I was never quite sold on the idea of flesh golems, but in my recent game I found a tremendous (almost unfair) use for them. I'm sure there are many other combinations that work well, and I invite others to share their experiences.

I used Graft Flesh to combine heavy crossbowmen and archmages (with Law III) to create city defenders that eliminate all unhappiness in the city. Keeping my early warriors upgraded to archers I ended up with heavily promoted heavy crossbowmen (combat V, gurilla II, city defence III, etc.). My early adepts were upgraded to archmages with Law III which I like due to its ability to eliminate unhappiness in a city. When combined I had strengh 8 flesh golems that can both defend the city and cast spells to enhance the city (one of them also had spirit mana to cast hope). Creating the flesh golem freed up a slot for another archmage to be promoted.

Unfortunately I did not have very many adept units built (planning to have a limit of three archmages and a few extras). In my next game I will create a lot of adepts so that they are ready to promote to archmages as soon as I create a golem. With luck I will have a golem in each city to defend it and keep the plebs from revolting as my farms ramp up the size of all my cities.

Please share any creative uses of flesh golems that you have come up with.

Like I said in the Super Mages thread, Vampires+Werewolves=Vampiric Werewolves decimating cities with contagion then feeding on the populace. Fun! I would say throw in Council of Esus, but you don't get werewolves then and all you have is a hidden nationality Vampire essentially...

combine archmages and druids makes super-er-er-er mages

or Archmages and Summoners, I've done that once every single magical promotion I had plus all the combats.

i prefer archmages and druids because druids are scorcery-summonin-divine casters plus a fire 3 mage with other stuff makes something really powerfull and you can make as many as you want

even better- play as a good or neutral civ then adopt oo and graft a druid and hemah with twincast and fire 3 together and you get a even beter er er er mage

once again i will give my opinion ....

if your playing with flesh golems , go back and increase the level of difficulty.

take all opinions for what they are worth ....

Like I said in the Super Mages thread, Vampires+Werewolves=Vampiric Werewolves decimating cities with contagion then feeding on the populace. Fun! I would say throw in Council of Esus, but you don't get werewolves then and all you have is a hidden nationality Vampire essentially...

I'm confused here, i thought golems couldn't get experience,(wiki), if thats the case, whats the point in feeding on the population with a vampire-werewolf flesh golem?

once again i will give my opinion ....

if your playing with flesh golems , go back and increase the level of difficulty.

take all opinions for what they are worth ....

I'm not really sure what the difficulty level has to do with the use of flesh golems. They are not available until the late game, and if the game is too easy then they would not be very useful (as victory would be at hand).

I play between prince and monarch difficulty, and find that when my empire gets large in the late game it becomes difficult to keep my cities happy while waging war with several AI civs. Having city defenders that keep the masses happy and also free up Archmages to accompany my army on its conquest is a great benefit during a tough game. On easier difficulty levels it would just be unnecessary overkill.

I'm not really sure what the difficulty level has to do with the use of flesh golems. They are not available until the late game, and if the game is too easy then they would not be very useful (as victory would be at hand).

I play between prince and monarch difficulty, and find that when my empire gets large in the late game it becomes difficult to keep my cities happy while waging war with several AI civs. Having city defenders that keep the masses happy and also free up Archmages to accompany my army on its conquest is a great benefit during a tough game. On easier difficulty levels it would just be unnecessary overkill.

i completely understand your sentiment here. i typically play on a huge map with default settings. I also play on diety difficulty. honestly the only time i get a chance to use flesh golems is when i am "toying" around.

question for ya though , how big of an army are you using? typically my armies are only 4 units big and move from city to city with and expanding supply train.

I ususally have two or three stacks of about 6 or 8 units each when I declare war. Less if I am counterattacking on an opponent. At least two of the units in the stack are usually defenders (they don;t attack, they sit at full strength so that if the enemy counterattacks they can take the hit). If possible the defender units have healing promotions.

While my armies are attacking, I try to have some strong units with mobility in my homelands to stop the enemy from piliging all my improvements.

This is, of course, the ideal situation. Many times I find myself in a less than ideal situation, especially if the AI declares war and has allies who dogpile me. That is when the game becomes the most fun though!

Calabim Baron and overlords inquisitor, attacking Acheron = Mutant vampire werewolf dragon golem. Love to see the expressions on the defenders' faces when that monstrosity rolls up to the gates :)

Calabim Baron and overlords inquisitor, attacking Acheron = Mutant vampire werewolf dragon golem. Love to see the expressions on the defenders' faces when that monstrosity rolls up to the gates :)
Probably somewhere along the lines of... "WTF HAX!":p :lol: Or the classic.. "What the hell is that...":eek:

Probably somewhere along the lines of... "WTF HAX!":p :lol: Or the classic.. "What the hell is that...":eek:

My... my God! Run, children, it's Rosie O'Donnel!

Graft a Patriarch into a golem and you can frequently change reigions, while always having the patriarch. My favorate is a Vampire Patrarch Dragon golem.

I was mucking around and came up with.....
Royal Guard, promoted to war chariot, upgrade with mithral spliced with a Blessed heavy crossbowman with enchanted weapon, Not the heavy magic user mesix makes but they provide happiness and have a strenght of 20

Playing as the Khazad i found that if i grafted a Dwarven Druid (Summoning + Sorcery) with a High Priest Runes (Divine + Summoning) my Khazad got access to the Sorcery spells of the Rune priest spheres Body, Enchantment, and Life (already have Earth). The significant thing about this is Khazad cannot ever get Mages or Archmages so other than Dwarven Druids who only have access to Earth they have no Sorcery spells.

Sorcery spells gained by the graft...
Body = Haste, Regeneration, Stoneskin
Enchantment = Enchant Blade, Enchant Arrows, Spellstaff
Life = Sanctify, Destroy Undead, Resurection

Some nice buffing spells.

- feydras

Idiot question, but how do you get access to this flesh golem spell/ability?

The Divine Body III spell, generally learned by high priests of kilmorph.

Currently I keep sacrificing Losha in mokka's cauldron for a str 12 flesh golem. No promotions at all, but hefty defender... Then send her out to squash a barbarian to make her immortal again and get another big defender. As soon as I get a Body III Divine unit, I plan on trying out the graft spells. The wait until level 6 is annoying, but after that the sky is the limit!

Edit, this looks to be a cool ability, but is it overpowered? Any more than the Baron?

The Divine Body III spell, generally learned by high priests of kilmorph.

Also by OO High Priests & Inq.

The latter get the advantage that you can use a Kraken as a free STR 10 "other half" for a golem.

Good one CuteKills.

Because of this trick, I usually go for OO first off even if I'm after Order or Veil ultimately.

If you don't switch faith until you've got a reasonable number of Cultists, you can later upgrade /all/ the cultists (in turn) to LIII, meaning you can have that many Krakens too... (if you're patient enough... )

Also OO's Cultists don't need gems, so they're a touch easier to get than Stonewardens.

Ohhh, Didn't know that, so Divine it is! :)

Interesting thing I found out today while playing as Calabim: Vampire Lords (don't know if this applies to all other "immortal" units) don't die when grafted, they only lose half their health. You could keep it in a city with some healers, churn out a unit like lunatics (my personal favorite) and graft them to a fully promoted vampire lord. Behold my army of newly created max promoted super soldiers! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

once again i will give my opinion ....

if your playing with flesh golems , go back and increase the level of difficulty.

take all opinions for what they are worth ....Exactly. Needing to increase the difficulty here about four or five notches.

Hehe, yeah I've recently gone up to Immortal, and already thinking about going to Deity.

Take your priest and turn it into a flesh golem (use any random unit), then convert to leaves. Once you've converted, build Yvain the Woodelf and an Archmage and turn them into one big uber-golem.

My favorite golem recipe right now is Vampire Lord + Order High Priest/Inquisitor. Fire and Law, baby! :goodjob:

My favourite flesh golem is a Patriarch plus Corlindale. I can declare war, and make peace automatically with 1 unit!
Plus, Corlindale saves me with dogpiles, but first I get all my fellow worshippers to kill each other.....

My favourite flesh golem is a Patriarch plus Corlindale. I can declare war, and make peace automatically with 1 unit!
Plus, Corlindale saves me with dogpiles, but first I get all my fellow worshippers to kill each other.....

Now that is a sweet combo!

That's interesting; I thought Peace was a Corlindale-only ability. Does it really work if he's golemized, and do other unit abilities work the same way (Donal Lugh, Losha Valas, etc.)?

I recetley played with the Mad people and I combined Courtision's and Flurry. How good is it to attack twice at the weakest unit in the stack. :)

What happens to religion-specific heroes that get golemized? Does the golem desert when you change to a different religion?

What happens to religion-specific heroes that get golemized? Does the golem desert when you change to a different religion?

No, the golem doesn't abandon you.

I decided to play at a higher level than I normaly do, so am in the midst of a deity game as calabin. I normally don't use graft flesh, but constantly being behind as I am in this game, I am resorting to exploits. Right now, I am using vampire lords and Krakens to make 2 highly promoted tier 4 units with hidden nationality a turn.
I don't think that graft flesh itself is an exploit, but using with immortal units is. Even concept wise, I don't think that immortals are reborn, leaving their dead body where they were. Instead, they cannot die and keep the same body, just somehow making it back to the capitol. So, there really isn't any dead body to graft flesh to.

Ok, it's time to make some Golems and I'm looking for suggestions. Here's what I've got to work with:

2 High Priest of Overlords: level 8, Body 3, Water 3, Chaos 2, Mobility 1
4 Greater Werewolves: Combat 5
Ranger: level 6, Combat 3, Subdue, Woods 1, 2 unused promotions
Beastmaster: level 8, Combat 5, Subdue, Woods 1
Druid: level 9, Nature 3, assortment of other promotions
Severous: level 1, 94EP, no promotions
Hemah: level 2, 39EP, no promotions
Baron: level 4, Combat 3
Govannon: just got him, only 14EP
Also assorted mid level units.

You can't graft Saverous, since he is a demon and not alive. Werewolves are good as golems, since the golem will still spread lycanthropy. (also, I think they wouldn't count towards the werewolf count that makes spreading less likely, so you can actually get more faster if you graft them) Only graft your casters if you are fine with them learning no new spells (govannon can still train spells once grafted, but he must know the spells first, or else the other graftee must know them.) Also, realize that your high priests can summon str 12 HN krakens which you can graft to make strong HN golems. Since you get them for free, feel free to mutate them first and kill off the weakened ones. If you have enough altars to make your Druids replaceable, I would focus on grafting them with werewolves or krakens.

Interesting thing I found out today while playing as Calabim: Vampire Lords (don't know if this applies to all other "immortal" units) don't die when grafted, they only lose half their health. You could keep it in a city with some healers, churn out a unit like lunatics (my personal favorite) and graft them to a fully promoted vampire lord. Behold my army of newly created max promoted super soldiers! MUAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

they do die but they get resurected in their capital and are no longer immortal for that turn so if you try to graft again you lose the vampire lord


and golems do count towards the wherewolf limit, it counts any unit with the wherewolf promotion

As I mentioned in a different (similar) thread, having three OO High Priests means one free size 13 flesh golem a turn (two Krakens + Graft Flesh). Or if you have a fully powered Barnaxus, a free size 20ish unit every turn. (or two, if your Inquisitors get in on the game). This strikes me as a bit too much.

How about this one: Magnadine (with Blitz and whatnot) and an Archmage (with Chaos III and whatnot).

A golem that can capture any unit on its own.

That is a unit specific ability, not one that comes from a promotion, so it would not carry over to the golem. You would be throwing away your ability to capture barbarian units.

Used to be a promotion...

Command is a promotion (which Inquisitors start with) that grants a 50% chance of capturing defeated living units, but Magnadine's special ability to convert 100% of living barbarians he defeats is not.

What I was saying is that command used to be 100% and Magnadine used to have it.

Am i the first one to notice the new "Add to flesh golem" spell? it allows you to basically make flesh golems out of as many units as you want ( but it does not change the strength) i find this pretty abusive. imagine combining all of your archmages summoners and high preists together and getting acess to every spell...

flesh golems have never been not abusive so meh heh

It is a very late game ability, and most of the 'exploits' come when you combine higher level, national units.

If you are fighting against the AI, no big deal, and most smart human players would want to handle things in multi player before it becomes a race to whomever has the most golems

golems are great imo

As I mentioned in a different (similar) thread, having three OO High Priests means one free size 13 flesh golem a turn (two Krakens + Graft Flesh). Or if you have a fully powered Barnaxus, a free size 20ish unit every turn. (or two, if your Inquisitors get in on the game). This strikes me as a bit too much.

Krakens+arcmage is powerful, then you have a hidden nationality unit that can cast crush, metior etc. defend it with a double kracken, and have a priest for a healer. you can kill all of the AI units before even declaring war. then on declaring war mounted units can rapidly capture empty cities without even getting blood on their swards. war over in a couple of turns without any WW.

It all sounds so easy........

maybe when combining with a kracken there should be some penalty, eg the fleshgolem is confined to water tiles, or it gains the summoned3 promotion, so will only last for 3 turns.

flesh golems are too slow anyway, you can't cast haste on them.

No, but if you first golemise your tier 3 priest with an arcane unit with spell extension, your krakens (and any golems created from them) will have Mobility 1 (or 2).