HELP: Ermor, Broken Empire (Middle Age)

[Arboris]

I am intrigued with the thought of ruling this dark and sinister empire. I have a dozen or so games under my belt and have avoided this empire as I reacquainted myself with the intricate details of Dominions. (What a great game of unprecedented depth!)

I’m not a fan of the Death Scale but I can be converted with the right advice. However I link long epic games and have read that tipping the scale in favor of death may not be a good strategy in epic scale games.

I’m looking for some advice from veteran rules of the Ermor empire. Tips, strategies, tactics, and recipes for disaster are all welcome.

Thank you!

-Arboris

[Nerfix]

Don't take Death scale, it will make Old Age worse. I've been playing with Astral/Death bless.

[Belcarl]

Well I'm not really a vet, but anyway.

The basics in a no particular order:

Any commander, even independent ones, with atleast one level of Holy can reanimate undeads. So take advtantage of this and recruit lots of priests outside your capitol to make expendable chaff troops.

Your best low level thugs would be Banes, Conjuration lvl 3. A good chasis with enough MR to resist banish from low level priests. A lucky pendant (5 astral gems) and whatever 10+ damage weapon you can afford will make a good thug against anything that doesn't have trample. Doom Glaive being a favourite of mine. This works until lvl 7+ summons shows up on the scene anyway.

Conjuration lvl 2 also gives you Dark knowledge which should help in improving your death gem income.

Enchantment lvl 1 will give your mages the ability to spamm undeads on the battlefield. lvl 4(?) gives you Behemots.

A well known battlefield tactic for Ermor and Pythium is to make a large block of Principes and place an astral mage or two in the middle. Then cast the Alteration 3 spell Body Etheral. This gives you etheral troops with armor and good stats! Give the principes the order to Fire closest, they will throw their javelins at their closest target and then engage.

You need to make a deciscion what your Middle/Late game is going to be though. Either you invest in astral magic with Thaumaturgy at lvl 5+ for Soulslay and Enslave mind spells. Or you try to get Conjuration lvl 9 and bring out some Tartarians. There are some nice Death evocation spells, but I have yet to train evocation beyond lvl 3 with ermor until turn 60+, thinking that Conjuration or Enchantment is more important for them.

Death and Astral spells are your strenghts. Etheral principes with some decked out banes as a vanguard, a horde of low undead chaff to wear the enemy down and all of them backed up by 3-4 unholy priests is a pretty standard Ermor tactic.

Magic item production can be in other paths with some creative pretender construction.

Your "artillery" will be lacking until quite well into the game. But cheap commanders with decent preciscion score can be decked with scepters of command (F2, construction lvl 4) for some decent long range firepower. You will need either your pretender of an indy mage to make these though.

[Endoperez]

Also, you can use the Black Servants from Conjuration 1 for some early game action if you can get them some armors. They are ethereal, and that helps a lot. You'll probably won't have enough gems or mages to make armor, but e.g. Earth would be wonderful. As with most undead, they have Encumberance 0, and thus won't suffer from heavy armors' fatique.

[Belcarl]

If you go with Black servants, you really need to put an anti magic amulet on them. Otherwise even independents will banish them pretty darn quick.

A Black servant with a Doom glaive, Fire plate, anti magic amulet makes a good thug. Thats quite a bit of gem investment in one lvl 1 summon though.

Or maybe Im just paranoid, after having lost 3 of these to an independent lvl 1 priest in my last game on turn 12...

[Talleyrand]

Can someone tell me what a thug is? I've figured out what a SC is but still not sure what thug means. It seems like a regular unit with lots of magical artifacts equipped? Sort of a mini-SC?

[dirtywick]

Death Magic has a good number of spells for stealth raiding squads. I use them mainly to pick on provinces with temples in them where you only have to deal with PD. A Spectre commander with Shades, Shade Beasts, Dispossed Spirits, and Ghosts are all available at D3 and Conj 6. They're all stealthy and ethereal and Chill 3 I believe, and Spectre's are pretty good mages.

[Arboris]

Belcarl said:
Magic item production can be in other paths with some creative pretender construction.

Belcarl,

I'd love to hear what you have to say on this subject.

I'd also love to hear from anyone else with pretender construction advice!

Thanks folks for all the great tips and advice thus far. Ever since SE IV I have been a big fan of the Shrapnel forum community!

-Arboris

[KissBlade]

you forget ye old Nether darts for Broken Empire.

[PvK]

A few notions for Broken Empire:

* Don't generally want Death scales.

* Learn to use your priests to reanimate. Follow your armies to reanimate armed soulless before the bodies go stale or the peasants bury them.

* Use national priest spells to improve the performance of the undead, especially the soulless, from totally incompetant to semi-decent fodder.

* IIRC, note that a holy-4 prophet can be had, giving access to better reanimation and battlefield spells.

* Also, the astral magic can be used to increase the holy power of high priests during combat, giving them access to higher undead-enhancing priest spells.

* Develop combined arms tactics with a mix of different types of undead and living troops.

PvK