Witch Mechanics Thread - Conquest of Elysium 3

So you want to be a Witch, eh? Well I can't blame you. You summon up chaff monsters like a Druid but instead of backing that up with crappy slingers, your back ranks are made out of genetically superior Androphag Archers who come equipped with poison bows. Your casters also have mostly superior magic, as they have Charms, Sleeps, and Confusions that work on everyone, not just animals. Your big enemies are the Necromancers, because plain old longdead are immune to all that crap and Poison and Fear, which negates almost every single thing your faction does well. But against everything else, you're awesome.

But let's look at your conjurations. You have three, and all of them can be cast either cheaply or expensively.

• Minor Conjuration - this can be done by Witch Apprentices and can be cast anywhere. It costs 15 to skimp on the fungus, 30 to do a normal recipe, and 45 to use fungus freely. There is absolutely no reason to use the fungus freely. It seems to work about 99% of the time when you skimp on the fungus, so that's about what you're going to do.
• Major Conjuration - this requires a level 2 Witch, which of course you start with, and can be performed anywhere. Upgrading Witch Apprentices to level 2 costs 150 mushrooms and can be done anywhere. The major costs 75 for skimping, 150 for a normal, and 225 for freely used fungus. Once again, there is no apparent reason to use fungus freely. Skimping on fungus is not advisable, as it appears to fail more than half the time. I have never seen it fail on a normal casting, so we assume it costs 150 fungus.
• Call Old One - this requires a level 3 witch, which requires you to spend 450 shrooms on advancing a level 2 Witch. It can only be performed in a Swamp. It costs 250 for a sparing dose of fungus, 500 for a normal dose, and 750 for a large dose. With the large dose, it succeeds about 80% of the time. At lesser doses it fails more often, and even on a normal dose it fails more than half the time. I have no idea why you'd want to use a minimal dose because it doesn't seem to ever work.

Whenever a summoning fails, the monster still shows up. But then your army has to fight them and you have to be the attacker.
Now let's talk about what you get. For a minor summoning the least you can get is a single frog. Yes, really. One frog. And it's even one of the useless "familiars" that shows up in the back rank and does not do anything. You can also get immobile fungus or slime molds, so you'll want to cast it in something you want to defend like an Ancient Forest, a Swamp, or a Town whenever you can. But most of the time you get something good. Swamp Ghosts are ethereal and zap paralysis into the back ranks, swamp monsters have 48 hit points, and Hydra Hatchlings have 3 attacks, 3 lives, take half damage from piercing and blunt, and regenerate. Swamp Ghosts come in packs of 1-6 (or so), Hydra Hatchlings come in groups of 1 or 2 for the most part. When you get frogs, you usually get like 10 of them. In general, every casting is worth like 50 gold of normal troops, more or less.

Things get more interesting with the major summoning. Much of it is fairly disappointing. Instead of a Crocodile (a slow moose with less attacks and more hit points), you get a giant crocodile (slightly more than double hit points, hits harder). More than twice as good certainly, but is it ten times as good? Absolutely not. But the high end of Major Summons are insane. The Doppleganger is an assassin that attacks three times and every time he kills anything you get a "dopplespawn", which is basically regenerating infantry. The Doppleganger himself has 35 hit points and regenerates! The Will-o-Wisp has a strikes anywhere enslave as its normal attack and hides in the back row.

The biggest one of course is the Call Ancient One. It gives things which are seriously impressive. However, it is the one place where Witches are actually inferior to Druids. Calling an Ancient One costs more fungus than calling Legendary Beings costs in herbs, and fungus are slightly more dear than herbs are. And importantly, Ancient Ones turn on you about one time in five, making their summonings pretty risky. And finally, while ancient ones are nuts powerful, their turkeys (mostly Ancient Presences) are even lamer than Giant Moose and only come one at a time. Nothing on the list is as over-the-top powerful as the Beholder (though the Catoblepas is very close).

Minor Summons List

• Black Cat Familiar - Useless
• Blood Fungus -Immobile
• Bog Beast (s)
• Crocodile - Slow
• Frog Army
• Frog Familiar - Useless
• Hydra Hatchling(s)
• Marsh Worm
• Slime Mold - Immobile
• Swamp Ghost (s) - (decent individually, a horde is awesome)
• Swamp Monster
• Swamp Thing(s) - Slow

Major Summons

• Creeping Doom
• Doppleganger
• Doppleganger Captain
• Gelatinous Cube - Slow
• Giant Crocodile - Slow
• Hydra
• Monster Toad (s)
• Root Monster
• Will-o-Wisp

Call Ancient Ones

• Ancient Hydra - Awesome
• Ancient Presence - Weak
• Catoblepas - Awesome
• Dracolion - the icon of the game, it's about the same as a chimera
• Echidna - Personally Weak, but freespawns troops
• Erinyes - comes with magic items
• Gorgon
• Medusa
• Swamp God
• Wyrm

A lot of the Ancient Ones cause Fear. This is an impressive ability if it's the only creature in your army that does that, but multiple Fear causing units do not stack. The Echidna is otherwise just a wall of meat who punches people, which is embarrassing.

Other than that, once you buy a Manflayer, you will start getting Hands of Glory from large settlements. The Manflayer is a level 2 Necromancer, but he can't go insane to raise the dead and all he knows how to use hands of glory for are the Minor Summons and Dark Knowledge (but Dark Knowledge is basically worthless because no one in your faction can reanimate). The Minor Summons costs 30 hands of glory and it isn't really any better than your regular witch brews. But it's strictly on top of your fungus rituals, so definitely buy a Manflayer as soon as one becomes available.

-Frank

Edited by: FrankTrollman

Thanks. There is quite a bit there that I did not understand before. Cheers

You're missing Gorgon from the Ancient Ones list. It's an immortal Erinyes/Medusa.

I would also not classify Echidna as weak. It's weak in combat, but it spawns one lesser summon creature every turn, including hydra hatchlings, swamp monsters, marsh worms and bog beasts. Give an Echidna a few androphag archers and hole her up in a citadel or an ancient forest with some immobile molds and fungus defenders and soon enough she will birth you an entire army of swamp creatures. The Echidna is not called the Mother of Monsters for nothing.

As far as the major summonings go, if you do them at a normal cost, Will-o'the-wisps will attack you about half the time and aside from the doppelganger captain, is the best major summon you can get (it has the enslave attack).

OK, yeah, I am going to revise my assessment of the Echidna. It makes one monster a turn. These monsters appear to be:

• Bog Beast
• Hydra Hatchling
• Swamp Monster
• Dopple Spawn
• Marsh Worm

Realistically, she still costs 50 times as much as a minor summoning, but considering that her freespawns are biased towards the good units, she pays for herself in a lot less than 50 turns. And she is personally a 114 hit point, fear-causing wall of meat with magic resistance 9, so she isn't useless in a fight.

Still never seen a Gorgon, but I'll trust you on that one since Medusa and Erinyes are both achievable.

-Frank

Major summons sometimes call a creeping doom, it immune to physical damage yet vulnerable to magic (11hp), especially fire. Immune to physical damage ! And it have 10 mr, four poison attack with mr negate disease effect.

Ancient presence can eat a unit and get temporary HP by digest them. I got one that eat a troll, and due to troll's regeneration, it became 325HP in the end......

Gorgon is awesome, with immortal and petrification. Medusa on the other hand is a little fragile

Edited by: Emberlord

The ancient presence's incorporate is really good, it removes a unit from the battlefield(like swallow whole) and then adds on it's lost health to the ancient presence's. It's also mr negates rather than strength negates like swallow is. Also the hp boost doesn't seem to be temporary, it remains after battle.

If it's aoe 3 like the Abomination's incorporate, it makes the Ancient Presence one of the most powerful summons the Witch has.

Yeah I think it works the same way.

The Ancient Presence Incorporate is AoE 1 Creature. It's basically just a double-strength Gelatinous Cube that you paid 750 mushrooms for and risked a higher rampage chance to get in a swamp with a Hag instead of grabbing with a Witch right outside the front door of the thing you were attacking.

Swallow whole isn't exactly bad, but all it has is that and a MR-negates Decay attack. he Ancient Presence will get stomped by any other giant sized creature - even an Echidna.
The Erinyes is also pretty bad, except that she comes with magic items and some of those are pretty impressive.

-Frank

The erinyes dies very quickly to archers, but it is good against melee units because of the petrification. Or was that the Medusa?

In any case, in case you guys ever run into a situation where something with petrification gets attacked and affected by a gelatinous cube's attack or the incorporation attacks, some seriously weird stuff can happen.

Nice post, really like it. If I might add:
I had quite a few minor summoning controls fail on skimpy mushroom cooking, or anyway at least 2 out of 10. Could just be my luck, but the fail rate seems to be more than 1%.

The Erinyes is incredibly weak. So weak, that I was wondering if I missed something. It's practically as powerful as a minor summon. Low HP, no armor, no survivability, no petrification, just some crummy magical weapon. Compared to the other summons, it's really, really weak. I wonder if it's a "bug" in that there's supposed to be something that isn't there. Or if there's some hidden mechanic to it. As it is, it's super much weaker than her sisters.

Yep, I'd expect the Kindly Ones to be more impressive. Maybe you need to collect all three of them... or all nine.

The Gorgon, as I said, is kickass. Immortal Petrification, can't ask for much more. It's not a commander, though. The Erinyes is weak and the Medusa also needs a fair few other tanks beside it to absorb hits or it goes down quickly.

The Erinyes comes with a pain flail (great in one-on-one, worthless in mass battles) and may come with other magic items. In my test games, I got two. One of them came with a pile of bones that summons a grip of disposable longdead every battle, and the other one didn't. I have to say that an Erinyes with a bunch of chaff troops that show up on turn one is pretty exciting, but without she's about on par with a Hydra. I wouldn't say she's a minor summons, because nothing with Fear counts as minor!

-Frank