LA Ermor - myth, legend, or overrated tripe?

[Shovah32]

As kissblade said it isnt as strong as it was, mainly because of the increased gold and supplies from dom2.

[DrPraetorious]

I actually think that LE Ermor is slightly underpowered.

Ermor now gets just as many troops as everyone else, but only gets mages by spending gems - and since Ermor has approximately the same gem income as everyone else (a little bit higher, but not much), this is a big disadvantage once magic becomes highly important.

The upshot is that I think all of the LE Ermor nationals should be *half* as expensive or less. This wouldn't make a big difference in the early game, but your forces would stay roughly comparable as the game goes on. It'd also enable Ermor not to fall so far behind the research curve, as they generally do.

The increase in price on spectres hurt them a lot more than it hurt other positions - which would've been fine in dom2 when they were so devastating, but now that they're not it's an over-correction.

[Nick_K]

LA ermor is incredibly potent in SP. Try playing as them and you'll find that the AI simply cannot deal with you at all.
However, the general belief is that this is due to limitations with the AI. I don't play MP, but it seems that the ashen empire in MP is a shadow of it's single-player self

[Sombre]

Playing against an AI ermor is also more challenging than otehr nations - it seems to eat lots of territory up and cn be harder than normal to go on the offense against (still not exactly hard).

[TwoBits]

I suspect you'd need to insist on keeping the LA magic site frequency setting at "default" in order to make LA Ermor worthwhile in MP. That way, your starting gem income (15 vs 4 for everyone else) is more telling. But since I've never actually played them in MP, I'm probably just blowing smoke...

[Nick_K]

I think extra magic sites helps ermor. Ermor uses gems instead of gold for its elite troops, priests and mages. They really need all the death gems they can get.

[Velusion]

I'm playing LA Ermor in the 18 player Eventide game (check out the forum). I seem to be doing fairly well (my army size is like 10x higher than the next runner up) but I don't think I'm in the lead by a long shot.

It's a completely different sort of nation. You are almost playing a whole different sort of game. You overtax and sometimes pilliage your own population - you burn down any fort you can't be sure of keeping - you liquidate the enemy counryside so you win the long war, even while loosing lots of other battles - You put a castle & a temple in every province you can hold - you don't recruit indy troops unless you really need them (ala archers sometimes) - etc...

Diplomacy is everything... do what you have to to make a friend early... bribe, deal, pledge your first born...

The turns also take 2x-4x as long as a normal game - lots of micromanagement. Lots of raiding. You have extremely limited access to non-death magic which is frustrating. I have lots of minor priests spending thier days raising the dead. You are often fighting one or more plays at the same time all the time...