Ermor?

[quantum_mechani]

Boron said:

In a 1on1 on CoT or a similiar map ermor would most likely win even vs. those nations though apart from caelum maybe.

I would amend that to SG only, AE is quite a bit easier to deal with.

[shovah]

i dont think bone grinding kills all undead but it does low AN damage and alot of undead have like 1 or 2 health so...

[Frostmourne27]

High lvl priests (lvl 4+) with rune smashers and/or spell focci wrok very well against hordes. In on Marignon game vs A.I. ermor (they beat me- i made their pretender for them) i had a high inquisitor prophet with the sword of justice, spell focus and boots of quickness. Against chaff, priests like that can do extremely well. Also note that for Caelum and Marignon, the first PD commander is a priest (lvl 3 for Caelum) and that for Jotunheim, Man, Marignon, Vanheim and Mictlan, the second PD commander is a priest.

[shovah]

but such high lvl priests (as i have been told and found out) are much less succesful than massed weaker priests (my fave is huge number of low lvl priests with w9 bless and 3 or more relief casters along with 1 maxed out priest. if you want my advice get a e9 n9 great mother because it gives an amazing paladin bless to paladins and although it berserks them it works wonders on priests (big reinvig) but unfortunately no quickness (get a paladin with herald lance and a shield (i suggest accursed) and then make him a lucky pendant, some armour and something else (preferably something making him etheral though i cant think of anything other than wraith crown/the robe) he gets a high protection and defense so most undead hits bounce off him, he has reivig for well.. reinvig and most attacks that get through are taken care of by luck and regen i find they are best ran in groups of 3 with some rather limited priestly support such as:1 divine blesser and maybe 2 banishers and an ivy king for relief

[Valandil]

does earthquake destroy ethereal undead. If so, it might me devastating to SG. Ermor is VERY strong early game, but can be countered effectively later on. Perhaps the best bet is simply to not attack, and try to stop ermorian armies (Lvl2 priests, devils, etc.) while forcing back the deadly dominion. Though this is not very easy, it might be the best option, since turn 50+ there are several counters to all but the most powerfl undead. I actually find BE ermor to be much more powerfull than the other themes. Not only do you have access to cheap undead fodder, but powerful S/D mages and tolerable (sort of) national troops. The dominions is less deadly, but many of the really good undead killers are unaffected. I am NOT an ermor player. Do NOT believe me. Thanks.

[shovah]

i dont think earthquake hurts etheral (just get a mega AoE like shimmering fields or early on falling fires/magma eruption) and ae/sg are far stronger than broken empire, my personal favourite is sg but some people swear by ashen empire, i still like my paladin loadout because with that herald lance he can take out more pwoerful undead aswell

[Endoperez]

Broken Empire has some interesting strategies, starts with Body Ethereal, they can combine living and undead armies very well, they Reanimate Longdead Legionaires... I'd really like to play them. Unfortunately, they have very weak mages. I'm not sure how or if they are changed for DomIII, but I'm expecting some minor improvements. I'd really like to see them have different sacred units, the current ones are inferior to Body Etherealized Principes.

I think BE Ermor is similar to Ulm in Dom:PPP - while it hasn't changed much, Ulm now has other options through themes, and has gotten several specialized troops that have opened different tactics. But even with Sappers and Siege Engineers, Ulm is weaker in the endgame. Ulm can shine, through very spesific route (Forge of the Ancients, lots of Constructs pumped out by the high-Earth pretender), and I'd like to try Broken Empire with pretender that could really benefit from Enchantment. I'm hoping something along the lines of W5E6 Daughter of the River in Dom3 - the priests will become sacred ( from this post ) and thus they would benefit from reinvigoration, and this would allow early Raise Skeletons, bonus for Claymen, and later bonus for Enlivened Statues.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
For most nations starting neighboring ermor is evil and they can only pray that ermor attacks another neighbor first or try to solve the issue diplomatically.

If I start next to Ermor, then I look at it as a chance to get a quick 10 death gems per turn. Ermor is more vulnerable than just about any other nation to early game conquest. They start out very slow - after all, it takes them 35-40 turns to reach level 9 research.

[archaeolept]

yah, i'm w/ the "Ermor? /shrug" crowd... Its usually not hard to scare up some ally against them as well...

[Saber Cherry]

W9 blessing and early research to Wind Guide (IIRC, and air nations only of course) should let you annihilate Ermor with indy priests. My worst (frequent) experience against Ermor is watching 4-5 soulless or spectral warriors advance on a couple priests... slowly... over many turns... avoiding every single holy beam, then slaughtering the priests. I imagine 50% quickness and bonus precision would resolve this problem...

Surround them with archers, not melee units, so that the troops can get kills too. Archers are almost as good as melee units versus undead (in melee) because of the huge stat disparity. So fatigue (and, versus spectrals, MR) is much more important than in normal battles, and swordsmen/spearmen have no better MR and usually no better fatigue than archers. Shields are nice, though.