Ermor balance?
 

After playing the demo with some friends for a while, I decided the time was right to pick up the full Version. My first MP experience with the full Version was a hotseat game with a friend. He chose Ashen Empire Ermor (dominion: 10, turmoil-sloth-death-luck-magic: 3) which I knew was a pretty strong theme. However, I soon realized that it was even stronger than I expected...

He got multiple leaders per turn, despite the fact he had only 1 castle. He got tons of free troops that were immune to routing. He pillaged ruthlessly, and used his money to purchase every mercenary group. To add insult to injury, Etimmu the Wraithlord decided to show up on turn 3 - he's probably the best special character I've seen.

Anyway, his initial expansion was impressive. By turn 8 he was taking 4 provinces a turn. If he had better managed his assets, he would've taken even more. I guess that was the most frustrating thing - he didn't really play that well and still managed to steamroller the independents (strength 6) and Man.

Is Ashen Empire Ermor too strong at the start? The independents and AI players couldn't stop him, thus he had a huge edge in troops and territory by turn 10. More provinces -> more troops -> more provinces... that synergy creates a lot of momentum. Add in the fact that the provinces he controls are progressively being ruined, and you have one very nasty opponent.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

that is only because the ai can't cope with ermor .

since 2.12 ermor may not use the vq anymore so it has lost even more of its danger .

in a 8-10 player mp game ermor is nasty but it will normally be far behind in research or only small .
his freespawns can get killed quite quick even with banishment .

have you ever seen wither bones , dust to dust , holy pyre and the other undead killer spells in action in battle ?

he will attack with a legion of e.g. 1000 freespawns your 50-100 troops but when you can cast one of the above mentioned spells + have some priests your odds to win the battle are good .

if you are not his direct neighbor at start ermor is normally not the biggest problem .
ermor is still a good nation , perhaps even top 5 but not too strong .

you will soon notice this yourself too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
have you scoregraphs on ?
leading in troop sizes for ae ermor is normal but normally he should be behind in research and only about nb 3 in gem income but normally not number 1 .

in your game your friend was just lucky because the ai can't cope with ermor .
i think though that perhaps your friend has summoned lots of priests for more reanimations and is far behind in research and not top in gem income .

ermor is nasty but has its issues . research and almost limited to death are the 2 biggest .

Re: Ermor balance?
 

I can definitely see how things might balance out later in the game, but it's the early going I'm more concerned about. If I had started next to him he could've overrun me fairly easily (like he did to Man). Masses of priests aren't really an option in the beginning when you have only 1 castle. He also had the luxury of being able to invade many provinces at once, which puts a lot of pressure on the defender.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">in a 2 player game ermor is nasty .

but in a mp game with 8-10 humans WITHOUT any ais he can't do that . he may kill 1-2 others through a early rush still but that comes with the cost of almost zero research .
and the others will forge an alliance against him because they see him as a threat.

furthermore if ermor e.g. starts with marignon as neighbors he has nothing to laugh.

ermor is evil but normally not that a concern lategame .

at which map do you play with your friend ?
in a 2 humans and some ai only game ermor has advantages but not in any other situation.
if you play a large enough map his advantages aren't that good anymore too.

ermor is not the best searcher + clamhorder .
+ it almost can't bloodhunt .

so even with ais and only you and your friend playing on a bigger map he has still problems lategame if you know what to do .

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why should Ermor be behind in research?
It starts with the possibility to summon a dusk elder every second turn for an average of 4 new RPs per turn, not too bad (yet not very good), with a bit of research and site-searching they can easily crank that up to even more through cheap summons with small research values strengthened by Magic+3.
Anyway, while I agree AE Ermor is pretty strong, the Anti-Undead spells are just too much for them.
I remember a game I had with the VS the AI, I had to conquer the Last enemy province on the entire map (which happened to be the AI's captiol).
I had ~500 units, he had ~40 IIRC.
One "Grind Bones" and I lost...
I never completed that game (And ended up deleting it after the post patch savegame cleanup I made).
One thing though, if R`lyeh and AE Ermor are forming enemy camps in a MP game, be sure to take Ermor's side ^^

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Aha! Who said you need castles to recruit priests? National priests, yes, but the basic indie priests are available in almost every province, and since they're so resource-cheap you don't need a castle.

EDIT: Which is not to say Ermor can't be tough to beat. In your game setup (two humans with several AIs) I can see how AE or SG Ermor would be very, very nasty. Ermor will simply have a much easier time overrunning the AIs, who aren't smart enough to ally against him or adopt anti-undead tactics.

If he absolutely has to play AE and you don't want to join larger MP games, try a two-player game on that small map with you as, say, Marignon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ August 04, 2004, 19:23: Message edited by: Sindai ]

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">AE Ermor is definitely a bad nation for research. Any nation that has to cast summoning spells just to get a researcher is not very good. And AE Ermor's mages, while powerful in Death, have little or no magic outside of that and so even once you have some they're mediocre researchers at best.

I don't think there is another nation in the game that couldn't out-research Undead Ermor if they made research any sort of priority. Well, except for Undead Pangaea, maybe, but that's about it.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">AE Ermor is definitely a bad nation for research. Any nation that has to cast summoning spells just to get a researcher is not very good. And AE Ermor's mages, while powerful in Death, have little or no magic outside of that and so even once you have some they're mediocre researchers at best.

I don't think there is another nation in the game that couldn't out-research Undead Ermor if they made research any sort of priority. Well, except for Undead Pangaea, maybe, but that's about it. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yeah shortly after pan cw ermor is probably the worst researcher .
and you need deathgems for your researchers which you need for forging + summoning + bane/wraithlords etc. + ghost riders .......

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good point. I was reluctant to do this because independent priests only have holy-2, which is fairly limited. If I'm going to spend my gold on priests, I'd really like to get holy-3 for Sermon of Courage. However, if I could go back I'd definitely bite the bullet and build an indie priest banishment squad to counter Ermor's rapid rise.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

Indie priests are a definate help. Plus the extra temples dont hurt you as far as boosting your dominion so that Ermor doesnt just kill off your population with those red candles all over the place. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

There are also some very nice priest leaders in some of the merc Groups.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, I remember one AE game where I had my first encounter with Orion and the Eternal Knights when Arco threw them at me. They just sort of strolled through my armies each turn until their contract ran out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Ermor balance?
 

Well ...
Really I believe Ermor Death Themes are very strong.

Death to supply his research has the Skull Mentors, only Const-4, and they cost 10 gems.
Ermor can take 4 scales at -3, allowing it to design a super pretender. And it can take Luck-3 and Magic-3 too.

Soul Gate is far better, since your troops could flee, yes, but they're ethereal.
Even if you've good magic against Ermor, you should commit mages to battle, risking to losing them, to fight infinite hordes of undeads ... while Ermor can freely keep up his research at full speed.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A pretender, no matter how super, is still only capable of performing one action at a time.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, but taking Luck is a natural thing to do when taking Turmoil, and everyone takes magic-3....right? Given that the alternative to Turmoil/Luck is Order/Misfortune, and both of these options are of equivalent cost, the only real free points you're getting is a heat scale, sloth scale, and death scale. This is the exact same thing you can do with your precious Abysia. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Soul Gate Ermor lacks cavalry. There are no spectral cavalries that are the counterparts of AE's Longdead Horsemans.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Without any mage support, Ermor's armies are pure chaff. It takes one mage to nuke 'em till they glow. Soul Gate Ermor, while ethereal, has ubiquitous 0 protection and is completely defenseless against magic-based attack, while having no longdead horsemans to rush mages. Thus, they lumber around at infantry-speed, and can be annihilated en-masse. Killing spree!

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not everyone http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Ermor with Magic-3 pays 12 gems to get a Spectator who does 7 research. Ermor with drain-3 gets 1 research out of the same guy, until experience increases. That's pretty horrible. But when you equip your Spectator with an Owl Quill and a Skull Mentor, you're paying 27 gems to get 13 research in drain-3 (16 with lanterns instead of quills). In magic-3 you get 19 (22 w/lantern) research out of that same guy. So your research, in the long run, is about 2/3 as good in drain-3 as in magic-3, and this discounts experience bonuses which make the gap smaller. Of course, you'd have to get to Construction 4 first, and this is a lot of time your pretender spends parked in the library when he ought to be out killing people.

I'm not seriously suggesting taking drain-3. Just pointing out that because of Ermor's tendency (or at least ability) to use Skull Mentors, you're not hurting so much in Drain (or at least from less magic scale) as other nations.

Wth a living nation you more or less have to take luck if you are taking turmoil. With Ermor you can still afford misfortune, if you need more points, or at the least, luck-2 instead of luck-3. The only bad event that really hurts for Ermor is having a lab or temple kerplode. Everything else kills half of your 0 population. IMO, the primary problem with misfortune is that you DON'T get gem or gold positive events.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Except Longdead Horsemen, of course. You don't get them free, but you can summon them for 0.5 gems (or less) per horse. And then there's the Behemoth...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Ashen Ermor troops don't hold up all that well against magic based attack either. The only advantage they have is that there are (slightly) more of them, so it takes more castings to kill them all.

In the past I held that Soul Gate was weaker than Ashen Ermor, because it has such worse autosummons. And while the autosummons are worse, largely because you don't get free, sometimes sacred, cavalry, they aren't THAT MUCH worse. Blade Wind/Holy Pyre/Banishment/etc kills longdeads about as efficiently as spirits. But SG troops can defend castles, and have better MR. The free commanders, which have priest powers, are much better. And the national summons, while more expensive, are ethereal and have better stats. All in all I think it is about a wash.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

I think AE is better than SG, and that's mainly for their priests.
SG priest can reanimate:
Dispossesed Spirits (havent tried those, sound pretty sucky)
Shadows (Weak! and only two a turn, even at high dominion)
Apparitions (Which require unburied corpses, so you can't mass 'em).

AE priests can reanimate Longdead Horsemen which are very powerful, at a rate of ~6 a day at a positive dominion, if you prophetize one you can even revive Wights (which are actually Lictors), which are very tough and come 2 a day.

And since for the same level of priest you need to pay more with SG and since AE has "Protection of The Sepulchre", I think AE is stronger.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Dispossessed Spirits are the same as the Spirit Mastery spell, and the autosummon you get in provinces with neither temples nor forts. Which is to say, not real good, but still ethereal. And they require corpses, too. So not real good.

Shadows aren't real hot either, you don't get very many of them and they aren't very strong.

Apparitions, on the other hand, are very good. They require population (not corpses) and lots of it, but in freshly captured territory you can reanimate quite a few before everyone dies. They aren't intended as troops of the line, anyway, but more as special forces; you don't NEED millions of them. And, a level 3 priest can make them (level 4 required for horsemen), although level 4/5 are much faster.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Both themes have Protection of the Sepulchre, but SG needs it less. Still useful for summoned low-MR troops like Longdead Horsemen/Archers.

I find that with AE my priests spend most of their time making longdeads. With SG they spend most of their time killing things.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Dispossessed Spirits are the same as the Spirit Mastery spell, and the autosummon you get in provinces with neither temples nor forts. Which is to say, not real good, but still ethereal. And they require corpses, too. So not real good.

Shadows aren't real hot either, you don't get very many of them and they aren't very strong.

Apparitions, on the other hand, are very good. They require population (not corpses) and lots of it, but in freshly captured territory you can reanimate quite a few before everyone dies. They aren't intended as troops of the line, anyway, but more as special forces; you don't NEED millions of them. And, a level 3 priest can make them (level 4 required for horsemen), although level 4/5 are much faster.

Quote:

And since for the same level of priest you need to pay more with SG and since AE has "Protection of The Sepulchre", I think AE is stronger.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Both themes have Protection of the Sepulchre, but SG needs it less. Still useful for summoned low-MR troops like Longdead Horsemen/Archers.

I find that with AE my priests spend most of their time making longdeads. With SG they spend most of their time killing things. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">By the time you capture a province with SGs weaker troops, everyone is already dead, so no apparitions for you...
While Longdead Horsemen require a 4th lvl priest, the 4th lvl holy priest is the standard priest for AE, while SGs standard priest is 3rd lvl, to get a 4th lvl you need to use your pretender, not very good...
SGs Etheralness is pretty weak, they still get hit a lot...
Also, SGs freespawn damage is negated by magic resistance, which pretty much sucks...
Also, since AEs freespawns are much better than SGs freespawns, a fort+temple on an important province (such as one with a mine) is VERY useful.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

i think too that ae ermor is slightly better .

you get lots of freespawns and lots of mound kings or censors .
sg gets "only" the shadow tribunes . they are cheap temple builders or can reanimate 1 shadow / turn .

the sg leaders are cool because they are immortal but for this they are quite expensive and in midgame you prefer bane lords / wraith lords anyway .

the main strenght of ae ermor is that they can build several raider armies with their freespawns/freespawnleaders which require still a respectable force to stop them .

because they are so huge in size they can deathpillage a conquered province in 1 turn .

while you can easy field 3-4 armies of 300-500 freespawn undeads midgame your enemy still needs about 10 priests with tough guards ( about 25-50 ) or 5 mages with tough guards who can holy pyre or wither bones .

fortunately ae ermor is thnx to swarming quite resistent to most sc's .

300 freespawns have quite a good chance to kill 1-2 scs with not too big losses .


unfortunately ermor has always a serious lack with deathgems and is only a mediocre clamhorder at best . so lategame you will have serious problems against especially arco , pythium , ryleh , caelum , tien chi if they were left alone long enough to start clamhording .

pythium because of communion and caelum because of flyby attacks is already earlygame nasty for ermor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Ermor balance?
 

There should be one or two nations more powerful then all the rest so the AI opponents can actually be more threatening during a single and multiplayer game.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">you can easy achieve that :
use impossible ai with cohens crusaders and Agrajags first Version of his umbarthium mod which wasn't balanced .
this way you will have really scary ai opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">you can easy achieve that :
use impossible ai with cohens crusaders and Agrajags first Version of his umbarthium mod which wasn't balanced .
this way you will have really scary ai opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The unbalanced Umbarthium mod (I should get to work on 1.03 already =P) isn't that good for the AI...
He is too dumb to use the really good (AKA Gifted) troops...
I beat the crap out of him in a game that I tested against my mod =P
An overall overpowered mod will give the AI enough power though, you can just mod half price for a certain nation =P.
The one thing I hate about those things though is that most computer games (I think that doesnt include dominions) use cheating AIs anyway, if you played the RTS game "Blah blah's city of Evil" (fictional name, DUH) when you put the AI on "Super Tough and Impossible to Beat without Resorting to Reprogramming of the game" difficulty, it would just get half prices for all units, or free income, or double stats for units or any number of other things.
Which is bad! Because it means the developers are too lazy to program a good AI that they have to give it cheats to be worth something...
SO if you give the AI cheats by yourself, you are going against everything that is good!

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">you can easy achieve that :
use impossible ai with cohens crusaders and Agrajags first Version of his umbarthium mod which wasn't balanced .
this way you will have really scary ai opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The unbalanced Umbarthium mod (I should get to work on 1.03 already =P) isn't that good for the AI...
He is too dumb to use the really good (AKA Gifted) troops...
I beat the crap out of him in a game that I tested against my mod =P
An overall overpowered mod will give the AI enough power though, you can just mod half price for a certain nation =P.
The one thing I hate about those things though is that most computer games (I think that doesnt include dominions) use cheating AIs anyway, if you played the RTS game "Blah blah's city of Evil" (fictional name, DUH) when you put the AI on "Super Tough and Impossible to Beat without Resorting to Reprogramming of the game" difficulty, it would just get half prices for all units, or free income, or double stats for units or any number of other things.
Which is bad! Because it means the developers are too lazy to program a good AI that they have to give it cheats to be worth something...
SO if you give the AI cheats by yourself, you are going against everything that is good! </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">hm i am looking after a new game for sp with really good ai which i can play a bit too .
unfortunately i know no game with good but not too serious cheating ai do you know any ?
has space empires IV gold a good ai i don't own that one . or galactic civilizations ?

Re: Ermor balance?
 

SEIV Gold has a failrly rubbish AI - OK for learning the game but not really challenging once you're up to speed. However there are a couple of mods which have made the AI opponents pretty tough. And they don't rely on cheating.

GalCiv's key feature is its AI. It's the only game I've played where, when you increase the opponent difficulty level, your opponents actually get cleverer and sneakier. On the downside, it lacks the complexity or flavour of either DomII or SEIV.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

[quote]Originally posted by Heironeous:

Quote:

Good point. I was reluctant to do this because independent priests only have holy-2, which is fairly limited. If I'm going to spend my gold on priests, I'd really like to get holy-3 for Sermon of Courage. However, if I could go back I'd definitely bite the bullet and build an indie priest banishment squad to counter Ermor's rapid rise.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Some other things to consider: if your Ermor opponent is hiring mercs, he probably doesn't have much money spent on temples and castles to protect those temples, since Ermor has limited access to gold income once it kills off its province populations. Further, Ermor's priests are unholy and can't preach, which makes it a fair bit harder for them to undo enemy domain quickly.

So you can take advantage of this by building up a strong dominion yourself to push your dominion and keep out his dominion, and also you can conduct raids on his templed provinces if he's not castling them. Low dominion for him means less auto-summons.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Boron, as a second opinion, I concur 100% with Mark's assessment of both SE4 and GalCiv. I have not tried the new GalCiv expansion (yet), so I don't know if it improves the game in any significant way. Perhaps someone else who's actually played with it might be able to give an opinion on the GalCiv expansion?

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">you can easy achieve that :
use impossible ai with cohens crusaders and Agrajags first Version of his umbarthium mod which wasn't balanced .
this way you will have really scary ai opponents http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The unbalanced Umbarthium mod (I should get to work on 1.03 already =P) isn't that good for the AI...
He is too dumb to use the really good (AKA Gifted) troops...
I beat the crap out of him in a game that I tested against my mod =P
An overall overpowered mod will give the AI enough power though, you can just mod half price for a certain nation =P.
The one thing I hate about those things though is that most computer games (I think that doesnt include dominions) use cheating AIs anyway, if you played the RTS game "Blah blah's city of Evil" (fictional name, DUH) when you put the AI on "Super Tough and Impossible to Beat without Resorting to Reprogramming of the game" difficulty, it would just get half prices for all units, or free income, or double stats for units or any number of other things.
Which is bad! Because it means the developers are too lazy to program a good AI that they have to give it cheats to be worth something...
SO if you give the AI cheats by yourself, you are going against everything that is good! </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">hm i am looking after a new game for sp with really good ai which i can play a bit too .
unfortunately i know no game with good but not too serious cheating ai do you know any ?
has space empires IV gold a good ai i don't own that one . or galactic civilizations ? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">(Pffft, lots of quotes)
I don't know the games you are talking about, but in many games you can observe the computer cheating, and in many ways:
1. He has more units than he could afford with his current mines/income.
2. A vastly superiour army of yours "somehow" manages to lose to his inferior one (sometimes its just luck though :\)
3. In certain games the AI may get better starting units.
4. He acts REALLY dumb and still wins =P

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh, most of these "seem" to fit Civilization 3, which is a pretty good game too. The AI shuffles around troops that makes no sense whatsoever. As to number 2, it's actually a fault of the game mechanics. A tank division losing to a phalanx of spearmen isn't even bad luck as such. With all sorts of defensive bonuses the phalanx has something like 1 in 3 chance of winning a combat round, and all units have just a few "HP", enhanced with experience (unlike Civ 2 where more advanced units had lots more HP too).

If I recall correctly, in Civ 3 the highest difficulty gives the AIs a slight technology research advantage, plus they're generally more aggressive towards the player. Third highest difficulty the tables are even.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Does anyone know for sure how the AI gets more difficult in Dominions 2 at higher difficulty levels? Does it get smarter or does it get bonuses?

Re: Ermor balance?
 

I think the main reason the AI opponents cannot handle Ermor is because of the simplistic way in which the game measures army size:
One troop of ANY kind = 1 army in the graph.

This is clearly bogus. I mean, 1 hydra = 1 militia? Not hardly.

So, the AI sees Ermor growing huge and is afraid to attack it. The human player knows that Ermor needs 2-3 times the army size just to be close to even. The AI has no clue on this. The AI then picks on Ulm, seeing the small army in the graph. The AI refuses to declare war on Ermor, thinking it has the baddest army, even though it is mostly paper thin. Eventually, since ermor is left alone, it DOES get the baddest army.

Also, the simplistic way in which the game keeps track of armies really warps the army size graph. Ermor is so much higher on the graph that the other races tend to squish down into the bottom of the graph, making it hard to see who is really doing well.

All they need to fix this is to modify the army size to make a troop approximately worth its true value. Something like 1*gold + 2*resources + Bonus (like for sacred) for each troop. A lot of programing perhaps, but far more realistic than what it does now.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

It gets more Dpoints (Design Points) to create their pretender is all.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

Actually, the AI isn't afraid to attack Ermor, but it doesn't do so successfully: Fighting Ermor requires that you exploit its weaknesses, rather than attempt to dogpile it with superior numbers. Even really good, strong troops can hold out rather well, but the AI doesn't build these: It builds tons of indy crap, which doesn't stand a chance against a mile wide mass of undead, as he does not back them with effective mages or priests. Furthermore, Death Magic, Ermor's primary mode, is the magic type most effectively utilized by the AI in battle, due to its simple and straightforward self-contained combos, which the AI itself likes the cast by default.

The Army graph is so misleading it's not even really useful. A vast army of Mictlan slave patrollers, while totally useless in battle, can rival the size of anyone's army, while contributing absolutely nothing in real combat performance. Besides, the AI is not daunted by visual squashing, since it is #blind and suffers no ill effects from lost eyes or the blindness affliction.

So how do you assess the fact that Ermor's troops are cheap-as-free, and have neither gold nor resource cost? Obviously, they're still worth SOMETHING.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

Maybe each troop should have a fixed value based on how strong they are perceived to be. That would be far better than the one-size-fits-all method currenty in use. As you say, Norfleet, the army size graph is not useful and can be very misleading.

Re: Ermor balance?
 

That's as inherently useless as an assessment based on pure numbers. The value of a troop can vary greatly by both technological level of game, and circumstance. The wrong kind of unit at the wrong time can be not only worthless, but even counterproductive. Does this mean that for every militia the player hires or acquires, his army strength goes down, as militias tend to do nothing but chew up upkeep while being difficult to get rid of? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif