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.