Ermor - Early Age Guide (?)

[Kristoffer O]

> The Lord of um... Nature?, the Zeus-like titan with a pot on his head - he seems the most "thematic" Pretender to choose.

That is Serapis, and he has a calathus on his head. He was a conglomerate of Osiris/Pluto and Apis. Although he collected more and more attributes over time. In the late roman empire he and Isis came to represent the imperial couple. He was reputedly created by one of the Ptolemies to create a helleno-egyptian cult for the ptolemaic kingdom. He is one of my favourite gods.

[Warhammer]

EA Ermor is pretty interesting to me. You have great mages, but the Augur Lords are not really battlemages, they are more summoning/RP guys. Your battlemages are the Augurs and Flamens. Your summoning strength is in fire and death, but you have no death gem income. You have great astral gem income, but not a ton of quality astral mages.

Your military is pretty good. You have good infantry, but I find myself making primarily Principes. Gladiators have niche uses, but they survivability is so low, they have little use far from forts. Your Equiites are good, but not great. What is fascinating are the sacreds, the only sacreds are the Shroud Cav which seems a bit weak.

What I have been doing is using Leves in front set to fire and flee, so they get off a shot before the battle lines collide. The main battle line of principes sprinkled with gladiators is set to hold and attack. So far, my casualties have been light, unless I run up against enemy cav. I have yet to put this up against anyone with a mage so I don't know how we will fare against any magic heavy nation.

Something I was wondering was whether or not to take an Air bless, don't you get a precision bless with air, or is it just air shield with air bless? What I was thinking was with all the mages, if I could increase their precision, their fire magic could be pretty devastating in combat.

Does anyone else have any other bless strategy for EA Ermor? Not saying it is the best way to go, but the most puzzling for me.

Otherwise, I think my long term strategy is to summon some undead and focus on upgrading some of my astral paths for some late game magic. Battlemages are going to be augurs and flamen. I just don't know what to do with the sacreds.

[SelfishGene]

Augur Elders not battlemages? I beg to disagree.

Even without any death gems you can raise dead all day long. Get one of those astral banners and you can go about castin some wicked death armor-negating spells.

There is not much of a reason to make a strong bless with EA Ermor although of course 9F/9W pretty much works with any and every sacred in the game.

Ermor lacks a bit in the magic diversity, though. I don't think it can get above a 2S caster naturally, only 1N/1A/1E.

With natural healing, i think EA Ermor pretty much begs from some kind of early/sleeping SC strategy. You can get away with a sleeping SC pretender because Ermors' starting forces are decent enough to expand on their own a bit until he awakes.

[Warhammer]

But isn't the strength of EA Ermor that you don't need an SC since you have a pretty dang good army for early expansion?

[Shovah32]

You dont need a SC pretender but its still useful to speed up expansion and, with healing, its less risky than with some others.

[Sandman]

Something I was wondering was whether or not to take an Air bless, don't you get a precision bless with air, or is it just air shield with air bless? What I was thinking was with all the mages, if I could increase their precision, their fire magic could be pretty devastating in combat.

Unfortunately, there's no precision boost with an air bless. The air bless in general might best be described as 'situational'.

[Warhammer]

Yeah, its an increase based on air magic steps, not air bless. I was getting the two confused.