Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

If you can get the masterlich to dom9-10 with the paths you want cheaper than the lichqueen go for it, otherwise i would probably go with the queen.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Regarding the choice between Lich Queen and Master Lich - I just use the exact same build with both pretenders, and see which one costs less points, and choose according to that.
The difference in the chassis itself isn't that important, since neither pretender is a good candidate for turning SC.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Well imortality, awe from the dominion and versatile paths for buffing makes them both atleast decent thugs and, iirc, the lich queens stats arent too bad.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

But you might as well use your Immortal Etheral national summons commanders (which also have pretty good stats), and keep your lich busy casting spells or forging items or using his/her awesome research capabilities.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

A fun bizaro world Ashen Empire Ermor you can try now is 3-Order, 3-Growth, and a Prince of Death with 4-5D magic. Then spam castles/temples everywhere.

As an aside, 3-growth mostly counteracts the death dominion of Dreamlands Ryleh.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

From my testing with 3-growth and Dreamlands Ryleh the population does seem to slowly increase.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

It's kind of random. The number killed per turn doesn't seem to be steady or consistent. I think it's related to the number of freespawn generated. But these spawn are not created every turn.

I got a random +pop event in my capital, which hung in there around 31185 or so, but has begun to decrease again as my dominion goes up and the number of spawn generated increase.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Oh, as an aside, the reason you can play "bizarro" world AE Ermor now and not before is because in Dom2 your capital began with only 5k or 7.5k pop anyway (i forget which). In Dom3 your capital starts full and so is worth preserving if you cherish hopes of a large gold reserve.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Yea, getting gold with LA ermor is fun but i personally think magical versatility(and a dominion that cripples your enemies) is more important to them than some extra freespawn.

PS:Growth dreamland is fun, even more-so when you remember enemies dont benefit from your good scales.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Yeah, I think over the course of a few turns I decided that for 3 growth R'yleh, dominion 6 or less = slow growth, dominion 7 or higher = slow shrinkage. I'm happy it's still killing others, but mostly I like the idea of it spreading insanity while I have commanders who can deal with it.

I only really ran into gold problems with Ermor under Utterdark, and that due to 30-40 Witches/Enchanters/etc. I'd hired to boost my research. Sure, you're not making very much, but your national armies don't have gold upkeep. I just tax the heck out of everything I come across (since they're going to die anyway, I might as well have them die in a manner that nets me the most cash possible) that I'm not hoping to recruit from and drop a temple anywhere I think I can defend it - I never ran into cash troubles past the very early game. I'm down with Bizarro Ermor for variety, but I'd have a hard time defending it as a useful build.

Master Lich is more efficient for a rainbow mage. With Turmoil/Sloth/Death/Cold/Luck 3 and Dominion 10 the Lich Queen gets to the magic screen with 453 points, the Master Lich 414. There's 6 non-blood schools you'd have to start a new path with, and the Queen is paying 20 points more for each than the Master. So she ends up effectively 81 points behind him, and he also gets the extra misc slot.