Advice for playing death magic

[MrBiscuits]

I can win on advanced consistently and some of the time on expert with all the other schools of magic, but I get nowhere with death magic. 

I just can't even seem to create undead enough to make it worthwhile trying. Ghouls don't damage much in nodes and just get destroyed easily (sprites are so much better for this).
They aren't very good at attacking other wizards as they get picked off by ranged before you can cast darkness and use them.

Drain life seems to do almost no damage at all for me, maybe one or 2 HP and then I have to kill units in other ways, so they don't get raised as undead.

I tried a build with two life books for heavenly light and guardian to allow ghouls to pick off any enemies that attack my cities, but nothing attacked me for most of that game. 

There aren't many unit or city enchantments to help in other ways.

How do people play death at a higher level?

[Cruel100]

Wraith Form in magics itens for heroes.

[ksasaki]

Sapher recommended warp creature (Chaos common) + drain life and try to get a chaos spawn under your control (get the warp with 0 resistance modifier), I haven’t tried it myself but it seems viable.

[MrBiscuits]

Sapher recommended warp creature (Chaos common) + drain life and try to get a chaos spawn under your control (get the warp with 0 resistance modifier), I haven’t tried it myself but it seems viable.

I guess from a node? 

So you'd need astronomer and then cast warp creature on a chaos spawn in the node, which would have a resistance of 12. So you'd have a 30% change of the warp creature working and then a third of that to get the 0 resistance modifier. So a 10% chance for the warp creature to work as desired for each casting, so you'd need a casting skill of about 50 to have a reasonable chance of getting the effect you need, then extra for the drain life. I can't see how you could effectively to that early in the game.

If it is in your city from raiders then it's a 50% chance rather than 30%, so you'd probably need a casting skill of about 35 for the warp spell, but Chaos Spawn raiders don't usually doesn't happen until later on in the game.

[massone]

Death's strength is not in attacking nodes until you have Shadow Demons, or unless you've got Focus Magic to buff up Ghouls some more. If you want to make the Warp+Life Drain strategy work, you can't rely on your own casting skill, you need to have Life Drain and Spell Save on a hero. IMO, it's not really such a good strategy anymore after 5.55 or so, when stacking Spell Save on items was adjusted to require Create Artifact. But it can still be done if you get a Spell Save -1 on a staff/wand and 2 accessories. It's still very costly and rather risky though, and only viable if you take Artificer.

I would recommend you instead focus on attacking neutrals and other Wizards, or just regular non-node lairs. Darkness isn't a must. What you need is to have an adaptable strategy. Most of the Death common spells are very good in the early game. Cloak of Fear and Wraith Form does wonders against low res opponents without magical weapons. Zombies are also really durable with 3 health per figure. And don't forget that Skeletons have Missile Immunity and they're dirt cheap.

You should combine Death with an offensive military race. Use the racial units and bowmen to help you get the nodes.

Shadow Demons are the best Uncommon summon available, and that's where Death has the biggest advantage. You can also rush for Werewolves, whose research cost is the same as a Common spell so you can get them super early.

[ksasaki]

Chaos spawns can appear in monster lairs but it’s a little luck based.

I agree with massone that shadow demons or werewolves are strong early.  I looked at the research costs and shadow demons is 2140 and werewolves is 420 so werewolves seems a more viable rush strategy.  

Skeletons are generally more effective than swordsman and spearman and can quell unrest without any maintenance cost, saving you food and increasing production / gold of your cities.  Useful for neutral city conquering or exploring a node before attacking it as well, as they are cheaper than magic spirits.  Mana leak is super useful as well.  I think focus magic has great synergy with ghouls or shadow demons as well, making truly awesome killing machines.

[MrBiscuits]

Thanks for all the tips, I tried a few more games, but I'm still not doing very well. Shadow demons are very powerful, but move so slowly that it's hard to conquer much with them in my experience.
I find them great for defence though.

Werewolves are good with regenerate, but it's hard to take enemy cities with them as most have a flying unit like sprites in them in the early game.

I find Zombies just too slow and expensive to cast to do much in the early game. Skeletons would be good against bowman though, I hadn't thought of that.

I have to admit using sprites most games to capture nodes or perhaps astrologer + confusion. Maybe I could try it with black sleep instead (although that doesn't prevent regeneration at the end for Great Lizards I don't think, which is one of the creatures in lairs with low magic resistance).

Are there any videos of someone using Death Magic at a high level?

[Sapher]

Are there any videos of someone using Death Magic at a high level?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bFA9G-C3c8

[MrBiscuits]

Thanks I'm watching it now.

I didn't realise Wraith Form gave weapon immunity. Has poison immunity been removed from it now?

A few questions, why don't you maximise the number of workers when you have extra food? Also why did you build a city when it said the maximum population there was 0?

[Sapher]

It was max pop 0 only because not all 2x2 tiles around that place were explored. I liked that square because i knew it had silver.
Extra food is converted to gold. So yea i have a bit less production in cities but i can buy more things. I often use a strategy where i have only 1 city producing good troops while other cities support buying those troops every turn. That must be a habbit from those times.