What to do about Ermor ....

[LintMan]

So I put plans for Ermor on hold (they didn't seem to be expanding, and all the pop in their provinces is dead already) and went after Tien Chi.

I thought it would be worth it to eliminate Ermor rather than allow them time to recover, but it's definitely lower priority now that Tien Chi has forced the issue.

How the heck do you deal with Living Statues? They're not undead, but they're unbreakable (morale 50) and they have 22 prot! A group of about six went through three provinces of 20 giants each! I have very few earth gems so no Elf Bane. Are there spells that target magic beings? (Is there some sort of index of spell effects anywhere, to save looking through every spell whenever I have a question like this?)

Living statues are very tough. I've generally just resorted to using a mix of overwhelming force and elemental spell attacks against them. Were those 20 giants they killed militia giants or better ones? The militia giants in particular seem to have morale issues and rout quickly. Hurler's boulder damage is huge and might be good against the statues.

Some summoned creatures might also help - the death summons as I mentioned above since they are mostly high morale or unbreakable, but if you can afford it, consider Ether Gate. It's a bit overpriced, but you get a S3D1sorc1 Ether Lord plus fifteen size-3 ethereal Ether Warriors carrying Moonblades (x2 damage vs magic beings!).

As I suspected, Tien Chi were spread pretty thin (apart from where they attacked me), so I've taken a half dozen of his provinces. In the meantime I found an isolated Ermor province, cut off from the rest of Ermor by a plucky Vanheim. So I decided to mop it up on my way further into Tien territory - by this time I had two fully equipped Bane Lords and two similarly decked out Firbolgs.

Unfortunately Vanheim decided to take that Ermor province the same turn, and I accidentally killed their god! I lost a Firbolg in the process too.

Wow, massive bad luck! I hate when you accidentally attack a peaceful nation, and when you kill their god, it's just that much worse. At least now their pretender will have lost some magic power and might have some afflictions, so it's less of a threat.

On the same turn I had decided that I could encroach on Ermor with one of my Bane Lords, and he got surrounded and killed. It was so close though - 240 undead killed out of 253, meaning it was only the summoned skellies that turned the tide.

It's tempting to send them out alone since they're quite tough, but sending banelords in pairs is generally safer. It's usually when I give in to temptation and send them alone that I get surprised and lose one.

That was one bummer of a turn - at least I got to conj 6 and can start calling Lamia queens.

Lamia queens are a real bargain, IMHO.

1. How to deal with Living Statues? (and other high prot non-undead MBs I guess)

I mentioned this above, but in more detail:
- elemental spell attacks are effective. Frozen Heart is a favorite of mine since it is 100 precision, and W1 mages can cast it (IIRC). Immolation is also 100 precision plus armor negating, but that's not as easily available for Jotuns. Falling Frost is also nice if you have any high level water mages.
- Moonblades do 2x damage to magic beings and cost astral gems not earth - give some to your surviing SC's and set them lose.
- I know lots of people think it's overpriced, but I love Ether Gate, and those guys would be quite useful here.
- Since you'll generally have low numbers of giants, morale can be an issue, particularly for the cheaper, lower-morale giants. Firbolg leaders can help offset this because of their Standard ability, as can using the better, higher-morale giants, and having larger Groups.

2. Why did my Bane Lord charge into the middle of the undead army and get surrounded, instead of flying to the back and offing leaders like he was ordered to? He only flew halfway down the battlefield.

Vynd mentioned the morale-check mechanism. I think this is a game-balancing factor to make it harder to take out rearmost leader units reliably. Since you were fighting 250+ units with one banelord, you would have gotten surrounded no matter where your banelord attacked (unless the attack rear actually worked and you took out all his leaders before you could be surrounded)

Boron thinks "attack archers" is better because it doesn't have the morale checks, but I think it does; I haven't seen "attack archers" cause direct movement to attack archers on any more reliable basis than "attack rear" actually attacks the rear. And if the enemy doesn't *have* any archers (such as usually the case with undead), you can't be sure where your units will attack instead.

3. Does the AI assume peace after X turns of no conflict? Caelum just declared war on me again - I didn't notice we'd ever not been at war, but it's true that a few turns had elapsed since we Last fought.

Yes, one of the developers stated that after some amount of turns of non-conflict, the AI can revert to peace status with you, unless you've killed thier god, which means a permanent vendetta.

4. If I equip a Bane Lord with a Flambeau or a Fire Brand, and a Burning Pearl, will he be safe from the fire effects?

There are some odd behaviors with resistance items stacking: some do and some don't. I think there was a thread here about that where someone figured out some of the details of the behavior. I think it was in the bug thread, but you might be able to dig it up with a forum search.