[Vynd]

1) In general, the way to decide what to research is to find a spell that you would like to be able to cast, and research until you can do so. There are spells in every magical school that will be useful, it is up to you to decide which you want. With that said, if you are playing Ashen Ermor, I suggest you concentrate your research mostly on Conjuration.

2) A ritual is any spell that is cast outside of combat. The only rituals that are going to apply all the time are global and local enchantments. It should be clear from the description which rituals are of these types. There's no one ritual that is important for everyone to research. But for Ermor, try looking at spells that require powerful death magic like Utterdark or Well of Misery.

3) This one is really entirely up to you. Magic items can help you a lot, but to get good ones you need to research Construction and spend lots of gems. It might be that there are better things for you to research and spend your gems on. Ashen Ermor needs to use lots of gems to cast ritual summoning spells, so if I were you I would not worry much about magic items.

4) You can take an enemy Fortress the same ways anyone can. The simplest is to beseige it. You can do this by moving an army into the space and then giving the commanders the siege order. Eventually, you will get a message saying you have broken the walls and have the option to storm the castle. Then you give your commanders the order to do thsi and you will fight a battle. It might take many turns for the siege to work, if it is taking too long send more men to help.

5) Ashen Ermor is not like regular nations, because Ashen Ermor gets free undead troops every turn. Because of this, you should probably use "Recruit Army" mostly to get powerful commander units.

[ April 24, 2004, 13:46: Message edited by: Vynd ]