Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

From my understanding AE is clearly a primary target, for everyone. Unless complaisant arrangements on temple locations and dominion spreading can be found no player would accept to see AE growing on his side. Yet as rdonj pointed, attacking AE early is all about loss : units, time, resources, there nothing to gain and a lot to loose.

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

Yes, high Dom makes you a major target for extermination. On the other hand, you get a huge defensive advantage, in that anyone who invades you risks starvation, and for their efforts gets a wasteland with no gold, albeit some gems. Thus there's always the chance some of your opponents might be reluctant to tangle with you and leave it to someone else. You could also try to plant temples away from some enemies in order to reduce the chance your Dom encroaches on them.

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

You are really weak for the first year or so. Not so easy to kill, but not capable of much other than not dying. You want to maximize your gold income during this period, and get as many castles started (in concentric rings around your capital!) during this period as possible. Once the castles start completing, build temples in each one. By restraining the spread of your dominion at first you maximize gold income, then you translate that gold income in year two to an explosive avalanche of dominion that will swallow any who come too close.

It is absolutely critical that you get multiple new castles up before you piss anyone off - your non-castle spawns are simply garbage, they are the chaff that you use to protect your chaff.

Also, the 200% tax+patrol is brilliant for Ermor, I forgot that in my first post, thanks rdonj. <3 Tax+Patrol will net you far more income than Pillaging, even as your dominion candles stack up. If you handle the first year efficiently, you should have 4-5 castles by spring of year 2, and probably have a few more started, and potentially have a little stockpile of gold to keep things rolling even as you start stacking temples.

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

thanks Jim, I guess I'll have to train for a while just on the first 2 years to improve that.

I had a serious issue in my test game : the indep mages always costed 3 up to 5 resources each (the game is to be played with CBM, I dont know if it changes something there), and I did not have that many resources in the provinces they were found. Therefore I was unable to recruit any of them :'(

In my test game I'm now around the end of year 4, I've cast burden of times quite early (I had a magic site that gives +20 to enchantments, so I decided to use this strong bonus) and it seems it was worth the cost. I've launch a serious assault on one of the AI, but this had terrible consequences on my research (I did take 1/3 of my mages to support the army, and since i'm very limited in researchers...).
Theres a skull that boost research (+9 ?) for 10 gems, I should use it more (by far the best gems/rp turn ratio I can get). Does it have any drawbacks ? (in a nother game with marignon I use to build lots of fire research boost +6 but it horror marked all my mages)

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

If you have even 1 resource, the mage will be recruited eventually. Resources are collected over time if units in queue demand more than the province can provide.
Provinces with 0 resources, from total pop-death or from being surrounded by castles with very high total admin rate, can't recruit anything, but even 1 resource is enough to recruit one mage every few turns.

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

I'm pretty sure this is innacurate. Are you certain of that ?

edit : my memory from the manual "number of forges blabla number of forgerons blabla"

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

A province with 0 population still has 2 resources unless it is bordered by a castle of yours with non-zero admin (Ermorian castles have zero admin). For some reason a single 50-admin fort drops resources from 2 to 0, instead of 1.

Endoperez is totally correct that if you recruit units in a province without enough resources, eventually the unit will be made. I think I waited 4 months for a Fire Lord to pop out of a lab once.

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

Endo is right. Any province with non-zero resources will eventually produce everything in its queue. It may take months to recruit a single Mage with only 1 resource, but it will happen.

Unless ... the province drops to 0 resources before recruitment is complete.

Or ... the unrest in the province rises over 100. If that happens, recruitment will stop until the unrest is handled.

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

If you don't believe it, make a game with 3Sloth, and the first province you find with indie commanders that cost more resource than the province gets, buy one. You should get him quite shortly.

Re: Some questions on LA Ermor
 

ok ok I believe you all :) but since resources do not stack I simply thought it was not the case. thats a good news for me anyway !

My apologies to Endoperez :o