Ok, this game was probably perceived by most of you as a relatively straightforward win for LA Ermor, which is probably being attributed mainly to the Pangaea alliance above anything else. Which I can not deny did make things a lot easier
And of course the overriding opinion that LA Ermor are just an overpowered nation to begin with. Which I'm guessing is a view that has only been strengthened by those who played in this game. And you are now more sure than ever that LA Ermor are indeed overpowered, so should be banned from all games (like they usually are). But things are far from being that simple, so now I'd like to give some insights from the victorious undead throne if I can, as to why LA Ermor are not necessarily the powerhouse people perceive them to be.
Firstly Ermor are very vulnerable to an early rush IMO. Their undead troops are not great at all, and are only a threat because of the sheer numbers Ermor can field once their freespawn rate gets going. But the freespawn rate is linked to dominion, and dominion takes time to spread, so they can't field excessive numbers in the early turns. Plus forts are needed to produce the good kind of undead. The Soulless and Longdead are the ultimate definition of chaff, and as units are no match for anything in LA.
What Ermor wants more than anything else in the early game is time. Time to get their dominion spread. Time to kill off supplies (makes invading harder) and population (makes invading less appealing). But all this takes time. Precious time. And a commodity that is of great importance in the first few turns. And one thing to note is that during the first 10 turns or so, Ermor's freespawn rate isn't really higher than other nations regular recruitment rate. So troop for troop, Ermor are just pathetic in the first 10 turns. As such I'm pretty sure that any nation with high protection and/or defence troops can easily roll in and take LA Ermor out within the first 10-15 turns if they went directly for them. And if LA Ermor doesn't have a SC to defend them, then I just don't see how they can survive personally. Plus if the rushing nation has good priests available, then the rush becomes a whole lot easier and quicker all round.
The main reason LA Ermor never gets rushed though is that there is no immediate benefit for the rushing nation, besides that of eliminating Ermor, and bagging a huge death income at the end. But before the end there is a war to fight. As we all know gold rules during expansion, and is in desperately short supply during an early war. But the catch is that you gain no gold from attacking Ermor due to their income killing, pop killing dominion. But if a potential rusher can agree a deal with the other nations then it becomes a no-brainer. As something like 2500gp would probably be enough to see them through until victory. So that's just 50gp per turn for 5 turns from 10 others nations to remove LA Ermor from the game. Plus all Ermor forts have low defence, and mostly only mindless to defend them. So there won't be any prolonged sieges. And Ermor's chaff dies at an incredibly rate when up against just a handful of priests. I don't think supplies are an issue in the early stage either. As there will only be a few provinces that have no supplies, and all armies will be smaller due to it being early game. And diseased troops can still usually fight as good as ever when diseased. The only issue is the morale hit from the starvation. But I don't think that's enough to save Ermor against a rush.
Another common occurrence that I think leads to Ermor's over-powered tag is that neighbours don't always change their mind-set the moment they find out they have LA Ermor as a neighbour. As once you do, you start massing priests. Even if it means not recruiting troops or mages for a few turns. You should immediately build some temples and start recruiting priests. In this game I raided an unbelievable amount of provinces with armies of 80 of the basic Soulless and Longdead that Ermor always have plenty of as it spawns regardless of forts. These undead are basically rubbish and have no killing power, but they can easily overcome 10PD because they don't route, and in a raid usually outnumber the PD 4-1. But just a single H1 Indy priest lurking amongst the PD makes Ermor need another 50+ chaff to raid successfully. And you can add 50+ chaff for each Indy priest that is there. Ermor has a lot of chaff available, but if they need 200-300 troops just to raid, then things can become very difficult very quickly. In this game it was only Marignon that really spammed the Indy priests at me, but I managed to attack them before they hit a critical mass of them.
Another big factor in this game was that I did an awful lot of MM. Which made my life a lot harder 'out-of-game' due to it's time requirements, but a lot easier 'in-game' as a result. Here's some of the things I did..........
- I made a point of keeping every Ghoul I had safe. I don't think I lost a single Ghoul all game, which considering I had about 1500 by the end is no small achievement. I did this because Ghouls are not mindless, so can make attackers life a living hell as a result. Simply because they can repair forts. I always made sure I had several hundred Ghouls on hand to move into any fort in my dominion should any siege threat be evident. As long sieges in Ermor's dominion is a certain fail for any attacker. But this not only required a lot of herding, but also a lot of bulk moving between battle fronts, and positioning my Ghoul stacks to ensure I could cover every fort I had in one move.
- Ermor's freespawn needs to be collected and pooled each turn. Therefore I ensured I had a commander in every province every turn to always collect it. Ermor's commanders spawn just like their troops do. Commanders can be summoned, but that's just a pointless waste of gems after turn 3 or 4. Now I'd imagine that one of the simplest things that an LA Ermor player can do to limit the MM is to only collect freespawn when a commander spawns in a province. And that would be a nice convenient system if the commander spawn wasn't so random. But undead hordes contribute nothing if just left to accumulate in the inner provinces, as it only becomes useful once it reaches the battlefront. So a lot of time each turn was spent ensuring I had a commander moving to every single province to collect the freespawn. I'm sure I was seeing red movement arrows in my sleep at one point
- I limited my loses at all times by fine tuning positioning and scripts to allow me to win fights with poor troops. It's very easy for an LA Ermor player to just keep throwing troops at something until they win. Especially against Indy's. As they incorrectly take the mindset of "I have loads of chaff, so who cares if I loses a few hundred. Therefore I'll just keep mindlessly throwing it at whatever is in my way until I win". Ermor does have a lot of chaff once they get going, but having 4000 chaff on hand is always better than having 3000. Especially if that extra 1000 is what you need to win you the next campaign. I think it's very easy for a LA Ermor player to waste their chaff needlessly by doing just basic scripting for battles, and opting for the "I don't care how much chaff I lose during the process, just as long as I win the fight" approach.
- I also safe guarded all the best freespawn until I needed it the most. This meant I suffered very few loses all game (relatively speaking) amongst the good stuff like Horsemen, Sacred Cav, and Black Shielded Infantry (which is what I called them), as I very rarely used any of these guys during expansion or raiding. This allowed me to acquire a nice base of good undead that I could call on should I need it. I had a serious amount of these guys by the end, and the Horsemen along could have taken out a lot of armies with their first strikes if things had got tricky.
- I managed my dominion very carefully, and made a very big point about not killing off Pythium, Agartha and Man for as long as possible. As this allowed me to keep my income healthy throughout the entire game. I even had one turn as the income leader
It would have been very easy for me to kill off Pythium and Agartha long before I did (well Ulm killed Agartha in the end). But killing them would only have meant my dominion spreading and my income rapidly dropping. Which would have slowed down my rate of everything.
- I also chose what I think is a very good Pretender for LA Ermor under CBM. The Lord of the Gates. It has no base cost, and a starting dominion of 4. Paths are expensive at 50, but Ermor's scales give them a lot of points to use. But the main things it has going for it are that it can be an SC with just minimum gear or research (the Divine Flail it starts with causes some serious fear stacking), so helps against the danger of an early rush I've already mentioned. And under CBM it also freespawns shades, which are a great early unit for taking out high protection units (AN attack) and can later be used very effectively under the command of Dusk Elders for either stealthy raiding, sneak attacks on enemy capitals, or sneaking in to reinforce besieged forts. Although I actually had very little use out of my shade armies in the end. As I kept them back for special case usage, but very few special cases came up. Although the shades did come in handy for making surprise first strikes against Mari and Pythium, and I used them for reinforcing the Mari capital when Atlantis had it under siege. At various stages I also had large shade armies led by D4 mage(s) (so Rigor Mortis and/or Darkness) camped out in hiding next to both the Atlantis and Utgard capitals. I attacked neither in the end, but the option to do so was always very nice to have on hand
Besides all the things I personally did to help LA Ermor to victory, I think there were three big things largely out of my control that contributed to the win.
1 - The NAP / Alliance with Pangaea
There's little doubt that this had a big affect on the game. And while there is always going to be a back-lash against any nation(s) "dealing with the devil", I think Pan's decision to NAP with me was possibly a good one from their perspective at the time, but also a definite gamble. As it relied heavily on other nations taking out Ermor, with Pan getting more powerful as the ones not expending their resources in that effort. Not such a crazy theory, as Ermor are always ganged-up on at some stage, and Ermor did have some real nasty undead killing nations around them in the form of Marignon (H3's and Holy Pyre), Jomon (High level water mages) and Atlantis (High Water / Death mages. DV troops). Pan were a danger to Ermor, but not as great as the three I just mentioned.
I think the biggest decision by Pan was not the NAP with Ermor, but their decision to help Ermor in taking out Marignon. As this allowed me to kill probably my most dangerous neighbour before the ganging against me could properly start. But then again from Pan's point of view, tagging with me against Marignon was their easiest path to furthering their prospects. As fights elsewhere would have all been 1-on-1 against possibly tougher foes.
2 - Marignon not Rushing Me.
"Oh ****" was my general reaction to discovering Marignon was one of my closest neighbours. As LA Ermor are incredibly vulnerable early on, and the most powerful undead killing weapon in the early stages is without doubt H3 priests. So I had no idea what I was going to do if Marignon had attacked me inside the first 10 turns. It only took one run-in with a Mari expansion army for me to realise my days would be numbered in a melee contest. 80 Undead v 10 Red Guards. Result was 80 - 0 to the Red Guards without even a scratch IIRC. My only hope would have been my SC God, but having just one survival option available doesn't usually get you very far. But of course there are requirements needed elsewhere to be able to rush LA Ermor, which I have mentioned already.
But by the time the war with Marignon did start, I had already established myself a solid mage and freespawn base, plus found an ally against them, plus had agreed an NAP with another big Atlantis shaped danger, plus Jomon were staling to death. So in the end what should have been a near death struggle against my nemesis, actually turned into a very one sided war that I was dictating the course of. I also managed to avoid any big fights until I had Rigor Mortis researched, when it was "straight to the capital" time.
3 - The Excessive Jomon Stales
I knew Jomon could be a threat to me, but I didn't think they would pose any more danger than most other nations. But the undead killing armies that Jomon did manage to field later on showed me that I was way off regarding their perceived threat level to me.
Once Jomon were back in the game after their roughly (I think) 10 consecutive stales, and I managed to see the composition of the Jomon armies, I ran some tests on how I would defeat them. But all the tests failed. I spent hours trying to bust the Jomon armies with my undead, but I couldn't even get close to winning. As dozens of W3 mages (or W4 with bracelet) just annihilated my armies with Cleansing Water spam every time. As the low fatigue, scaling effect, and high pathed mages casting it all combined in the CW spell to allow every mage to cast at least 10 CW's per battle, killing ~20 undead per casting. And an E4 bless and some of the W3 having E2/3 for Earth Power meant even more castings per mage. I threw thousands of undead at those Jomon armies in testing, and even with Darkness and Rigor Mortis up I always lost heavily. As there was just no way my troops could get to the mages before the mages annihilated them. And this is before taking into account the Jomon troops and Priests that they had. The only thing I had native (ie. not summoned, not usual LA Ermor stuff) to Ermor that stood a chance was my Lord of the Gates, but I would have to have been getting pretty desperate to risk him going solo against those Jomon armies.
But the main problem, with regards this game, is that those Jomon armies appeared 10-15 turns after they should have done, and this was probably entirely because they were left to stale for so long before the situation was addressed. And once a sub was found in the more than capable form of Psycho (I believe), I had already taken out Marignon, and was getting pretty close to being unstoppable. Plus my research had reached acceptable levels, which amongst other things allowed me to start diversifying my armies should the need arise, so I had a lot more options for tackling Jomon if I had to. And of course Pan were in on that action as well.
So if the Jomon-Ermor war had been brought forward 10-15 turns, then the whole nature of this game would have been very different indeed. I'd actually go as far as saying that this was the biggest contributing factor to the relative ease of my win, and not the Pangaea alliance. As it transpired against Jomon, like it did against Marignon, that I never had to fight against any army I didn't want to, and managed to dictate the direction of the war, and where and when the battles were happening. Plus of course I had long since reached critical mass,.so it was unlikely that I would have ever struggled to find resources to throw at them.
I think I've covered the general points for how and why I won in the above. There were lots of other smaller factors as well such as....
- Finding Sorceress Indy's.
- Pythium's suicide of their God against me and then turning AI (not the other way around). The Pythium AI actually built 3 forts 2 temples 1 lab, and amassed a decent sized army under the control of the AI. So while I took their capital early in the war, they had more than just a few resources on hand to continue a tough fight had they been human controlled.
- Getting Etimmu (Hero) and making him my prophet. Again another unused resource, which I kept back for emergencies that never happened.
- Ambushing a group of Atlantis thugs (which netted me the, ultimately unused, Aegis shield).
- Another ambush on the Atlantis God.
- Sneaking my God and Shade army into the Mari cap to prevent Atlantis from taking it (and thereby tying up a very big Atlantis army).
- Pulling off a neat sailing trick against Atlantis that allowed me to raid, and become established in most of their undefended rear provinces.
- Researching Rigor Mortis pretty early on, and before anything else (like Darkness).
- Making sure that my first usage of Rigor Mortis against anyone was in a very big fight (as it's an even bigger killer if it comes as a surprise)
- Giving Mictlan lots and lots of money to keep them in the game, and thereby cause a headache to both Atlantis and Utgard.
My play was far from perfect though....
- Stupidly didn't switch to forging Skull Mentors as soon as I hit Con4.
- Stupidly didn't kill my prophet off the moment Etimmu appeared.
- Letting my enemies have control of important, magic diversifying merc mages for too long.
- Cloud Trapezing one of the above said merc mages, Obscuro, to his death to avoid my enemies getting him (once I had Indy access to Air). Which was a very clever idea apart from the bastard actually managing to win his suicide Air-drop, and Atlantis out-bidding me when I tried to get him back. Note to self, script 'Attack' next time to stop him summoning Air Elementals,.
- Not testing Shark Attack before using it
- All too often forgetting to leave a unit in my water provinces to get the free intel on the attacking army from the battle replay.
- Finishing my non-Death site searching long before my Death searching. LA Ermor has no excuse for not getting their Death sites searched very quickly.
- Losing a huge fort storm 500 - 0 against Man because I had most of my units set to 'Guard Commander' (intended), and the AI deciding that I didn't need to cast Rigor Mortis to win. (definitely unintended)
- Making the exact same mistake again two turns later because the AI apparently still decided I didn't need to cast Rigor Mortis to win.
- Not ambushing the Atlantis Pretender 10 turns before I did.
- Not making enough Hammers with my God before he went site searching.
- Not blood hunting with scouts early enough.
I've attached my last few turn files and .2h files. Plus a screen shot of one of the more MM intensive turns when I had the most wars on the go (basically a screen of red arrows).
Many thanks for playing everyone. I enjoyed it for several reasons, not least because I think every player should play LA Ermor at least once during their MP career, and now that I've done that, I won't ever have to do it again. Hurray!!!
Re: Ruby LA CBM Game Running 10/16 Pretenders Left
Linear Mode
