Would probably be the most common form of "Solitary Wizard Tower" players would use.
I really look forward to being able to do something like this. It would be like Dwarf mode in Adventure mode: you WOULD have a unit you play through while other units you control do all the tasks such as building, working, creating, processing and refining. This reminds me of that game....Spell Force? Where you summon the creatures and units that do the work for you, and the further you progress, the higher creature types you can summon and the more buildings you can create and resources you can harvest. It'd be different because the bodies of the creatures you defend yourself from and kill would restock the creatures expended in the killing. Each attack or siege would be like a wave of immigrants. As creatures don't really move around that much and attacks would become rarer as you settled in and prayed on the locals, you would probably need to travel further and further afield until you have zombified all life in a large radius. Your neighbourhood would become like a silent graveyard devoid of all living things and inhabited only by your obedient slaves. As above, undead would probably move and work slower, and I would reckon that their skills would be capped pretty low to account for this. However, the corpse beetle idea would help to make slow zombies into their faster moving skeleton kin.
In such a necromantic possibility, there might need to be a way that your minions could catch living creatures and bring them to you alive for slaughter and raising as undead. Some of your minions may even break free of you and become either neutral to you or as equally hostile to you as they would be to the living.
Later, if you die or decide to start anew somewhere else, the undead would still plague the area and your tower or lodgings would become ruins and the home of some evil force that the locals want killed. Perhaps even your adventurer's own spirit would be the nuisance!
The whole notion of having a solitary wizard's tower makes me want to see novices and apprentices want to come and stay with you and learn from you, too! Certainly a fancier option than the spear catchers we're used to.
I like it. I like it alot.
I would like to see some non-conventional ideas and suggestions peeps would have about this, and also how they would like to be able to play a necro-style adventurer?
AND HOLY CRAP! I just noticed the thread screen below the "Preview Reply|Add Reply" buttons for the first time!!!! Oh man....! So much time wasted cutting'n'copying and Back-ing and Forward-ing this year!
Edit: Inserted about undead speeds + skill caps, and corpse beetles.
[ October 14, 2007: Message edited by: Faces of Mu ]