Beating down the Undead

[OmikronWarrior]

Ermor's free spawn may not be the Cat's Meow, but when you're outnumbered on a strategic scale by 50:1, I don't suppose they have to be. So, what are the general strategies for dealing with hordes and hordes of undead? Assume the player is competent and and does his blessed and buffs.

P.S. PS, if the anti-undead talk could focus on air magic, that'd be great.

[Kamamura]

I would say... lot's of priests, with some chaff for protection? Also some spells like solar rays, if I remember correctly. There is also an astral spell that makes everyone blind and makes all undead on the field lose hitpoints gradually. Also, there is a nice fire ritual "Purgatory", together with strong dominion you can hit them skellies even before seeing them...

[thejeff]

Air magic isn't a lot of help versus undead, unfortunately.

Wrathful Skies will work on any kind of chaff. Fog Warriors will help keep your meat shield alive. Lighting/Orb lightning/Thunderstrike can take out the tougher undead. Use flying/cloud teleporting teams to burn temples to cut down on his dominion and thus free spawn.

More generally as suggested, lots of priests. Astral/Fire/Death magic, if you've got them.
More priests.

[Nikolai]

Air magic: One man casts "Wrathful Skies" and retreats. One SC designed to _last_ keeps the battle going. It isn't so hard to survive massive undead for 50 turns. And with a bit luck, they will not survive 50 turns for "Wrathful Skies".

[Velusion]

What turn in the game are you in? What does your research look like?

[OmikronWarrior]

Magic: 4-Conj, 5-Alt, 6-Evo, 7-Ench, 5-Thua, 0-BM.

I have wrathful skies, a plentiful Air Gem income for making Storm Staffs and Air Boosters, but no real supercombatants. I was going for Storm Army to comine with Wrathful skies, but I just figued out that this spell only conveighs half resistance. Still might be enough to keep my Skinshifters alive (Yeah, I'm playing Midgard, so priests are all capital only). Fire Magic is out of the question, but I do have limited earth, death, nature and blood. Then I have units that are 2-Astral and only 2-Astral, but I'm hoarding my Pearls for Dispel.

[Velusion]

Solar Brilliance (Ench 7) is the single best spell to use against hordes of Undead (save Undead Mastery). IF you are playing against the AI it should wipe them out provided your meat shield can hold. Even in MP it can be crippling if the other player hasn't been getting ready for it.

Get a communion up (with astral boosters) and use it. It shouldn't really take that many pearls away from your hording.

[thejeff]

When we say priests we're talking indy priests. If you haven't yet, build temples in every province that has indy priests and isn't on the front lines and start pumping out the cheap priests.

Air elementals and Spring Hawks are lightning resistant. They might be able to slow down the hordes long enough for Wrathful skies to do it's work.

Do you have the research to get to Air Queens in time? SCs/thugs are the way to go against hordes of chaff. Even properly equipped Banelords or Sleepers would help slow the hordes down and let the priests and mages work.
I assume you don't have a bless or an SC pretender?

[Baalz]

Yeah, when the hoards get to really absurd sizes your only option is battlefield wide effects. A lot of the undead counters (solar rays, banishment, dust to dust, cleansing waters, holy pyre, etc) will work when you're merely extremely outnumbered, (put boots of quickness on people with flabeaus or herald lances for instance) but LA Ermor does get to a point where you really have to deal with them as a homogeneous army rather than a set of units. Solar brilliance, earth quake, rain of stones, acid rain, etc. is what you want to be thinking about by that time, depending on your capabilities.

[Shovah32]

From Baalz list I second the spells solar brilliance and rain of stones. The first will turn almost any undead horde to dust and the second is extremely destructive against poorly armoured/low health troops(most soulless and longdead respectively).