What do you think about ermor in dom2

Don't forget your Thamaturgs and Grand Thamaturgs tendancy to after getting done with your scripted spells, to only cast unholy buffing spells

That can in and of itself, make you want to shoot them.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
Heck, Pythium could use 150 gold Astral2 Theurgs to Magic duel 340 gold Grand Thaumaturgs on equal terms....

OTOH a beefed up Grand Thaumaturg (magic penetration items, communion, crystal shield, power of the spheres, whatever) can try Apostacy on this Theurg. Pretty funny when it works, and from my tests I can say a 4-slaves communion and a Spell Focus is enough to have a regular Theurg change sides ~50% of the time.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Wendigo:

Ermor [broken empire] is an excellent nation that combines very good troops with some astral and death magic. It is a very capable nation that is worth exploring. [/qb]

I'd rather play Ashen (but this is mainly personal taste, of course).

Broken Ermor looks like a weak Pythium to me: similar troops, no communicants & hydras, lose strong astral, water & air in exchange for poor astral, poor death & unholy (poor trade IMO).

Trade-offs also from their mages having unholy priestly level: they cannot reanimate & research/cast rituals at the same time.

Cheers,
Pepe [/QB][/quote]

Broken Ermor has one weakness - i.e. expansive mages.

But they have one key advantage which can compensate most shortcomings. Their Ermor cultist can reanimate ghouls. If started from the beginning of the game, their castle will be basically unbreachable. They also get one free each turn Shadow Vestal from the capital site. They're holy and ethereal. And since they're from site, you can keep getting them even under seige.

Their regular troop is almost as good as Pythium. And I don't think death is weak, at least comparing to air and water. Less flashy on the battlefield but it has a lot of goodies and summons outside. The astral/death combination is also notoriously powerful once you get to Evocation 7. Moreover, broken Ermor's ether darter is not capital-only. Given enough cash, you can sprinkle the whole battlefield with these missle of death.

Yes. It might be weaken than Pythium but I don't think that the Broken Ermor has much to complain about comparing to other nations.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
To the original poster:

Others have comented SP, so I will just cover MP:
Ermor IMO is a bit stronger in Dom II than it was in Dom I (where it was rated poorly by most), the elemental magics and in particular Air & Fire are a bit weaker than they were, and those were pretty good at killing undead. Blood has also been downed a lot, and seeing as Ermor had the hardest access to it due to the nature of its population killing dominion this also good news for the undead nation.

You can also do some funny stuff with bless in Dom II, and Ermor has the most design points to draw from here, even if it cannot push recruitment of its unholy troops with as much control as a live nation.

Finally, the Undead pretenders seem to have been upped with the removal of encumbrance from Dom I, which is also good news for Ermor.

Due to all the above I would rate Ashen Empire stronger than it was in Dom I, but not between the top nations...Ermor still has a lot of drawbacks.

It is however a unique nation with an extremely different style, and that makes it a popular choice. In the end, you should play whichever nations attract you more and not those that you percieve as the most powerful, the differences are really not that big and random stuff like starting location & neighbours, or game settings have a much higher influence in who wins IMO. So just play what you like most.

Ashen Ermor is also stronger from three other reasons (Saber, if you're reading, I found it out from the battle with you :
1) Banishment is now slightly less powerful;
2) The addition of a few evocation spells has made the Ermor mages more useful on the battlefield;
3) The bless effects... Ashen Ermor is the only one who can have an insanely powerful pretender, that could boost up their Unholy Knights quite a bit. But, of course, they're still very vulnerable to "Dust to Dust" - you can't have everything .

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
It's not just the fact that Broken Empire is one of the weakest Astral nations, it's that combined with:

-The mages being expensive for the amount of 'Astral power' they can field when facing another Astral nation.
-The nation has no alternate mages nor priests, apart from the weak cultist.

That's all true, but it still has strengths:

- Excellent infantry.

- Ashen Empire/Soul Gate have to spend their gems on mages or priests, Broken Empire can aim for Enchantment 4 from the start and raise hordes of Behemoths which are very good with etherealness pre-researched.

- Leave a few thaumaturgs where your armies just fought to get free well-equipped soulless. No other nation can hoard free undead as easily while still relying on excellent regular troops.

- The Vestals lack punch and are slow to gather in numbers, but they're free and with battlefield-wide power of the sepulchre (+4 ATT and AP, better than fire-8 blessing!) they're quite good units.

- With Jotunheim, the only nation that can rely on mass Nether darts.

- Powered Apostacy can be nasty (does someone know if it works on enemy prophets?).

All in all, I've not found the MD liability to be that big of an issue. Just be cautious when meeting powerful astral nations, and if you send GTs give them proper equipment, and cast power of the spheres before anything else. If you pick a pretender with some earth magic, you should have no problem boosting a couple astral-3 GTs to level 7 or 8 when you reach Construction 6.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
Level 9 deaht blessing gives greater fear to unholy troops (or undead unholy, if there is difference), and only fear to other blessable troops. I think level 9 in death gives more fear than just the level 8 blessing for all blessed units, but am not sure.

Someone should research that!

I tried a death-9 PoD with Broken Empire (for mass ghost summoning rather than death blessing) and noticed this:

- summon a Mound Fiend
- give him a shroud and an horror helmet

What do you get? A leader even scarier than your pretender - fear +20!

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by ywl:
They also get one free each turn Shadow Vestal from the capital site.

Actually, they get two Shadow Vestals per turn, one from each site.