[Peter Ebbesen]

Thufir said:
1) My first question is on choosing between Soul Gate and Ashen Empire. Soul Gate sounds more my style, but a friend has pointed out that lots of their spawns have MR negates attacks, which really hurts their ability to have effective massed attacks on SCs. Canyone out there w/ MP experience playing SG confirm whether or not the SG freespawns are useful in the endgame?

SG vs AE is in many ways the question of quality over quantity. Still, good arguments can be made for both being preferable. As such, I will do both.

Why SG is better than AE

• Your freespawn are not mindless. This means that evil astral nations using mind burn and other mind attacks (or even worse, R'lyeh's mindbLasts!) will target your plentiful troops rather than picking off your leaders one by one on your leaders.
• Your freespawn are not mindless. This means that they are immensely much better at defending fortresses.
• Your freespawn have higher MR than AE. This means that it requires rather more or stronger priests to perform a drive-by priesting. Moreover, when boosted by either anti-magic or the unholy powers of your Wraith Consuls, most of them get very decent MR.
• Ethereality is very valuable in the early game, and throughout the game it provides protection from some of the nastier anti-leader rituals. When you are sinking so many death gems into good leaders, that counts.
• In the late game most of your troops are crap. However, at very high dominion levels some of the freespawn are ghosts. If you gather them together every 5 rounds or so, you will be gaining a good ghost army, and massed ghosts are fun because of their lifedrain attacks. They can take down some of the nastier SC types on their own. (While being worthless against others such as Wrathers, but you don't get everything)
• You will over time gain an awful lot of Shadow Tribunes for free, who can summon more shadows. They are good leaders for fetishes/clams.
• Having a few Shadow Tribunes stationed in each province summoning shadows in the later game is a good investment. Most raiding spells rely on summoning troops with natural weapons, which have real trouble with the ethereality of the defenders.
• You do not have to worry about bless effects unless you want to. D9 overkill? D7 is enough for most purposes, really. Still, you can go far in the early game with a Wraith Centurion with a Shirt of the Battle Saint, Especially if you have D9, and in the mid-game you could make a band of very scary Bane Lords capable of routing armies. Add helmet.
• You are never, ever, going to lose one of your good unholy leaders in the early to mid game, thus losing the gem investment. (Since you will only be attacking own-dominion provinces). Worst case, your leader is going back to your capital to pick up the new army formed. This allows you to take greater risks. Moreover, you can use the suicide shortcut to return to your capital from the front.... And you are not going to see 16D or 23D go down the drain because of some stupid trampler who got lucky.

Why AE is better than SG

• Your freespawn are mindless. This means they will never break morale.
• You gain more freespawn than SG.
• You gain unholy freespawn (Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre) - very useful in the early game..... But they have MR 13 and only 6 hp, so do not expect them to Last individually.
• Your troops may be individually crappier, easier to hit, banishable by a drunk friar with a hangover, and slow - but at least they do damage when they hit without requiring a MR roll!
• Your dominion kills people quicker than SGs. While bad for oneself during initial expanion, it does mean that any slight dominionpush into enemy territory pays off quicker.
• Your unholy priests cost less death gems than SGs. True, they are not immortal, but just how often does SG see a Senator or Consul die in battle anyway? They are usually hidden by a horde of troops!

(Okay, so I am a Soul Gate rather than Ashen Empire type. One run-in with mind-affecting/commander-seeking spells convinced me - as did seing ordinary SG troops Last twice or thrice as long against massed priests. In the late game, the troops are not supposed to kill anything anyway (except for Ghosts or if you manage to mass flight), just supposed to stay undead long enough for your Dusk Elders to deal with the opposition)

2) I don't quite understand how bless effects work (or don't work) w/ unholy. The "Unholy Blessing" spells say that they activate the "powers of an unholy troop". Does this have anything to do with the bless effects that come from your pretender? If not, is there any point in considering bless effects w/ your pretender design?

No reason to really consider bless effects unless you play AE as SG does not have any unholy troops but AE has.

3) In the case of SG, it seems reasonable to choose a putz as your initial prophet, until you can afford a Wraith consul. However, I've heard other choices argued regarding Ermor prophets. Is it not the case that going from four to five in unholy level is quite valuable (as with the equivalent for holy prophets)? The fifth level "Power of the Sepulchre" spell seems pretty useful, though I can well imagine that its painful to spend the 35 death gems for a Wraith Consul is pretty painful, early on.

Unholy 5 Wraith Consuls are much, much funnier than Unholy 4 once you are pushing a few hundred troops around. Which, given that is Ermor we are talking about, sure isn't going to take a long time.

The five different things unholy Ermorian priests can do are:

1. Boost magic resistance [+4 MR]: Unholy Protection (L1, Area 1), Protection of the Sepulchre (L4, Area Battlefield)
2. Activate blessing: Unholy Blessing (L1, Area 1), (L3, Area 10), (L4, Area Battlefield)
3. Increase speed and attack [+4 MV, +4 AT]: Unholy Power (L1, Area 1), Power of the Sepulchre (L5, Area Battlefield)
4. Curse holy unit: Anathema (L3, Area 1)
5. Control enemy undead: Unholy Command (L2, one target)

+4MV and +4 AT are definitely worth it and while you can achieve it by placing lots of unholy priests in the ranks, it is much easier to achieve with a single spell in the first or second round of battle from your prophet.