Ermor Themes

[Scott Hebert]

I don't know much about MP strategies, and I know that the theme I'm about to suggest is perhaps a little sub-optimal, but has anyone thought of Fires of the Faith Marignon? IIRC, each of their provinces has a free Holy-1 Inquisitor preaching every turn, and if you start with a Dominion of 10 (Virtue or Glyph most likely), then it's just possible you might be able to win the dominion war.

If you choose to go the Virtue route, and you think you can keep your dominion up, you might also think about the Wrath global. Purgatory is another option.

[Zen]

Pangaea can beat SG Ermor when played with fighting Ermor:SG in mind. You can't make your dominion as heavy as Ermors, but thats okay. Pans can deal with early and middle game freespawn/spams and Centaur Warriors hypereffective especially 1on1 when you can send a dryad prophet (2+ other dryads) with 20+ warriors (depends on game settings) through indeps to Ermor land. Use tangle vine script on the early game thugs and expand as fast as you can with Pretender cheeze in your land (medusa's pretty good) and cut Ermor expansion.

If you can harrass Ermor long enough and cut their gold/thuggery to either A) Get Lamia's going or B) Blood (use xbreeding to fortify chaff provinces).

A good research strategy is:
Alt 3
Conj 3 (Earthpower, Call of the Wild)
Alt 4 (Swarm)
Alt 5 (Mother Oak)
Conj 6 (Lamias)

You should research about as fast as SG:Ermor even with early Dryads out causing havok. Depending on the mapsize I might not even search for sites, use Mother Oak to fuel the troops to get a critical mass of either blood/lamias.

You should be able to get Lamia's online around turn 16+ depending on how the early game goes.

Edit: Also this is no foolproof strategy. It's just one that works very well against SG. Alot of things can go wrong for you or you opponent can get lucky. The key to 1v1 dominions is being aggressive.

You could also do this with base Marignon. Though the formula is much simpler. Only make xbows (you should have a good 250-300 by turn 15) speedresearch Ench 4 then alt 4 (for luck if you want) go evocation until you get to firestorm (early game you are looking for falling fires). Use mostly Witch Hunters. Assume your opponent is going to become fully fire resistant and use Witch Hunter Communicant slaves as Astral Shield by setting their script to "hold, hold, hold, hold, hold attack"

With a Master with personal luck, resist magic, astral shield, astral weapon, fire resistance, retreat.

It's unlikely that SG Ermor will be able to fit more than 4-5 (if he's lucky) anti-missle and anti-fire. Use flaming arrows to cut through chaff, use your pretender to deal with opponents pretender (something big with regen usually works pretty good for stalling, make sure it has air shield and a ring of fire resistance).;

[shovah]

try a naga with N9 + whatever else you want and it will get 13 lamias per turn, add that to gift of health and boom...