Seeking input on an exclusively Undead army

[Jamers]

Thanks for reading.

So I'm about to finish the game with a Paladin, and I'm considering next time through playing as a Mage and using a fully undead army as soon as I get the chance. I'm relying pretty hard on Resurrection in my current game, but I figure if I can load up on Cursed Ghosts and Ancient Vampires and Sacrifice them, it'll make up for it and I'll even be able to replenish troops that died in previous battles--impossible with Resurrection.

My concern is that with the games randomization system, I may not be able to find the troops I need, or they may be very limited. In this current game (my first), I only found Ancient Vampires at the Dwarven Necromancer in Kordar and Necromancers didn't show up until Demonis (!).

Anyway, the idea is I would be able to dual-cast each turn, and I could hypnotize / sacrifice or just blast away or whatever. I'd have the zombie wife for the bonus speed and initiative which would come in handy for the entire game.

So the problems I'm foreseeing are a limited availability of the [I]good[I] undead units and the fact that a fully undead army would limit me to pretty low level units, given that Bone Dragons just suck. *I posted a question earlier about the mechanics of Necromancy and Necro Call, as I'm not sure exactly how these work. If someone could help me out here or on that post, I'd really appreciate it and it may change my whole position on this idea.

Anyway, just wanted some input on what people thought, if anyone had tried this before, etc.

Thanks a lot for reading this whole rant!

[Daedalus]

curious if the Necromancers' raise dead ability is permanent or if the raised troops vanish after the battle.

[Fargol]

Originally Posted by Jamers

Thanks for reading.

So I'm about to finish the game with a Paladin, and I'm considering next time through playing as a Mage and using a fully undead army as soon as I get the chance. I'm relying pretty hard on Resurrection in my current game, but I figure if I can load up on Cursed Ghosts and Ancient Vampires and Sacrifice them, it'll make up for it and I'll even be able to replenish troops that died in previous battles--impossible with Resurrection.

My concern is that with the games randomization system, I may not be able to find the troops I need, or they may be very limited. In this current game (my first), I only found Ancient Vampires at the Dwarven Necromancer in Kordar and Necromancers didn't show up until Demonis (!).

Anyway, the idea is I would be able to dual-cast each turn, and I could hypnotize / sacrifice or just blast away or whatever. I'd have the zombie wife for the bonus speed and initiative which would come in handy for the entire game.

So the problems I'm foreseeing are a limited availability of the [I]good[I] undead units and the fact that a fully undead army would limit me to pretty low level units, given that Bone Dragons just suck. *I posted a question earlier about the mechanics of Necromancy and Necro Call, as I'm not sure exactly how these work. If someone could help me out here or on that post, I'd really appreciate it and it may change my whole position on this idea.

Anyway, just wanted some input on what people thought, if anyone had tried this before, etc.

Thanks a lot for reading this whole rant!

I tried it, and gave up fairly quickly (around level 10 or so).

Availability of undead troops is kinda limited, but worse, variety is as well.

They're just ... boring to use. Now you can put animals in your army and their morale won't suffer, so for a while I was using Royal Snakes, Ghosts, Skeletal Archers (gads are these guys brittle), and Vampires off and on. Throw in Ancient Bears when I could find them, and it's a decent army I suppose. Get that skill (can't remember name) that gives nice bonuses to undead, and I suppose it could be effective.

But the lack of variety and availability convinced me early on to give up the ghost, so to speak.

[Daedalus]

sadly i haven't encountered Cursed Ghosts, otherwise i'd give them a try...

The normal ones are kinda unimpressive.

[Quikpik]

I've been keeping track of all the different vendors in my games. Thus far, between Darion, Kordar, and Isles, there are a total of 8 places where you can buy undead creatures. None of them had any vampires or necros for sale, just your basic units. So I would say getting an undead only army would be tough. Too bad though because the undead in HOMM were brutal.

[player1]

Well, it depends from game to game, since recruit roster is random in every game.

Best strategy is to plan what to use based on what is available in your current game, instead of planning before you ever start playing.

[JGary321]

Bone Dragons - They don't suck, they are just different than the other Dragons. The skill that the Bone Dragons have is still an excellent skill. Poison damage to all surrounding cells i great. I agree they are not quite as good the others, but they are still decent units.

As far as Vampires go - in the Marshan Swamp you can pick up the casket's. Don't they spawn vampires? Can't remember which variety though. Probably not the ancient ones.

[Quikpik]

Originally Posted by player1

Well, it depends from game to game, since recruit roster is random in every game.

Best strategy is to plan what to use based on what is available in your current game, instead of planning before you ever start playing.

The undead recruiting is not that random. Sure you may get Cursed Ghosts from one vendor rather than regular Ghosts. But the point I was trying to make is that they just aren't very many places to buy undead troops. If I were to start a third game, I was thinking about going all undead just to be different. But looking at the available troop vendors, I don't think it will be possible.

[devmoon]

i dont really see why they choose to make undead units so sparse yet still they have skills that work exclusively for undead only

I really want to make a paladin controlling only undeads but after reading that the undead are hard to come by i might not be possible.

If you really wanted maybe it can be possible on hard or so. ghosts and cursed ghosts are really good because they only increase but im having big troubles with the increasing amounts since i must kill them off myself (any solutions to this one?) so does vampires but they are rare as hell : /

Any more input on undead army?

BTW Great game

[Jamers]

Devmoon: I'm not sure how much this will help due to the randomness of the game, but if you can find the spell Sacrifice, then the ghost problem will be solved and will become a boon; you can use Sacrifice to destroy your own units and give a number of units to another troop based on hit points (obviously the the spell level, the higher the damage done and percentage raised). This doesn't work like Resurrection in that you can raise units with Sacrifice beyond the number that you started a battle with.
I just discovered the usefullness of this spell at the end of the game (I use it with Hypnotize where I can find low level units), and I find it very handy in that while there is nowhere around to hire Knights, I can Hypnotize a stack for 500 or 600 spiders, Sacrifice them and then spawn mre Knights without having to trek back to a castle.
Good deal. Hope this helps.