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In early game necros are crap(in beta; i don't know the full game). I had over 40 skeletons, over 20 zombies and 2 ghosts. I fought with militia and won with 15 zombies left. Reason skeletons do 1(!) damage and few hit points. Ghosts didn't survive because their ability don't works realy often. And zombies survived only because of their high hit points and they also do 1 damage so it was a looooooooooooong fight. I think that zombies should have damage 1-2 and skeletons should have also 1-2. In previous games they were good because of their damage 2-3. They should also have such damage in Heroes V. Just my opinion.

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it's not hard saying that necro is underpowered with just a look at a weekly creature growth chart, but let's not forget the following:

Necro DOES have a building that boosts dragon production by 1 per week;

It also has a building that converts other troop types to the equivalent level necro troops (this is extremely useful mid-game when a lot of the troops that may join you are lvl 4 and 5);

Necromancy provides a very solid boost to skeleton growth, eventually dwarfing the amount of skeletons produced in town per week;

There is a building that boosts the Necromancy skill even more, and it's cumulative; if you have 3 Necro towns, that is potentially 30% more skeletons resurrected.  Enormous armies of lvl 1-3 troops become goldmines;

There are numerous abilities that buff Necromancy even more:
-Necromancy: Eternal Servitude- allows you to bring back a portion of your own dead troops as skeletons
-Necromancy: Skeleton Archers- resurrects the upgrade (now ranged)
-Enlightenment: Lord of the Undead- adds +5% to the number resurrected skeletons
-Leadership: Herald of Death- automatically changes any joining troops to the undead troop of its level;

Let's not forget about the spell "raise dead", a level 2 Summoning spell that resurrects undead troops permanantly.

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The game is easier for Necro in the beginning, from my beta experience, when you do not have to worry about casualties as much as other players. Only aggressive way works, because that way you get more troops.. so you brake blocks faster and expand faster.

Dungeon and Inferno on the other hand have a really rough beginning...

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Well not to mention the Herald of Death skill... ALL neutral creatures will be assimulated just like borg did into the army at the level of the creature that it is...

You start picking up extra high lvl creature with this skill is just the same as any other dipolmat does. That may prove intresting to see how it works out.

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Exactly ... they even discarded the nice feature of Heroes IV that leadership and luck was coupled into one skill.

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The "Powergrowth" (PWG) is the power of the creature multiplied with the weekly growth - that is PWG = Power * Growth. I did this for each city on each level, and I normalized the figures to the maximum value at each level - that is, I divided with the maximum number at this level (for instance, on first level, the numbers came out 1540, 1200, 1680, 2065, 2100 and 1630, so I divided each value with 2100 to give the relative (normalized) values of 0.73, 0.57, 0.80, 0.98, 1.00, 0.78). What this tells us, is, that on first level, the Academy gets the better of the deal, while the inferno is pretty bad off. This might not exactly be the full truth, because the Imp special ability is pretty nasty, but it gives an image. I've done this for all 7 levels as well as a totalized weekly powergrowth.

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Guys.... That ability - non-necro creatures joining the army are transformed into NECRO CREATURES MATCHING THEIR LEVEL... so every unit u get u transform into one of yours but not ass in HoMM3 to skeletons, but to according level. U get 5 archangels from somewhere? U get 5 spectre dragons. Necro isn`t weak it will dominate with numbers!

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And we all know the most powerful in the game are archers and they have the only (I think) lvl1 archer... Remember Tower Gremlins, they were kinda strong!

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Herald of Death seems pretty useless since the Holy Temple does the same thing.

The Necropolis in Heroes 5 is actually very similar to the Necropolis in Heroes 3. They're both mainly dependent on the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th level creatures. Sure, necromancy is less effective but they have Skeleton Archers. Vampires are actually about the same, they have less hit points and only have 50% life drain, but they cost less than in Heroes 3, they do more damage, and they have higher growth. The Heroes 5 Liches are much more powerful than the Heroes 3. They are probably the second best shooter in the game, a week's growth of Liches do 36 - 51 damage, a week's growth of Archliches do 48 - 60 damage, a week's growth of Shadow Witches do 34 - 48 damage, and a week's growth of Shadow matriarchs do 34 - 54 damage. Liches have 3 less attack than Shadow Witches and Archliches only have 1 less attack than Shadow Matriachs, plus they have the death cloud ability, which damages all non-undead creatures. The Lich's biggest weakness is its size, it's four squares big so creatures with 8 speed can cross the field and hit them. Wights and Wraiths are not as good as Black/Dread Knights but they do the highest damage of any level 6 units, although Paladins and Rakshasas can do more damage when you take their special abilities into account. The Zombie, Ghost, and Bone Dragons seem pretty useless, perhaps even more so than their Heroes 3 counterparts. Although ghosts do have high damage values but their low hit points and speed limits their usefulness. Sure they have the incorporeal ability, which could be improved with Soldier's Luck, but they still get slaughtered by spells.

The biggest problem with the Necropolis is the lack of speed. No Necropolis creature can cross the battlefield in one turn and the highest initiative they have is 11. The Necropolis is the slowest faction in the game. Academy is second with only the Djinn Sultan being able to cross the battlefield in one turn and the Master Gremlin have an initiative of 11 and the Djinn have an initiative of 12 but at least the Rakshasa Rukh can double its initiative and Wizards can create artifacts that increase their creature's initiative and speed.

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