Paper, Rock, Marignon!

[Cheezeninja]

Nature magic is FAR from the only way around the lack of supplies. Commanders never starve, all you really need is troops that dont eat. I've had great success in SP with Devils, but any of the lifeless troops or troops that dont need food work.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
...Ermor's killer dominions...
The drawback being that you lose the ability to effectively produce any OTHER units, because your population is 0 and cannot support such an endeavor, and your army is entirely one-dimensional. ...

It doesn't have to be entirely one-dimensional. The same units enemies can summon to survive in Ermorian dominion, can be summoned by Ermor, particularly if the Ermorian pretender is a rainbow mage who site-searches.

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by HotNifeThruButr:
Sure, I've got no problems with nations being dramatically different, but I think they should be based around rational concepts. Nothing like the killer dominions.

"I've got an idea! We have this theme that uses hordes of free troops! Because they're free, you don't need scales to support them, so they'll have a beefy SC Pretender ALL THE TIME! Oh, and their dominion KILLS EVERYONE, so armies can't invade without nature magic or fay boars! And when they do, the land is TOTALLY USELESS because EVERYONE'S DEAD!"

Except not.

1) Ashen Ermor is quite rational. Powerful death magic begets undead.

2) Having everyone die is definitely not "free"!

3) The dominion doesn't kill everyone. As mentioned already, there are many of ways to overcome lack of supply, and the dominion doesn't kill troops, nor inconvenience leaders, or any of the many units who need not eat, or who generate supplies.

4) Unpopulated lands are far from totally useless. They can still be full of magic sites which can be more valuable than population. They also serve as obstacles to food-eating armies led by inexperienced players.

PvK

[velk]

particularly if the Ermorian pretender is a rainbow mage who site-searches.

All ashen empire pretenders are rainbow mages to some degree - what else are you going to spend the excess points on ?

[tinkthank]

A different question:

Ulm beats Marignon on small maps / shorter games?? Really? I dont understand that.

[Yossar]

Originally posted by velk:

quote:

---

particularly if the Ermorian pretender is a rainbow mage who site-searches.

All ashen empire pretenders are rainbow mages to some degree - what else are you going to spend the excess points on ?

---

You don't have to make a rainbow Vampire Queen. VQ may by the strongest SC pretender but taking something else with a couple paths really high along with fortune and magic can be viable and will also eat up a lot of points.

[Cohen]

The Ermor problem (or better, advantage) is that he can take a lot of points from scales, getting 600 points more or less (Turmoil 3, Death 3, Sloth 3, Cold 3 = 480. Misfortune ... up to you ... 3 would be nice, most events kills pop, but this prevent you from receiving national heroes. However from 0 to 120 additional points).

So on his pretender is almost always overpowered ... for Ashen Empire and Soul Gate.
So it would be nice in a patch to see Ermor not getting pretender design points from non-affecting bad scales. He gets only from Lucky and the Magic scale.