Necropolis
| Towns | |
|---|---|
 Castle
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 Rampart
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 Tower
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 Inferno
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 Necropolis
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 Dungeon
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 Stronghold
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 Fortress
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 Conflux 
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 Cove 
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 Factory
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Necropolis is an evil alignment town type, that is overrun and ruled by undead creatures. They are the natural bases for the Necromancer and Death Knight hero types. Necropolis armies have many units with abilities to weaken their opponents. This may give them an advantage over an equal or even a stronger opponent.
Native terrain for Necropolis's troops is dirt.
Overview
Structures
| Resource | Basic | Upgrades | All |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
33400 | 25500 | 96400 |
 |
45 | 25 | 135 |
 |
65 | 25 | 135 |
 |
5 | 12 | 45 |
 |
5 | 12 | 45 |
 |
5 | 27 | 60 |
 |
15 | 7 | 40 |
| Troop cost/week: | 26920 2
| ||
Necropolis Specific Buildings
- Cover of Darkness (unique Necropolis town building, like cover of darkness, creates 20 tiles of shroud around the city)
- Necromancy Amplifier (unique Necropolis building, works like Vampire's Cowl, stacks with each city)
- Skeleton Transformer (unique Necropolis building, enhance values of Peasants to Skeletons (+4 attack, +3 defense, +5 hp, +0-2 damage +1 speed) or life span of other non undead creatures to those of Skeletons, or, in case of Dragons and Hydras Bone Dragons)
- Shipyard (like Shipyard on the adventure map, a boat can be bought for 1000 gold, 10 wood, works like Summon Boat but more reliable when not on expert Water Magic, expert Water magic would with Summon Boat get a free ship but still cost adventure map movement points when boarding/deboarding boats instead of using Water Walk or Fly if those spells are available)
- Soul Prison (Grail building, +20 Necromancy for allied heroes, the usual 5000 gold each day and +50% creature growth in the Grail town)
- Unearthed Graves (+6 Skeletons per week horde building)
Creature Dwellings
- Cursed Temple (12x Skeleton, Skeleton Warrior)
- Graveyard (8x Walking Dead, Zombie)
- Tomb of Souls (7x Wight, Wraith)
- Estate (4x Vampire, Vampire Lord)
- Mausoleum (3x Lich, Power Lich)
- Hall of Darkness (2x Black Knight, Dread Knight)
- Dragon Vault (1x Bone Dragon, Ghost Dragon)
Heroes
| Necropolis | |||||||||||
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| Death Knights | |||||||||||
 Straker
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 Vokial
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 Moandor
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 Charna
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 Tamika
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 Isra
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 Clavius
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 Galthran
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 Ranloo
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 Haart Lich  Lord Haart
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| Necromancers | |||||||||||
 Septienna
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 Aislinn
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 Sandro
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 Nimbus
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 Thant
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 Xsi
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 Vidomina
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 Nagash
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| Towns | |||||||||||
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Template:Herotable Template:Herotablerow Necropolis |} List of all heroes
Creatures
| Necropolis creatures | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | |||||||||||||||
 Skeleton
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 Skeleton Warrior
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| Level 2 | |||||||||||||||
 Walking Dead
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 Zombie
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| Level 3 | |||||||||||||||
 Wight
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 Wraith
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| Level 4 | |||||||||||||||
 Vampire
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 Vampire Lord
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| Level 5 | |||||||||||||||
 Lich
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 Power Lich
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| Level 6 | |||||||||||||||
 Black Knight
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 Dread Knight
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| Level 7 | |||||||||||||||
 Bone Dragon
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 Ghost Dragon
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| Towns | |||||||||||||||
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All Necropolis' creatres are undead, which means that they are unaffected by morale. They are also immune to all mind spells as well as Curse, Bless, Resurrection and Death Ripple.
Template:Creaturetable Template:Creaturetablerow Necropolis |}
Discussion
Introduction
Necropolis is one of the most powerful towns in Heroes of Might and Magic III. It has very strong 4th, 5th and 6th level creatures. Vampire Lords and Dread Knights are among the strongest in their respective levels, and while having Power Liches in an army consisting of living creatures may have problematic because of the death cloud attack, in the army of undead it is an advantage. As if this was not enough, Necropolis' heroes have Necromancy secondary skill, which enables them to harvest Skeletons (or Skeleton Warriors) from enemy armies as well as allied creatures. It is possible for a hero with Necromancy to pull through from a battle with more troops than he went into it.
Necropolis has also excellent magic capabilities. It can build level 5th Mage Guild and has few special spells like Animate Dead and Death Ripple to support the armies. Also, undead hordes are immune to mind spells, which greatest advantage is that they cannot be blinded or "berserked". In addition, undead do not suffer from negative morale (nor do they benefit from positive).
Perhaps the only true weakness in Necropolis' creatures is Bone and Ghost Dragons, which are among the weakest 7th level creature.
Strategy
An advantageous tactics with Necropolis is "harvesting" skeletons with the Necromancy secondary skill. At expert level Necromancy allows 30% of the creatures killed in combat to be brought back from the dead as skeletons. The precentage can be increased with two structures: Necromancy Amplifier(s) and Soul Prison. Amplifiers can typicallly be constructed in necropolis towns, while Soul Prison is the grail building of Necropolis. Each amplifier increases the precentage by +10%.
There are also artifacts that can increase the skill: Amulet of the Undertaker increases the precentage by +5%, Vampire's Cowl by +10% and Dead Man's Boots by +15%. With these increase, Necromancy secondary skill may rise up to 70%. Additionally, two heroes specialize in Necromancy, Isra and Vidomina. Combining either of them with the amplifier and artifacts, it is possible to reach 100% skill level in necromancy, which means that possibly all the creatures killed in combat will be brought back as skeletons.
Harvesting leads to a situation, where it is profitable for heroes with Necromancy (mainly Death Knights and Necromancers) to carry through combats with wandering creatures instead of letting them flee if they are substantially less creatures and want to quit the battlefield. So, special months (see growth) where some creature types population doubles is actually a boon for Necropolis skeleton harvesters. Random units blocking pathways on the map thus become a motivational boost because those wandering creatures mean additional Skeletons.
Pros
- A variety of good heroes to choose from
- A variety of strategies available
- Unaffected by negative Morale
- Unaffected by Mind spells
- Necromancy is a powerful secondary skill that only Necropolis heroes can utilize effectively
- Vampire Lords are by far the most cost-efficient level 4 unit (and arguably the most cost-efficient unit in the game), as they can beat armies of much greater size as long as they are not (like Undeads or Constructs) immune to the Vampire Lords' Life drain ability and as long as the Vampire Lords are used properly.
- The level 3 spell Animate Dead (which the necromancer hero Thant has built in) can resurrect units in combat, and they stay resurrected after combat (the 4th level Earth Spell Resurrection can resurrect units, but so treated units are removed after combat quite like Summon Air Elemental created creature stacks).
So given a good balance of Thants undead and repairable units compared to the opponent, enough mana for the resurrects and having Shackles of War for unlimited turns (a smaller version would be using Blind on all remaining enemy units and killing one blinded stack each turn, keeping the enemy locked until the hero is lost to the opponent and the artefacts if any are transferred) he would not lose any units in combat but also often get additional Necromancy created skeletons (which would hamper movement on the adventure map a little, as Skeletons are slow creatures (and even with Town Portal and Dimension Door there's an adventure map movement penalty to consider). - There are number of artifacts that are only useful to Necropolis (artifacts enhancing the created creature number of the unique secondary skill Necromancy like Cloak of the Undead King, but also Pendant of Death which counters the mini, undead-only version of Armageddon, damaging all undead on the battlefield, even those recruited in no Necropolis but on the adventure map).
- Both Necropolis hero types begin with a spell book
Cons
- Walking Dead and Zombies slow armies down
- Only one ranged attacker Lich/Power Lich
- Unaffected by positive Morale (creatures of other towns might still have less morale when doing combat with creatures of other towns, and the Skeleton Transformer mostly creates skeletons and not Necropolis type creatures of the same level (except for perhaps transmuting hydras and dragons to bone dragons)) - Spirit of Oppression is a nice thing to have for any Necropolis hero with no non Necropolis units.
- Difficulties in the early game, where your slow level 1 and level 2 creatures are not the best to conquer mines and explore the map (and in the endgame a host of in-combat ressurectable skeletons might hamper adventure map transfers (to reflag buildings for instance))
- Bone and Ghost Dragons are near the bottom of the Level 7's in strength and usefulness
WARNING! This town is often considered too strong and thus is banned in many multiplayer games/tournaments.