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LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Hey all,
Fairly new to the game and am enjoying it a lot! However, in reading the manual, playing several games and reading the boards, I see that there are very strong opinions on LA Ermor, most negative. My question is, I personally find the traits very intriguing and I think played and set up properly LA Ermor could be potentially unstoppable and unbeatable, and some of what I have read is to this effect. So basically: Is it worth trying to be a 'LA Ermor' master? Will this get me shut out of MP games? Is it too cheap? What's the real pulse on this issue out there??? THawk |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Your biggest problem with LA Ermor in MP will be that absolutely everyone will be out to kill you the second they encounter you since your dominion will kill their population. That frequently means that anyone and everyone on your borders will gang up on you just to get rid of you and divide up the spoils before they are ruined. There is really no good way for you to use diplomacy to full effect because of that handicap and your hordes of chaff are there basically just to absorb hits before your real troops (most of them summoned) get targeted.
Edi |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
On the other hand your lands can be a pretty nasty place to try an invade - anyone looking to lay into you is going to have to accept little in the way of gains. If you point that out you can play diplomacy a little more.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
LA Ermor is actually not that strong in dom3. Annoying dominion effect, a decent nation but not overpowered as it was in Dom 2.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
As kissblade said it isnt as strong as it was, mainly because of the increased gold and supplies from dom2.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
I actually think that LE Ermor is slightly underpowered.
Ermor now gets just as many troops as everyone else, but only gets mages by spending gems - and since Ermor has approximately the same gem income as everyone else (a little bit higher, but not much), this is a big disadvantage once magic becomes highly important. The upshot is that I think all of the LE Ermor nationals should be *half* as expensive or less. This wouldn't make a big difference in the early game, but your forces would stay roughly comparable as the game goes on. It'd also enable Ermor not to fall so far behind the research curve, as they generally do. The increase in price on spectres hurt them a lot more than it hurt other positions - which would've been fine in dom2 when they were so devastating, but now that they're not it's an over-correction. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
LA ermor is incredibly potent in SP. Try playing as them and you'll find that the AI simply cannot deal with you at all.
However, the general belief is that this is due to limitations with the AI. I don't play MP, but it seems that the ashen empire in MP is a shadow of it's single-player self |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Playing against an AI ermor is also more challenging than otehr nations - it seems to eat lots of territory up and cn be harder than normal to go on the offense against (still not exactly hard).
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
I suspect you'd need to insist on keeping the LA magic site frequency setting at "default" in order to make LA Ermor worthwhile in MP. That way, your starting gem income (15 vs 4 for everyone else) is more telling. But since I've never actually played them in MP, I'm probably just blowing smoke...
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
I think extra magic sites helps ermor. Ermor uses gems instead of gold for its elite troops, priests and mages. They really need all the death gems they can get.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
I'm playing LA Ermor in the 18 player Eventide game (check out the forum). I seem to be doing fairly well (my army size is like 10x higher than the next runner up) but I don't think I'm in the lead by a long shot.
It's a completely different sort of nation. You are almost playing a whole different sort of game. You overtax and sometimes pilliage your own population - you burn down any fort you can't be sure of keeping - you liquidate the enemy counryside so you win the long war, even while loosing lots of other battles - You put a castle & a temple in every province you can hold - you don't recruit indy troops unless you really need them (ala archers sometimes) - etc... Diplomacy is everything... do what you have to to make a friend early... bribe, deal, pledge your first born... The turns also take 2x-4x as long as a normal game - lots of micromanagement. Lots of raiding. You have extremely limited access to non-death magic which is frustrating. I have lots of minor priests spending thier days raising the dead. You are often fighting one or more plays at the same time all the time... |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Its not the strengths of Ermor. Its the killer dominon. It must be stopped before it spreads too far ruining large parts of the map for anyone but Ermor. Most players recognize this and target Ermor quickly by making lots of priests (basically atomic against LA Ermor). Its also possible for people NOT next to Ermor to help by sending Ermors neighbors some anti-undead weaponry which is unlikely to help that nation later when the two non-ermor nations meet in combat.
Now if you tried a sneaky strategy by EXPECTING those tactics and developing an Ermor which surprises everyone then it might be worth trying but unlikely to work many times in a row. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
I don't hear people making the same sorts of comparisons about LA R'lyeh. Same killer dominion, fewer problems for invading due to starvation, but on the other hand invading commanders invariably go insane. They also have extremely nasty missile troops which work underwater, they start underwater so it's hard row to hoe to dig them out, they still have a gold economy, and in a game of any length they'll end up with hordes of prophets. Is it that they're stronger in MP than Ermor so people don't feel the need to belittle them as much, or are they generally seen as weaker and therefore not needing to be talked about?
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Velusion certainly surprised me in another game we're playing in Middle Age. I had a game against the AI back in Dom2 when I never saw anything from Ermor except the insanely high troop graph until it was almost too late and the first two armies composed each of 2k undeads came and hit my provinces - I was doing fairly well before. Before that, I was sure of winning, at that moment I was close to defeat and I only got the upper hand back by bringing up the Eternal Pyre and forging Flambeaus like crazy. The game was getting quite interesting because of the sudden change, as I only had about half a dozen Dom2 games in total and I was totally unaware of the situation before. So, I was expecting this type of game with hundreds and thousands of undeads in Middle Age, too, for which I soon prepared temples, priests and spells of mass destruction like Earthquake, but I got hundreds of Principes and Shadow Vestals instead - high defense units which I have to fight in totally different ways because I can't even hit them, and even if I do, I'm not doing much damage because they either have good protection or etherealness.
I don't know how to surprise somebody as LA Ermor, but it might be worth a try to think and play outside of the box. EDIT: Aleph, I might be wrong, but I think that unless Ermor, R'lyeh's dominion does not kill the population in provinces that they don't own, it "only" makes your commanders insane. Then again, you should either make sure to have dominion in your provinces where your troops are, or not have any troops in there at all. I also believe that the effect from R'lyeh is not as strong as from Ermor when it comes to decimation of the population. And freespawn from R'lyeh are still humans or atleast humanoid, so they suffer from fatigue etc., unlike undeads. Maybe it's because the insanity thing is an added disadvantage for R'lyeh and kind of a funny effect, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Ermor can be a surprise in a "dam breaking" strategy. Take nearby provinces and sit quiet building up. Let the others take damage clearing the way to reach you and by that time you have converted all of your populace to army. The first nation to reach you gets the bursting of the dam. Its not always a game winning strategy but it can be a major shift of the game that some players might just "rout" the game rather than try to shift their tactics. Very demoralizing.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Interesting. I had thought that Dreamlands killed wherever it was.
MA Ermor can also spawn undead armies that make LA Ermor's look weak, since it has the best gold recruitable reanimators in the game. Enough Grand Thaumaturgs set to raise undead horsemen will still lead to 2k troop armies coming at you, it just that now they're a) all horse b) didn't require as much micro to get them to you c) have been pumped with Power of the Sepulcher through communions. Even the lesser, satellite armies of Longdead Warriors will still benefit greatly from the Protection/Power of Sepulcher combo, and can of course be leavened with various high protection / defense troops for further strength. Much stronger armies overall than LA, I find, although of course there's none of that lethal dominion. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Interesting.
It seems that you could make a hugely overpowered Pretender by shifting the scales towards all the bad stuff (since that's the point) and creating a hellacious undead SC this way. I was playing with the pretender creator and you can get a lot of points doing it this way, to boost your dominion to 10, and get your death and fire magics to 8 each with some points still left if you take a less powerful form. Beyond priests and holy items, it just seems to me that LA Ermor is pretty much unstoppable played properly. I didn't play D2 so I don't know the comparisons, but giving this race even 10 turns unmolested seems to be asking for it later. I was under the impression that people won't play someone who was good with Ermor, maybe I'm wrong? That's my question; is it considered 'politically correct' to min-max this particular race given its unique advantages and will people be OK with that? |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
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However, LA Ermor is very, very stoppable because there are just so many anti-undead spells and 95% of Ermors army is complete chaff which falls like the leaves in autumn. Add to this Ermor is hated because of its dominion, so no friends (seriously lethal in MP) and its army grapth and province, castle count go off the scale. Which leads players to form an alliance to destroy Ermor, time and time again. Also it soon becomes 'unfun' to play as you after move hordes of chaff around every turn and the bigger your empire the worse it gets. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
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The big problem with Ermor is that it's larger weaknesses are both incredibly hard to cover as Ermor, and easy to exploit for anyone going against Ermor. I tend to find that Ermor is one of those armies which encourage you to think outside the box - do what everyone expects and you'll be taken apart quite swiftly. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
In my most recent game, 4 Blade Winders + 10 generic priests has led me to quite a lot of battles vs. LA Ermor where I lose 0-5 regular troops and they lose 500+... and I'm not particularly clever, I'm sure many can do much better. The chaff instantly explode when exposed to any AoE attacks, they really need the better summons to help them survive. Again, I find MA Ermor more dangerous because they can have "priest killer" armies of regular troops
Also - in SP, where they are fairly annoying due to the computer's refusal for other nations to use appropriate counters, LA Ermor pretty much dies the instant they are exposed to Astral Corruption. No blood magic, no gold recruitable troops, it takes a mage to make a mage... a couple turns later all they have is dominion freespawn and bishops, and every one you take is one that can't be replaced. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
In Solo Play you actually can counter Ermor using the other nations. Find one thats a neighbor to it and send them gifts. Not something like Flambeaugh which will make them hard for you to take out later. One of the best is Herald Lance. That will help that nation hold back Ermor, but not be too much of a problem to you when you finally get to that part of the map.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
On pretender design or LA Ermor:
I almost always take a lich queen. All negative scales generally with luck 2-3 and magic 1 or 3. The queen gets maybe 6 death and then various other magics for summoning and forging. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
played ermor since dom1.
i like ashen empire a lot its one of the reasion that makes this game so fantastic and innovative, the other is R'yleh, now if there would be new functions for the interface to controll all these free spawn chaff better it would be gold. can be really annyoing on big maps. Ashen Empire in dom3 is weak at the beginning of a game or on smaller maps. ON big maps its possible to pillage vast amounts of porovinces ruining everyones economy and force everyone to use food supply items or units that do not need to eat. ermor LA, however starts out really weak, not in single though but in MP its easy to exploit their low magic res chaff with banishments and priests. dust to dust is an ubber cheap spell anti undead spell availible with just 1 death mage pic. and this is much worser than banishment it ignores magic resistence. take an undead prince and see him killing dozens of priests and he never gets a scratch due to high magic resistence, additonally i use him with either magic res item or cast magic res as a astral spell. all my pretenders for ashen empire do start with high astral and death magic. so you need a good SC to survive early part of the game, taking something else is a risk in non SP games that ia m very sure of but inever got banished back to the underworld to hell must be fun too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif later soulgate is really fantastaic, i casted it in many games now with high dominion you get ethereal undead(also ethereal ermor legions) with good stats and no "never heals" ablity, so they do regenerate hp too. problem with it is conj8 and cost a ton too. for scales all -3(taking cold here, and magic drain just 2) and +3 luck. 3misfortune may give more design points but i am sure its not worth it on bigger maps. maybe smaller maps. on bigger maps with high luck they get extra gold, gem income and so on. the zealots and millitia are very annyoing...so i usually send them to death quickly to get rid of the annoying upkeep. my overall strategy with them so far is to summon a lot of dusk elders to get the most needed research up and scout the enemy if he is random to know his nation, its midgard or similar glamour abuse i go for enchant4 - Behemoth to trample them. alteriation is pretty much a no brainer with SC to have on at least lvl3 if he does not start with ethereal. rest goes into constr.4 to get skull mentor for quick research, its needed for magic drain scale anyways. rest goes into conjuration. additonal i make asap 2 groups of dusk elders with allt he 4 elements in magic paths + astral and rarely blood to search magic sites more quickly as it takes too long with just pretender on medium-large maps. my pretender had 4 nature, 6 astral, death9. with this you can try to go for the lictor summons and cast htem with black laurels still gives 2 additional lictors. they are all heavy armored and sacred and astral gives them most needed +2 magic res, with drain scale its +3magic res. usually its good enough on big maps to just conquer your nearest lands and pillage whats far away and slowly go backwards to your capitol using a scorched earth method, it gives gold for more temples, labs and castles and ruin everyones world except for yourself. with soulgate up soonish and high dominion the game will be in your favour quickly. except you get obliterated with dust to dust or wither bones....really unfair spells http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif btw, i think dusk elders and arch bishops can be a bit cheaper...this hurts a lot early on. i am not sure to survive a rush with that? maybe pillage home province and surroundings take sphinx and using a lot of ghouls to defend with? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif anyways to summarize, i feel AE is a lot weaker now in the early phase of the game. and yeah, R'yleh and MA ermor is maybe a lesser risk than taking AE. also want to make a suggestion, namely. i would like to see more pretender choices here for LA Ermor. Since they are really focused on a powerful pretender more choices are logical. i think Ashen Empire could have a more powerful and special Prince of Death and i wonder why jortundheim/niefelheim always got the draco lich and bog mummy but not ermor where it suits much more. its nice to have the lich queen but more choices would be more fun here. i think we have her since dom1. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif i know lich, ghost king or lich queen is the most obvious choice, but PoD with immortaly ablity added and a better special ability(just gives like 1-3 longdead/turn) would have been more fun, just for ashen empire.....or else is just taking some lich and casting tatarian gate and make someone with a lot hp your prophet. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
I always thought that alot of the pretenders would work well for Ermor, and even some non-pretenders. Eater of the Dead? Horrors? Harvester? Ive enjoyed creating maps with boosted Ermor as an AI and building them a god around such units.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
yes, but panagea or even jortundheim have more unique choices. just say bog mummy and draco lich. LA Ermor just got lichqueen, and this is the nr1 nation with most design points to spend on a pretender.
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
The 'bog mummy' is basically the Jotun lich. Ermor isn't a jotun nation so they don't get it. Some roman-themed pretender choices would be nice for Ermor, and I'd have nothign against an undead dragon if it didn't have the jotun alternate form.
I also always got the impression that the prince of death was already very good indeed. Not too sure about the Eater of the Dead... unless the mechanics were changed slightly so your god didn't go on a rampage against its own nation! A harvester-type pretender would be excellent, especially as LE ermor is really the only nation that could easily use one. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
The prince of death is indeed very good and works well with the Dom10 AE demands(awe+high fear=good).
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
As long as you have Arch Bishops with all your army's the effects of priests is lessened especially if you have more then one.
Quick question. Does anybody have a good way of dealing with Eternal Knights, which does not involve chucking so much chaff at them that they finally die |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
A couple of evocations sort eternal knights out no problem.
Early on shadow bolt will do the trick. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
That will help a lot in dealing with them without watching them carve through my weaker armies
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Ermor as nation of only death doesn't need harvesters.. they don't need for so nothing to harvest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
there is lots of things for an ermor god to harvest. All the lovely people in his domain just waiting to be killed so they can be added to the undead horde
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
Harvester of Sorrows, Sickle whose Crop is Pain, Harvest Blade... The only "harvester" in Dominions that has anything to do with ripening crop are Clockwork Horrors, and those didn't work out so well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
When Ermor is allowed to devour neighbours one by one, especially if closest neighbours are new players, he's unstoppable. And thats often the case - especially on some maps, where movement is difficult you often just cannot help others against Ermor even if you wish to.
And just as many neutral priests are atomic against Ermor, so is darkness against most living nations. He may be weakened now by not being able to invest tons of gold into very, very strong PD (when buffed) in addition to castles and temples. But I'd say Ermor is still strong enough to be one of the local superpowers. |
Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
810 longdead horsemen makes for excellent chaff http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
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Re: LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?
I dunno I think an army of at-least 14000 undead legionaries is nice. That was rather late in a game though.
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