what you find early in resource piles, what creatures are guarding mines, etc... I can give some tips though:
1. Build the skeletal archer upgrade ASAP!!
2. Build your economic structures as soon as they become available.
2a. Build up the first couple of levels of the spell tower when you can so you can see what skills to take for your hero.
2b. If you are running low on resources take the time to build something cheap like a Marketplace so you can at least make SOME build that turn. Note if you are saving $ for an economic structure this advice doesn't neccessarily apply.
3. Build up L1-L4 creature buildings before you go to Citadel.
4. Build a Castle when you get a chance. Usually I would build the Castle before the Wraith buildings.
5. You shouldn't plan on having Liches soon because you'll probably want to spend about 15-20 sulfer before you can even get to Liches. When you can build them do so.
6. Most of the time I wouldn't bother building Dragons [sometimes don't even bother with Wraiths & Liches] ... just buy out what you can and go kill something.
Helpful combat hints [exploits]: Creatures that are low intiative, speed 4, and are melee only are PRIME targets. If you have some ghosts then split one or two off into 1 creature stacks. You can use the ghosts to lure these slow melee creatures around the map. With care you should be able to wipe out lots [or more] fairly early and very easily. AI wants to kill the ghosts so badly they will ignore your hero attacking and your skeletons shooting the crap out of them. If you are lucky and even if you get caught you should only lose 1 or 2 ghosts while wiping out VERY high number of slow creatures that you couldn't beat in a stand-up fight.
Once you have a large number of skeletal archers and an awesome raise dead you should consider not including the rest of your army in many battles .... just use the skeletons. This way you only have to worry about raising one stack instead of several. As long as the enemy can't do more damage than you can raise then you'll be virtually guaranteed of no losses.
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