Corpses (or, what's the use of dying)?

[JonBrave]

I do hope I won't be shot down for failing to RTFM...

As I have said in another place, I am presently EA C'tis. Lots of Death magic. I seem to have a number of spells --- some ritual, some battle --- whose description talks of "animating corpses", or similar. But I think I seem to cast them regardless of the current corpse-count (or at least on the strategic map)??

Am I being unobservant? What's the low-down on corpses, both on the strategic map and for fallen in battle, please?

[13lackGu4rd]

some spells are dependent upon corpses, others aren't. animate/raise skeletons for example is independent of corpses on the battlefield while animate/raise dead is dependent on them. same goes for Rituals, some depend on them and some don't. there are also a few spells that don't actually need corpses but do get better with them, Undead Horde comes to mind, not sure if there are any other examples of the like.

[JonBrave]

Can I (reliably) tell from the descriptions --- on screen, vanilla --- whether a spell requires corpses?

[JonBrave]

For example, I just fired up my EA C'tis. Home province, no corpses. I can cast "Reanimation". The description says "corpses", later talks of "skeletons". Does it require corpses??

[Kobal2]

The main difference lies between soulless and longdead.
Priests or spells that reanimate longdead (skeletons) always have the same effect, no matter where you cast them. That's because they reanimate dead people who have died a long time ago, and there's never any shortage of those.
Priests or spells that reanimate soulless (zombies) are different, because they reanimate dead people who still have some flesh on them. Thus, they're a little bit wasteful if there are no fresh corpses around (i.e. your mage reanimates fewer total people/hitpoints than he would have reanimating longdead), but are better when done in provinces that have corpses in them (in which case you'll reanimate ~ the same number of undead, except soulless are generally much better than longdead man-for-man).

The same is true for battles BTW: in the first turns of a battle animating skeletons will get you better results. A few turns in when some people have died on either side of the battle animating zombies becomes more efficient.

Finally, there's the Raven Feast spell, which turns Air gems into Death gems based on the corpse count of the province it's aimed at.

[JonBrave]

OK, so, from the "Reanimate" description, I should ignore "corpses" because later it says "skeletons", and skeletons (being longdead) tells me I won't need corpses? Is that right?

[JonBrave]

I think our posts may have crossed.

[JonBrave]

I know this game has lots of depth I keep discovering, but I had no idea that there are actually two kinds of corpses/undead... I just thought dead was dead...

[Kobal2]

And to answer your question: nope, Reanimation doesn't care about corpses - because it reanimates Longdead.

[Kobal2]

Welcome to Dominions, where the learning curve was modelled on the cliffs of Dover