Battling Ermoria
 

First of all, thank you all for the warm welcome. Barely registered, and just a few hours later I have a PM in my box. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Secondly, it is a pleasure to be here.

Thirdly, I have seen some topics on this but none that answer me satisfactorily. I often play Dominions with a friend, and he often (or always) uses Ermor and seems to defeat me without fail. That in itself is not very signifigant, as I seem to always lose regardless.

I think I have a lot to learn, but in general - what are some effective tactics in fighting the dead?

So far, I tend to use just my troops, I think my weakness may be I leave the AI to cast whatever spells it wants, and dont really bother powering anyone up but my pretender.

I usually make my pretender either a fighter(Wyrm) or a magic user(archmage/freak lord, etc), but I usually create what I think is referred here as a "rainbow mage", and don't bother giving anyone else magic levels.

Comments on the strengths(if ANY :P), and weaknesses of my playing style are quite welcome.

My favorite realms are Ulm, Man, though lately I gave Caelium a shot. Love the mammoths but can't stand the weak troops. Again I think my lack of attention to magic may be partially responsible for my ingame failures. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Welcome to the forum! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I'm still a bit new myself, but I'll just throw in my 2 €-cents:

If it's against undead Ermor, the obvious answer is "priests".

And even if you play Ulm (I like to play Iron Faith myself), DON'T neglect magic. Strong commanders still need good items, and you wouldn't believe what Ulmish smiths can do with their blade winds on a good day. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

A solid way to defeat Ermor is to play the nation most diametrically opposed to them: Marignon. First and foremost, Marignon has dominion which kills undead. Second, it has a wide selection of priests (which you should be using in abundance). And Lastly its national spell is Holy Pyre so right out of the box your fire mages should be able to massacare the undead.

In strategic terms you should also attempt to go to war with Ermor as soon as possible. Ermor gets most of its base troops for free and does not pay upkeep nor have supply restrictions. Attack them while your priests and fire mages have the relative advantage.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

So lets say the situation is a 2 player game on a relatively small map(40 provinces or so), and both players agree not to go to war for awhile so both nations take a 20/20 split on the land and thus have time to build up.

Lets say war starts on turn 50. With this much time to develop, does Ermor carry a heavy advantage?

My initial belief was they were terribly overpowered, but the consensus here as I've read it is that they're not overpowered at all, and they are very beatable, especially by a skilled player.

When you say their dominion kills undead, how do you mean?

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

I have to disagree with Ironhawk (and only in part because I am playing Ermor in a game that he is in http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif ) Of course this applies only to the undead themes of Ermor, which are most common.

Ermor's base troops are free, but this matters only if you attempt to fight them hand to hand with your base troops. Ermor, if he doesn't lose his troops in battles, may have several hundred or even thousand troops sitting around. However, most of these troops are completely useless. The weaker variants (Soulless for Ashen Empire, or Dispossessed Spirits for Soul Gate) are so bad in battle that about the only thing they can do is soak up hits. Longdeads for AE, or Spectral Legionnaires for SG, are slightly better. But they still have problems; longdeads never heal and have few HP, and SG's spectral soldiers have attacks that are negated by magic resistance. Pound for pound, these guys are really bad fighters.

It's true that Ermor gets stronger as the game goes on, but that is true of every empire. There's nothing special about Ermor. In fact, the longer the game goes on, the easier it gets to blow up huge numbers of undead troops.

Ermor's mages, while upkeep-free, are also tremendously expensive in initial cost. Its research is not really all that great, and its magical diversity (other than on the pretender) is practically nil.

Ermor's one big advantage is the number of points it has to spend on its pretender, which is far more than any other nation. Ermor's pretender will *always* be a competent SC, and will usually be more powerful than the pretenders of other empires, except those who focus on combat to the exclusion of all else.

Finally, Ermor has only one natural resource, magic gems. Most empires have gems, gold, and resources. They may tend to have more gems, but they have to spend this one resource on mages and many of their regular troops, that other nations could spend gold for. For instance, Ermor has to summon its archers, whereas other nations can buy them. Then they also have to spend their gems on summons and magic items like everyone else. Ermor has a horrible, chronic gem shortage.

Ironhawk's assessment of the Marignon dominion is wrong, but I have to take the blame, since I was the one that gave him the wrong information. Only the Marignon home province kills undead (and it continues to do so even if not controlled by Marignon). The rest of the Marignon dominion has only the usual enemy-dominion effects.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

But the usual dominion effect is still good.
Since the amount of freespawns and reanimationspawns depends on dominion.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

If you wait until turn 50 on that small map, yes Ermor has a big advantage. By then, they've killed all the population, making their 20 provinces a no-man's land for the living - no supplies, no resources, no gold income. Your armies starve when you try to invade his provinces, and you get very little for your efforts - magic gems, if there are any sites in the province.

And yes, you're making a mistake by only using / building up magic on your pretender. This is true against any nation, but against Ermor perhaps a little more so - the undead never have a problem with morale or fatigue, so your troops are just tiring themselves out until ... they die, after taking a handful of undead each, at most.

Your mages, though, can be very effective, especially with spells that effect an area. Many of these spells do more damage, and cover a larger area, if the mage is powerful in that area of magic. And Ermor's troops, by and large, are very vulnerable to these spells - little or no armor on most, and no healing between battles.

(Although they _will_ heal if visiting a friendly lab.)

Your pretender just can't shoulder it all by himself. Especially as either a Wyrm or a human rainbow mage.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Don't only magic non-healing units get repaired at labs? Not ermors undead.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Correct.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

To hijack this thread in the opposite direction, I want to what is the most effective way to play Ermor AE. I mean you have very little money, so what should the spending priority be: forts, temples, PD, independent troops (sages)?

And how do you push dominion as Ermor? I know Ermor easily has enough points to buy 10 starting dominion, but how can you help to make your dominion as fast as possible?

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

So, what's a good magical combo to take for your pretender to maximize his undead slaying abilities? [or to best let him reinforce his armies with magic to increase theirs, which is probably more useful]

And man, those ethereal units. How to crack an egg like that? Especially as a physical nation like Ulm?

A friend I play with has a summer lion obsession and they really tear through my armies. I'm considering next time attempting to use more magic, and try some of the magical/dead destroying/control spells since he usually uses a small group of normal soldiers and a truckload of dead and magical/summoned creatures.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

I'm not an expert at Ermor, but I'd say sages (when you can get them, since Ermor's research generally sucks), followed by indies. You still have to be careful, even if you can afford to hire them, that you can also feed and pay them afterwards.

Ermorian PD reeks, temples are pricey given your serious lack of funds (due to population-killing dominion), and forts, while useful, are even harder to afford than temples. In short, things that cost money are things to try to avoid, unless you have something that can give you a steady income (however small that may be). Ermor is a swamp-them-with-crappy-masses sort of nation, and about the only economy you have to speak of is gems, and even that's not great. Your goal is to expand as fast as possible to scarf up new gold-producing lands before your dominion turns them desolate, and look for gem sites while you're at it.
You buy that 10, and push it with your pretender and prophet. Your task isn't so much pushing your dominion as it is systematically crushing your enemies' temples so that they have nothing with which to impede the spread of yours.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Forge lots of magic weapons. No nation forges better than Ulm. Now you know why. They need it. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Actually, you do not have a real money problem. If you slow down your expansion to pillage any province you conquered at least one turn, money will be avaiable in good enough quantities to buy the much needed temples and castles. Choose Dominion 8 or 9, unless you are on a really small map, because you want to build temples and castles anyway, as they cause the heavier of Ermor's troops to spawn. This is especially true for Soul Gate.

Also, don't forget to add at least 1 point of pd to every province. While you have tons of freespawns in there, they usually come without a leader, and a surprise sneak attack will not rout them but dissolve them (since they find themselves on a battlefield without undead leadership).

Re: Battling Ermor
 

How much difference is between Ermor-specific undead (velites, legionnares et al) and general ones (soullesses, longdeads) in terms of usefulness, you reckon? If I've understood it correctly you can only get the specific ones in a province with a fort, while unforted get you truly crappy ones. And adding temples should give you those knights. (speaking AE theme)

I mean, would Ermor benefit from castles enough for them to be worth it due to "quality" of troops? Yes, troops are crap anyway, but I'm talking about different flavors of crap here. The research sucks, but how much indy mages can you afford anyway?

Re: Battling Ermor
 

I think I'll let someone else better qualified on Ermor than I discuss the finer nuances of crap ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

A Black lord makes a "moderate" combatant with jade armour charcoal shield plus flaming sword. Maybe reinvigoration belt or some other fatigue relief, lucky pendant or MR item, a hat (expensive).
As Ulm you can get the basic for 130 gold & 12 gems using smiths with hammers. The armour needs the pretender or an indep or forge of the ancients, which Ermor canot easily dispel. Forge of the Ancients makes the gem cost 5 too.

They are not all powerful but they are cheap enough to spam.

Pickles

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

The different kinds of crap are actually quite different, as said before, soulless aren't [censored], they are lower than [censored], they are what little micro organizms [censored] when they eat [censored].
On the other hand, you have the longdeads which are just ordinary [censored] (hence, much better than soulless), and if you take an arch-bishop (AE) and reanimate longdead horsemen, they are quite good.
They are easy to mass (~5-7 a turn in a good dominion), they are big and (relatively) strong units, but you can't kill them by massing troops on them because they come in huge numbers.
Also, using indies for research is not recommended imo because it keeps draining your funds, which are tiny anyway...
Your bucks are better spent on (cheap) castles protecting temples.
The best province you can get is one with a gold-producing mine, if you get one, castle and temple it for freespawn masses of protection (and if that province is deep in your territory, you can use them in the front lines).
Just my take on AE - Arch-Bishops are your friends.
They mass units easily, are great Undead leaders and are vital for your army's survival (increasing MR through blessings to avoid unwanted anti-Undead spells).
Also, if you want a strong elite mass (much smaller mass though) you can prophetize one and he can reanimate Lictors (even though it says something else, Ghouls IIRC).
One other awesome (yet super cheasy) tactic to take light fortifications is to take your huge mass of Longdead Horsemen and put it all on one Arch-Bishop:
What you do is you take a whole lot (the max his leadership allowes), give him only 1 horseman, put that horseman in the front and then put all the other horsemen (again, to the top of his leadership) in the 1 horseman stack.
Because they are so big (size 3 iirc) and in the front outside the lines of ordinary battle placement and in such a huge stack, they tend to start the battle INSIDE the enemy fortification.
The ones with wide walls and trenches are probably more "immune" to this "cheese" but its a nice tactic to pull against and AI (in MP - now that's just LAME).

Did anyone understand everything?

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

More thoughts on ermor:

Dominion 10 is IMO unnecessary. If you are trying to push your dominion, you are just naturally going to build enough temples to boost it. And you don't have infinite points, you just have a whole lot. You can spend your points better.

You don't have to do dominion-push to play Ermor. Without preaching, it's hard to "aim" your hostile dominion. If you push too much, you will probably end up annoying everyone around you, and then they'll all kill you. Especially with AE, which is not dependent on immortal units, you can easily advance out ahead of your dominion like everyone else, then plant temples in captured territory.

In reality the only thing your dominion does for you economically is generate freespawns. But the thing about the freespawn horde is that it tends to get blown up entirely or not at all. So you don't need to fight in friendly dominion to replace your losses.

Soul Gate only gets dispossessed spirits without a fort/temple, and only if there is still population alive in the province. Ashen Empire only gets soulless and plain longdead. In general, AE troops seem to be even more numerous than SG troops, although both of them come in bushels. AE units are larger and take up more space on the battlefield.

For SG, upgrading to a proper armored temple gives you ghosts, apparitions, and spectral soldiers. Ghosts and apparitions are genuine good units by any standard. Spectral soldiers rarely do any damage, but some of them cause fear and all of them are ethereal, making them effective at obstructing the enemy army. For AE, you upgrade your longdead and soulless to the warrior variant, and get longdead horsemen and/or knights of the sepulchre. These are also good units by any standard.

I almost never buy an independent mage. The upkeep (and even the initial cost, plus the cost of setting up a lab) will eat you alive. Er. Not alive. The only time I will buy an independent mage is if it has a particular path combination that does something I need, which can't be done conveniently otherwise. Buying sages/witches for research is not real good, IMO. Summon spectres and make skull mentors/lightless lanterns instead. Don't buy too many Dusk Elders, they are much better mages than Spectators/Spectres, but much worse researchers. You need to get the right balance.

As Ulm, use Blade Wind. Blade Wind is especially destructive to Soul Gate troops, which haven't any protection. Wrathful Skies/Orb Lightning work, but actually less effective against Ermor, because the armor negating and stun effects are wasted. The occasional fire spell such as Holy Pyre is also effective. Everyone that doesn't have earth, air, or fire magic should use priests. None of these will help you vs. Ermorian SCs. But they will all help a great deal vs. the regular troops.

Ermor is likely to bring assorted bad weather to battle. Their mages are also likely to cast spells that hurt your troops but not theirs, especially those that can be cast with death magic. Rigor Mortis, Terror, Foul Vapors (which only the pretender is likely to cast since it's not death), etc. etc. There are also plenty of spells that are more (or only) effective against undead. Learning these spells on both sides of the battle is key.

The purpose of Ermorian PD is to provide a leader for the random units that pile up. It's useless on its own. Ermor doesn't really need to defend its territory, anyway. Most likely a large portion of your territory won't do anything useful at all. Only the territory with >1 site, or a really good site, is even worth paying attention to, economically. Ermor has some problems in magically rich games, which give it more to defend, and also erode its natural gem advantage.

Undead units left without undead leaders will either dissolve or rout. They are like magical beings left without magical leaders. In both cases the determining factor seems to be whether the unit is lifeless or not. If lifeless it will dissolve, otherwise it will rout.

Ermor is not real good at defending castles because so many of the units are mindless. Once you've captured an Ermorian castle you have a real decision to make on whether to keep it, or blow it up. Ermorian castles have quality defense, but no admin or supply value at all.

Don't try to fight Ermor by cutting them up with your swords. There are just too many of them.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

It says wight. A lictor isn't really that different from a wight, they have similar abilities and statistics, but you can get extra lictors with the Black Laurel item.

Wow, that's got to be considered a bug. In MP I would consider this cheating.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Yeah, thanks for the advice. I'd figured out the 1 PD thing.

Also, I discovered that Ermorian priests can't preach but can reanimate. Any idea of the mechanics behind reanimate?

And oh yeah, thanks for reminding me about pillaging. I completely forgot about that.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

For the reanimation mechanics, check your manual. There's some tables what level of unholy priest reanimates how much stuff.

And don't tell us you bought the game second-hand and it came without the manual. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Magic is the central aspect of the game. I don't think you can be successful at Dominions without it, even if you are playing a relatively "non-magical" nation like Ulm. And to ignore magic when playing with Caelum, one of the magically strongest nations in the game, is definitely a mistake.

As far as defeating Ermor goes, there has been lots of good advice on that already. I especially like the suggestion of trying Marignon, their priests and Holy Pyre spells slaughter undead units.

If you want to stick with the nations you already know, invest in priests. You can form squads of flying Serpahs to strike behind Ermor's front lines, banish his free troops, and generally make his life miserable.

Also, remember that Ermor's ranged attacks are pretty much limited to javelins and a few spells. So archers, which Man and Caelum certainly have, are your friends.

But magic is definitely your best bet. A few mages with the right spells (many of them mentioned above by other folks) can destroy entire armies of Ermor's free undead troops.

Re: Battling Ermoria
 

Heh. Got the manual, but left it at home in Malaysia while I'm in the Solomon Islands. I had to call my mom internationally to get the CD key too.

One other thing I noticed: it is definitely better to attack province you have dominion in since you only get freespawns. Every turn that a province under your dominion that is not under your control is a turn that you lose out on freespawns.