[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cheezeninja:
Maybe thats just Ermor's flavor... they can be used well by almost anyone, they scare people alot, and the AI can't handle them well. Offsetting this is the perception people have of all these things which causes people to gang up on them.

If the only drawback to Ermor's power was purely perceptual, and people would automatically lose if they failed to gang up on Ermor, then Ermor WOULD be overpowered.

This is not really the case: Well-played, any nation stands a decent chance of defeating Ermor alone. Some nations are better at doing this at different stages in the game than others. Ulm, for instance, stands a good chance at crushing AE Ermor in an early rush, provided that Ermor's pretender can be countered: However, later in the game, Ulm will falter against any flavor of dead Ermor because it is unable to easily sustain its dominion against the increasingly large hordes.

However, Ermor is very simple for even a novice player to use at a decent level of play: Most of Ermor is blunt and easy to get a handle on, and requires little of the fine nuances of other nations. Ultimately, however, Ermor proves one-dimensional. Once you get good at that dimension, you have little else available to you. Other nations have more depth, but a newbie is rarely able to perceive and plumb those depths.

As a result, the common response becomes "Gang Up On Ermor". This rather hamhanded approach, however, targets Ermor's strengths rather than its weaknesses. Thus, Ermor is quickly perceived to be overpowered because everyone pits what could very well be one of their weaknesses against Ermor's strength and attempts to overwhelm it by brute force. Unfortunately, you learn very little this way.

On the other hand, you can make this work for you, provided you do not allow Ermor to intimidate you: People will give you their gold, their gems, their provinces, and leave you alone and unmolested, so long as you profess to be fighting Ermor. Suckers.