Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice

[Aleph]

So I recently have the full game and am enjoying it, but I'm looking for some thoughts on the various undead nations available in the game. I figure that any serious undead strategy requires one of the nations with priests with undead specific spells, so that's pretty much late C'tis, MA/LA Ermor, and LA Pangea. I'm playing as LA Ermor now and they are pretty amazing, particularly in how simple they are for a new player, but I have the feeling that MA Ermor is probably a lot better if run by someone who has some idea what they are doing. Can anyone enlighten me on the pro/con aspects of these nations (beyond the manual). Which is the most lethal in the hands of an expert?

[Edi]

Depends on quite a few things. The AI isn't too good at dealing with the deadly dominion of LA Ermor. For the otehrs, it depends very much on your style of play and your strengths. Some nations just suit some players better than others for some reason. For example, I've always been partial to Ulm and Abysia because they fit my style of play while the EA Pangaea and others that rely on sneaking and trickery are far more difficult to play with equal effectiveness. Though they CAN be played very effectively.

Edi

[Shovah32]

As edi said, it all depends on your style of play. MA ermor is strong, it has strong reanimating priests, strong death mages, good(ethereal) sacreds, tough troops and strong mages who can summon alot with death and be useful on the battlefield with spells like raise skeletons, shadow blast and nether darts. MA ermor is fun, it is a nation where the living march to war with the dead and it can get you into the game quite quickly with its versatility.

[Meglobob]

MA Ermor, a bless strategy on those ethereal vestals is very, very nasty. Especially early game. Mid game, getting communional master/slave thing going. Use it to bombard a living enemy army with multiple shadow blasts. Shadow blast is a truely devestating AOE spell. Late game, as MA or LA Ermor utterdark everyone to death, with perhaps burden of time to soften them up? Not tried this end game winning strategy yet but it should work. Apparently for MA Ermor, enslavement/master enslave is a game winner as well...

Those were just off the top of my head, death has soooo many nasty tricks.

[Shovah32]

For MA ermor getting death globals up helps immensely. If your using many undead with few living units both utterdark and burden of time are useful where-as any ermor strategy can be greatly helped by the global well of misery which increases your income and gives you 21 death gems per turn.

Pale riders, wraithlords, banelords, tartarians, legions of wights and spectres/black servants are all good summons which ermor can get access to(although tartarians may require your pretender) and shadow blast, nether bolts, ghost riders and life after death(and many many more) are all good spells to aim for.

Magic is very important to ermor and to help research those spells quickly they can forge skull mentors, greatly speeding up their research and, with their very useful magic they can also forge lucky pendants, antimagic amulets, horror helms, robes of shadow are various other items to kit out thugs/SCs.

[Aleph]

Thanks very much, all. I'm not tied to MA ermor - I'm just thinking about it since it has an economy and thus far LA ermor pretty much spares me from that part of the game. Which is cool, but I should probably learn it. Plus, gold + magic have to yield more versatility than just pure magic. MA Ermor, with it's long list of national spells and incredibly versatile priests, seems like the natural choice for a more flexible death approach.

Any late Pangea or C'tis players want to chime in? Pangea seems really interesting, but are you just racing to Carrion Woods to end up essentially as LA Ermor? Not that I think their combo of all Recuperating native troops + Foul Air would be a bad thing in that case, but it seems like the long way around.

Meglobob - most people seem to recommend dual bless where they recommend it at all. Obviously, high death for death weapons, but were you thinking of a dual? And why is master enslave only for MA Ermor?

[tibbs]

One thing I don't like about LA Ermor is the micromanagement. You have to constantly move your undead troops from the provinces they spawn from, to the front lines.

[Meglobob]

Aleph said:
Meglobob - most people seem to recommend dual bless where they recommend it at all. Obviously, high death for death weapons, but were you thinking of a dual? And why is master enslave only for MA Ermor?

Those were both strategy's used by a MA Ermor player(not me) in MP to great effect. He went through Jotunheim like a knife through butter, I intend to try those strategy's out fully myself playing MA Ermor, as they seem like great fun, when I get time, just 1 of the many nations/strategy's I looking forward to trying out in the future. Master enslave will probably work for anyone with astral mages, however MA Ermor very, very quickly seemed to amass 32 communion slaves + masters to carry this out. Also Ermor as access to alot of death gems usually, which means skull mentors, which means enslave mind/master enslavement/shadow blast are very quickly researched.

[PDF]

Aleph said:
Meglobob - most people seem to recommend dual bless where they recommend it at all. Obviously, high death for death weapons, but were you thinking of a dual? And why is master enslave only for MA Ermor?

Forget Death weapons, Fire weapons at Fire9 is better. But anyway it's not that useful on Vestals IMHO, their weapons already being magical (plus F9 is really of not much use for MA Ermor..).
Personnally I'd just go for a W9 bless (quickness), with some Fire (to increase attack) or Astral (to increase MR, as Vestals are banishable).