Posts from What skills should Necromancers take when facing Orcs on a very large map?

Against Orcs, darkness is essential! But you can also try one of the light magic spells – Divine Retribution (which doesn't depend on the spell itself!). At the beginning of the battle, cast Plague or something else to reduce their rage, and then bombard them with Divine Retribution, as Orcs deal very high damage! In short, you can defeat the enemy with its own weapon! Where can you get Divine Retribution? Of course, in libraries, which are often found in the map generator!

Very original... Using a ballista in the ultimate skill???? HA HA HA!!! And how much damage will it do..., I respect you, Crol, you've written a lot of useful things about Orcs, but this... Think about it yourself, it's not a rush strategy...

It's not about the damage, the point is to disrupt their rage. You always need to upgrade the ballista against Orcs! It works - I've tested it myself!:smile20:

Light might be problematic, as it drops very rarely (2%), so it's not reliable. Chaos, on the other hand, is quite good; with a large amount of necromancer magic, the damage will be significant (not as good as a Warlock with Arcane Wave, but still great). However, darkness is indeed the most useful, especially against Orcs, and not just when playing as Necropolis.

You might have problems with Light, as it rarely drops (2%), so it's not worth relying on. Chaos, on the other hand, is quite good; with a large amount of Necromancer magic, the damage will be significant (not as good as a Warlock with Arcane Wave, but still great). But Darkness is definitely the most useful against Orcs, and not just when playing as Necropolis.

It's also viable to develop Darkness for Haven (Fallen Knight). Against Orcs, Darkness works well – a Berserker on free Cyclops is devastating! They can destroy half of your army!
Topic...:smile03:

Specifically, last night we played Orc vs Necro... we played on one computer, but we only told each other what was happening on our turns after certain events, which I'll mention later...
I played Necro: the tactic was as follows—since the opponent knew I usually focus on Dark Magic, I decided not to level it up at all :D Otherwise, it was standard: attack, defense, summoning, and education.

The Orc captured all necessary mines by the first week.
In the first week, I only captured ore; I didn't have enough troops for the rest. I accumulated them, and by the start of the third week, I got wood. Mercury started dripping from the warehouse starting from the second turn))
The Orc cleared the territory, built up an army, and developed the hero. He reached level 17 and, naturally, developed resistance to Dark Magic, fearing a Berserker with Mind Control. He also developed Luck, Attack, and if I'm not mistaken, Defense, all to the Expert level.
I leveled up to 20—could have gone higher, but I only attacked 1-2 target squads at the start of the week to increase my troop count... after that, I simply ran out of Dark Energy. I entered the Orc's territory, started capturing his mines, and looped back and forth. At that point, I had slightly less than 1k Skeleton Archers, about 100 Vampires, 2 squads of 350 Zombies, 20 Death Knights, and about 40 Liches. The opponent started chasing me; the terrain was a bit confusing. In short, I forced the opponent to move more than one turn away from the castle, used Teleport across the mountains, and took the castle. The opponent essentially surrendered and asked for a rematch)) After that, we started acting strictly by agreement just to test the balance. The opponent attacked; his army consisted of ALL the creature growth since the start of the game—he had a bottleneck in building the level 6 creature dwelling, but otherwise, everything developed normally.
150-180 level 2 creatures (Centaurs),
14 level 7 creatures (Cyclopes),
about 70 level 5 creatures,
about 16 level 6 creatures,
I don't remember the rest...

All the opponent's troops were upgraded, mine mostly weren't (I hadn't been in my town since level 12))). In short, I had to run; the Orc's losses were 1 Cyclops and all the Centaurs. THAT'S ALL!!!

We decided to replay again. The scenario: I return to my town, collect all troops from the town, upgrade those I have—basically maximizing everything—and return immediately. Considering there was NO MIND CONTROL, NO BERSERKER (didn't level Dark Magic), and not even Phoenix summon (got some celestial shit, damn it))), and mass spells weren't leveled up, the battle was still won, though with heavy losses. I had 39 Harbinger of Death, 21 Dragons, 1k Archers, 750 Zombies, about 67 Liches, and 182 Higher Vampires. At the moment of my return, the opponent had:
18 level 7 creatures
37 level 6
94 level 5
52 level 4
177 level 3
196 level 2
368

The fifth level proved to be the most problematic; only the Zombies survived until the end (slow and steady wins the race)))) and plus I restored 210 archers by the end of the fight... In short, the balance is ideal: two players roughly equal in strength, at the same level of temporal development, on an absolutely asymmetrical map, played an absolutely equal final battle... perhaps I should have ignored the plan and leveled Dark Magic; then the victory might have been a bit more tangible, but I'm sure not by much...

But there is this point: considering that my army grows in number faster than the opponent's, and if he has just reached the maximum creature growth level, then my maximum continues to increase with the hero's level. In a few weeks, I could be raising significantly more, and if this battle turned out roughly equal, then later the advantage could shift to the Necro, at least in terms of army strength. Perhaps again the number of troops would be compensated by the increased Rage of the Orc, but that's not the point; the point is that in the late game, Necro looks quite good against the Orc... not necessarily dominant—it's not supposed to, and SHOULD NOT, look dominant... the main thing is that the tilt in either direction would be insignificant, which speaks to a fairly high level of balance in the game, where subtleties decide the outcome, and making a mistake in them puts the victorious outcome of the duel in doubt.

Necromancer needs Darkness (because Diminish only reduces the duration of Berserk, and if you have good magic skills, it will still last for 2 turns. Leadership is essential (I played on a large map and leveled up the ability to turn joining units into undead of the same level), Chaos (to scare neutral creatures and also to remove Fury), Attack, Defense, and Logistics.

darkness is also useful because cursed land effectively suppresses bloodlust, usually in Orcs. It typically takes two to three turns to reach Necropolises, depending on the terrain; during this time, the initial bloodlust is burned out. Once, I fought Orcs on a map where there were only two narrow passages in the rocks between the two armies, right in front of my troops. I blocked these passages with a wall of fire, and considering the cursed land, the Orcs started fighting without bloodlust and were weakened.

Yes, the "Curse" spell is very effective at reducing rage, and "Darkness" is useful with Berserkers against Cyclops. Also, you can take "Challenge" and "Fire Traps" – they remove rage very effectively, and "Chain Lightning" is great against Orcs, and Undead can compete with Orcs. You can also take "War Machines" if your hero is Kaspar.

Kaspar already seems to have some units... No, he definitely has them. I suggest he gets the Plague Tent; it should be pretty good at reducing enemy morale.

That’s what I’m saying – you don’t lose anyone at the beginning when you’re on neutral territory, and then the tent is pretty good; it deals damage.

Also, the Darkness spell, Confusion (Forgetfulness), is very effective... And in Light magic, the Holy Word spell is good...

I think that even a weak mass spell and a destructive beam will help here!

the main thing is that there shouldn't be any corruption of darkness:) otherwise, everything will be fine.

I think here both mass weakness and a devastating beam will help!

That's for sure!! It seems like it's not a very strong spell, but on a difficult level, and even in general, it's very useful... I like centaurs and trappers against warmongers with zero defense.

Kaspar already has some creatures, I think. No, he definitely does. I suggest he gets the Plague Tent; it should be good at reducing Rage.

Mass Plague is even better at reducing Rage.