Necropolis

Fully built Necropolis, as seen on the adventure map Fully built Necropolis, as seen on the adventure map. (HotA)	Towns
	Castle
	Rampart
	Tower
	Inferno
	Necropolis
	Dungeon
	Stronghold
	Fortress
	Conflux
	Cove
	Factory

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 classes. 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. Necropolis represent Deyja.

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

Incomplete Necropolis town seen from inside

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 (Skeleton horde building, +6/week)

Necropolis 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
Death Knights
Straker
Vokial
Moandor
Charna
Tamika
Isra
Clavius
Galthran
Ranloo
Haart Lich Lord Haart
Necromancers
Septienna
Aislinn
Sandro
Nimbus
Thant
Xsi
Vidomina
Nagash
Towns

Template:Herotable Template:Herotablerow Necropolis |} List of all heroes

Creatures

Necropolis creatures
Level 1
Skeleton
Skeleton Warrior
Level 2
Walking Dead
Zombie
Level 3
Wight
Wraith
Level 4
Vampire
Vampire Lord
Level 5
Lich
Power Lich
Level 6
Black Knight
Dread Knight
Level 7
Bone Dragon
Ghost Dragon
Towns

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

Might and Magic

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. Skeletons are around average rank for their level, but this is made up by their high growth potential thanks to Necromancy. However, Walking Deads, Wights, and Bone Dragons are all among the weakest creatures of their respective levels. In fact, Bone Dragons are by far the weakest compared to other 7th level creatures.

Necropolis has 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).

Features

Perhaps the most outstanding feature closely related to Necropolis is Necromancy secondary skill. It enables heroes with the skill to "harvest" Skeletons (or Skeleton Warriors) from enemy armies as well as allied creatures. It is possible for a hero with Necromancy skill to come out from a battle with more troops than he went to it.

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 percentage points 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 percentage points by +10%.

There are also artifacts that can increase the skill: Amulet of the Undertaker increases the percentage points 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
• Units are unaffected by negative Morale thus unaffected also by Sorrow or Spirit of Oppression, mixing with other Town type units still has a penalty on units of other towns.
• Unaffected by Mind spells like Elementals, even Blind does not function on Undead units.
• Necromancy is a powerful secondary skill that only Necropolis town heroes can utilize effectively and that every Necropolis hero typically has. Given affordable Necromancy amplifier buildings (10% point building bonus to Necromancy, unique town secondary skill boost building feature for all own heroes on the map, safe the Navigation centric building Lighthouse the only secondary skill bonus enhancer building available in the game) in Necropolis towns and a range of artefacts that further enhance the skill percentage like Vampire's Cowl it is rather easy to recruit a small but steady number of Undead from most other creatures after fights. Every successfull fight will increase the number of level 1 units one has even to astronomical amounts of stack sizes for steady motivation boosts after each encounter. Undead generally are Animate Dead ressurectable during combat additionally and the Skeleton Transformer in a Necropolis town can change foreign units to Skeletons so mixing foreign units with Necropolis town units does not make them suffer morale penality when converting them to Skeletons first, one can recruit units off fights with the opponent and they are rather hard to kill and easily replenished given enough mana or Necromancy skill bonus points which are readily available via buildings or artefacts or even hero specials.
• 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 Undead,Constructs or Elementals) immune to the Vampire Lords' Life drain ability and as long as the Vampire Lords are used properly (with Blind on extra enemy stacks for example or Counterstrike on the Vampire Lords amidst low number/low hp enemy stacks, alternated with Animate Dead to help out if the Life Drain to damage inbound ratio is proving destructive to the Vampire Lord stack - perhaps also using Haste and the Flying feature of the Vampire Lords to switch opponent melee stacks to feasible ones or to seek a safe point to replenish via Animate Dead, Cure or First Aid should Life Drain prove to be effectively ineffective due to outrageously onerous enemy aggression without rhyme and reason).
• 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. 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 enemy 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

• No Logistics speciality heroes
• Walking Dead and Zombies slow armies down
• Only one ranged attacker Lich/Power Lich which also has a Melee penalty, no Double attack and cannot attack Siege Walls.
• Unaffected by positive Morale. Mixing creatures of other town types without converting them to Skeletons via Skeleton Transformer first will get them negative Morale of course, on the other hand Spirit of Oppression is a very nice thing to have for any Necropolis hero with only Necropolis units in the party as it does not do any harm to Necropolis units. The Dread Knight Death blow feature works largely (no Luck bonus for the second strike) like an attack only, no movement Morale bonus would, but at a higher probability of 20% (high Morale has 12.5% of activating a second action each creature) and it is a natural feature.
• 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) safe for Town Portal which is a nice (and often banned) spell to jump the adventure map))
• 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.