Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

When you are playing ermor, you should really overtax at 200% as much as possible and patrol to keep unrest down in any province you have dominion in. This is particularly wise to do in your capitol as it will soon be a smoldering ruin anyway and not do much for you otherwise. Relish (and overtax madly) any province you capture outside of your dominion that has a large population, as you can get a significant increase to your tax base from them. And if you have priests available, reanimate all the dead peasants this creates to swell your armies. Luck scales as others have mentioned are very important as well, as your lands quickly become useless and luck events can provide a useful source of income.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Currently on turn 16ish of a MP game, and playing as LA Ermor. Enjoying quite a bit as expansion has proven to be explosive with over 30 provinces conquered while the next contender has about 18.
Research is going at good rythm and troop numbers are stratospheric. I even got Etimmu as hero which is lovely.

My current concern is magic path access and magic object forging. As Dusk elders are limited to D3 +1 elemental level, my magic options are quite limited. On top of this random magic sites seem to be sparse in the map, forget about indie mages. So currently it is only my rainbow pretender who can build anythng meaningful. Got to construction 4 and would like to build a few shields/brands for my banes but cant unless I use my pretender, who is busy site searching.

Any advice magic and item construction wise?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

let the pretender build the path boosters and hand them to your elders for further forging/summoning. Especially the rings and elemental stuffs should prove to be very useful. You should have found some indie N1 shaman, with a mace you are in nature business.

So, construction 6 should be considered for starshine caps, water bracelets, etc.

With a ring of wizardry, an elemental stuff and another booster your random elders are at 4 in their path (replace staff with coin for S).

That's perfect for lab duty, you should look into summons/communions for battlefield magic, though.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Thanks for the advice. This means I need to stop my pretender doing site searching though and he is the only one with Astral in my fleet. Also, for battlefield magic communions seems a bit far fetched no? dusk elders dont come with much astral and tehy bring +1 elemental for the most part unless I missed somehting?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Spectral Mages (Conj 6) will give you a bit more diversification, and Const 6 will give you more path boosters.

The Strategy Index (stickied) links to the Magic Path Booster Guide:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=37423

Which is also on the wiki somewhere (it's down at the moment):

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Main_Page

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Cool, thanks.

Also given the fact Conjure Spectres, Ether Gate and Well of Misery are all in the Conj path, should I give up my current resarch in Alt aiming for the battle spell Darkness (Alt 6) and focus rather in Conj all the way to level 8 (Well of Misery)?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Its debatable. Darkness makes your troops 10x as deadly pretty much, and I think Rigor mortis is also alt, and its a killer spell in itself. Of course, conj gets you all sorts of cool summons, and the well of misery is awesome. That said, Ermor isn't too good at forging, so thugs aren't something you'll do well with at first.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

This guide's lack of listing for Lord of the Gates as a viable pretender saddens me.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Well, moving your pretender to a lab to forge a few boosters is very well worth the effort, sooner or later. The thing about the rainbow is that it's there to open doors, not to do it all alone. With a few boosters other can take over the searching.

The most difficult thing is to get all the gems together in LA.

About communions, that was just for really big battles where you have to bring a couple elders anyways.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Rigor Mortis is an absolute killer. It's the perfect companion to spamming soulless and skeletons. Granted, you lose a ton of your chaff units anyway, but the enemy army rapidly grinds to a complete fatigue halt, and eventually your undead chew them up. He won't even get his mages out alive, because they'll be collapsed unconscious too.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Just don't combine rigor mortis w/your enemy's shark attack. You can ask Calahan how that turned out :D SOOOO many sharks eating undead.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Yes... never used it yet, but it seems also the perfect castle storming companion if you have mostly chaff undead and no serious thugs/SC with you.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

The only tricky part of RM is making sure your own casters are all undead or have really, really nice reinvig. Beyond that it's really effective with the typical undead battle of attrition spells - skellyspam, darkness, wailing winds etc.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

All that won't save you from solar brilliance, right?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

No, but rain of stones, bone grinding etc on turn 1 probably will.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Well I don't actually know how skellyspam from high reinvig commanders with RM up would work against solar brilliance. It seems like it might still work ok since the spam doesn't care if the caster is blind and the skeletons might not die quick enough to the solar brilliance to avoid the attrition caused to the other side - certainly they'll have to spend a long time out in the sun, so I guess a lot of them would be struck blind.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

That makes sense Sombre, though I lack personal experience to verify that.

It seems as though rigor mortis + skelli spam is indeed a tough shell to crack unless you design specifically a counter from what you have available.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Well I think solar brilliance is mostly just anoyance as yer undead armies will mostly have 10+ mr after blessing thus casualties will be acceptable from it. Ye must think as russian in ww2 general regarding yer undead thousands... thousands there thousands here we got thousands to spare they don't :)

I would be much more scared if enemy spammed those fire/ice mass army kill spells. In my last game I seemed to lose tons of troops with ma ermor to that frost version... armies were mostly undead.

What la ermor must be most afraid is multiple front wars... they will kill him no matter what but those who fight ermor will fall with it.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

That's why you make sure your communion master casting Solar Brilliance is laden with penetration items; eye of the void, rune smasher, etc.
:)

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

I used Solar Brilliance in one game when fighting MA Ermor. IIRC I took about 30% blindness casualties each battle, with MR13 army units. It would probably have been better to use it in conjunction with a few higher-MR thugs. If I hadn't had the chalice to cure blindness, it wouldn't have been worth it.

As for its effectiveness, it was pretty meh. I got the same amount of disappointment as from using the Ark.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Ah one of em blind vs blind war mongers eh?

I find it quite sad that solar brilliance cant be coutered with darkness cast after it is cast...

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

I'm pretty sure penetration items don't help with MR BEs.

I checked the debug log, and there does not appear to be a bonus.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Hmmm now I learn new things... I dreamed of gettin my pretender in ma ermor game to p0wn enemy army with master enslave with all mr negate items... he had s9

Tho if extra paths and mr negation worked on be spells it would be kinda kill'em'all.

Btw in that game I was holding off 2 other humans machaka and rleyh... after got 3rd (atlantis or oceania) I was just delaying inevitable. It would have been impossible if I hadn't ma ermor as I was able to spawn hundreds of replacements for my immence casualties.

- much editing too drunk to get it right on first try

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Master enslave is a BF - those do use mr bonus.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

I think this is totally new subject so I made new topic.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=44526

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

:doh:
Well then, disregard that suggestion then.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

By the way. Is there any way to get other Archbishops (other than the prophet) to sacred level 4? Power of the sepulchre is too good to be only able to cast it with 1 mage :D

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Sword of Justice or Injustice. Both add one to holy level.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Or communion w/matrices.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Power of the spheres. Crystal shield.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

I thought those don't work if the priest only has H. And communions with H-only mages were kind of buggy last time I looked.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Ah yes, if the mage only has holy, that's true. But he could empower the mage in blood.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

...which also opens up Hellpower. Technically.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

That is the thing, Arch bishops dont have astral. Although crystal shield is a low construction level option indeed...

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

You can empower them. You just asked if there was a way, not a realistic or useful way :]

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

I think your idea to empower in blood is pretty useful. Since you're only casting Holy spells, you can run a little 3-man communion with shamen or spectral mages. You only need to cast Power once per battle, and CBM means you don't need a slave to become a Sabbath Master, for added convenience.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Come again? CBM means doe sabath no slaves are required?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Yes. Wait. What do you mean by doe?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

You may not need slaves for Sabbath, but you'll need 'em for Hell Power. And where in the heck does LA Ermor get blood slaves?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Umm.
Trade?

Also, doesn't Sword of Injustice autocast Power of the Sepulchure (or was it Protection of the Sepulchure?)?

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

I think he must mean some kind of female deer.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Lol, apologies, quick and bad typing while at the office...

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Excellent! my English is still lacking but I can recognize the Sound of Music here :p

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

There's no need to script Hell Power, slaves are rare for Ermor, like you say, and you don't want to be relying on a BF spell when the caster could get randomly eaten prior to the battle. Once you've got B1H3 you either slap on a Crystal Shield or communion up.

Would I, as a blood nation, trade 50 slaves to LA Ermor for 25D? Probably.

But you can also pick up rand B on your summons (Tarts, Ether Lords, Lamia Queens) and blood hunt in negative dominion lands.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

Hell Power is the meanest spell ever. It requires B3 to cast but because it takes 3 slaves, a B3 guy unboosted won't cast it iirc.

Re: MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire
 

I haven't used it much, but a B3 caster shouldn't have a problem casting a 3 slave B3 spell.
He'll pass out, but that won't stop him from casting it.

It's not much use, except in communions, because of that.