Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

My summary of Ermor goes along these lines:

I regard EA ermor as incredibly thematic. They *have* to fail to result in MA/LA Ermor. And so they do - their soothsayers
have only 1 S. Which is an incredibly difficult to bootstrap.

They lack Earth/Water/Nature/Air access, except on a single ? basis. No blood access.

No thugs. Difficult to boost to S3 for gateway.

Their (slim) pluses: Great troops. Good Site searchers. Good research.

Site search the hell out of everything. Plan on death/fire for thugs.

Your troops / mages are strong enough to deter an early rush. Terror / Prison of Fire
I think you need a rainbow pretender to cover your magic deficiencies. Save the points - put him to sleep.

Income really isn't a problem for Ermor - its easy to overspend on forts. Instead, put forts in choke locations and after that stick everything into mages.

Your elders can hit four schools (Death, fire, astral air) on manual searches. Plan on manual site searching - and ignore thau initially.

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

Don't EA Ermor actually do really well? It says in the nation history they conquered almost the whole world before they collapsed into the MA death cult with Pythium and Marignon splitting away.

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

Yeah, Ermor is Rome (almost an anagram) and they are meant to conquer most of the world. Where decadence in real life just lead to Rome collapsing, in Ermor it leads to the death cult.

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

Yep. however, the weaknesses in the national history (the mistakes of the augurs) etc really do show up in game play - so much so that I don't believe they've ever won an EA MP.

Of course that has a lot to do with who else is in EA- Niefle, Mictlan, Helheim, Vanheim, Sauromatia....

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

Updated it at last with the suggestions.

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to minimize attrition while expanding with the national troops? They seem good enough to take most Indies as long as they are re-enforced each turn, like when clearing the capital's neighbouring provinces out. But I can't find a way to do the preferred 'go and conquer in that direction' expansion with them.

So the challenge is.....

Ignoring Pretender build, and using CBM, can you find a way of expanding with any mix of 40 (the Indy commander leadership) non-sacred troops, with no mage/cleric support, and without taking above 20% attrition rates. Your army is also limited to about 400-450 resources.

Have tried all the usual archer decoys, side stacking etc, but nothing seems to work reliably. Also not the biggest fan of relying on Indy archers, since finding a large reliable source is just pot luck, and stopping to recruit them delays expansion.

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

One thing you could try is just recruiting the basic Alai legionairres. Sure some will die, but they're so cheap that you can just recruit a big load on the first turn and then send them off good for a few turns. The javelins they throw help a lot, with the large number of troops you'll have you can often reduce the enemy numbers substantially even before contact.

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

I'd go for the Leve, 8 gold 8 res. for the first couple of provinces, and puch in some cavalry on turn 3-4.
Avoid heavy cavalry, go for barberians, deep and beer tribe warriors/achers, light infantry and other indie types that can't hold the javelins.
As for archers,
Put 5 of them in front and order guard commander, they'll pull back while the archers keep fireing at them and chasing them down the battlefield.

The Alae Legionnaire unit is from MA Ermor. And while I don't mind losing units from a money point of view, I'd like to avoid it from a 'stopping to wait for re-enforcements' point of view. And think it'd be hard to recruit a load of them in the first few turns due to their 20res cost. Even max produciton scales will only allow you to recruit about 6 or so on turns 1+2. So hard to hit any sort of critical mass until close to turn 7. Even longer if they're taking heavy loses.

Thanks for the input Executor. Yeah, the 8gp 8r Leve's are certainly what I've had most success with during testing. They are quite effective once they hit a critical mass of 60+. But the only problem is that if I send 'just' 40 of them in, they'll take loses of 25%+, and then the next fight becomes a 50/50 or less.

Have used the 'place front and Guard Commander' tactic many times before. It helps a bit here, but not as much since the main problem is melee attrition, and not archer fire. Phasing-in the cavalry units helps as well, but I find them to be a bit fragile (again from an attrition PoV) since 12 protection 15 defence isn't an ideal mix. Would be better if the difference between the stats was more polarized.

Another annoying aspect is that the various tribe provinces result in the least attrition, but don't give you the Indy commanders needed for troop supply. Lots of little annoyances :mad: Starting to think I can't avoid using some mage/cleric support :(

Re: EA Ermor Guide
 

Correct. Thats why I didn't respond to your original question.

Use leves. Personally, I think you can afford a turn to make the standard bearing cmder.

Attack archers.