Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

So I recently have the full game and am enjoying it, but I'm looking for some thoughts on the various undead nations available in the game. I figure that any serious undead strategy requires one of the nations with priests with undead specific spells, so that's pretty much late C'tis, MA/LA Ermor, and LA Pangea. I'm playing as LA Ermor now and they are pretty amazing, particularly in how simple they are for a new player, but I have the feeling that MA Ermor is probably a lot better if run by someone who has some idea what they are doing. Can anyone enlighten me on the pro/con aspects of these nations (beyond the manual). Which is the most lethal in the hands of an expert?

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Depends on quite a few things. The AI isn't too good at dealing with the deadly dominion of LA Ermor. For the otehrs, it depends very much on your style of play and your strengths. Some nations just suit some players better than others for some reason. For example, I've always been partial to Ulm and Abysia because they fit my style of play while the EA Pangaea and others that rely on sneaking and trickery are far more difficult to play with equal effectiveness. Though they CAN be played very effectively.

Edi

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

As edi said, it all depends on your style of play. MA ermor is strong, it has strong reanimating priests, strong death mages, good(ethereal) sacreds, tough troops and strong mages who can summon alot with death and be useful on the battlefield with spells like raise skeletons, shadow blast and nether darts. MA ermor is fun, it is a nation where the living march to war with the dead and it can get you into the game quite quickly with its versatility.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

MA Ermor, a bless strategy on those ethereal vestals is very, very nasty. Especially early game. Mid game, getting communional master/slave thing going. Use it to bombard a living enemy army with multiple shadow blasts. Shadow blast is a truely devestating AOE spell. Late game, as MA or LA Ermor utterdark everyone to death, with perhaps burden of time to soften them up? Not tried this end game winning strategy yet but it should work. Apparently for MA Ermor, enslavement/master enslave is a game winner as well...

Those were just off the top of my head, death has soooo many nasty tricks.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

For MA ermor getting death globals up helps immensely. If your using many undead with few living units both utterdark and burden of time are useful where-as any ermor strategy can be greatly helped by the global well of misery which increases your income and gives you 21 death gems per turn.

Pale riders, wraithlords, banelords, tartarians, legions of wights and spectres/black servants are all good summons which ermor can get access to(although tartarians may require your pretender) and shadow blast, nether bolts, ghost riders and life after death(and many many more) are all good spells to aim for.

Magic is very important to ermor and to help research those spells quickly they can forge skull mentors, greatly speeding up their research and, with their very useful magic they can also forge lucky pendants, antimagic amulets, horror helms, robes of shadow are various other items to kit out thugs/SCs.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Thanks very much, all. I'm not tied to MA ermor - I'm just thinking about it since it has an economy and thus far LA ermor pretty much spares me from that part of the game. Which is cool, but I should probably learn it. Plus, gold + magic have to yield more versatility than just pure magic. MA Ermor, with it's long list of national spells and incredibly versatile priests, seems like the natural choice for a more flexible death approach.

Any late Pangea or C'tis players want to chime in? Pangea seems really interesting, but are you just racing to Carrion Woods to end up essentially as LA Ermor? Not that I think their combo of all Recuperating native troops + Foul Air would be a bad thing in that case, but it seems like the long way around.

Meglobob - most people seem to recommend dual bless where they recommend it at all. Obviously, high death for death weapons, but were you thinking of a dual? And why is master enslave only for MA Ermor?

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

One thing I don't like about LA Ermor is the micromanagement. You have to constantly move your undead troops from the provinces they spawn from, to the front lines.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Those were both strategy's used by a MA Ermor player(not me) in MP to great effect. He went through Jotunheim like a knife through butter, I intend to try those strategy's out fully myself playing MA Ermor, as they seem like great fun, when I get time, just 1 of the many nations/strategy's I looking forward to trying out in the future. Master enslave will probably work for anyone with astral mages, however MA Ermor very, very quickly seemed to amass 32 communion slaves + masters to carry this out. Also Ermor as access to alot of death gems usually, which means skull mentors, which means enslave mind/master enslavement/shadow blast are very quickly researched.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Forget Death weapons, Fire weapons at Fire9 is better. But anyway it's not that useful on Vestals IMHO, their weapons already being magical (plus F9 is really of not much use for MA Ermor..).
Personnally I'd just go for a W9 bless (quickness), with some Fire (to increase attack) or Astral (to increase MR, as Vestals are banishable).

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

S9W9 is very nasty on vestals. With ethereal, twist fate, great defence and high mr they are very hard to kill. Their speed from w9 allows them to quickly approach the rear of the enemies army and their survivability lets them slowly grind the enemy down when they get there.

S9D9 could also work, not only does it provide you with access to high level spells such as the death globals, tartarians and master enslave(without communion or with it) but it lets them do alot of damage to SCs/expensive units without magic weapons/lots of attacks(ethereal, twist fate, very hard to banish and death weapons to stack afflictions).

LA pangaea is fun but, without building your whole strategy(or atleast most of it) towards massing undead it will only remain a fairly small part of your strategy.

LA ctis is slightly better for raising undead imo. They dont need any research to summon their undead priests and can use them well. They have fairly cheap death mages who can summon these reanimators and can cast the deadly battlefield spell banefire. When reanimating they can also get lizard undead who, iirc, are better in general than regular longdead.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Went away to a party, came back to some nice advice.

In my most recent MA Ermor restart, I'm trying an imprisoned oracle, S9D9, with Magic 3 Sloth 3, dominion 6, and possibly something else... but I think that's it. I'm on one of the premade maps with 200+ provinces, since my large/random LA Ermor game ended before I got anywhere near 9th level spells. I appreciate those saying that F9 or W9 are better for sacred, but part of the whole allure of the undead forces is the kind of spells high level death magic brings, and I really wanted wish. Plus, even without Twist Fate it seemed that the vast majority of the early/midgame damage my vestals were taking was Banishment, so Astral it is.

shovah - were you saying C'tis is better than MA Ermor, or just than LA Pangea? I could see it either way, since Ermor's high level mages are very pricey and if lizard-dead are better than human dead that's a reasonable argument. And any idea why the book claims that the Sacred Serpents are unsuited to a bless approach?

pdf - I don't yet understand the game mechanics enough to grok the pros and cons of death vs. fire. Are you saying that fire weapons are actually better than death weapons, or that the attack bonus is better than the affliction bonus?

tibbs - I agree. I actually didn't find out that you can raise armed soulless from battlefield corpses until I played MA Ermor, since I had so many freespawned mound kings that I just threw them with freebie longdead/soulless/ghouls at most problems and rarely bothered slowing down to reanimate.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Keep in mind that magic 3 will lower your banish resistance (the research may well be worth it though, I'm not ermor savvy). In any case, trying to fight outside your dominion if you see any armies of priests would be advantageous if you've got a high magic scale, although the astral bless will help out plenty regardless.

I believe sacred serpents don't lend themselves to a bless strat because they're horribly craptastic units on the whole.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

I was saying that ctis was better than pangaea. Instead of sloth3 magic3 try order3 sloth2 misfortune2 magic1. You will get alot more gold(25% more than your previous set-up) and only -1rp on your mages.

Sacred serpents arent good for bless strats. They have low prot that cant be boosted with an earth bless. Low defence that cant be helped much(even with w10 they only have 12def) with a water bless and only a single attack so they cant make use of a death9/fire9 bless.

In general, fire9 is better than death9 because: It does more damage, it increases your chance to hit, it can set enemies on fire and death bless needs the enemy to fail a mr test to do its extra damage. Those shadow vestals of yours will be very helpful for holding the enemy in place and grinding them down and if you are facing an jotuns or early thug/SC's(probably pretenders) without magic weapons they will be amazing.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

If its income you want, I'd rather play with Turmoil-3 Sloth-3 Growth-3 Luck-3, much less of those devastating bad luck events, and eventaully your income will be better off. (A quick test game I made showed that while Order-3 was better in the first 10-20 turn, after 30 turns you are probably better off with Turmoil-3 Growth-3 Luck-3, though one game isn't statistically viable)

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Also, besides the gold, you get loads of extra gems, free troops, bigger chance of heros turning up, free magic items and spells like cross breeding give you better effects.

However, the first 20 turns are the most crucial and in that time, with those scales, you are at a serious disadvantage. Especially if you only have a small empire.

I think order is better for small maps, well the luck/turmoil/sloth/growth combo fantastic for big maps with a high dominion, 9 or 10 and a powerful combat pretender, dragon etc...

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Well, obviously each pick is good for different games, different people and different strategies.
I just wanted to remind that Turmoil-3 Luck-3 Growth-3 is a viable alternative to Order-3.

And I assumed the extra gems,magical items, units and heroes and cross breeding were obvious advantages. Then again, I guess they aren't always obvious http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Both ! F9 gives +4 Att and Fire weapons (6AP attack), Death9 gives 350% affliction (not very useful IMHO) and Death Weapons are only 2AN damage *but* resistable by MR

Codes :
AP = armor piercing damage, armor protection halved
AN = armor negating damage, ignore all protection from armor
MR = Magic Resistance

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

But death9 is useful for stacking afflictions on SCs ect and death also(imo) generally has better spells. I would still say that fire is generally a better bless than death though.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

The original poster was playing SP, so he'll have no SC to fight http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ...

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Also useful on any other expensive/rare units that are tough(alot of good sacreds, jotuns, pretenders ect)

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Would you recommend the turmoil/luck/growth 3 combo over order 3 for races that have reanimators? I generally do pretty well against indeps with a screen of soulless backed up by missle troops (and, in the case of MA Ermor, Vestals). I'm assuming that the reason Order 3 is better in the early game is in aiding early conquest, but that's precisely why I like playing with reanimators. Or is it more to do with needing to throw out multiple fortresses in the same time period?

On a related note - would you recommend Luck 3 as an addition to LA Ermor's weaponized Turmoil/Cold/Death/Sloth 3 dominion? I would think the free gems and free battle fodder would be good pickups for them, given their almost purely magical economy, but some small part of me likes the totally hostile to others approach of the Ermorian domain.

On a totally unrelated note - does Twiceborn cure afflictions and old age? I'm thinking of using LA Ermor with a Crone, tossing twiceborn on her, and then burning her out with a fever fetish, but the whole point is to get a decent combat pretender on the sly and if she's perm-crippled it's not worth it.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

1) Generally, if you can get by without the extra gold early on, then Turmoil/Luck/Growth is the superior alternative.
I think Reanimtors are a good example of when you can probably get by with less gold early on. Having good early summons (like Magma Children) to replace the troops the extra gold would've got you (the extra gems from events can actually help funding those summons), is another case where you can skip the gold.
I'd also reccomend it (though less strongly) for nations with mainly heavy infantry - the resources are a stronger limit on early strength, and the free militia you may get can work instead of the light infantry you don't have (though don't always need).
2) LA Ermor is always Turmoil/Cold/Death/Sloth/Luck 3 for me, sometime I take magic for research or drain for MR, but the rest are always the same.
You should bear in mind that positive dominion effects from your dominion don't positively affect enemies, so luck-0 and luck-3 are just as destructive to the enemy. Furthermore, taking Turmoil-3 Misfortune-3 is suicide, so I don't think there's much of an alternative to Luck-3.
Other reasons for Luck-3 include:
Free gems are awesome for a nation that uses gems as its currency.
Free money events are great, since you still need gold for fotresses and temples and labs (which aside from the lab all provide improved freespawns).
Free fortress/mine events are pretty nice too since cash is hard to come by.
Another good reason is that with Death-3, you can get the "Uber rich person died in your country and you got all his stuff" event, so LUCK LUCK LUCK!
3) IIRC it doesn't, but I'm not 100% sure, been a while since I last used it, and to pay attention to afflictions? :O
It makes sense if the afflictions remain, just like an immortal keeps afflictions after rebirth (though they also have the ability to cure those over time.)

EDIT: One final note - bear in mind that Turmoil-3,Luck-3,Growth-3 is risky in MP (compared to Order-3), since the extra income from Luck isn't guaranteed, but also since there's (IIRC. I didn't make the calculations) a bigger chance of suffering a fataly bad event (like losing a building early on, or an unrest event on turn-2), though as the game progresses the bad events turn from fatal, to a mildly annoying statistic, far outweighed by the good events from Luck-3)

EDIT2: Fixed some stuff :X
Also, forgot to say "2^aleph" is stronger than you are http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif (even though you kick aleph0's *** http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif)

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

For LA ermor, imo, turmoil3 sloth3 cold3 death3 luck3 magic1 is the way to go. Plenty of points for a fairly versatile, high dominion, awake lich queen, good research and lots of luck(although you need to kill the militia asap due to upkeep)

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Its much funnier to use them to pillage the province they are in to 0 population and watch them starve http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
(Though I usually just send a half zillion troops led by 1/50 zillion freespawn commanders to pillage the province to supplylessness)

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Shovah - didn't catch the upkeep with the militia. I have a bunch running around, will have to stab them asap. Wish I could Imprint those tossers into something useful, but I suppose I could suicide charge them at a moderate enemy and pick up the corpses afterwards.

Agrajag - I don't get the other aleph references, but thanks for your advice. Right now I'm playing LA Ermor with the scales you recommended and it's going a lot easier. And in a nice surprise (for me at least, I'm sure it's old hat to everyone else), in my other game of LA R'lyeh, at domain 6 or less and Growth 3 has positive population growth, while around 7 it's balanced or just teetering on a very slow decline (and given how many prophets I have I could probably have kept it at 6 and still worked some decent domain expansion if I'd known that was the break point). I'm playing starting Domain 5, Turmoil 3 / Luck 3 / Growth 3 / Magic 1 / Sloth 2 / Cold 3 (I think I recall someone saying that Cold/Heat have no effect underwater) and having a blast. I just wish more spells worked underwater.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

I'm glad you're having fun, and that my advice is helpful http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
As for the Aleph references: Aleph0, Aleph and 2^Aleph are (in very simplistic terms) "orders" of infinity.
AFAIK, They are called so for the Aleph right at the beginning of "einsof".

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Ah and my inaccessible cardinal beta beats all your alephs together and more! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Another note aleph: You should, if at all possible, get your dominion up to lvl 9 or 10 with ever LA ermor pretender you make.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

My current LA Ermor leader of choice is a Lich Queen with 10 Dominion and excellent Astral and Death magic. I'm sure there are more optional mixes of elements for a combat pretender, but astral and death do fine for me, and I really like Immortality with such a high dominion.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Yes, thats a nice build. One thing i would suggest is try to get some other paths in there(specifically elemental magic but maybe nature too) mostly for forging items to kit out SC's and thugs.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

I don't find that to be too much of my style for LA Ermor. I'm often assembling small armies out of the freespawns and throwing them at whatever is handy. I usually have more troops available for smashing indeps than I know what to do with, and I tend to use battle magic, Wailing ladies, and dominion affecting spells to wipe out opposing pretender's armies. I can see forging for Ryleh (who also have a lot more natural advantages at it, given that they have pretty much everything but air/blood/fire in their available recruits) given their ability to mix freespawn and chosen recruits - a couple ice pebble staves or black bows in the hands of commanders / cultists can really add up. But I've only scratched the surface of gameplay thus far, so perhaps that's something I need to try.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Earth is a potentially very valuable path for Ermor; most of the more common free-castle or free-income sites for magic provinces are Earth. A bonus 100-gold site will pay you 200 when taxed 200% even if all the population is dead.

Fire can also help for the alchemy income, but it gives you less free stuff like free fortresses.

A quasitraditional Dom2 build involved getting most paths at least at level 2, except for blood -- blood is almost completely useless for the Ashen Empire since you will rapidly lose population and it's difficult to get blood slaves. It's harder in Dom3 now that randoms tend to be restricted; for instance, you can't get a blood spectre, so you would end up having even fewer effective hunters than before.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

I tried the all 2+ with an Enchantress, threw Twiceborn on her, killed her off, to try to protect her from Burden of Time. She got diseased when she died, but it had no effect on her as a Wight. However, when Burden of Time came out, she started collecting afflictions like mad. Scrap that game and that idea. I guess I could just give her Elixir of Life instead.

My current build ideas are either Lich Queen with Water/Earth/Nature 3, Astral 5, Death 6, or Master Lich with 2 Fire/Air/Earth, Water/Nature 3, Astral 5, Death 6. The Master Lich's fragility makes me nervous, but I suppose I can keep him out of harm's way with magic, and he is immortal. Both the Queen and the Master can afford to summon Naiads for clams, which made me really happy when I realized that was viable since it really drove my last Ryleh game (I know, it's probably old hat to everyone else...).

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Master Lich won't die as long as he's in your dominion. If he "dies", he is back to your home province. As Ashen Empire, your dominion should be as strong as possible. So you can use him for everything but waging wars deep inside enemy lands. Immortality also means that he heals any afflictions he might get, btw.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Both masterlich(cheap paths) and the lich queen(high dom, med price paths) can get high dom and versatile magic with LA ermor.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Do either of you have strong thoughts on the choices between the two? My thoughts seem to change after every game, but right now Master Lich is looking pretty good for a long game - F/A/E/N 2 W 3 S 6 D 5 lets him start out as a site searcher, kick off the Naiad/clam economy, and move easily to S 9 or D 9 with items alone - and if need him for an SC I can always Wish him to power. Is including Wish in my strategies sort of besides the point for Ermor?

Aside 1 - is there a way to know which creatures are vulnerable to aging? Undead not, obviously, and I'd assume demons and any recuperating creature. Anyone else?

Aside 2 - How does the national spell Soul Gate work? It's not in the manual and its blurb isn't clear.

Aside 3 - every once in a while, when playing LA Ermor with dominion 10, I get a message that my troops have been beaten somewhere, and I pop to the location to find a place with reasonable amounts of my dominion way the heck in the middle enemy territory where I have never been. What's going on here.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Your dominion creates free undead spawn, thus a enemy province is getting your undead spawned in it, resulting in a battle of PD vs undead spawn.

Why the dominion spreads so far away is strange...I have had this with other 10 dominion nations, was like getting free spy reports.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

It's a special event that sees another player attacked by 'ermorian cultists'. If they win, you get the province and a handful of troops. It's linked to misfortune and death scales, IIRC.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

So, not really a function of anything I do, then.

Soul Gate - I get it, roughly, but I'm still looking for details. Is the dealout random? I know it varies by temple, but there's several kinds of ghoulies and I like some of the rarer ones.

New Aside - is there any way to automate site searching? I use Dark Knowledge for all the death sites, but it gets really tiresome for the others and I don't have the numbers of Astral Mages, or the desire to throw around so many pearls, to make Akashic worthwhile. Is there any way to automate either physical searching or spell based searching? (And if not, may I suggest the latter for dominions 4?)

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Oop - nevermind on the searching question, there's a topic easily found on that.

I'm fully in favor of the Master Lich now, BTW - in part due to easier multipathing, and in part due to the extra misc item slot. Ring of Wizardry/Ring of Sorcery/other path boosting item is really nice.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

If you can get the masterlich to dom9-10 with the paths you want cheaper than the lichqueen go for it, otherwise i would probably go with the queen.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Regarding the choice between Lich Queen and Master Lich - I just use the exact same build with both pretenders, and see which one costs less points, and choose according to that.
The difference in the chassis itself isn't that important, since neither pretender is a good candidate for turning SC.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Well imortality, awe from the dominion and versatile paths for buffing makes them both atleast decent thugs and, iirc, the lich queens stats arent too bad.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

But you might as well use your Immortal Etheral national summons commanders (which also have pretty good stats), and keep your lich busy casting spells or forging items or using his/her awesome research capabilities.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

A fun bizaro world Ashen Empire Ermor you can try now is 3-Order, 3-Growth, and a Prince of Death with 4-5D magic. Then spam castles/temples everywhere.

As an aside, 3-growth mostly counteracts the death dominion of Dreamlands Ryleh.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

From my testing with 3-growth and Dreamlands Ryleh the population does seem to slowly increase.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

It's kind of random. The number killed per turn doesn't seem to be steady or consistent. I think it's related to the number of freespawn generated. But these spawn are not created every turn.

I got a random +pop event in my capital, which hung in there around 31185 or so, but has begun to decrease again as my dominion goes up and the number of spawn generated increase.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Oh, as an aside, the reason you can play "bizarro" world AE Ermor now and not before is because in Dom2 your capital began with only 5k or 7.5k pop anyway (i forget which). In Dom3 your capital starts full and so is worth preserving if you cherish hopes of a large gold reserve.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Yea, getting gold with LA ermor is fun but i personally think magical versatility(and a dominion that cripples your enemies) is more important to them than some extra freespawn.

PS:Growth dreamland is fun, even more-so when you remember enemies dont benefit from your good scales.

Re: Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice
 

Yeah, I think over the course of a few turns I decided that for 3 growth R'yleh, dominion 6 or less = slow growth, dominion 7 or higher = slow shrinkage. I'm happy it's still killing others, but mostly I like the idea of it spreading insanity while I have commanders who can deal with it.

I only really ran into gold problems with Ermor under Utterdark, and that due to 30-40 Witches/Enchanters/etc. I'd hired to boost my research. Sure, you're not making very much, but your national armies don't have gold upkeep. I just tax the heck out of everything I come across (since they're going to die anyway, I might as well have them die in a manner that nets me the most cash possible) that I'm not hoping to recruit from and drop a temple anywhere I think I can defend it - I never ran into cash troubles past the very early game. I'm down with Bizarro Ermor for variety, but I'd have a hard time defending it as a useful build.

Master Lich is more efficient for a rainbow mage. With Turmoil/Sloth/Death/Cold/Luck 3 and Dominion 10 the Lich Queen gets to the magic screen with 453 points, the Master Lich 414. There's 6 non-blood schools you'd have to start a new path with, and the Queen is paying 20 points more for each than the Master. So she ends up effectively 81 points behind him, and he also gets the extra misc slot.