What do you recommend for Ashen Empire Scales and Domain ?

[void]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

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Originally posted by PvK:
Seems to me drain gives a good bonus to magic resistance, helping your forces survive banishment, which is rather important. No?

No. There's only 1 point of difference between drain+3 and magic+1, and the difference on the battlefield is unnoticeable. OTOH with the latter your Dusk Elders are worth 4 more research points (7 instead of 3), and that's huge. Ermor can't afford building Skull Mentors as it needs the gems for its summons. Whoever claims drain is essential for Ashen Empire hasn't tried it with a magic scale yet.

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Research+9 Skull: Amethyst*10
Dusk Elder Research+7(Magic 3): Amethyst*23
SO,Ermor COULD afford building skulls.

I have tried both drain-3/magic-3 scale.
The magic one is better when you choose magic(revive elders at the start).
The drain one is better when you choose might(revive bishops at the start).

[ywl]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

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Originally posted by PvK:
Seems to me drain gives a good bonus to magic resistance, helping your forces survive banishment, which is rather important. No?

PvK

Drain is essential... your minions die like flies even with +1 MR. Without it, you'd be toast. You can always forge skulls and quills for research - con-4 is easily in reach of an Ermor pretender in a few turns.

Besides, it's good to make your dominion as hostile as possible to everyone else=)

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It's not really a very good idea to choose Drain-3. Your undeads, even in Dom 2, would be banished by the bundle anyway. There isn't too much point to protect them. It's better to improve your research using Magic Scale. Skull is possible but it's not gauranteed that you have many death sites other than the capital one.

On the Dominion side, there is opinion that your dominion strength shouldn't be excessive (more than 6 candles) in a MP game. You're usually hated and ganged up against by most people. But with a smaller dominions strength, you might have a larger chance to delay the inevitable. With a high dominions strength, you'll also have a very impressive number of units, most of which are *useless* undeads - another way to ask for an alliance to kill you if the world score is open for everybody to see.

But the balance between viable diplomatic scale and enough undeads is a hard one. That's why I always find Ashen Ermor difficult to play in a MP game.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

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Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
Luck, pick 0, and push that up to +3 if you have spare design points after buying the essentials.

I went luck+3 in my Last game. But... it's worthless! There are no good events. None. Good events depend on your scales, and if all your scales are -3, the only "good" event is the necromancer showing up (due to death 3, I imagine). However, because "free" "volunteers" still demand pay, that's a major negative. Sometimes militia show up, too - that can be crippling... they die of disease, and cost you a good 128 gold in so doing (25 units * 7 gold each * 11 turns to die from disease)/15.

So - DON'T choose luck! Luck is worthless to ashen empire. You don't even get many gems, due to the drain scale.

Next time I design an Ashen god, it will be -3 all scales, cheapest (gold-wise) castle, Dominion 9, an undead - possibly immortal - god, and the rest on magic paths. Don't worry about bless effects, BTW... knights are super-rare no matter what you do, and only have 6 or 7 HP (any fire spell annihilates them).

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Don't take drain with AE/SG Ermor. They have terrible research to begin with, and depend totally on summons to have any unit that isn't pathetic. And you can't afford Skull Mentors, not because you need the gems to summon more researchers, but because you need them to summon Behemoths, Wraith Lords, Armies of the Dead, etc...

Luck, on the other hand, isn't bad. You get free gems, which is always nice (especially for AE/SG which don't have a good mage other than their pretender to search with, dusk elders are very expensive and nothing else has a random). And you don't get your temples and labs destroyed by bad events (which you would otherwise get a lot, with turmoil). Having your provinces conquered is irritating too.

If you don't take luck and magic - what are you doing with the points? Sinking even more points into a pretender that can only be in one place at a time? I know you aren't spending them on order, productivity, growth (ha!)...

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by void:
Research+9 Skull: Amethyst*10
Dusk Elder Research+7(Magic 3): Amethyst*23

(1) A Dusk Elder is worth 9 RP with Magic+3, not 7
(2) A Dusk Elder costs 20 to summon, not 23
(3) A Dusk Elder gains experience, a Skull Mentor doesn't
(4) A Dusk Elder can lead armies, a Skull Mentor can't
(5) A Dusk Elder can fight, a Skull Mentor can't
(6) A Dusk Elder can summon things, a Skull Mentor can't

Many reasons to choose Dusk Elders over Skull Mentors.

SO,Ermor COULD afford building skulls.

I would surely build some if I picked Drain+3, but I'd never pick Drain with Ashen Empire anyway, so as far as I'm concerned, the debate is closed.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

SO,Ermor COULD afford building skulls.
I would surely build some if I picked Drain+3, but I'd never pick Drain with Ashen Empire anyway, so as far as I'm concerned, the debate is closed.

I'm with you on Magic +3. But even if it's Magic+3, there are still good reasons to have the Skull. The cost of a Skull plus a spectator is 22 gems. It gives you 16 research points at Magic +3. The cost of a Dusk Elder alone is 20 gems and give you only 9 research points. The Skull is also transferrable and you can put them on less expensive mages such as sages or spectral mages if you got to Conjuration 6 already. So, it's not a bad idea to forge some Skulls if you can spare the gems.

I don't believe Ashen or Soul Gate Ermor has many 'spare' gems. Considering the sheer amount of troops needed later in the game, you need as many fodder troop producing animators and semi-decent troops (Ladies, Bane Lords, etc) that you dont' have alot of gems to spare. And if you did you'd probably be forging skull staffs so your Dusk Elders could cast Darkness and Rigor Mortis.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
If you don't take luck and magic - what are you doing with the points? Sinking even more points into a pretender that can only be in one place at a time? I know you aren't spending them on order, productivity, growth (ha!)...

A pretender with 4+ in each path is nice for site-searching, as Ermor is gem-hungry. Such a pretender can do quite nicely in combat, too... casting any spell. If you minimize all scales, your god can even be immortal on top of having 4+ in all paths.