Ermor themes, too strong?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
They will prevent enemy dominion from spreading through the province they are in however. There is also some chance that even a dominion that is not at the maximum in a province will spread, which is seen most commonly in the very beginning turns.

This is true, but the chance of a temple check attacking a neighboring province appears to be independent of the strength of dominion in the current province, except for the case where the current province is at maximum dominion strength: Then the temple has no choice BUT to attack a neighboring province.

The interesting question is how a temple check propagates out beyond the immediately neighboring province, as temples are clearly capable of spreading dominion further than a neighboring province: Perhaps there's a chance that a temple check which attacks a neighboring province instead bounces and attacks a neighbor of that neighbor: Obviously, this may be forced if the temple's neighbors are also all at full dominion, and perhaps contain temples of their own: If this is what happens, and the nation is jampacked with many temples and is at max dominion in most provinces, the dominion spread may be forced outwards like a giant tidal wave, which WOULD very much account for the overwhelming force with which it overran your own dominion, since the above profile fits my empire.

]I don't particularly like how the rich setting also doubles resources, so I was thinking that I would just mod the amount of gold a given population produces to double gold income only.

Can that be done in a .map file? If it requires a full mod, the Cradle map may be fundamentally unfavorable towards gold-dependent races.

quote:

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At least there's lots of gems: Have you tried converting gems to gold by alchemy? That's where most gold I use is from.

I have been, but Caelum has a particularly hard time finding both fire and earth gems.

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Caelum is also a water nation, with cheap national water mages. High Seraphs can easily roll a random in Astral, which can then jumpstart the process. Surely you can afford to simply use Acashic Record to search for those necessary fire and earth gems, since Gnome Lore and Augury are not castable by basic national mages?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Can that be done in a .map file? If it requires a full mod, the Cradle map may be fundamentally unfavorable towards gold-dependent races.

That's a mod only change.

Caelum is also a water nation, with cheap national water mages. High Seraphs can easily roll a random in Astral, which can then jumpstart the process. Surely you can afford to simply use Acashic Record to search for those necessary fire and earth gems, since Gnome Lore and Augury are not castable by basic national mages?

To get a high seraph to astral 3 takes a good 75 pearls, and then you are going to be spending a lot more pearls to search provinces that have been almost totally searched anyways. You're really better off just sending around a search team of two high seraphs of fire 1 and earth 1.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
To get a high seraph to astral 3 takes a good 75 pearls, and then you are going to be spending a lot more pearls to search provinces that have been almost totally searched anyways. You're really better off just sending around a search team of two high seraphs of fire 1 and earth 1.

75 pearls? No way. It takes 40 pearls: Take an S1 High Seraph, empower to Astral-2 at the cost of 30 pearls, and forge a Starshine. You can use him for the purpose of scanning any new provinces you take for a full search. If you can take F or E High Seraph and give him a booster, you can then easily do probings for Fire and Earth on your searched provinces as well. If the terrain around you is so apparently poor in gold, then it will be rich in resources and gems, because mountains and forests are higher-resource provinces, and wastes, swamps, mountains, and forests again are also richer in magical sites: Acashic Record is very much to your benefit on such targets.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
75 pearls? No way. It takes 40 pearls: Take an S1 High Seraph, empower to Astral-2 at the cost of 30 pearls, and forge a Starshine.

Bah. I need to pay more attention to what I'm saying.

Acashic Record is very much to your benefit on such targets.

Except of course when you've already completely searched for every other type of site (except blood).

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Ermor is not as strong as many would believe. Here's a breakdown of Ermor, from the perspective of an avid Ermor player:

You've missed their major advantage, which is that they are still balanced for the Dominions 1 economy, whereas every other nation now has half the gold production available.

It is popularly believed that if Ermor is left uncontained, it will grow to be unstoppable. This is not inherently true, or at least more true, of Ermor: All nations, if left unchecked, will reach a point where stopping them becomes very difficult.

I believe that that statement is quite literally true. Ermor has absolutely no limitations on the maximum number of troops it can support, and pays no upkeep on its mages whatsoever. That alone is an incredibly massive advantage. Every other nation requires high population in many provinces to keep their troops and mage numbers high, and population only drops over time.

If your dominion is weak, however, you must shore it up with priests and temples, or Ermor's temple spread will quickly overwhelm yours and ruin your lands.

This is the major problem with them. Ermor has absolutely no need for population, so once they have captured a province it becomes useless to anyone else within a few turns.

Don't let yourself be goaded into a rash campaign: Act with patience and prudence, not a knee-jerk reaction of "Ermor must die!".

I think that this is poor advice. Once ghost riders comes into play, which tends to be before turn 40, you basically have no chance against an Ermorian player. This spell makes building fortreses necessary in every province with a temple, which drains gold reserves incredibly quickly.

Both population killing Ermorian themes should probably cost 200 points just to match the other reanimating themes that exist.

[Teraswaerto]

Both population killing Ermorian themes should probably cost 200 points just to match the other reanimating themes that exist.

You mean Desert Tombs? I though the consensus was that DT is too expensive, and quite weak compared to, for example, base C'tis.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
You mean Desert Tombs? I though the consensus was that DT is too expensive, and quite weak compared to, for example, base C'tis.

That comparison might be valid if Ermor had to pay upkeep on its mages and troops.