Newbie Q re: Ermor AE and income

[Agrajag]

First of all, Turmoil-3,Sloth-3,Death-3,Cold-3,Luck-3,Magic-3 is pretty much a must with AE.
Especially early on, they have quite bad research, so you need magic to compensate, and since you take Turmoil-3, you might as well capitalize on it with Luck-3, the lucky +Gold events are much more valuable to AE since you have and need much less money.
You should also take a very high dominion score, since your priests can Preach, and its harder to get temples going because of money problems. Also, your Reanimations and freespawns are affected by dominion, so increasing dominion will also help your military strength.
And since dominion is important, you are going to have trouble finding provinces that aren't drained completely because of your dominion, I usually don't even bother with pillaging and taxation because there's hardly anyone left to tax or pillage by the time I get a province. Though obviously if you get a chance, do it.
What I usually do (this is only good for SP) is get some earth on my pretender, atleast 5, though 6 is much better, and then I use this earth to get the earth-gem-giving global. With this global active you can easily afford a Forge of The Ancients in a few turns, and then you can both use your Dusk Elder's randoms well, as well as forge that alchemy stone for maximum benefits from alchemizing all that earth into gold to fund your temples and fortifications.
And just a small tip, remember that what kind of freespawns you get is influenced by temples and fortifications.

[shovah]

which is why i suggest the cheaper castle. with a castle you get tougher units and those great knights of the unholy sepulcher. the earth blood deep well is good and so is the forge but unfortunately both are quite easily despelled. if you were going for pure cash the ever burning pyre would be a good choice (would give you 300 extra gold per turn)

the best advice i can give you is kill any free militia/flagelants asap because they drain your cash

[Agrajag]

shovah said:
which is why i suggest the cheaper castle. with a castle you get tougher units and those great knights of the unholy sepulcher. the earth blood deep well is good and so is the forge but unfortunately both are quite easily despelled. if you were going for pure cash the ever burning pyre would be a good choice (would give you 300 extra gold per turn)

the best advice i can give you is kill any free militia/flagelants asap because they drain your cash

Well, that's why I said it only works well in SP, where the AI rarely dispells.

As for those annoying militia events, the good thing about AE is that your Death-3 scale means you have no supplies in your provinces, and the militia dies from starvation. Its still not fast enough because they are a serious drain on your economy, but atleast they finish themselves off eventually.

[Wish]

I might point out that alchemizing earth gems is fine and all, but under CB, at least, fire gems are worth more gold.

[Endoperez]

Fire gems have always been 15gp/gem, while Earth gems are 10gp/gem.

[AMF]

Thanks for all the advice. Definitely learning a lot. I might actually even survive a game...just in time for Dom3 to come out and make me feel dumb again!

Alarik