Bay 12 Games Forum

Drain should have been hitting pretty decently... iirc, a bit better than a non-crit soul rot, on average. I usually sink a few generics (2-3) into it early on, m'self. Further, you should be using it instead of bump attacks whenever possible (all corrupted strength, all the time!), so you've usually got a good excuse to use it, t'boot. If that and the normal murder isn't enough, a few points into willpower (iirc, it's +1 vim/kill every ten will) might not hurt, or picking up bloodcasting. Reavers... vim management definitely isn't the problem I've ever had with them. Their biggest issue is they're kinda' squishy and not the most mobile thing in the world. Made up for by all the melee. All of it. And I guess those disease things or... whatever... too.

Rest seems like you may have been running into bugs (the no-vim from disease kills, bone shield regen), at least some of which I could have sworn was fixed at some point... but vim regen has always been kinda' finicky. Might want to give it a bug report or two, see if it doesn't get fixed in the near-ish future. Buggers are definitely a lot less painful to keep vim up with than they used to be, ha. The wonder and glory of keeping hostile civilians around strictly so you could blood sac in relative safety... thankfully a glory of days gone past, hopefully never seen again.

Little bit, anyway. You don't really need to cook food, from what I've seen (single patch of neon melons or something and you're set for hours and hours), fire usually ends up only being useful if you're going atmosphere or particularly cold planets (and then, half the time you can get by just dropping torches.), and freezing becomes less of a mechanic as time passes and you get better armor. Starbound's stuff feels a lot less... call it sticky than URW's. Easier to brush off, doesn't adhere to your corpse quite so hard. It's there, I guess, but...

Have to give remote attacking a shot, then... bit more before I can test it, but eh.

In other news, why in Zeus's name is the advanced orders stuff not just in the freaking menus!? I just now learned there's a monthly forging command. I knew about the monthly ritual for a while, but this... argh. Thug production just got ridiculously more streamlined

Also managed to summon up a wraith lord for consul comparison purposes! And, uh. Well. The base stats, consuls actually have a bit of an edge (note: For 15 less death gems, and absolutely zero research), winning out on defense by about a point, and otherwise they're... basically identical. Consuls are a little faster in terms of AP. Same HP, consuls have slightly less prot, same attack, same morale, magic resistance... for what it's worth, WLs have about double the spellcasting fatigue, but eh. It is a trade of d3 for h3 (which is definitely a downgrade if you're comparing them side by side.) and no death curse, and they've got worse starting kit (especially the weapon), but in exchange they're sacreds who can self bless, from a nation that can very, very easily afford an incredible bless, and if you throw them in an army they can throw out some pretty sizable supporting buffs right off the bat. Consuls are also full amphibians, for what that's worth.

The rub, being, well. Wraith lord is conj 7. Lemur Consul is turn three, and potentially every two turns thereafter as a minimum. It... that's pretty incredible. Yes, I would like an end-game (mini)SC chassis on turn three. I would like that very much.

E: Does explain why they were walking indies so easily, though. They're basically forty death gems and several hundred points of research in a twenty five gem zero research package.
E2: Oh wow, the ermor equivalent (censors, I guess?) is kinda' utter trash in comparison. No fear, ethereal, worse stats in almost everything... a lot cheaper, at least, but I'd half bet on one consul over 6-7 censors >_>

Ermor in comparison... definitely a different beast. Amulets of the dead work on their reanimations, for one <_<
E3: Dusk elders are a hell of a lot better than the equivalent top-tier lemuria caster, though, whatever those things are called. ~Half the cost for roughly the same casting power and research, that's kinda' ridiculous. Admittedly, the grand-whatever's stats (and immortality) probably make it a considerably better battle caster, but... eesh.

Seems to be the general pattern, really, which is kinda' interesting. Ermor's got better research, better freespawn, Lemuria has more expensive but a lot better commanders in regards to everything else, but frankly pretty iffy freespawn (not that they particularly need it when they've basically got turn three wraith lords x:). Neat... contrast, I guess? Lemuria's doom consuls and whatnot make 'em feel more... flexible. Definitely a different feel to both empires, which is nice.

!!!

There can be more than four sites in a province.

There can be more than four sites in a province.

My knowledge of reality has shattered before fact. All is unknowable and strange! WHAT MADNESS IS THIS‽ Why, Illwinter? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS‽

El proofo:

I can easily see my niece inheriting my sister's debt, many years from now (I hope) when she dies.

For what it's worth, don't worry about this one too much. Most debt cannot legally pass on to family in the case of the debt owner dying. There's exceptions, but not too terribly many (and, iirc, most involve cases where the debt is attached to the estate rather than the person. If push comes to shove, it can be ditched by ditching the estate.). It likely means losing certain material goods -- stuff legally owned by the debt owner on death will be liquidated to pay off debts -- but the remaining debt shouldn't transfer (assuming the debt collectors don't attempt skulduggery, anyway. Lawyers might be recommended at that point, just in case.).

And... to be fair, that kind of behavior isn't entirely universal in the states. We're definitely somewhat cavalier about debt (and somewhat resigned to certain ones, such as student loans, never going away), but situations like the one you described is... well, not exactly uncommon, but not exactly the standard thing, either. Least from what I've seen. Folks do know juggling debt like that with multiple credit cards and whatnot can (will) come back and bite them. Fairly often, anyway.

I usually build TWs Will/Mag/(Other), with other depending on the build. Archer warden can skimp more on the willpower, though. More melee-centric one (or even a most hybrid leaning) probably wants willpower for the extra strength. Still, I'd wager the better of archer wardens end up Will/Mag/Dex for their three sixties, and end up with a hefty amount of non-bow (i.e. spells) ranged usage to take advantage of their eventually ridiculous magic (and thus spellpower) score. Temporal classes in general are will/mag primary, since most of their stuff scales off one, the other, or both.

S'really one of the things I like about wardens... same as with mindslayers, actually. Being able to set some of your other stats (Magic and Strength in the case of the Wardens, Str/Dex for slayers) scaling off others (Will for wardens, will/cun for slayers) makes for delicious double-dip shenanigans. Wardens have been toned back a lot from the glory days, though. I still remember fondly breaking 200 magic (or was it 250...) with my first warden winner...

For the priests, you can cast different raise units with priests instead of preaching.  However, I noticed it only works if you have corpses to raise.  But I also noticed that units still freely spawn even when there are no more corpses in a province.  How exactly does the free unit spawning work?  Is there anything I can do to effect it?  I noticed some provinces spawn more units then others, what effects that?

In the case of Ermor, three things effect their freespawn, so far as I'm aware. The strength of their dominion, and whether there is a castle or a temple in the province. Higher dominion = more spawns. Temple = better spawns. Temple + Castle = even better spawns. I'm not sure about castle by itself, though. I imagine that provides better spawns as well. S'far as I know, that's it.

Priest reanimating is a different thing entirely and yeah, as you note, primarily takes corpses (or just plain population, in some cases).