Ermor?

[Agrajag]

magnate said:

Er, don't you mean Wither Bones? Bone Grinding damages *all* units on the battlefield, normal and undead alike, including your own. Wither Bones is undead-specific.

CC

Let me rephrase my misguiding quote:
Bone Grinding auto kills all skeletal undead because they are made purely from bones.
I'm not 100% sure its true, but 300 Longdead Horsemen and some more misc. Longdead troops say otherwise.

So with one spellcast, you destroy all of the undead.

A good spellcaster for that is the Lich, you can easily give him the requiered Death paths and he is immortal, so he can attack the army, grind, and escape, with no risk at all (under friendly dominion) and with a great chance of destroying an entire (or most of) undead legion.

[Gargoyle]

I recently posted that in my current SP game Ermor had a few spots on the map where it had over 400 troop. But I found that I could win an open battle against it with an army of about 150 mixed troops, a couple of mages and a couple of priest.

[Valandil]

Solar brilliance too. Fairly high level, but destroys armies. My quickend priest-5 prophet with the forbidden light currently has about 6000 kills. Big spells like flame stome are good, as is fire storm. Not niefel flames.

[The Panther]

This whole discussion overlooks a few big problems with Ermor:

1. Ermor can pile out troops in the early game and can easily overrun most any nation by turn 20. You simply can't have enough priests nor high enough research early on to counter this. Ermor can easily rush better than any other nation.
2. Fighting Ermor nearly ALWAYS requires multiple nations to join in. This seems to me to be an obvious flaw in the game design if one specific nation normally can't be beat in a 1-on-1.
3. If you want to have at least a fighting chance to beat Ermor in a 1-on-1 in the first 20 turns, you MUST have a good anti-undead nation such as Pythium or Marignon. But who wants to only play those races just because Ermor is present?
4. If you start near Ermor, you have basically no chance to win the game. Even if you put together a coalition right off the bat and kill Ermor early, you will take too many troop losses doing so, plus you will have provinces with no population and no resources. So you will easily lose to the guy on the other side from you who has a normal nation with normal troops and lots of mages.
5. Soul Gate troops simply CANNOT be banished by level 2 priests. Their MR is too high. Even Level 4 priests have trouble banishing Soul Gate troops. Low priestly nations like Man and Ulm have almost no chance against SG Ermor.
6. Don't forget supply. If you cannot get a nature mage, plus nature gems, plus CONSTRUCTION 4 (!) you can't invade Ermor. Your starving, 5 morale, diseased troops will never win any battle in enemy territory.

Your best bet when an Ermor death theme is in the game? Start as far away as possible so you have time for the necessary research and artifacts needed to kill the undead!

[Cainehill]

The Panther said:
6. Don't forget supply. If you cannot get a nature mage, plus nature gems, plus CONSTRUCTION 4 (!) you can't invade Ermor. Your starving, 5 morale, diseased troops will never win any battle in enemy territory.

Er - you mean unless you don't have earth mages (mechanical men, etc) death mages (make enough undead to let your mages destroy his), water/earth (claymen), or a variety of other non-eating troops. Of course - national troops are pretty much out.

[The Panther]

Cainehill said:
Er - you mean unless you don't have earth mages (mechanical men, etc) death mages (make enough undead to let your mages destroy his), water/earth (claymen), or a variety of other non-eating troops. Of course - national troops are pretty much out.

Sorry, I meant early game, like the first 10-30 moves or so. There are plenty of counters by move 50 or later, if you last that long. By move 80, pretty much any nation can beat Ermor.

But early on, you only have national troops available for the most part. And those don't work at all without supply.

Overall, death mages work the best, but you need research to make them useful. Ermor needs no research to fight an early war, which is a big problem fighting against them.

My son did show me in a game once that mass devils will utterly destroy just about any size undead army (easily a 30-1 ratio or so). Thirty devils led by a Demonbred killed a 250 undead army with barely a scratch. He might have lost one devil.

[Ironhawk]

The Panther said:
4. If you start near Ermor, you have basically no chance to win the game. Even if you put together a coalition right off the bat and kill Ermor early, you will take too many troop losses doing so, plus you will have provinces with no population and no resources. So you will easily lose to the guy on the other side from you who has a normal nation with normal troops and lots of mages.

This is exactly why I ban all pop-killing dominions from games I host. Its cute, thematically, but it completely breaks down the incentive for war. Why bother attacking a nation if there is so little to gain?

I hope pop-killing dom is removed from dominions 3!

[Wish]

The Panther said:

Sorry, I meant early game, like the first 10-30 moves or so. There are plenty of counters by move 50 or later, if you last that long. By move 80, pretty much any nation can beat Ermor.

But early on, you only have national troops available for the most part. And those don't work at all without supply.

Overall, death mages work the best, but you need research to make them useful. Ermor needs no research to fight an early war, which is a big problem fighting against them.

My son did show me in a game once that mass devils will utterly destroy just about any size undead army (easily a 30-1 ratio or so). Thirty devils led by a Demonbred killed a 250 undead army with barely a scratch. He might have lost one devil.

most undead take extra damage from fire, and devils are faster and stronger than your average longdead, spectre, or vestal.

[Endoperez]

I don't think undead actually take more damage from fire. Mummies do, but the ones that come in huge numbers (longdead, spectral whatever) don't.

However, there are lots of Fire (and Astral) spells that deal extra damage against undead, e.g. Holy Pyre. Incidentally, Holy Pyre doesn't harm Devils...

Devils rule over undead because they have so good stats that, even with superior numbers -> more hits against the devils, the undead can hardly even harm them. I imagine Fiends of Darkness would work just as well, or at least come very close.

[Boron]

All in all Panther is right i think.

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.
Some Nations might have a good chance earlygame though:

Ctis - Skelspam, eagle Eyes, dust to dust, sauros need no supply at all + even provide supply for some troops
Ryleh + Atlantis - Underwater advantages, vs. AE ermor Mind Burn, Soul slay etc.
Marignon - Holy Pyre starting spell
Pythium
Caelum in Vanilla
Pan CW - Perfect Ally for Ermor

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