How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

I am just wondering if people could give suggestions on how to beat LA ermor. I have never beaten them.http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gifI have tried everything from mass holy to masses of soldiers to thugs. I cant beat them. I dunno if i just wait to long or if they are that tough which I would tend to think not.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

MP or SP?

Jazzepi

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

They are pretty easy to beat in the late game, if you can last that long. They are a one-trick pony. Early-mid game, they can run you ragged.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

I was under impression that in the late game, when they send small raiding parties of 1000+ units, they become unstoppable.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

Aldrenas: can you go into more detail about what thugs you are using? I have not fought LA ermor myself (due to objections over thier dominion) but from what I understand the conventional way to fight them is with massed banishments. And the way to use thugs vs them is pretty much any chasis plus a fire shield and regen.

Kuritza, ermor relies on masses of cheap undead to win. But in the late game, masses of troops no longer matter. Access to the high level spells and SCs makes them obsolete.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

o sry i haven't tried to play mp yet so i am referring to sp. Well last time i played against them I played Bogarus. I started out ok trying to mass produce the elite horsemen bodyguards. I took over a dozen territories quickly then ran into groups of ermor ranging from 100- 900. I had lots of priests and different types of mages mixed into my forces balancing out holy and regular magic. The biggest army i was able to amass on the field was over 350 of those elite horsemen near the middle of the game. I also had armies of the swordsmen ranging out behind that army supporting it. I took alot of territory but somehow ermor just kept pumping out legions of dead that were very overwhelming. While i fielded an army of 350 they were slamming me with armies of 2000-3000. I was slowly overwhelmed. near the end the gath started to attack me too. In the end I got desperate so I wished for horrors. lots of my astral mages were killed but i did get some horrors. but by that point ermor had enveloped me and was besieging my capitol with over 10000 soldiers which was quite ridiculous.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

I used those heroes that show up on horses for Bogarus. The first one of those hero horsemen that are sacred and have priest ability unit i tried giving him the sword of justice, Wraith crown, elemental armor, ring of regeneration, and nethgul. The second one i gave ember, unquenched sword, horror helmet, hydra skin armor, krupp's bracers, and the ark.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

course ermor also did get some nasty spells active while i was busy using my astral gems elsewhere. They managed to get utterdark and burden of time up for about 10 turns before i could dispel them.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

If you're playing Bogarus I would probably try to forge some large communions with Occultists leading them. Cast power of the spheres, and forge some death boosters after forge hopping your way up to getting a ring of sorcery so that you can pump out the boosters off of a Staret with a D random.

Once you have a good deal of occultists leading a large communion, they'll get a boost to skill from the communion, from power of the spheres, and from the death boosters. Make sure to have someone holding an astral banner to make each casting of power of the spheres/communion master cheaper. Then spam wither bones. It should devestate large groups of enemy undead. Just set your units to guard commander. I would use the city guard units if you can afford it, otherwise use the spearmen. Both have decent morale, defense, and shields.

You can also do the same thing with alchemists if you want to cast blade wind instead. The nice part about that is that you have summon earth power as an earth booster in addition to earth boots and power of the spheres.

In any case, if you're playing Bogarus and you're not using communions to spit out crazy battle magic, you're doing it wrong.

Jazzepi

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

Also, I couldn't seem to manage to wrap my head around LA Ermor personally, until I played them.

I sort of tend to think that, ultimately, their dominion just kills pop a little too quickly. I mean, seriously within like 5 turns of the first candle, you are looking at 10-20 pop. If you took 50% of the map, and they took the other 50%, you'd better be an incredibly skilled player, or they will crawl all over you.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

Really? In the endgame, mages become invulnerable and no longer need a meat shield to absorb hits?
Sorry, quite the opposite. In the endgame, quality of the troops doesnt matter as much, and quantity is where Ermor rules supreme. Not to mention that Ermor can also use SCs (death gems, right?), counter your SCs with lifedrain and desintegrate and support his masses of undead with Darkness.
Just look at the statistics - LA Ermor owns.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

LA Ermor has two moments of vulnerability :

- very early game against rush nations with mages-priests (so even the researchers they recruited before seing Ermor can bannish) and cheap/numerous sacreds with a correct bless (ideally water 9) ; Atlantis, Mictlan, etc... have no difficulty to erase Ermor if they start close

- beginning of late game against nations having the edge in research and able to use anti-undead or anti-chaff spells (wither bones, solar brillance, or even mass elemental/mundane dammages...) and communions to boost priests ; but once Ermor has hordes of tartarians etc... it's not sufficient

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

If you don't mind exploiting a bug, forge a crystal matrix for a holy priest (with no other paths, only holy). Group him with at least 2 astral mages scripted to cast communion slave. The priest will banish 3 times per round instead of 1. This is very easy for Bogarus, and the more slaves, the bigger the banish.

In a more general sense, you can't beat Ermor with troops. You have to use magic, either large amounts of conventional mages with troops as blockers, small communions to cast battlefield wide spells like Solar Brilliance with expendable chaff to block, or a global like Purgatory with lots temples and dominion spread. (Is it Purgatory that blasts undead in your dominion? I don't remember). Fighting Ermor with troops is always a losing endeavor for two reasons:

1) Their troops are free
2) Their mages spam raise dead in the backfield, so you're actually fighting an army about 50% larger than the listed number.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

Banishing works, but you have to realize that it scales hugely with priest level.

A level 1 priest casting banish will kill, as a rule of thumb, one or two basic undead a round, and you have maybe 10 to 15 rounds untill your meat shield routs, so you would need one priest for every 10 to 15 undead to win that battle.

On the other hand, a level 3 priest should be good for 10+ undead killed by round, so one for every 100 undead should do the trick nicely. Plus, they can switch to smite to deal with any thug that won't let themselves be banished.

And of course, getting higher levels is even better. So whip out communions if you can, equip mage-priests with crystal shields, empower ordinary priests with blood 1, do whatever you need to get those levels up !

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

Supposedly, Phoenix Pyre spreads the fatigue from dying among communion slaves just like spell fatigue. I'm pondering trying the following in my current game (vs. LA Ermor):

Get a bunch of cheap S1 mages.
Have them cast Communion Slave.
Communion masters cast Fire Shield, Phoenix Pyre, Summon Earthpower, Personal Luck. Then they either retreat or start firing bows or something.
Communion slaves all Attack Closest.

Phoenix Pyre is pretty weak but it has a huge area of effect that should mess LA Ermor up pretty good. Of course it would be more efficient to use all those massed communion slaves to cast H4 Banishment--but this way sounds like more fun.

-Max

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

If you can get Air in there as well, could add Mass Flight. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

And Maybe toss in Body Ethereal? Not sure what the relative benefits of delaying the explosions might be, though if the undeads mass up around the slaves nicely.....

Also Fire Ward could be good if you had access, I'm under the impression that chain explosions can make that strat very showy, but ultimately less effective than hoped. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

ok so the consensus is to use communion? I love fighting LA ermor but they always beat the crap out of me. Is communion the spell that lets one mage use all the other mages on the battle fields power?

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

one other question that i have. Do burden of time and foul air effect lifeless creatures the same as they would an undead creature?

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

I am not really sure i have ever used communion. my usual tactic is to overwhelm my opponents with lots of powerful soldiers and many different types of mages spewing as many different deadly spells as possible.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

Don't need to. IMO, LA Ermor shouldnt ever be used in MP due to its dominion. Breaks the gameplay.

Re: How to beat Late Age Ermor?
 

Body Ethereal won't spread to all the slaves because it's not caster-only. For the same reason you might as well choose Flight over Mass Flight (all the slaves get it automatically when a master casts it).

To fight chain reactions, throw in a Stoneskin or Ironskin. Phoenix Pyre is actually quite bad at killing anything armored.

-Max