Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

I am playing as Man against late Ermor. I've been able to maintain a defensive line for most of the game, but they just crushed two of my provinces. All of my provinces have castles and 125 defense. One that was crushed also had an army with my prophet and pretender there. Both of them were killed, but are thankfully immortal (Lich and Wraith Lord) and it was a high friendly dominion province so they are okay.

I had all priests on repeated Banish, but it just does not work against almost 2000 undead. What are my options?

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Well, the funny way is to cast undead mastery and capture all those 2000 undead to use against ermor the next time around. But probably the easiest way, with little cleverness or strong paths outside the national, is just to build some thugs/light SCs that are basically invulnerable to undead, give them lightning immunity, and use a pair of a3 magisters arcane, one of which casts storm, the other casting storm power and then wrathful skies. Obviously the mages need to be immune to lightning as well. If you had to, you *could* use just one mage, but it would be much slower and waste more gems. Unless you can make staves of storms, in which case you do that and use a single mage. Note that PD is negatively useful here and can cause you to lose battles you would otherwise have won due to routing.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Another fun way is rain of stones. It's often suicidal for human casters but you can buff them with BE and luck to improve their chances of survival (put some kind of prot buff on your army/PD as well). And if you're playing SP of course the AI won't adjust and will keep walking right into it.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Best advice anyone can give you is to just stop playing SP. As it turns you into a terrible player with awful habits. Such as for example, making you think buying insane amounts of PD, which you have done, is ever a good idea. As it is not, ever. And using or indeed relying on such awful strategic ideas in SP games is only teaching you how to play the game incredibly badly, and pretty much guarantees you will never learn how to play the game properly.

SP games offer little value to improving as a player, but if you also make no attempt to play properly in SP game, then SP games become genuinely harmful and the end result will only ever be a dreadful player who has no idea how the game should actually be played. But if you're happy with that then please carry on.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Playing against AI hordes is ordinarily bad enough. Playing against Ashen Ermor AI is just masochistic. Against a horde of 2000, there aren't many good options. Are you using H1s or H2s to banish? Your Bishops will do a better job. Archers are also pretty effective. Keep in mind that you will want armies of dozens of bishops each carrying 10-15 archers, along with winebags/cauldrons for entering his territory.

What other opponents do you have in the game? you'll want to make sure you own their territory first before exhausting yourself on Ermor and getting nothing for it.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

If you can create some items such as Herald Lances it can be a big help.

Even more if you gift those lances to other AIs that might border Ermor altho that tactic is best done to gift to your "enemies" that are between you and Ermor before you ever reach Ermor. Gives them a chance to slow Ermor down while you expand. And those lances wont help them much when it comes time for you to attack your old "allies"

TIP: many players make the mistake of thinking that if the game is too hard they should turn the independents down. That makes the AI opponents stronger and makes them rush you. Try turning the independents stronger next time. You tend to make better decisions on what to attack so strong independents can slow down the AIs long enough for you to build up more.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

I always set independent strength to 9.

Without PD, what defensive strategies do you recommend? What sort of defensive force would I keep in each province?

I was using H2 priests to banish, but I guess I didn't use as many of them.

Looks like Ermor crushed my neighbors and now has hordes of undead troops all around. I did have some luck beating as many as a thousand undead and the force that defeated me took quite a bit of damage itself.

What thugs are immune to undead? My favorite thug is Wraith Lord since he is immortal and I have a high death gem income.

By the way, the reason I bought a lot of PD is because I have a LOT of income and I am playing a nation of man with an imprisoned pretender and very good scales. Bless is useless for man IMO as its sacreds are not that good. Archers + fire arrows is a better bet.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Regarding thugs and undead, you'll need low encumberance, good protection, and an area effect weapon. A bane lord with a vine shield and a fire sword will stand up well. But you're playing Man; I'm not sure you have easy access to any good thugs. A Golem at least has zero enc so that's a big help.

If you have more cash than you know what to do with, make sure you have lots and lots of temples, bishops, and archers. Any other troops will just get devoured and spat out by his freespawn.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Another thing--push your dominion on him. It won't help you now but it will down the road.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

copy paste from IRC. With colors!

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

My thoughts did go to assassination or charm right away (my favorite tactics) but its not one of the nations I remember having that ability natively.

Ermor does tend to have many troops led by few leaders so taking out the leaders and causing the troops to run away is a good tactic. I lacked a specific suggestion for that so I figured some more expert players would have one

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

I think their big army had about 40 leaders. Might be hard without fliers.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Yeah, Ermor gets all those freespawn commanders, so while they go down easy to assassination unless you reach some sort of "assassination attempts mass" you probably wont slow them down.

You have death casters, how high in death can you get?

I agree with Maerlande, don't let LA Ermor get big.

Do let us know how you go if you keep playing.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

A fire mage, guarded by fire snakes or summer lions, and casting Fire Storm.
That's my favorite way to take care of those endless undead hordes (in SP): the whole army gets burned to cinders in 3-4 combat turns!

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

If you have a bit of construction you could forge herald lances. These weapons allows, say, an indy commander to spam an undead killing spell(Solar Rays?). Not powerful in and of itself but it is not resitable and a herald lance only cost 5S so you can spam them.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Perhaps it is better to use those astral gems to forge penetration boosters for the priests. Not sure. But that advice was given by the IRC advice machine. herald lances just don't do enough damage.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

If you have immortal thugs, spam them. And while you're at it, get Flame/Frost Brand for them plus Luck and Etherealness. They can hold the line while you AoE spam, as well as take out a bunch on their own. Get them high protection and you'll get to a point where most undeads can't even touch them anymore. If that combination doesn't hold, it should at least deal serious damage.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

A simple defensive thug that can last until the auto-rout kicks in will annihilate any number of attacking mindless undead as long as their leaders don't magic you to death.

A lucky wraith lord with a vine shield and some extra prot and regen should be able to just stand there and soak hits for 50 turns IIRC...the AoE weapon is only useful for attacking provinces. Golems are a bit iffy in this role despite the 0 enc since they tend to collect afflictions since they can't be given regen or heal during the fight, but the idea is the same.

And firstorm is much more effective than wrathful skies for undead clearing, unless Ermor is rocking Army of Gold.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Ow right, purgatory is also nice.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Earthquake, rain of stones, firestorm, solar brilliance, undead mastery.
Purgatory, Flames from the sky, Wrath of God,
AoE heavy spells if you have loads of mages, fire cloud, wither bones, cleansing water, conflagation, magma eruption. Having precision spells for those helps.
Items such as heralnd lance given to commanders than casting quickness on those commanders so they cast a bit extra, or give them quickness items if you have gems to waste. Bell of cleansing, massed bows of war, also under quickness, bringing along the forbidden light artifact, using aegis (probably the best option for massive hordes of undead).
Thugs and SCs. I recommend kitting those WrathLords with a luck pendant, and as much defense as possible. Items like, vine shield, faithful, cat charm, chain mail of displacement, boots of quickness and such. You can also bring a few mages to cast one or two buffs on him and retreat. Like Micah said just keeping him around until turn 50+ is enough.
There are pretty much dozens of thugs and SC you can use with any nation. Just have enough defense, and buffs like luck, body ethereal, mistform, etc. I suggest looking up some thugging guides if you`ve never created such a unit.

And many, many, many more things...
Also I suggest listening to Calahans advice. Fighting the AI offers no chance for improvement. And MP games are easy to join, are and can be played under quite relaxed schedules and are immensely more fun.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

in my experience, solar brilliance doesn't do much. Even when boosted with penetration items (which led me to believe that battlefield spells that proc every turn do not get penetration boosts. But not sure. I never saw more than one or two undead die due to this spell each turn).

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Really? It`s not MR negatable and it worked just fine for me. Killing up to hundred of units per battle turn.

EDIT: It indeed works just fine. Killed 2000 undead in about battle 10 turns for me.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Wow- it did not work nearly as well for me with vampires. Maybe thats because vamps regenerate...?

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Well, crap undead have low HP and never heal while Vamps have 22hp I think and regen 2-3 per turn. Solar Brilliance on the other hand hits with only a few point of (AN?) damage so I doubt it would touch stronger undead like vamps, and barely hurt things lie dust warriors and alike.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

I used it against normal undead boosted with the +4 mr battlefield wide spell. So while in theory it should have worked great. In practice it didn't.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Ehhm no? The undead killing part is resistible and it only have penetration 8. The reason why it will still kill longdead units is because they have poor MR and few HP and it will hit 50% of them every turn. At 5 AP damage I guesstimates it might kill some 12% of all longdeads each turn. Slightly better than storm of vengeance witch would kill some 9% imho.

Still completely negligible vs undeads with actual armor or MR. I used it with a bunch of LA C'tis tomb king on the battlefield. They all had MR 19 (from drain) and they were barely touched during the long battle. More of them went blind than took any damage.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Guess I was wrong. Nowhere in it`s description does it say it`s MR negatable (which frankly should get fixed) so no reason anyone should assume so.

Doesn`t matter in any case. We`re talking about AI dealing measures here, where it works just fine, not elite undead with buffs.