EA/MA Ermor Late-Game Advice?

[Shovah32]

Ok I'm stumped with how to use both of these nations in the lategame.
EA Ermor has powerful troops, particularly against many of the conventional armies of its age(not including sacreds)with the legionaires who can handle the generally dominant missile fire of the age(principes are great all-rounders) but falter a little in the late-game and the equites who are also nice but fall out of favour quickly.
You can take a bless with them but the sacreds are fairly expensive and, due to being capitol only, don't have much late game potential. The augur elders, recruitable at every fort, can spam various powerful evocations but, although dangerous, have trouble winning battles alone - particularly with their lack of 1 very high level path.
Their lack of very high death magic also limits them.

MA Ermor has fairly effective troops, although they often falter against the more powerful troops of the age. They have powerful and cheap sacreds(who are about to get a lovely nerf) but they are capitol only and limited by your dominion level and they are also weak to many undead counters+they are routable.
The grand thaumaturgs are not particularly powerful in any of their avaliable paths and apart from the precision boost the air random is next to useless. The grand thaumaturgs are also capitol only, severely limiting their use later on. The very poor magic diversity of ermor - maximum 3 in astral and death and maximum 1 in water and air - excluding 10% randoms which rarely match up - also severely limits them yet without a bless pretender(who can't really help diversify) their armies are rather poor - particularly early on.
The regular thaumaturgs can cast nether bolt/darts and, while fairly powerful, it is not terribly difficult for enemies to greatly reduce the effectiveness of the nether spells by the time they are avaliable - antimagic or army of lead on decent MR troops or extra MR gear on SCs.

Any advice both on builds and late game play for these nations?

[quantum_mechani]

Late game, almost all nations tend to degenerate to something very similar. By that time people have mostly diversified enough that they are mostly playing with the same bag of tricks. MA Ermor does have one unique trick that doesn't run out late game though, reanimation. Don't underestimate infinite skeleton armies, even late game where they are easily destroyed, they are an important buffer and distraction.

[RamsHead]

Here is a little tidbit for EA/MA Ermor: Take one of your lucky level four death mages (hopefully you will have some) and cast Twiceborn on them. Then get them killed. Make sure it is in your dominion or the spell won't work. When becoming a Wight Mage, death mages sometimes gain an extra level in death. Once you have a level five death mage, just give him a Skull Staff and a Skullface, and now you can summon Tartarians!

[quantum_mechani]

A ring of sorcery is usually an option too.

[Rytek]

Communions with banefire is so much fun. Banefire has a long range, wide area, awesome damage. Add some communion shadow blasting. Summon up some skeleton archers and add some more banefire pain. Make sure to have plenty of undead chaff in from of the skeleton archers to soak the priest banishings. Unload with a round of horror markings and then summon some Lamshanka's. Use plenty of Banes equiped for linebacking in front of your communion armies.

[Frostmourne27]

Rytek said:
Communions with banefire is so much fun. Banefire has a long range, wide area, awesome damage. Add some communion shadow blasting. Summon up some skeleton archers and add some more banefire pain. Make sure to have plenty of undead chaff in from of the skeleton archers to soak the priest banishings. Unload with a round of horror markings and then summon some Lamshanka's. Use plenty of Banes equiped for linebacking in front of your communion armies.

I agree about the banes, (by which I assume you mean wights, the troop version. Banes are commanders, and although they make decent thugs, you proably wont be massing them) although they're hard to mass, but dispute several of your other points:
Banefire is not avialable to ME ermorian national mages, as it needs F1. Banefire archers, likewise, although you don't need amny casters, so a god and some empowerment would probably work. I'm not sure its cost effective, but they are pretty cool anyway.
Both of those are probably decent options for early ermor, however.

As for Lammashtas, I've found them to be pretty unreliable except with mages ordered to cast and the retreat, in which case you don't get the province. Otherwise , in my experiance, one of several things occurs: the Lammashtas kill reverything, frindlies included, The Lammashtas die horribly to a huge enemy army/battle magic/something lethal, or the lammashtas massacre the enemy, only to be brutally murdered by your forces, in which case your army was very likely strong enough to defeat the opposition without recourse to such a dangerous spell.
On the other hand, I'm not

[RamsHead]

quantum_mechani said:
A ring of sorcery is usually an option too.

Of course but that is not nearly as fun to describe.