Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

In our mp game, my peace loving Ashen Empire, which never attacks first, will soon be attacked by jotun, abysia, and maybe mariginon.

Attempts at negotiation have fallen on deaf ears, (or could it be the mere fact that my troops are all muttering "brains.." in the background? nah.), so some advice on who to atta- er, 'defensively advance' on would be appreciated. My limited intel puts abysia and then jotun as the stronger of the 3, with marigion a bit back.

Right now I have the usual massive armies of fodder, and death gem income of about 12 a turn.

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

Marignon is baaaaaaaad news for Ermor. Huge amounts of priests with good holy and fire magic = lots and lots (and lots and lots) of freshly re-dead corpses. Take them out as early as humanly possible. Jotunheim should be relatively easy for you to take on (well, as easy as fighting giants with human sized creatures ever is), since they only have 2 priests, neither of which is all that accurate and both of which are semi-expensive. I'm not familiar enouogh with Abyssia to say one way or the other.

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

Definately go after marignon as soon as possible. As zurai said they are bad news for undead.

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

hmm, point taken. Is there any way I can destroy that Marginion holy site that burns my troops after I take the capital? Or do I just accept the fact that I will be taking casualities just by standing there?

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

Snuff out Marignon as fast as inhumanly possible! I don't think you can destroy that site, but you can try to stay there as briefly as possible with actual undead.

If you can summon/hire up things that can't be banished, that would be best. Otherwise, do your unholiest to protect the undead you use, but don't count on any undead "survivors." Scatter some undead in front to attract inefficient banish attempts. Race at their priests with undead riders. Get things that fly, to go fly and attack their priests. Kill the priests and take their lands and destroy their temples, quickly. Blitzdeath!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

You can't destroy magical sites, ever. You might be able to preach them out, but with Marignon that's usually a bit tricky as well... of course, this all assumes they aren't using Diabolical Faith. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
Abysia shares fire, astral and strong holy, but Anathemant Dragons are very expensive and their mages tend to be a bit on the imprecise side, and lack the national access to crossbows (flaming crossbow bolts are not good for undead!).

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

this is still early in the game, just about turn 30 or less, so I shouldn't have to worry about the dragons just yet. Mariginon, here I come!

Thanks guys!

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

Incidentally, in such a setup it'd be sorely tempting to try to start something between Abysia and Marignon. For instance, if you can get a fire-3 caster (not exactly easy as the Ashen Empire unless your pretender has it; dusk elders only get 1 random, and even spectre randoms tend to be different) flame bolts at Marignon might be blamed on Abysia for instance.
In the high likelihood that you and Jotunheim both use cold, and both may use some undead, and both have reason to worry about dominance by fire/astral folks, an at least temporary partnership there might be appropriate.

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On the other hand, if you CAN pull it off, that just makes it less likely that they'll suspect you. After all, Ermor isn't exactly known for its strong fire magi.

Re: Help!! I\'m feeling oppressed
 

Oboy! Ashen Empire in MP is most likely the worst faction possible because of the age old saying "If facing many opponents, kill the walking dead guy first".

And you're up against Marignon as well.. While I'm sure you know what you're doing it might not hurt to make a few searches in this forum to find what have been said about the factions in your game.

Going after the exorcists might seems like a very good idea, but then again your giant and flaming friends are counting on you doing just that. You seem to have picked a game of polar opposites as far as factions are conserned. If at all possible try to worry less about the Jotuns. Their cold winter can be shrugged of with a rigor mortis grin. The eternal fires of Abyssia are not so easy to deal with.

To add what little wisdom I have I recommend you hurl a quality, not quantity, force into the oceans where you have a large advantage. Only Jotunheim can follow you there any time soon and that faction is very vulnerable to undead swarming, while the others are not. If you "devour", meaning you pillage them into dust, the oceans then you will have a nice amount of gold to bring some living units against Marignon.

[ February 19, 2004, 21:12: Message edited by: Wauthan ]