Soul Gate vs. Ashen Empire & Ermor Setup

Dont forget the Broken Empire (base) theme. Actually my favorite. SG and AE have both a terrible Achille's heel in MP games : all other players will hate you. And your economy is so weak that you simply cannot pay good indep mages or troops (pillage is a short term solution).

Ermor Broken Empire is an excellent nation that combines very good troops with some astral and death magic.

Weaknesses:
- expensive mages (but 1/2 upkeep),
- all mages and priests, apart from the cultist, are vulnerable to Magic Duels.

Strengths:
- excellent infantry,
- Body Ethereal, the best starting spell of the game IMHO, and death gems to raise hordes of Behemoths (Enchantment 4) or Wights (Conj 3) which are very good with etherealness,
- Leave a few thaumaturgs where your armies just fought to get free armoured soulless (against strong indep, I often raise 30 undead after one battle).
- The Vestals lack punch and are slow to gather in numbers, but they're free and with battlefield-wide power of the sepulchre (+4 ATT and AP, better than fire-8 blessing!) they're quite good units. And since they're from site, you can keep getting them even under seige.
- Nether Darts.

AND you can still be friends with your neighbours and have a flourishing economy.

Cheers

[quantum_mechani]

Sunray_be said:


Weaknesses:
- expensive mages (but 1/2 upkeep),

They are not sacred or unholy, so I don't think so.

[archaeolept]

yah i didn't think they were, but zen also felt that they got half upkeep. it should be easy to check

[Boron]

hm so nowhere detailed info on freespawns ?

Like 2x dominionstrength freespawns and 10% chance on stronger freespawns etc. ?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

quantum_mechani said:
They are not sacred or unholy, so I don't think so.

Actually they are sacred and have halved upkeep, but for some mysterious reason the 'sacred' icon doesn't appear on them (although strangely, it's back again when they lose their leader status).

[alexti]

Sunray_be said:
Dont forget the Broken Empire (base) theme. Actually my favorite. SG and AE have both a terrible Achille's heel in MP games : all other players will hate you.

Yep, and they will keep hating Ermor by reflex. After destroying Ermor, they may realize it was Broken Empire though

[Taqwus]

Top-level SG unholies get to reanimate Apparitions, IIRC, at the added cost of population. The Apparitions are ghostly fellers with a disease-causing aura.

Hm, regarding theme confusion... it bothers me that for provinces of enemy dominion, even if you're occupying them or have a spy there it won't tell you the theme, or even which is the worshipped pretender. Sometimes this is fairly odd, e.g. you'd think that Miasma would be self-evident, as would Carrion Woods, and that the dead Ermor themes would also be readily clear (although not necessarily distinguishable).