[Micah]

Good post, Bob.

Without knowing the specifics of what map you're playing on I can't really say for sure, but on reasonably large maps my income by turn 20 is often over 2000 gold, so 40 priests and temples would only be 2 turns' worth of income...the temples will help keep Ermor's nasty-*** dominion away from you as well, which is a nice benefit. It is, granted, a large investment, but in MP games you should be able to find some help dealing with Ermor from other players to help defray the cost, and in a duel the fact that the priests are useless elsewhere doesn't really come into play.

That being said, I've personally found that Ermor is pretty OP on a smallish map/duel, as they can keep enough pressure on their opponent to stunt their research when they start out close together. In addition any province-trading via raids will always benefit Ermor, as they can rapidly pump the unrest in all the border provinces and slowly choke off their opponents' gold supply even without dominion spread. The difficulty of assaulting Ermor's capital due to needing supply items compounds this, since there isn't a reliable way to counterattack effectively.

A lot of the tactics discussed (e.g. herald lances) DO suck pretty hard, but they're better than having gems sitting in your vault if you're getting overrun. Lances also have the benefit of being mailable, so your neighbors can send them to help out.

Destruction will pop tower shields nicely, and it's only level 4 research, combos well with blade wind if you have good earth magic. Good option if you have earth. Falling fires has been mentioned I believe.

The real killers vs Ermor are the battlefield-wide spells though. Fire storm, wrathful skies, solar brilliance, etc. They're hard to get to in a tight game, but they'll pretty much auto-win battles for you as long as you've got some chaff that'll last long enough to let the BE do its thing. This is pretty much the turning point against Ermor, as before you get these spells you'll be hard pressed to fight them, but after you pick them up things become much more manageable. LA Ermor is just one of those nations that it sucks to start near, much like Niefelheim. Both are very hard to stop early but kind of sputter out later on in the game. In MP you have to diplomacy your way around the problem by getting allies or at least convincing the big bad to go after someone else, and in a duel you'll just have to accept that it's probably not a fair matchup, and don't duel them if you want a fair fight.

SCs will also work pretty well. I had my cyclops pretender turtle by himself against a huge legion of undead and he lasted 50 turns against them without regeneration, causing the entire army to dissolve on turn 50...he picked up a mess of afflictions though. Regen would obviously help with that, and the opponent had a D9 bless to boot. On the flip side of that equation you do have to be careful not to attack into too much chaff with an SC without an escape route, since 400 longdead chaff will probably last 50 turns against a lot of SCs, causing them to run and possibly die.