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[nenjin]

I'd also recommend Path of Exile. My Necromancer is 86 and I think the most summons I've had on screen without summon raging spirits is...like 40? 10 zombies, 10 skeletons, a Golem, 4 Spectres and Vaal Summon Skeleton all at once.

The game has come a lot farther in recent years with more "evil" themed powers aimed at Chaos. For the longest time you were a Necromancer throwing fire, ice and lightning around like everyone else. But now there's a whole line of Chaos themed spells more in-line with your prototypical Necromancer.

[Astral]

I didn't realize they added an explicit Necromancer to PoE; last I had played the Witch was a lot of fun as a minion master though.

[nenjin]

Witch has always been the class closest to all the pet traits on the skill tree, so they've always been the 'default' Necromancer.

But then they added Ascendancy Classes and one of the Witch's is straight up Necromancer.

[Spehss _]

Haven't read through the thread yet, don't know if this has been mentioned. Plague Inc Evolved have a couple special plague scenarios with zombies and vampires.

The zombies disease let you control hordes of zombies numbering up into millions, and each person you kill with the disease or the zombies then becomes an additional zombie. By editing the disease you can control how the zombies behave and what they can do, and eventually you can direct zombie hordes to move from nation to nation spreading the disease and killing. Makes for a kind of grand strategy necromancer kind of feel, although there is no necromancer character in game.

Vampires is similar to zombies but has a powerful vampire character you can control who spreads a vampire disease and kills people or turns them into ghouls. If I remember correctly you can get additional vampires, but it's not nearly as widespread as the zombie disease. Zombies would number in millions, vampires would be super powerful but you'd have maybe 2 or 3 vamps at most. t's not quite like a necromancer but having to control a "hero" character is different enough than the zombie mode to be worth mentioning.

I'm surprised there's not more necromancer-based strategy games. The whole "raise an undead army to control" theme seems appropriate to the genre.

[Puzzlemaker]

So I actually got warlords battlecry 3 because of this thread.  Fun-ish so far, but it's kind of oldschool in that the in-game help is abysmal.  Make sure you look some things up.

I really wish there were more games in this "genre", it's my favorite playstyle. 

[Frumple]

Oldschool is... somewhat expected from a game published in 2004, heh. Particularly when it's a smaller studio. Definitely some clunky bits to it, but it's pretty neat. Might be worth checking out the modding scene for it, too -- iirc there's at least one pretty massive one that adds/tunes up a lot.

[Puzzlemaker]

Also of note, the steam version has a fan patch auto applied (which fixes some things) but also nerfs necromancers, so there is that.  It adds a duration for troops summoned by necromancers, which is sad.  I think I am going to go back to the original game and go all overpowered with my necromancer, swarming the enemy with thousands of skeletons as is it meant to be.

[SangerZonvolt]

In Heroes of the storm you can also play as the necromancer from diablo. You summon skeletons when minions die and one of his ult is summoning a line of lich mages. You can push down a lane kinda hard with him, so swarming is definately there, even when the numbers are rather limited. There is also the witch doctor who summons a circled wall of zombies, which with the right talent can uproot and swarm enemy heroes. He also summons some kind of undead (?) giant as his ult.

[SalmonGod]

Myth: The Fallen Lords is a woefully under-remembered gem from the late 90's that was way ahead of its time.  A tactical RTS game about fighting an undead apocalypse in a fantasy setting.  It's quite grim and gristly, with a hardcore survivalist feel.  It had an impressive engine for its day, with every unit capable of being fully dismembered... and some undead units would de-moralize you by picking up severed heads and throwing them at your people.  IIRC, you couldn't play undead in single-player, but I think you could in multi-player.  So it doesn't quite fulfill the goals of the thread, but still deserves a mention, imo.

Also, I'm happy to see so many mentions of Warlords: Battlecry 3 here.  My wife and I played the crap out of those games way back when.  The devs talked periodically about making a WBC4, but apparently the studio got bought out and the entire dev team quit and reformed a new studio.  So maybe a spiritual successor someday, but the rights to the IP are gone.  On the bright side, the WBC3 source code was released a long time ago, and there is a fan project called The Protectors that has been carrying on with it for a long time.

Edit:  Oh, shit I forgot Myth was made by Bungie... back when I actually liked them, before they decided to deal a critical blow to PC and FPS gaming by popularizing it on consoles with Halo.  The Myth games and Oni were what they developed in between their Marathon and Halo eras.  Looks like Myth also has a healthy fan project carrying it forward into modern day -- Project Magma

[Kagus]

Yeah, Myth doesn't really fulfill the criteria for this thread, but it's got a freaking amazing atmosphere. And yes, a really quite impressive engine for the time.

I remember playing the demo to... I believe it was Myth 3, and there were plenty of ways you could screw around in the tutorial. Such as, when controlling a warlock and trying to launch a fireball at a training dummy, it was possible to hit a hawk flying overhead as it passed between you and the dummy. Successfully doing so would result in the narrator saying something along the lines of "Holy shit, how did you do that? That was incredible! I mean, err, stop slaughtering the wildlife and complete your lessons."

Lots of easter eggs in that series. Kind of a shame that it required a fair bit more micro than I was really capable of providing. Still though, the art style, lore and general theme of the games was amazing.

[Jopax]

Not exactly necromancy but Total Annihilation/Kingdoms/Supreme Commander allow you to build and send vast numbers of disposable units to their deaths. Like 1k+ unit caps in matches that can go up to 8v8 in case of SupCom, tho you'll need an appropriately powerful PC to not slow the simulation down to a crawl.

[sambojin]

Dungeon Quest on mobile can do a bit of Necro stuff. Not heaps (about 4-5 skellies, a big skelly or two, a skull turret and another skull thingy with a bit of item switching),  but it's the closest I've seen to the Diablo 2 thing I've seen on mobile.

[Rakonas]

Sovereignty: Crown of Kings has 2 undead factions. It's a TBS with tactical battles mixed with a strategic map.

Civ 4: With the right FFH2 submod gives you the Legion of D'tesh which is my go-to for this. Basically you need to enslave others instead of having pop growth, and you turn the land into wasteland. Ideally you're eradicating literally all life on the planet, including burning the cow resources and stuff.

[Aoi]

I just saw this when downloading JYDGE (Hi there, Humble):

"Raise undead minions and vanquish the living - Undead Horde is an action adventure where you command the undead. Maraud through the lands of men and plunder their treasures. Go forth my undead minions and bring me victory!"

...Yeah, I'm pretty sure that'd qualify, sight unseen.