Ermor?
 

How on earth do you deal with them?

They are the scourge of all other races given that their domain alone kills population that other races need for income and resources. If they are able to make it to mid game, how do you take them out (give the vast wastes you have to fight through to get at them)?

I have played them through to mid game in SP and stoped because it was to easy but have no MP experience of them.

Regards,
Goblin

Re: Ermor?
 

Basicly, build a lot of priests. There are also a lot of anti-undead spells and items that help out (holy pyre, herald lance). If you are preperared to fight them, they are not so tough. If you are not, however, then you will probably want allies to help out if it is an MP game.

Re: Ermor?
 

I'm in the same position, sort of...although I have a few other options at my disposal. I have been trying monk hordes with Vine Ogres as the front end meat shields. In one engagement, I had about 16 Monks (Man), and I wasn't impressed with the amount of undead they banished out of the 300 strong horde. I still ended up retreating after countless battle rounds. I'll admit that the banishment looked cool, like a light show, but didn't seem to do much against the undead horde.

Am I not using enough priests? or are they to low level?

Re: Ermor?
 

You are not using enough, else ermor is using more powerful undeads than thier normal freespawns. Level 2 priests are ideal banishers- partiularly Man's which are almost half price.

Re: Ermor?
 

Priests which have water magic can cast quickness on themselves for double efficiency (I think a water-9 blessing would work well in most cases as well).
Anyway, the ultimate undead horde (AE) killer is alteration-7 Bone Grinding, it doesn't say so in the spell description, but since AE undead are... Well... Bones, it grinds them up and kills them all, or atleast that's how I lost a horde of longdead horsemen to an AI once. It is however quite hard to get enough death magic levels on one mage to cast the spell (unless you are Ermor...).

Re: Ermor?
 

As said before, there are many anti-undead spells, items and even units. Using them, superior numbers of undead won't be enough. AI can't use these tactics correctly, and playing Ermor's, Pangaea's or C'tis' undead themes against AI is very easy.

Re: Ermor?
 

Astral mages casting mental attack spells like Paralyze, Mind Burn, Soul Slay, etc., ignore the mindless undead, and those spells have 100 Range and 100 Precision (but MR negates). If you are fighting the Ashen Empire theme, often the only units with minds will be Ghouls and the commanders. If you can kill alll the commanders, the mindless undead will stop fighting and dissolve.

Re: Ermor?
 

Er, don't you mean Wither Bones? Bone Grinding damages *all* units on the battlefield, normal and undead alike, including your own. Wither Bones is undead-specific.

CC

Re: Ermor?
 

A number of other spells are very effective against the petty undead hordes as well, presuming you have the proper mages. For example, Abysia can easily destroy huge armies of normal undead using spells like Falling Fires, never bothering to cast Holy Pyre or Banishment. Bladewind is also pretty good, especially against Soul Gate's ethereal but fragile minions.

And of course, one thing no one's mentioned here is the need for nature magic, as you really need to get wine skins or other supply producing items to go very far into Ermor's dominion (unless you're using summoned troops with no need to eat).

Re: Ermor?
 

I somewhat disagree : Banishment is largely level-dependent, and if you manage to have lvl 3+ priests they are much more effective.
However, in the case of Man they're just not available : so I'd advice to rather back the priests with bowmen and Air mages, for WG sure but also for lightning (LB, OB, TS) spells. To top it off add a dose of Bards for soothing songs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Ermor?
 

Let me rephrase my misguiding quote:
Bone Grinding auto kills all skeletal undead because they are made purely from bones.
I'm not 100% sure its true, but 300 Longdead Horsemen and some more misc. Longdead troops say otherwise.

So with one spellcast, you destroy all of the undead.

A good spellcaster for that is the Lich, you can easily give him the requiered Death paths and he is immortal, so he can attack the army, grind, and escape, with no risk at all (under friendly dominion) and with a great chance of destroying an entire (or most of) undead legion.

Re: Ermor?
 

I recently posted that in my current SP game Ermor had a few spots on the map where it had over 400 troop. But I found that I could win an open battle against it with an army of about 150 mixed troops, a couple of mages and a couple of priest.

Re: Ermor?
 

Solar brilliance too. Fairly high level, but destroys armies. My quickend priest-5 prophet with the forbidden light currently has about 6000 kills. Big spells like flame stome are good, as is fire storm. Not niefel flames.

Re: Ermor?
 

This whole discussion overlooks a few big problems with Ermor:

1. Ermor can pile out troops in the early game and can easily overrun most any nation by turn 20. You simply can't have enough priests nor high enough research early on to counter this. Ermor can easily rush better than any other nation.
2. Fighting Ermor nearly ALWAYS requires multiple nations to join in. This seems to me to be an obvious flaw in the game design if one specific nation normally can't be beat in a 1-on-1.
3. If you want to have at least a fighting chance to beat Ermor in a 1-on-1 in the first 20 turns, you MUST have a good anti-undead nation such as Pythium or Marignon. But who wants to only play those races just because Ermor is present?
4. If you start near Ermor, you have basically no chance to win the game. Even if you put together a coalition right off the bat and kill Ermor early, you will take too many troop losses doing so, plus you will have provinces with no population and no resources. So you will easily lose to the guy on the other side from you who has a normal nation with normal troops and lots of mages.
5. Soul Gate troops simply CANNOT be banished by level 2 priests. Their MR is too high. Even Level 4 priests have trouble banishing Soul Gate troops. Low priestly nations like Man and Ulm have almost no chance against SG Ermor.
6. Don't forget supply. If you cannot get a nature mage, plus nature gems, plus CONSTRUCTION 4 (!) you can't invade Ermor. Your starving, 5 morale, diseased troops will never win any battle in enemy territory.

Your best bet when an Ermor death theme is in the game? Start as far away as possible so you have time for the necessary research and artifacts needed to kill the undead! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Ermor?
 

Er - you mean unless you don't have earth mages (mechanical men, etc) death mages (make enough undead to let your mages destroy his), water/earth (claymen), or a variety of other non-eating troops. Of course - national troops are pretty much out.

Re: Ermor?
 

Sorry, I meant early game, like the first 10-30 moves or so. There are plenty of counters by move 50 or later, if you last that long. By move 80, pretty much any nation can beat Ermor.

But early on, you only have national troops available for the most part. And those don't work at all without supply.

Overall, death mages work the best, but you need research to make them useful. Ermor needs no research to fight an early war, which is a big problem fighting against them.

My son did show me in a game once that mass devils will utterly destroy just about any size undead army (easily a 30-1 ratio or so). Thirty devils led by a Demonbred killed a 250 undead army with barely a scratch. He might have lost one devil. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Ermor?
 

This is exactly why I ban all pop-killing dominions from games I host. Its cute, thematically, but it completely breaks down the incentive for war. Why bother attacking a nation if there is so little to gain?

I hope pop-killing dom is removed from dominions 3!

Re: Ermor?
 

most undead take extra damage from fire, and devils are faster and stronger than your average longdead, spectre, or vestal.

Re: Ermor?
 

I don't think undead actually take more damage from fire. Mummies do, but the ones that come in huge numbers (longdead, spectral whatever) don't.

However, there are lots of Fire (and Astral) spells that deal extra damage against undead, e.g. Holy Pyre. Incidentally, Holy Pyre doesn't harm Devils... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Devils rule over undead because they have so good stats that, even with superior numbers -> more hits against the devils, the undead can hardly even harm them. I imagine Fiends of Darkness would work just as well, or at least come very close.

Re: Ermor?
 

All in all Panther is right i think.

For most nations starting neighboring ermor is evil and they can only pray that ermor attacks another neighbor first or try to solve the issue diplomatically.
Some Nations might have a good chance earlygame though:

Ctis - Skelspam, eagle Eyes, dust to dust, sauros need no supply at all + even provide supply for some troops
Ryleh + Atlantis - Underwater advantages, vs. AE ermor Mind Burn, Soul slay etc.
Marignon - Holy Pyre starting spell
Pythium
Caelum in Vanilla
Pan CW - Perfect Ally for Ermor

In a 1on1 on CoT or a similiar map ermor would most likely win even vs. those nations though apart from caelum maybe.

Re: Ermor?
 

I would amend that to SG only, AE is quite a bit easier to deal with.

Re: Ermor?
 

i dont think bone grinding kills all undead but it does low AN damage and alot of undead have like 1 or 2 health so...

Re: Ermor?
 

High lvl priests (lvl 4+) with rune smashers and/or spell focci wrok very well against hordes. In on Marignon game vs A.I. ermor (they beat me- i made their pretender for them) i had a high inquisitor prophet with the sword of justice, spell focus and boots of quickness. Against chaff, priests like that can do extremely well. Also note that for Caelum and Marignon, the first PD commander is a priest (lvl 3 for Caelum) and that for Jotunheim, Man, Marignon, Vanheim and Mictlan, the second PD commander is a priest.

Re: Ermor?
 

but such high lvl priests (as i have been told and found out) are much less succesful than massed weaker priests (my fave is huge number of low lvl priests with w9 bless and 3 or more relief casters along with 1 maxed out priest. if you want my advice get a e9 n9 great mother because it gives an amazing paladin bless to paladins and although it berserks them it works wonders on priests (big reinvig) but unfortunately no quickness (get a paladin with herald lance and a shield (i suggest accursed) and then make him a lucky pendant, some armour and something else (preferably something making him etheral though i cant think of anything other than wraith crown/the robe) he gets a high protection and defense so most undead hits bounce off him, he has reivig for well.. reinvig and most attacks that get through are taken care of by luck and regen i find they are best ran in groups of 3 with some rather limited priestly support such as:1 divine blesser and maybe 2 banishers and an ivy king for relief

Re: Ermor?
 

does earthquake destroy ethereal undead. If so, it might me devastating to SG. Ermor is VERY strong early game, but can be countered effectively later on. Perhaps the best bet is simply to not attack, and try to stop ermorian armies (Lvl2 priests, devils, etc.) while forcing back the deadly dominion. Though this is not very easy, it might be the best option, since turn 50+ there are several counters to all but the most powerfl undead. I actually find BE ermor to be much more powerfull than the other themes. Not only do you have access to cheap undead fodder, but powerful S/D mages and tolerable (sort of) national troops. The dominions is less deadly, but many of the really good undead killers are unaffected. I am NOT an ermor player. Do NOT believe me. Thanks.

Re: Ermor?
 

i dont think earthquake hurts etheral (just get a mega AoE like shimmering fields or early on falling fires/magma eruption) and ae/sg are far stronger than broken empire, my personal favourite is sg but some people swear by ashen empire, i still like my paladin loadout because with that herald lance he can take out more pwoerful undead aswell

Re: Ermor?
 

Broken Empire has some interesting strategies, starts with Body Ethereal, they can combine living and undead armies very well, they Reanimate Longdead Legionaires... I'd really like to play them. Unfortunately, they have very weak mages. I'm not sure how or if they are changed for DomIII, but I'm expecting some minor improvements. I'd really like to see them have different sacred units, the current ones are inferior to Body Etherealized Principes.

I think BE Ermor is similar to Ulm in Dom:PPP - while it hasn't changed much, Ulm now has other options through themes, and has gotten several specialized troops that have opened different tactics. But even with Sappers and Siege Engineers, Ulm is weaker in the endgame. Ulm can shine, through very spesific route (Forge of the Ancients, lots of Constructs pumped out by the high-Earth pretender), and I'd like to try Broken Empire with pretender that could really benefit from Enchantment. I'm hoping something along the lines of W5E6 Daughter of the River in Dom3 - the priests will become sacred ( from this post ) and thus they would benefit from reinvigoration, and this would allow early Raise Skeletons, bonus for Claymen, and later bonus for Enlivened Statues.

Re: Ermor?
 

If I start next to Ermor, then I look at it as a chance to get a quick 10 death gems per turn. Ermor is more vulnerable than just about any other nation to early game conquest. They start out very slow - after all, it takes them 35-40 turns to reach level 9 research.

Re: Ermor?
 

yah, i'm w/ the "Ermor? /shrug" crowd... Its usually not hard to scare up some ally against them as well...

Re: Ermor?
 

W9 blessing and early research to Wind Guide (IIRC, and air nations only of course) should let you annihilate Ermor with indy priests. My worst (frequent) experience against Ermor is watching 4-5 soulless or spectral warriors advance on a couple priests... slowly... over many turns... avoiding every single holy beam, then slaughtering the priests. I imagine 50% quickness and bonus precision would resolve this problem...

Surround them with archers, not melee units, so that the troops can get kills too. Archers are almost as good as melee units versus undead (in melee) because of the huge stat disparity. So fatigue (and, versus spectrals, MR) is much more important than in normal battles, and swordsmen/spearmen have no better MR and usually no better fatigue than archers. Shields are nice, though.