MP: BSoD (Newbie, LA, CBM 1.92) [Started!]

[revenant2]

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

Have you ever played against LA Ermor? I`ve tried once. With LA Pangaea (trampling minotaurs and "dust to dust" spam). I`ve lost, even with financial help from other players..
It`s not about killing undead - it`s about killing ~10000 of them on turn 20. And it only gets worse.

I just hope the last one of us will be Jomon - They, at least, have some nice anti-Ryelh troops underwater.

While we're waiting to sort out our player situation, I thought it would be interesting to count how many units I had at turn 20, and it was 1,137 unead. I had a pretty good start with 26 provinces at this time and was spending all available gold to building temples and forts.

I did lose several hundred troops to Patala and Atlantis on turn 20, so under perfect circumstances I might have had around 1,500, but I don't think I could have improved this very much -- certainly not anywhere near 10K.

By the way, I did some tests last night where I calculated the average troop generation over 100 turns. Here's the data:



Basically, with 10 dominion in a province with no structures built, i.e., fort or temple, LA Ermor will generate about 10 chaff a turn. Put in a temple and fort, and the average is about 23 (with higher quality units).
If I have time, I might rerun the tests with Soul Gate up.

I'm wondering if the 10K total was in the old days of LA Ermor where their dominion didn't kill population as quickly? This gave a lot more money to Ermor who could afford to buy lots of priests, who could then reanimate the recently departed into legions of soulless. However, even then, I don't think anyone could get close to 10K.

[revenant2]

My OCD kicked in and I felt compelled to count how many units I lost at the hands of Atlantis and Patala on turn 20. We lost 588 undead, or about a third of all my units in 8 separate battles -- only two of which I won (one of which was against an undefended province). That was a bad turn, although worse was to come.

Anyway, I would have had 1725 units in my empire as a best case scenario.

If I had somehow been able to put all undead into a single large horde, Atlantis would have utterly destroyed it with his scary super-soldiers. If you're curious, here is what most of my battles with Atlantis looked like at around that time:

[Shardphoenix]

Originally Posted by revenant2

While we're waiting to sort out our player situation, I thought it would be interesting to count how many units I had at turn 20, and it was 1,137 unead. I had a pretty good start with 26 provinces at this time and was spending all available gold to building temples and forts.

I did lose several hundred troops to Patala and Atlantis on turn 20, so under perfect circumstances I might have had around 1,500, but I don't think I could have improved this very much -- certainly not anywhere near 10K.

You didn`t take a combat pretender that can take provinces by himself. You didn`t overtax at 200%, didn`t hire indie priests and didn`t reanimate with them.
Nad all of this adds up

[revenant2]

Bone Daddy is definitely going to need work on his diplomatic skills

[HoleyDooley]

The Stewards report a late change in the starting line up.

The Chinese are out and the red devils (Abysia) are in.

Cheers,

Dooley

[Shardphoenix]

In fact, I`m not going to quit - it was just a rhetorical question.
But if Ermor isn`t stopped really early on, our midgame is going to consist of desperate last stands.

[parone]

every game i play is basically one long desperate last stand...

[Shardphoenix]

OK, of SHORT desperate last stands.

[revenant2]

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

OK, of SHORT desperate last stands.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that you're not a big fan of LA Ermor

I've never played with them or against them in MP, but if there's issues in using them I can bow out. The reason I'm playing them is because I'm currently playing EA and MA Ermor in two other MP games -- my only MP experience so far (one of which is in its final stages), and I wanted to complete the trifecta.

A cursory look at the Ermor strategy guides tells me that the nation is a bit of a one-trick pony with a ton of weaknesses and lots of counters, so I'm not sure how they could be such an unstoppable juggernaut. Admittedly, they seem to have a good mid game, but they look almost weak at the end game when SCs and powerful battlefield magic effectively neuter them.

This is purely anecdotal, but in my MA Ermor game, I lost an entire army of 1,000+ cavalry units to a single well placed spell. Admittedly, it's different age but the mechanics are similar, i.e., chaff armies can be easily brought down with the right tactics.

[parone]

dude, be ermor if u want. if u crush us, so be it.