Ok,
first one is already know about i suppose but here goes:
Get a mage to make a flesh golem
Sacrifice enough beastmasters to get it to strength 14
Sacrifice enough knights (with the +14 free exp from wonder & civics) to upgrade the golem to have most promotions.
Sacrifice 1 mage to get combat 5
Sacrifice 1 religious unit to get medic & city attack/defence.
Sacrifice 1 paladin to get its base abilities
Sacrifice 1 hawk to get flying
There now you have a 170+ strengh 19/18 flying moves 4 golem...which single handedly can whipe out almost anything, especially if you give it some of the unique items like orthos axe and the +3 swords. You could also cast mutate on and hope for an additional +30 str from heavy.
I notice in the flesh golem thread that people say you can get them to cast spells, but my golems have never been able to do that; i wonder if they patched that out of them?

Anyhow, next strategy:
Be balsareths, get a mage with chaos 3 + twincast. Make a 2 pets, have pets go cast wonder; so now you have 6-10 random magic effects possible for just 1 mage.

Another strategy for the city portion of the game is:
Quickly research mind stapling, build the tower, then research order and switch. There now have you an aditional free no unhappy city possible. You also get that city a lot faster than if you went straight to order to get sphener.

All good, but if you have most of those reqs, you should have won the game already.

forget the bestmasters - if you follow OO, and have their high prists, you can graft krakens onto it (strength 17 permanent summons). And krakens are free - you don't need to worry about wasting hammers building beastmasters just to sacrifice them.

-Colin

Sacrificing mages and knights isn't cost effective; you get the same benefit from sacrificing ride-of-the-nine-kings-built chariots or horse archers.

Also, don't forget to get this guy enchanted blade, flaming arrow, and poisoned blade. The defender promotion is nice too, but marksman is the worst thing you can do to a unit with so much potential.

The hawk and the kraken were good ideas that I had never thought of... water walking would also be nice (he would sink any ship!).

Four golems like this, four vampire lords, four vampiric archmages, four liches, the Baron, Hemah, and a partridge in a pear treewere my empire-destroying mini stack in a recent game.

You don't need Water Walking if you can fly.

Now if you truly want to be evil, make some as the amurites... while following OO. Thats 1 from hemah, 1 from govornnan, 4 from archmages, 4 from liches, 4 from druids, and 4 from high priests. Thats a total of 18 flesh golems - more than enough to steamroll your opponents I think :lol:

Allright, so vampires are second best as they can get 12 from liches, archmages, and vampire lords, plus 1 more if they follow esus or OO. Though if they follow esus one will be an illusion...

-Colin

interesting, I wonder why i can add krakens to the golem but i cant add the puppets or other summons like fire elemental.
Anyone know why my golems cant cast spells?

I believe that only living units can be grafted into fesh golems. Golems, Puppets, and Elementals are all non-living.

You don't need Water Walking if you can fly.

... That is so true. Does flying eliminate your ability to use roads though?

yes, flying means you can't use roads. And golems are specifically blocked from being able to cast spells.

-Colin

I don't remember what it was exactly(Something involving OO Balserphs) but you could summon 108 Water Elementals per turn using just Hemah. That seems pretty overpowered to me, thogh I do know you need the Tower of Elements for it.

I'd guess it would involve playing as Keelyn so as to have the summoning trait, getting Hemah to have Twincast and a Spellstaff, summoning puppets for 3 turns, having all the puppets summon water elementals, having Hemah and all the puppets break their spellstaffs, having Hemah and all the puppets summon water elementals again, and suicide attacking with the water elementals so that they split up. The Tower of Elements would mean the elementals start with the strong promotion, which mean they split into 2 without promotions which then each split into 2 with the weak promotion rather than just spliting into 2 with the weak promotion initially. The total number may have been reduced when the summoning trait was changed to give Combat I and one extra turn duration rather than 2 extra turns duration though.

You could do the same thing with Gibbon Goetia, but since the summons would be illusions they couldn't kill anything no matter how many you get.

Even though it sounds like an impressive number, when taking into account that the split up elementals start out at 25% (?) health, only the first generation is really useful in battle. Except for fodder on defense soaking up an attack each or possibly mop-up, I don't see what these second generation elementals can be good for.

Even though it sounds like an impressive number, when taking into account that the split up elementals start out at 25% (?) health, only the first generation is really useful in battle. Except for fodder on defense soaking up an attack each or possibly mop-up, I don't see what these second generation elementals can be good for.

In my experience they start at something like 60%-75% health, which is easily strong enough to be effective in the quantities that Twincasting Summoner puppets can summon them in.

Even though it sounds like an impressive number, when taking into account that the split up elementals start out at 25% (?) health, only the first generation is really useful in battle. Except for fodder on defense soaking up an attack each or possibly mop-up, I don't see what these second generation elementals can be good for.
75%. I just played an OO Balserphs game(As Perpentach, not Keelyn) and they always started out with 6.0/8 health. Not bad really, since even as Penpentach I got 12 Water Elementals per turn, and i I haven't gotten the Tower of Elements yet(which would bump it up to 28).