Been romping with my Undead until...
 

First off, let me say what a wonderful diverse game this is! I've had 4 victories and i haven't even scratched the surface http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif . Tonight i'm against Mictlan and they're killing me! Banish really seems to work well for them as my 120+ army is gone in minutes. I've tried Ashen and Soulgate and i don't want any vile living creatures in my "death squad". Any hints anybody? How to you oppose banish? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Magic resistance and use more undead. Magic resistance can be increased by having a level 4 unholy priest repeatedly cast Protection of the Sepulchre on them, as it Lasts for one turn.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Spells like:

Antimagic (Astral, Enchantment 4)

Drain 2

Unholy Priest Spells like Unholy Protection.

Also try fighting in your domain.

Each of those increase your MR of your armies. Though Ermors troops are usually fodder and used to distract while your mages and elite troops tear up the armies.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

You may also wish to get a nice squad of undead horsemen. Put them as far forward as you can, on the extreme left or right. Make their battle orders to attack the rearmost.

The effect is that they will race down the side of the enemy army and hit those hiding at the back, who are usually the priests and mages who are hammering you. They will quickly take out the commanders, especially priests, making your un-life a happier place. This also creates two targets for the spells, which reduces the effectiveness on the usual closely packed troops.

I also put my other regular undead troops as far forward as possible, so they get into action earlier. Leaving them at the default starting position means they are exposed to “spell fire” for an extra turn of two.

The earlier suggestions on protection spells are very good. I am currently in a nasty war with Ermor and toward the end of the battles, when they have protected most of the surviving troops, my banishment power goes way down. Those protection spells work! On the plus side, I have five priests in the hall of fame, as their kill count is truly massive. I am boosting them with precision items and they get even more dangerous.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

I just thought of something related. More generally, flying troops that can hit the rearward commanders will also work well, though most that I can think of are living.

I also like The Pelt of Feniris (I think that is the name). It does not fit in with your undead theme, but having wolves line both sides of the battle is a nice distraction. I have found that they do not do much damage, but they distract your opponent from the main force. Right now I have a lot of spell casters, so the extra couple of turns the enemy spends cleaning up the close by wolves are a couple of extra turns of spell casting. In your case, having the priests mess about with the wolves in close combat give the rest of your troops more time to advance.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Indeed, MR must be boosted. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
Ermor is the best nation IHMO, if you know how to play them.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Marignon was generally considered (in Dom1) to exist as a barrier to Ermor being the ultimate choice. Have you not hit them yet in this game? How do you feel Mictlan compares as an Ermor killer?

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Could someone who has experience playing Ermor please list everything that affects the automatic recruitment of undead.

Be as specific as possible. For instance, I know that building a Fortress will give you better quality troops, but does the amount of resources in that province matter?

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Your dominion strength, type (as in theme), and the presence of unburied corpses all affect what kinds of automatic summons you receive. I believe temples don't have a direct effect, but they do boost your dominion, and I am also pretty sure you need a higher dominion in a province for the better auto-summons.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Unless this changed from Dom I, for Ashen Ermor:

Dominion strength, presence of temple & world richness determine the numbers generated, presence of fortress determines quality.

In my little playing of Ashen Ermor I have not noticed any changes to the above, although the presence of unburied corpses & existence/lack of population seem to have some effects on soulless & ghouls summoning/reanimation.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's normal http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . That's why even with heap of bones and rotten meat, Ermor was widely regarded as a weak nation in MP. All the regular undeads are very vulnerable to banishing. Any player with some preparation can easily finish off a 100+ undeads army. The high-level undeads are wonderful but they need a good gem income to summon.

As the other mentioned, the undead priests of Ermor can cast protection spells to increase magic resistance. "Protection of the Sepulchre" and "Power of the Sepulchre" are both very good spells. A drain scale helps but it's not recommended since it'll slow your research to an incompetitive pace.

But, for most people, the answer is to give up on Ermor in Dom 1 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif . Except for a few very good players, I don't aware of too many people claiming they know how to handle Ermor yet.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Undead archers would probably be pretty decent against those nigh-unarmored Mictlan troops, and yes the longdead horsemen are nice too (and Pale Riders is definitely a bulk summons... along with Carrion Reanimation and the nice but hard-to-research Wight summons.)
Disease might also be a nasty weapon against Mictlan; think black servants with bane venom charms, harbingers, black death, etc. Mictlan *needs* blood magic, which effectively means they need to have a decent population in at least some provinces, plus they need to keep unrest down. Hitting their high-pop provinces with pop killers (which, incidentally, should also increase unrest) should help.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

The Drain scale is nulled by the fact that you have death and can make Skull Mentors. But that is only one option to give MR.

More often than not, the longer that Ermor survives with a good dominion the stronger it gets.

Ashen Empire is particularly nasty with 9 Death and 8 Bless Effects as Unholy Knights of the Seplechure are plentiful and can form a strong core of your armies against banishment.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

You can also deploy small squads forward with a single undead, perhaps one with good MR, away from your other undeads, to draw banishment attempts away from the others. Since banishment strikes like an inaccurate barrage, many castings can be wasted missing a single undead, which would have taken out dozens of zombies from a big group.

A necromancer or Revenant in the front raising skeletons can also do this well, but exposes the caster to danger.

Command units can hold anti-magic charms, etc.

Higher-level black priests can raise more and more powerful undead - see the manual's tables.
Wights and banes and those hounds with the bare skulls, and shades, are all somewhat tougher undead. The faster of those, and the Undead cavalry are great at the flank/rear attacks to go kill the priests, as Saxon mentioned.

PvK

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Thanks to all of you for your excellent tips! I think i rushed the Mictlan Capitol too early while using my high level troops to commit genocide http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif around the local provinces http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif There's so many GOOD ways to be BAD http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif , i just LOVE this game. The higher dominion levels definitely give you more/better undead troops with Ashen or Soulgate BTW. Tonight i'll spread my troops out instead of letting the computer do it and tell my gem carrying priests to cast the appropriate spells...Bruhahahaha!!!! Thanks again everyone http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Hi,

I'm certainly no expert at D2 or Ermor, but I do so love to play them. One thing I didn't see mentioned by anyone else here was to take as high astral as you can with your pretender. Then, when you bless your sacreds, they get one added to their MR for every two levels of Astral, starting at 4. So, if you could take astral 10, you'd have +4 for all your sacred troops when they're blessed. (Plus Twist of Fate.)

Hope this helps,
V'ger gone

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

I think the reason that isn't or was overlooked was because most Banishments can't affect your sacred troops very well (They usually have higher MR). The blessing only affects your sacreds.

And astral is always a great pick for Ermor for a variety of reasons.

Re: Been romping with my Undead until...
 

Well, after many hours i am kicking booty http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif . I set my dominion at 9 as it seems apparent that is all the Undead need as opposed to supplies. My quality of units showing up is MUCH improved, and i'm keeping my cavalry separate as suggested as well as having my priest/prophet stocked with death gems and only casting power of sepulchre. The carnage is unbelievable http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif ...no survivors, only death! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif With the Undead it's like the song goes: "gotta keep 'em separated" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .