Getting addicted to death mana

[Thrar]

In my current game as Tebryn/Sheaim, I realized how powerful death mana can be.

Skeletons are great at the start of the game, then once you get up to mages (or in this case, moebius witches, too), spectres make a great supplement. Another tech level later, there are wraiths and, sort of as a free bonus, the option to have twice as many archmages as usual. Building death nodes wherever possible in addition to the death mana buildings like the Tower of Necromancy means getting up to 8 very powerful wraiths per turn, plus one pretty decent spectre out of every mage and moebius witch.

Eventually, I used to promote my adepts with just combat and spell extension promotions, which works especially well with Sheaim since you can just rely on moebius witches for other spells and don't even need mana nodes other than death.

I've been wondering, how can other civs keep up with this combination? Not using death means you only get half as many archmages, don't get free summons that can stand up to national units from just mages and you actually have to build your military units at the start of the game rather than just summoning a new one if one of them dies.
I didn't have to build any military units after pyre zombies in the early game and a few national units at the end, and even though Sheaim gates help, the main part of the military was based on summons. In turn, cities didn't have to build military and could get eco buildings up quickly for a very strong eco.

Are there other strategies that can replicate this power? I'm sure in the next game I'm going to miss just summoning up a bunch of strength 15+ units to take care of those annoying city defenders without having to worry about losing them in the process.

 

[Onionsoilder]

There are various strategies with each type of mana that can be very powerful. Death is hardly the only one. I think it is Life II that grants the Destroy Undead spell, which will do very heavy damage to your army. Air II and Fire II can both do collateral damage to your army. A large number of the spheres have elemental summons for their Tier III, which are very powerful in their own right. In short, yes Death is powerful, but so are the other spheres.

 

[cabbagemeister]

I agree that Death mana is probably the strongest mana type overall (at least for military). Many spheres have excellent spells and summons, but Death is the only one that has a superb spell at Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III.

The balancing factor for Death mana is that, for it to be effective, you NEED to hoard it, and that kills you diplomatically. A spectre is worse than a fireball unless you have at least 3 Death mana sources. Similarly, I'd rather have a Fire or Earth elemental than a Wraith, unless I have 3 death mana sources. But having that much Death mana means that almost everyone in the world hates you, making it hard to get resources and war allies.

Finally, Death mana's fatal flaw is that it's quite ineffective against non-living units. Yeah, your wraiths might be Str 17 when they're attacking normal Longbowmen, but what do you do when Hyborem marches against you with a horde of Demons, or Basium with a horde of Angels, or even Beeri with a horde of Golems, and your wraiths are only Str 6 (and your spectres only Str 3) against them?

 

[Thrar]

Good point about the golems and demons, these summons would be fairly useless there. Not so with Basium - in fact, in that very game, I was fighting against him as well. Angels have a 50% death resistance only, so those wraiths could still get decent chances even against heralds (after all they're just summons, so who cares if it's just 20-30%?).

I did notice that good civs didn't exactly like me, but this was mostly due to being evil with a fairly high AC. The death mana penalty is only applied once, not once per mana source, and only for some civs. Evil civs (e.g. Hyborem) even gave me a relationship bonus for it.

Regarding destroy undead: I don't know exactly how it works, but first of all, the units need to be there in order to be damaged. Since they're summons (except for the liches), they can jump into the action directly and if someone wants to spend a spell on destroying them in their turn, be my guest.

It's been my impression that while several other spheres offer good level 3 summons, you just can't afford abusing the affinity as much because only your archmages can get them, and you only have four of those. With fire, for example, I'd have a lot of fireball-capable mages, but only four fire elementals per turn.

What I would like to see would be a kind of synergy between different mana types. Maybe not in the form of a direct bonus, but having some spells that can complement each other might be very interesting. Are there any combinations like that, mana types or spells that combined are more than the sum of their parts?

 

[Onionsoilder]

Hmm... would be interesting if some spells could "upgrade" as you got more mana. For example, if you collect three Fire Mana your Fireballs turn into Meteors, each Air Mana gives a small % chance of lightning elementals spawning on malstrom tiles, etc.

 

[Inspector Javert]

which mod is this?

nevermind didn't read the topic... stupid

 

[cabbagemeister]

I did notice that good civs didn't exactly like me, but this was mostly due to being evil with a fairly high AC. The death mana penalty is only applied once, not once per mana source, and only for some civs.

Are you sure? I believe that in my Death mana hoarding games I've had "-10 You use Death mana" before. Maybe it's only applied once, but it also scales with the AC. Anyone know how this works?

 

[travathian]

I think it also depends on the civ, some hate Death mana more than others.

 

[JonathanStrange]

Frankly a skillful player using Death mana and an equally skillful player using other mana spells? I'd say the Death mana user would have an advantage but there's so many other factors that enter into the equation that it might not really be decisive to use Death mana. It's not like having an A-bomb while everyone else is perfecting firearms. But it's a definitely a powerful tool.

If it weren't so anti-thematic for the Elves (as I play them) to use it, I would. However, the Ljos make do with using their starting Life, Nature, and Air mana by building a node or two extra from the three, as well as Enchantment nodes, etc. I think the combination of mana types is adequate to deal with Death users.

True, against Death mana, the Life spells don't seem all too potent: Life I Sanctify really isn't an attacking spell, Life II Destroy Undead is powerful but a bit specific to Undead enemies , Life III Resurrection is useful but you have to die to need it (though getting Gilden back in action's cool). But again, the game's not decided by one mana type anyway, so it's not game over.

My Ljosalfars' get a Palace Starting Life mana but I rarely have an adept take the Life path beyond Life I (the Sanctify spell clears Hyborems' lands easily). The problem is the Life path is just too narrow, sort of like someone taking an "Anti-Elf" promotion over a general purpose Combat promotion. It is good knowing I have that "headstart" option though if I need Life spells.

The A.I. usually doesn't force me to make that choice but it would be cool if it did. I think that in the face of vigorous Death mana usage, as an Ljosalfar, I would have the adepts build a Life mana node for that valuable second Life mana source jumpstarting access to Life II and then, in combination with my Druids (whose Nature mana affinity is strengthed both by the Ljosalfar's Palace Starting Nature mana and by my usual building of a Nature mana node), mages and assassins, I think we could cope & of course we'd have a few tricks of our own. The OP is talking about a high level Death mana force though, and it would take a really powerful force to handle 'em - but that's the nature of any T4 units in the endgame.

I'm not knockin' Death mana, I'm definitely aware of its power. I suppose this thread could have been titled "Death Mana Is So Powerful, Why Use Any Other Mana?".

 

[Opera]

Yeah, the diplomalus for Death/Entropy is only applied once, not for every single resource. I changed that in my mod, following MagisterCultuum's advice. It makes more sense this way

 

[cypher132]

Fireballs are incredibly effective, Mutate is a good win/lose spell, and the Flesh Golem is amazing. Just stick any unit with a certain promotion onto it and bam. Strong Flesh Golem.

 

[Bill Bisco]

Yeah, the diplomalus for Death/Entropy is only applied once, not for every single resource. I changed that in my mind, following MagisterCultuum's advice. It makes more sense this way

It doesn't make sense at all. Who cares if it's death mana or fire mana. They're both used to maim and kill. Secondly, a good civ who turns evil still has a problem with Death mana even though they ask for it in Diplomacy.

 

[Lone Wolf]

It doesn't make sense at all. Who cares if it's death mana or fire mana. They're both used to maim and kill.

Necromancy is creepier, though, that's why it's so irrationally frowned upon. The "good" people on Erebus are very prejudiced. Life as a Necromancer is very hard, not only you always need to somehow get a supply of dead bodies for your research, you're shunned by the "righteous". Recently, some Order priests tried to execute me for suggesting that Skeletons and Spectres will be only too proud to fight for the noble Bannor cause.

 

[Opera]

Well, I didn't choose to make Death and Entropy negative. I only made it so it counts how many number of a resource you have and then it multiplies the malus by this value.
Of course, you can now set a leader to hate Marble or Fire mana if you want.

 

[Cromagnum P.I.]

As far as I can tell rushing to FoL and then creating the altar and spamming priests from that city was a brutal combo for me. I was playing on a lower difficulty but having an army of priests that could make an army of tigers to weaken my foes was great fun. And after awhile I could just create new priests and my combat 5 frontline priests could summon more, highly empowered tigers.
I realized just how much overkill that was when I unlocked crusade (I was Bannor) and swarmed the globe with Demagogs.

 

[Demus]

the thing is, those specters can easily hit 10+ strenght thanks to affinity, with a few 13+ strenght wraiths as icing on the cake. It's the tier 2 affinity that makes death mana a killer (unless you're sheiam, from which the tier 3 possibilities even outshine the tier 2 summon. Try a summoner leader which can summon dozens of tier 3 summons from every city they capture).

 

[Landmonitor]

In one game, I was the Malakim and I found the Mirror of the Sun, then founded Empyrean. That was a +6 for my Aureali right there....

The main thing with Death, IMO is the level 2 summon affinity and the access to liches.

I still believe that the single best summon is the Djinn. No matter which Civ you are, you'll have some mana types that nothing else has affinity for, and those one add raw, unresistable strength. With a couple of vassals and your archmages are summoning str. 25+ Djinn, and having metamagic promotions helps the mages who are casting Maelstrom out as well.

 

[Elyssaen]

I still believe that the single best summon is the Djinn. No matter which Civ you are, you'll have some mana types that nothing else has affinity for, and those one add raw, unresistable strength. With a couple of vassals and your archmages are summoning str. 25+ Djinn, and having metamagic promotions helps the mages who are casting Maelstrom out as well.

For 25 on your Djinn you'd need 24 mana nodes. That's half the world on a Huge map with Blessing of Amathaon on, in my experience. I'm finding that by the time you're in a position for Djinn to be ridiculously strong, you've already won the game.

Any +1/mana is the same of course – the Djinn are just more versatile. The +2/mana are the ones that break that game, especially Sun mana.

Since I'm still new to the game and do not like magic¹, I've found that the best mana to collect is Sun mana. Say you manage to get 8. Chalid now has 25, and any Aureali you summon have 24. Any one of them is unstoppable, more so Chalid because of Pillar of Fire and how early you can have him.

¹ Perhaps I've still got a lot to learn. Fireball is good for bombardment but often does so little collateral damage that it's pointless. Maelstrom damages my own army. Other than optimised Aureali I've only had limited use for summons as opposed to just buying another combat unit instead of the adept/mage.

 

[popejubal]

Perhaps I've still got a lot to learn. Fireball is good for bombardment but often does so little collateral damage that it's pointless. Maelstrom damages my own army. Other than optimised Aureali I've only had limited use for summons as opposed to just buying another combat unit instead of the adept/mage.

Fireballs are mostly good for bombardment, but Adepts/Mages can take Mobility once you get Horseback Riding and Haste speeds them up as well, so I like Fireball wielding mages a lot more than I like Siege equipment because I like 3 better than I like 1 .

As for summons, the nice feature isn't even the fact that they're powerful - it's the fact that they're disposeable. An Archmage is a very big investment, but once you have one, you can throw a zillion summons at a city and have a lot less "real" unit backup. The summons don't even have to destroy the defending unit. If you can just significantly damage the top defenders, the city will be vastly easier to take.

Being able to throw a few summons at the city to soften up the best defenders means you don't have to sacrifice real units that cost you hammers. This turns wars of attrition into wars of throwing summoned units into fights so that your opponent gets the attrition and you get to keep growing.

The best use of magic, imho, is the useful spells that come at tier I and II. Water I to turn worthless deserts into productive plains. Nature I to instantly fortify your units as they wander through enemy territory. Death I to summon a horde of shock troops even before you discover Sorcery. Body I for Haste. Body II for Regeneration. Lots of spells are just rediculously good. You just have to use magic for a purpose that fits your plan instead of trying to make a plan that fits your magic. I actively ignore at least some of my starting mana for almost every civ.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Well, I didn't choose to make Death and Entropy negative. I only made it so it counts how many number of a resource you have and then it multiplies the malus by this value.
Of course, you can now set a leader to hate Marble or Fire mana if you want.

-20 "You use Corn"

Could make some interesting games... I wonder if we could make Pepentach's modifiers change throughout the game, maybe with his trait switches? As long as there are some positive resource modifiers as well, it would be fun, I think.

The reason Death Mana is so powerful is because for spells like Destroy Undead, you have to cast them after an opponent summons them, but before they attack. This is hard as it is with Simultanious Turns, and impossible in games were you take turns. Maybe there could be a spell that gives 50% resistance to death damage...