Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice

[Aleph]

Thanks very much, all. I'm not tied to MA ermor - I'm just thinking about it since it has an economy and thus far LA ermor pretty much spares me from that part of the game. Which is cool, but I should probably learn it. Plus, gold + magic have to yield more versatility than just pure magic. MA Ermor, with it's long list of national spells and incredibly versatile priests, seems like the natural choice for a more flexible death approach.

Any late Pangea or C'tis players want to chime in? Pangea seems really interesting, but are you just racing to Carrion Woods to end up essentially as LA Ermor? Not that I think their combo of all Recuperating native troops + Foul Air would be a bad thing in that case, but it seems like the long way around.

Meglobob - most people seem to recommend dual bless where they recommend it at all. Obviously, high death for death weapons, but were you thinking of a dual? And why is master enslave only for MA Ermor?

[tibbs]

One thing I don't like about LA Ermor is the micromanagement. You have to constantly move your undead troops from the provinces they spawn from, to the front lines.

[Meglobob]

Aleph said:
Meglobob - most people seem to recommend dual bless where they recommend it at all. Obviously, high death for death weapons, but were you thinking of a dual? And why is master enslave only for MA Ermor?

Those were both strategy's used by a MA Ermor player(not me) in MP to great effect. He went through Jotunheim like a knife through butter, I intend to try those strategy's out fully myself playing MA Ermor, as they seem like great fun, when I get time, just 1 of the many nations/strategy's I looking forward to trying out in the future. Master enslave will probably work for anyone with astral mages, however MA Ermor very, very quickly seemed to amass 32 communion slaves + masters to carry this out. Also Ermor as access to alot of death gems usually, which means skull mentors, which means enslave mind/master enslavement/shadow blast are very quickly researched.

[PDF]

Aleph said:
Meglobob - most people seem to recommend dual bless where they recommend it at all. Obviously, high death for death weapons, but were you thinking of a dual? And why is master enslave only for MA Ermor?

Forget Death weapons, Fire weapons at Fire9 is better. But anyway it's not that useful on Vestals IMHO, their weapons already being magical (plus F9 is really of not much use for MA Ermor..).
Personnally I'd just go for a W9 bless (quickness), with some Fire (to increase attack) or Astral (to increase MR, as Vestals are banishable).

[Shovah32]

S9W9 is very nasty on vestals. With ethereal, twist fate, great defence and high mr they are very hard to kill. Their speed from w9 allows them to quickly approach the rear of the enemies army and their survivability lets them slowly grind the enemy down when they get there.

S9D9 could also work, not only does it provide you with access to high level spells such as the death globals, tartarians and master enslave(without communion or with it) but it lets them do alot of damage to SCs/expensive units without magic weapons/lots of attacks(ethereal, twist fate, very hard to banish and death weapons to stack afflictions).

LA pangaea is fun but, without building your whole strategy(or atleast most of it) towards massing undead it will only remain a fairly small part of your strategy.

LA ctis is slightly better for raising undead imo. They dont need any research to summon their undead priests and can use them well. They have fairly cheap death mages who can summon these reanimators and can cast the deadly battlefield spell banefire. When reanimating they can also get lizard undead who, iirc, are better in general than regular longdead.

[Aleph]

Went away to a party, came back to some nice advice.

In my most recent MA Ermor restart, I'm trying an imprisoned oracle, S9D9, with Magic 3 Sloth 3, dominion 6, and possibly something else... but I think that's it. I'm on one of the premade maps with 200+ provinces, since my large/random LA Ermor game ended before I got anywhere near 9th level spells. I appreciate those saying that F9 or W9 are better for sacred, but part of the whole allure of the undead forces is the kind of spells high level death magic brings, and I really wanted wish. Plus, even without Twist Fate it seemed that the vast majority of the early/midgame damage my vestals were taking was Banishment, so Astral it is.

shovah - were you saying C'tis is better than MA Ermor, or just than LA Pangea? I could see it either way, since Ermor's high level mages are very pricey and if lizard-dead are better than human dead that's a reasonable argument. And any idea why the book claims that the Sacred Serpents are unsuited to a bless approach?

pdf - I don't yet understand the game mechanics enough to grok the pros and cons of death vs. fire. Are you saying that fire weapons are actually better than death weapons, or that the attack bonus is better than the affliction bonus?

tibbs - I agree. I actually didn't find out that you can raise armed soulless from battlefield corpses until I played MA Ermor, since I had so many freespawned mound kings that I just threw them with freebie longdead/soulless/ghouls at most problems and rarely bothered slowing down to reanimate.

[Micah]

Keep in mind that magic 3 will lower your banish resistance (the research may well be worth it though, I'm not ermor savvy). In any case, trying to fight outside your dominion if you see any armies of priests would be advantageous if you've got a high magic scale, although the astral bless will help out plenty regardless.

I believe sacred serpents don't lend themselves to a bless strat because they're horribly craptastic units on the whole.

[Shovah32]

I was saying that ctis was better than pangaea. Instead of sloth3 magic3 try order3 sloth2 misfortune2 magic1. You will get alot more gold(25% more than your previous set-up) and only -1rp on your mages.

Sacred serpents arent good for bless strats. They have low prot that cant be boosted with an earth bless. Low defence that cant be helped much(even with w10 they only have 12def) with a water bless and only a single attack so they cant make use of a death9/fire9 bless.

In general, fire9 is better than death9 because: It does more damage, it increases your chance to hit, it can set enemies on fire and death bless needs the enemy to fail a mr test to do its extra damage. Those shadow vestals of yours will be very helpful for holding the enemy in place and grinding them down and if you are facing an jotuns or early thug/SC's(probably pretenders) without magic weapons they will be amazing.

[Agrajag]

If its income you want, I'd rather play with Turmoil-3 Sloth-3 Growth-3 Luck-3, much less of those devastating bad luck events, and eventaully your income will be better off. (A quick test game I made showed that while Order-3 was better in the first 10-20 turn, after 30 turns you are probably better off with Turmoil-3 Growth-3 Luck-3, though one game isn't statistically viable)

[PDF]

Aleph said:
pdf - I don't yet understand the game mechanics enough to grok the pros and cons of death vs. fire. Are you saying that fire weapons are actually better than death weapons, or that the attack bonus is better than the affliction bonus?

Both ! F9 gives +4 Att and Fire weapons (6AP attack), Death9 gives 350% affliction (not very useful IMHO) and Death Weapons are only 2AN damage *but* resistable by MR

Codes :
AP = armor piercing damage, armor protection halved
AN = armor negating damage, ignore all protection from armor
MR = Magic Resistance