Strategy advice wanted
 

I decided the best way to learn the various races was to play each race on the same map and see how it goes. Unfortunately, I'm running into big trouble:

Ermor, early era. I keep getting utterly smashed. It's the usual story--things seem to be going ok (this time I just polished off the last lesser land power and dominion-killed Oceania on the same turn, only one enemy left) and then suddenly it's like my troops don't know how to fight anymore. He's got a bunch of mages that are way more powerful than anything I can recruit or afford to empower.

What in the world am I doing so wrong?

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

You probably need to get more mages and research more, late game mages, summons and SCs dominate the battlefield so try some of the following:
Research construction and forge boosters for your mages to cast big spells

Research conjuration/enchantment to get summoning spells, combined with construction this can give you access to thugs/SC's(summon black servants, spectres, banelords and maybe even wraithlords/tartarians) and equip them either to solo enemy armies or support your armies

Research evocation for battle magic(iirc you have fire which is obvious for artillery, you can also get things like shadow bolt, banefire, maybe even nether darts) which can also go well with conjuration(phoenix power ect to boost skill level in battle) or construction (forged boosters).

Research enchantment for skele spam, if you have d2+ mages(iirc you do) they can cast raise skeletons. While a single mage casting this isnt impressive, a bunch of them can have a real effect on the battlefield.

Research alteration/enchantment for troop buffs, casting spells like luck and body ethereal on tough troops(sacred cavalry, principe ect) can make them alot tougher, as an example with both of those enchantments on a group of men only 1 in 8 hits will effect them(ethereal stops 3/4, luck stops half of the 1/4)

Take an awake/sleeping SC pretender(any tough pretender who can cast some buffs on himself/solo indies without buffs)

Try a bless strat, f9w9 makes your sacreds both survivable(shield, 21 def, 13 health, recuperation), fast(+50% movement) and hard hitting(14atk, light lance, hoof, 50% chance of extra attack, all attacks flaming)

You could use any combination of these or plans all of your own, telling us your strategy would help us in helping you.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

You actually havve fairly easy time with reaseach, with easy skull mentors. I personally would research ench 3, cnst 4, evo 3 first.

I personally wouldn't bother with a bless strat, but would rather take lots of positive scales. Otherwise, play as many human nations (eg. pythium), nationals to expand, research to a decent level, and then win with magic.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

First off, I get the feeling you are empowering way too much. Almost the only reason you will want to empower is to get at least one mage capable of doing high level forging/rituals in a given path. For instance, say you have ton of air gems, but only air 3 mages. In this case, spending the gems to empower a level in order to get booster items and air queens might be a viable choice.

Now, as for what your mages should be doing in battle, I advise phoenix power + fireballs, or raise skeletons. For troops, you can usually get by recruiting almost only lizard legionaries, and triari/alae when you need the gold for mages/mercs/buildings.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Empowerment has a place in blood magic too, since it is easy to pick up a massive quantity of slaves (expecially via wish).

What type of pretender are you using?

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

The only empowering I have done is to help with site searching. I'm saying that the levels I have observed with the enemy mages are higher than I see any way to obtain.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Empowering for site searching can be valid too, but you never have to go farther than level 2 (to use remote site search spells).

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

My advice is a little different-not much, but a little. First of all, Ermor has great troops for using strategy on the battlefield, so if you're willing to take the time and effort to script out, and think about, every troop on the battlefield, it can really pay off with Ermor. Second, Ermor has great sacred calvalry-they're fast, strong, and heal afflictions, which means you can have them around for a long, long time. I personally like to put a Nature bless and an Earth bless on them, atleast 4, but more is fine too, after all when you don't have to worry so much about getting afflicted, the longer you can have your troops on the field, the better. They're mainly good for taking out archers and flanking anyway, and I feel it's better to concentrate on blesses-like earth and nature-which will help your units survive longer, rather than fire and water, which will give you a combat machine that may help you a lot in the early and middle portions of the game, but will leave you with lots of levels in two of the weakest branches of magic. Don't use Ermor calvalry to try and slaughter the enemy, kill them with your footsoldiers and use the calvalry to grind the enemy soldiers, mages, and archers down, instead. You're going to have a lot more foot for the same price, and Ermor's soldiers are cheap and respectable. Lizard auxiliaries are fine, but the other troop types also have their place. Remember that Ermor is strong in priestly power, not so much in magic. You're going to want to spread your people around so you've got lots of researching "camps" and in the long term have lots of the younger mages rather than Auger Elders, because those Elders might be gone in a year from disease.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

And, as already stated, remember that you only need lvl2(1 in the case of death and maybe astral) to preform a lvl9 search in that path(via remote searching) and if you can get an s3 mage you can do a lvl9 search from every path by casting acashic record.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

acashic is 25 gems (!), so unless frequency is very high it often won't pay for itself.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Yea, i tend to only cast it on forest or mountain provinces where i should be finding many sites(and it beats empowering mages to all the paths you dont have http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif)

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Great for SP, rubbish for MP.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

For a start I suggest just you forgot to empower anyone, it's a very inefficient way of wasting tons of gems unless you really know what you're doing (eg boosting that mage to Air4 and you have Cons4 and still a lot of Air gems to make Bags/helms booster).

I'm unclear about what you did encounter : in SP I've never seen the IA empower mages, rarely boost them and overall it doesn't have enough of it by far...If you're playing MP well that's life with a better opponent http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
With Ermor Early you should get as much Augur Elders as you can, using them as artillery with Fire spells (they have access to the Fire Skull item), and research to Ench4 and Conj3 to summon Banes, Wights and Behemoths for example, these units are strong. Give some a Skull Staff to make them up to D4.
Also make some Skull mentors to boost research, give them to Flamen or such that you can recruit anywhere.
Then go Ench5 for Pale Riders, Ench6 to summon the dreaded Banefire Archers, and Conj5 for Bane Lords, those are even stronger and with some equipment can kill many foes.

A Water9 bless on Equites is not really efficient but fun and usable in SP, as they have a good def. Fire4+ is required in this case IMHO as they have a paltry attack (that's weird as they're supposed to be super-elite ?)

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Single player--I don't think about playing a game MP until I can consistently beat the AI.

It was a whole pack of mages with death 4. My troops would rout before they could close.

I never found a death gem the whole game.

I never lived long enough to reach such levels.


I finally won one as Ermor. 4 opponents. One attacked me, basically the whole game was my cav stomping on him. I had two provinces with contact with other hostile forces, I put high defense in both and they kept wasting their troops on inadequate attacks on those. I dominion-killed both of those. As I was closing in on the guy I was dealing with he was dominion-killed by the remaining enemy--and then a few turns later I dominion-killed him.

The only difference I can see is that I started out with a more defensible starting point. I was on a peninsula and there was no water enemy.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

You never got to around lvl5 research? You realise that you should be aiming to recruit atleast 1 mage per turn right?
And as for never finding a death gem, afaik all ermorian eras have some starting death income and mages who can cast dark knowledge(remote death site searching)

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

How long were your game, and what map ? Unless it was very crowded (a 40-prov map with 8+ players) you should live at least to turn 30, and be able to have a decent research and get gems. You need to send a couple Augurs out to search sites early, then cast the site-searching spells (Dark Knowledge for Death, Augury for Fire, Astral Probing for Astral).

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

They don't have any in the early age.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Then alchemy will be needed early on.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Manual site-search can be done. It is easiest for Death, because some Death sites can be recognized from the fact that they change the Death scale. Even if they aren't found with D1 or D2 sitesearcher, Dark Knowledge can be cast once even a single site has been found.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

The death sites that increase death scale are all lv3 or above. Death does have proportionately the largest number of low-level high income sites, so the D1/D2 manual searches could very well pay off.

Edi

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Wrong !
In a rather normal setting (50%) you'll find 1-3 sites producing an average of 1.5 gems each, so you'll get 3 gems/turn, refunding you in 10 turns or so...

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

50% is rather normal ONLY for Early Age. And I'm not sure if the default is 45% or 50% even there.

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

You also have to factor in the option of a manual search...if you can find half the paths in a province with a 0-gem local search with your nationals then all of a sudden your refund time has doubled. It depends on the nation you have though...Shinuyama's bakemono mages have something like 10 magic paths they can manually search for, while it'd take Ulm a small army worth of mages to find a level-0 site.

You also need to have conj 5 researched and a really large pile of pearls to make this feasible, since even if all of those sites you're finding with the search produced pearls you'd still need about 150 stockpiled to cast acashic every turn until you were making the 25/turn it's costing you.

-Micah

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Uh, you do realize that lv 0 sites are automatically visible? It's lv 1-4 that you have to seach for and effectively only lv 1-3 because there are so few lv 4 sites and almost all of them rare to boot.

Edi

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Yes, it was hyperbole, along with the 9th and 10th path of magic that those shinu mages are looking for. I guess some people may have been genuinely confused though if they didn't know the game that well, so probably a fair comment on my post =)

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

45% EA, 40% MA and 35% LA. I personally usually play my SP games with max (70%+ sites), cause they are fun...

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Hey, it's 10 pm and I'm on helldesk duty, do you really expect me to think straight? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Edi

Re: Strategy advice wanted
 

Yes it was 40%; not 50%, but it doesn't change the numbers much... Anyway I didn't say that Acashic everywhere was a good idea, just that it can pay for itself if you cast it from time to time on a high magic freq province (waste, swamp, "magic rich if marked on map..).
Manual searches don't cost gems but cost valuable mage-time and are a lengthy process, evreything has its pro and cons (hi Gandalf ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) and I usually use all methods - first "manual" searches, then magic, and possibly Acashic if I have the resources later on.