Reanimation - is it worth it for non-Ermor nation?

[Corwin]

I haven't played much as an undead nation in Dom2, so I don't have much experience with reanimation. Now I am trying Yoni nation, and I'vve accidently noticed that some troops with priest level can reanimate (despite being holy, not unholy priests). I think it makes sense because they are demons.

However, Oni only have lvl 1 priests. I've tried reanimation in two provinces last turn, one with 1 1-lvl priest, and in another with 2 1lvl priest. The resuslts were strange.

I expected to have 4 ghouls and/or 10 soulless in 1st province and 8 ghouls and/or 20 soulless in the 2nd province, according to the table in manual.

What I got instead was 5 ghouls in each provinces. However the population losses were twice as high in the provincce with 2 priests doing reanimation (-100 pop) than in the province with only 1 priest. (-50 pop)

It didn't make much sense to me. Is both pop loss and number/type of troops somewhat random? And do you think it make sense to do it with 40gp 1 lvl unholy priests of YONI, or is it waste of time and as well as loss of your own long-term income from population?

Finally would reanimation works better if there are corpses in the province? If so - how much better?

[Ballbarian]

In my current Yomi EA game, I have been using my Oni prophet (lvl 3 priest) to summon souless after battles. Corpses in a province result in armored souless. So far every reanimation has yielded 24 units. This has come in very handy.

I can't speak to the strange results that you received in your test yet. Will try to watch for it when I field some additional priests. Right now I am kicking ermors tail with my prophet and legions of Kuro-Oni.

[Ballbarian]

Reanimating with a lvl 1 priest is yielding 4 ghouls.
Reanimating souless in a province with corpses yields 24 armored souless.

Strangely the manual shows lvl 3 priest as summoning 20 souless. A lvl 1 priest is supposed to get 4 ghouls and a level 2 priest is supposed to get 5 ghouls. Is there another mechanic involved in determining results that are not listed in the manual? These results were in enemy growth 2 dominion and I saw no change in population where raising ghouls. Assuming that the growth offset the population killed.

[BigJMoney]

The manual is probably just wrong.

=$=

[Corwin]

Ballbarian said:
Reanimating with a lvl 1 priest is yielding 4 ghouls.
Reanimating souless in a province with corpses yields 24 armored souless.

Strangely the manual shows lvl 3 priest as summoning 20 souless. A lvl 1 priest is supposed to get 4 ghouls and a level 2 priest is supposed to get 5 ghouls. Is there another mechanic involved in determining results that are not listed in the manual? These results were in enemy growth 2 dominion and I saw no change in population where raising ghouls. Assuming that the growth offset the population killed.

Interesting. I'll do more experiments than.

As for population loss - 1 ghoul = 10 people in your province. IMHO Not worth it, unless you are desperate.

Armored souldless might be better option, since you are getting quite a bit of arrows fodder for free.

So does province need to have 24 corpses to get 24 armored souless? And is this number (24) for lvl 1 priest as well?

And finally - what about longdead and longdead horsemans? Do they require corpses as well, or they reduce population, like ghouls?

As an Oni, my only lvl 3 priest is my Oni King prophet. But for some strange reason whenever he is at any moment, usually there are a lot of corpses around. >

So perhaps I should use him to reanimate dead, when his army is not moving.

[Frostmourne27]

A province need 1 corpse for each soulless reanimated. The soulless will be of the useless unarmed kind unless there has been a recent battle. Wights/Longdead/Londdead Horsemen/Tomb Wyrms require neither population nor corpses. I am not sure if there are any new reanimatable undead in Dom3. BTW Call Spirits works similarly: Dispossed require corpses, Apparitions require Population and Shadows require nothing. I assume that races now animate racial undead -legionares for ermor, longdead of c'tis for c'tis etc. I think that was a mentioned change but I'm not sure.

[Corwin]

Got it, thank you.