Bah!
See attached file.
While I did win the battle (barely), it was not a good thing for the war, for I lost way too many troops winning the thing. Boron was using his secondary army against me anyway. While the battle result was indeed costly for him, it does not matter for the final result in the war against me and Pasha.
I have decided that I will never again play an MP game in which an Ermor death theme is allowed. It unbalances the game far too severly.
Not that Ermor is unbalanced late game, but it ruins the early/middle game. Mictlan has this SOL game won mainly because he started the farthest spot away from Ermor. When AE/SG Ermor is in the game and you get unlucky to start adjacent to him, you have two ways to lose:
1. You can have selected a good anti-undead nation, such as Pythium or Marignon or Arco. You could even make a pretender specifically for killing undead. You could even attack Ermor early and get a couple of other players to help. You could even mostly kill Ermor right off the bat. But the excessive losses required to do this means that your neighbors on the other side can invade and kill you easily.
2. You could have not done anything specific to make a pretender to fight undead and you could be a very weak race early on against the undead (like Jontunheim, for instance). You could even put together a nice anti-undead coalition (like I did). You could then weaken the undead enough in a suicide mission to ensure that Ermor does not win (like I did). But you will still die (like I will).
There is really only one way to win in a game with a death Ermor theme:
1. You could get really lucky and start on the other side of the map. This allows you to get the necessary research needed to kill 5-10 times as many troops as you lose. I can't think of anything else that could be done against an expert undead player such as Boron.
Boron made the utmost rush pretender. By using -3 on all scales, he is basically making a mockery of the game. I doubt the game was designed to be played like that at all, but Boron is quick to take advantage of the many loopholes in the game.
Fundamentally, the presence of AE Ermor takes ALL the fun away from the game. The three commanders I lost in the attached battle? They were the 50 gold indy priests. It is very sad that the most cost effective troop I can buy in my castles is an independent priest...
So, what will happen to me next in SOL? Boron will just put together another stack of his endless rush troops and attack yet again. I will surely lose the war of attrition in the long run.
Meanwhile, Mictlan will mop up on C'tis, next kill whomever wins the Arco - TC war, and then eliminate Ermor in the resulting 1 on 1 for an easy victory.
BAH! HUMBUG!
|