So, one thing I noticed is that necromancers have a LOT of tier 2 rituals. I found myself surrounded by ancient forests in my starting area, and thought to myself, "gee, I should fish for corrupt ancient forest" Big mistake.

I think the one that makes mummies is something that could be moved onto an optional leader, as it's pretty niche. So, my pitch: remove the ritual from necromancers, put it onto Dust Kings and Dust Priests. These are currently not easy to get your hands on. But they don't have to be.

They would fit into summoning, but kind of have a weird power level for it. The Dust King is a little too weak for minor summoning, would be disappointing if you rolled him in the far north. The Priest, with Necromancy 2, is maybe too strong. The Dust King might fit Minor Summoning if he had Necromancy 1.

The priest might fit major summoning, as a low roll--they are better than a ghost, right?

A good option, if possible, would be optional recruitment triggered by owning pyramids. That would let you move some of the cost onto gold, though a small HoG cost to go with is thematic.
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That brings me to my other gripe, that sort of extends to other mage classes. The pain of having a lot of hamlets but poor magic income. I wonder what you would think of giving mages a way to turn gold into magic, with added risk/reward, situationality, and theme?

For the Necromancer, that would be the Murderer. HoG are the left hands of killers--so why wouldn't a necrocult make their own? Randomly, for say, 35+1d20 G, you could recruit a "Murderer Prospect." This guy would be non-leader, stealth, and have a hits-anywhere assassin dagger. Nothing that will win you battles.

Much like the Thief, he will have 1 of a set of rituals, looking for a specific piece of terrain. For tier 1, something like Farms, hamlets, coastal hamlets. Settlements, you know. Doing the ritual promotes him to a proper "Murderer." Slightly stronger in battle, but with new rituals. One is always the same--Ritual Execution: To be done on gallows, kills the murderer for a windfall of HoG. The other ritual will be, like the thief, tasking you to find rarer terrain to do more murders. When Upgraded again to "Serial Murderer" he can executed for even more HoG.
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Third idea! I love the Scythe Infantry. They make the class feel less like a few mages who have somehow bullied humans into service and more like an actual movement, a power people can perceive, and want to follow. I've said it elsewhere--I want more unique captains! A Captain version of these black-armored wierdos would be awesome. I would put him at Mid+, and give him something that supports the scythes. Necromancy 1, actually fits the bill, since disease and weakness help them out without stealing last hits. A strength buff that reliably hits the front line would be good too. If he's good enough at supporting scythes, he doesn't even need a ritual, though another route would be just letting him make more by giving him one that upgrades swords into scythers for time and HoG.

The Desecrate Forest ritual is currently on the chopping block as it's turned out to be pretty mediocre even when Shadow Woods are plentiful. There's a neat concept there, but it's also fitting that beyond reanimating animals necromancers just don't really have a reason to go for a walk in the woods.

Regarding both hands income and the mummies ritual, this class is very powerful already so I'm a little hesitant to create a new source of hands to rocket them into Lich faster. While removing a level 2 ritual also makes Vampires easier to fish for. The large "spellbook" of level 2 rituals I think serves as a bit of an intended weakness that way.

A unique captain is a fine suggestion and could make for interesting "Harvestman" squads.

Hmmm... I got to say, I have serious doubts about the balance usefulness of having a bunch of less-desirable rituals clogging up one that's really strong. The rituals are a random draw. What if you draw vampire on your starting mage?

If you look at say, vanilla demonologist... i think it's evident that inconsistency doesn't make a faction BALANCED... just inconsistent. As a gross generalization, the demonologist will wipe everyone or self-destruct. Doesn't make them "fair" or fun to play against!

If a ritual is too strong, I think the first thing to do is look at the cost...

Not to be contrarian, but it's so odd to hear you are axing Desecrate Forest for being weak, but you want to keep Mummies on the list... A spell that does something of comparably low impact on even fewer of the map's tiles (and centralized in a small part of the map rather than spread around!) Like am I crazy? Mummies ARE the weaker spell, no?

Am I talking past you? I hear that necro is a strong class, so ANYthing that makes them stronger is going to worsen that issue. That is a serious constraint to work with, as pretty much anything "fun" you do to them will make them at least a little stronger. If we're at that point, I say nerf or nothing! It sounds like there are specific options you see as strong, which should point the way?

Off the top of my head, I would still cast twiceborn if it cost 35 Hands. I would still cast Greater Mastery if it was more expensive (480 currently? Could be 500!) I would still cast greater summoning if it was 80 hands. I'll stop saying numbers now!

The point is, I think are better ways to balance than using "bad" rituals to gum up access to the strong ones. You really have no control over how many rolls it takes to reach a ritual! Balanced on average is not balanced in practice!
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I will be sad to see Corrupt Forest disappear. I agree, it is liability to the class where it is now. But I like the role it played, as an opt-in to squatting in the woods. I LOVE the Senator's Reveler. By the same tack, the Mistwalker you gave the Cloud Lord is great. I think every class that is not a forest-squatter should have something like that, to opt into. That way, they can still be competitive (wrong word? "viable"? "fun"?) on foresty maps.

The trouble with it as a ritual on the main caster is that you can't really "opt-out" of it they way you can a dedicated special officer. Those officers, you can just not recruit. Very elegant! Ah well, that's my peace.

Sorry my last answer was a bit short/vague.

Desecrate Forest is a weird ritual currently because it's hard to cast and doesn't offer a ton of utility when it is. It requires an Ancient Forest to have already been reduced to a Shadow Wood and then summons a stationary unit to guard a useless tile and spawn very weak units that don't wander on their own. Mist Forest/Revelry for comparison, pacify the forest without requiring its destruction from another source and have much better utility. I'm not totally opposed to Necromancer having a unique interaction with Ancient Forests, but I'm leaning towards something that immediately addresses the threat of an Ancient Forest rather than exploiting it after its destroyed. The upcoming Spirit Gate ritual for Bakemono will be like an upgraded version of this with way more utility, and will come along with Aka Oni providing easy access to getting the Shadow Wood in the first place so I think it's going to succeed where this didn't

For Mummification, not disagreeing that it's very niche and could be adjusted, just hesitant to go straight to cutting a ritual before I've explored buffing it. The goal isn't to dilute a ritual list with bad rituals, but to make sure there's variety so there's interesting decisions on whether to use what you have or continue to roll for a more ideal result for the situation/terrain and not get it paired down to the point where there's a "build order". Not that cutting 1 uncommonly used niche ritual is going to cause that, but just being cautious so that a series of changes doesn't eventually lead to that. Your vanilla Demonologist example is totally apt why this can't be used as a balancing factor for everything, but I think there's also something special to how it's currently set up that I'd like to preserve.

Now despite all that rambling, I'm team Dust Priest now! I have warmed up to the idea of Dust Priests being a Temple based recruitment offer for Necromancer that know an improved version of Mummification where it's the boosted rate whether you are on a Temple or a Pyramid. I think the main issue in Vanilla is the good result where it's worth casting is locked to Pyramids, where Pyramids should merely be a usable terrain given how inconsistent they are. This also frees up a Level 2 slot to assign a new ritual that interacts with Ancient Forests and be the successor of "Desecrate Forest" so seems like a win-win.

Idea for a new random officer recruitment--"Gravedigger".
Has Necromancy 1 and Geomancy 1, and burrowning.
A single ritual allows him to "exhume" longdead and soulless from graveyards for a small gold cost.

It makes more thematic sense for him to produce corpses, buuuut that would make him an abomination factory, and I envision him more as a tool for an iron-rich necromancer to get more upgrades off (with a neat synergy of opening up iron sources in agartha!)

Limited ability to buy basic undead with gold shouldn't break anything, right? If you wanted to have fun with it, you could include rare results of rarer undead like giant soulless.

That's a pretty neat concept. Geomancy + Necromancy also matches the Tartarian Spirit, so it seems like a precursor to that summon. The new and improved "Desecrate Forest" is a bit of a longdead factory, and I'm pretty happy with how Dust Priests have landed in their new role as commander recruitments. Perhaps in the future if I go the direction of adding more commanders a Gravedigger that exhumes soulless could pair with that.

The new desecrate forest works great! Using desertification, but losing it after the second form so only the ancient forest dies is terribly clever. Kudos!

Anyway, here's some ideas
-New recruitment option: Promote Soulless into Ghouls--15 HoG

-Tartarian Spirit gains only heals on haunted lands
These guys are far and away the primo pick out of the greater summoning pool. With a small nerf like this, they still will be.

Glad to hear the new version of Desecrate Forest is well received. I definitely think it is leagues better than the former. I'm all in favor of nerfing "S+" units to "S" units so giving Tartarian Spirits a healing deficiency is a great suggestion to help curb their power to a more reasonable level.

Soulless to Ghouls could be a neat way to give these guys a non-slow route. I can see this going either the way of a recruitment option or tied to a specific undead commander.

On the subject of
Vampires: Ought to be midrank in stead of back. Since durability and melee-capability are kind of the whole selling point, midrank just makes sense.

Longdead Cavalry: The basic longdead cav are imo just a little overtuned right now. 25 gold and some skeles for a set of cheap, expendable lances is a very good deal. An entire rank of lances is a huge advantage, and now necromancers can do that sooner and cheaper than other factions.
I would recommend one of:
lowering batch size to 3 (reducing iron cost of the knights)
Adding 5 HoG to the cost (again, reducing the iron cost of the knights)
Or just nerfing the basic cav to have a weaker lance

Also: Reaper seems to be mothballed right now? Is that permanent? Is there design space for a new tier 3 rit?

Thanks for the feedback! I was already 100% on the same page with adjusting the longdead cavalry units, so that's in the works. No real strong feelings on the vampire rank placement, but if it doesn't make their position in sieges too off I'm leaning towards a mid rank adjustment because I see where you're coming from and it's a fairly minor tweak.

The reaper should still be in the game, and I ran a few quick tests to confirm that's the case. I suspect I do know what would make it seem that they've been removed though. I believe last update I added a tag to the ritual so that undead beings can't learn it so that there isn't the option for a Lich or a Vampire Count to waste HoG to learn a ritual they have no use for at all. A human necromancer should be able to learn "Reaper Ascension" but if they become a Lich or Vampire first it won't be learnable.

Hmm... so is it possible to have each type of necromancer have a unique tier 3 ritual?

Like: Lich, Vampire Count, and Reaper all have a unique tier 3 ritual? If so, yes that is possible, you can make it so they are level 3 in their own new ritual class in addition to Necromancy so when promoted they'll learn that ritual along with anything else and it'll be exclusive to that unit.

That being said, I kind of consider them to already have unique rituals (except for vampire), with the Lich's being appropriately the most expensive and impactful. I was thinking of fleshing out/distinguishing Vampires by having them unlocking some unique mercenary recruitment instead, but open to hearing any concepts you may have for some level 3 variety.

Is it possible with wight mages and ghost mages as well?

I've had this idea that each kind of undeath would have its own t3 advantages, whether a ritual or something else.

On paper it should be doable using the same method, could always be some weirdness with gaining new ritual schools specific to the twiceborn "promotion", but should work.

That being said, while I think there's room for some unique perks associated with the wight/ghost mages, I do think it's appropriate that anything unique to those commanders should be relatively minor compared to features unique to Lich, Vampire, and Reaper.