I have just performed extensive 'real-game-situation' testing (i.e. I just finished a game).
Setup:
Ermor, Soul Gate.
Prince Of Death. 9 Death, 80pt Castle.
3 Turmoil, 1 Sloth, 3 Cold, 3 Death, 2 Luck, 2 Magic. Dominion 10. Leftover pts in Astral (i think I got around 5).
Was going to post this in the Tartarian Gate thread, but decided it might be interesting for people like myself who like to read statistical AAR's.
Game: Default settings, Urgaia versus Pythium and Arco.
Early Game: Before I read [the Tartarian Factory thread], I played the first twenty turns. Basically, playing an easy game to get used to Ermor. Went with Luck/Magic for a couple of perverse reasons (I wanted to see lucky, magical undead, okay?).
Created a crapload of thaums, mostly on reanimate duty. Had my PoD forge Skull Mentors for my main research battery while I took over the NW corner of Urgaia. Pythium came up strong and began taking over poorly defended territories (i.e. most of my border). I didn't care too much- the box of undead in Ermor would wipe anybody without a swarm of priests (i.e. stupid AI).
Turn 20 or so: Start reclaiming stuff with a party of four grand thaums. Have an insane set of researchers, all stocked with a single skull mentor. Pythium starts coming after some of my roving 'border-reclaiming' armies with a set of priests.
an army evaporated. Luckily, I've also been recruiting the cheapest Ermorian unit en masse, mostly to spend gold on something. Send a swarm of these in. The border tilts slightly more in my favor, but Pythium generally has more armies than I do (since I have to group more commanders together to build up enough undead to be able to actually match Pythium. The upside is that the only cost for my undead is the time it takes to reanimate them, something like 1/6th to 1/8th of a turn for one mage).
Turn 30: I've been extremely lazy. I have 3 fortresses, i've halfheartedly searched all my territories for death sites (by pulling my reanimators off reanimation duty to burn off part of my post-skull-mentor glut of death gems by casting Dark Knowledge). I'm going whole hog for Utterdark now. With a ~100 research and more being added every turn, this is easy. I have no temples outside of fortresses. I don't really see the need for them right now. Enemy dominions aren't a problem. My PoD is serving as a dual border-pusher and unit summoner- I spent a couple of turns in Conjuration.
Turn 35: I love Utterdark. I didn't realize how ultimately disgusting it could be until streamer armies from Pythium (south of western portion) and Arcoscephale (far east) ceased to threaten my borders, pretty much just melting into themselves. I read something about them being attacked by random units.
My units are pretty wussy right now. I gear up for the siege on Pythium and focus my major research effort (other than a straight stint on Construction and then Alteration, I've been jumping around alot) and switch to Conjuration.
~Turn 45: Eater of the Dead is cool. Just about every mage in my empire is focusing entirely on Research, since I'm pretty much waiting out the remnants of Pythium and the dwindling Arcoscephale. I didn't claim to be playing a tournament level game, anyways. Playing like this might get me creamed in MP, but I'd never play a race I hadn't played like this with at least once anyways.
Anyways, Eater of the Dead is cool looking (kind of like a chunky Vastness) and has a suitably scary piece of text. I was *almost* worried it would eat my PoD, until I realized that I'd have a Well of Misery up very, very soon.
Later Turns:
WIth the well of Misery, Ermor, Pythium, and a couple of sites (despite my searches, twice with Akashic Record, I have not found *any* sites while searching) I have an income of 12+ astral and 28 death gems. Also, I'm somehow getting Air gems. Not using them, so I don't really care where they're coming from.
Arcoscephale stopped attacking me shortly after Utterdark, thus my complete retooling for Conjuration. Harvester of Sorrows is a very disgusting unit- it's stealthy and causes horrible, horrible epidemics. I get it away from me (even though I like death, I don't want it in the same province as my Eater of the Dead until I find out exactly how that thing works) and send it off towards Arcoscephale.
A few probing armies are sent to clear up stragglers as my PoD 'The Violent' starts a monthly Tartarian Gate. I chortled with glee when I saw a manticore-ish Tartarian Monstra UNIT (non-commander) with 221 HP. Sick.
I eventually generated a couple of Titanic armies and walked them (province by province) over to Arcoscephale, on the other side of the map. It was like, turn 80 when I was done, because I pulled my PoD long enough to forge the Sickle whose Crop is Pain and a few other goodies.
The look on that scared Phoenix sprite's face was an awful thing, at least in my mind. It kept teleporting around and casting blindness, as if though that would keep it away from an angry set of Tartarian Monstra. It didn't have any support units since my Harvester moved into the neighborhood- just a few stragglers.
Final thoughts on Ermor:
1. Alteration 9, Conjuration 9 is a lofty goal for a cutthroat MP game, so I doubt Utterdark/Tartarian Gate is likely to show up there. But you HAVE to try it on your own.
2. My hands will not let me choose magic other than my national magic for my pretender. I keep hearing all the good things about it, but thematically I like to keep everything in line.
3. I was lazy about temple-building and dominion-pushing, but not really about site-searching. I just got pretty frustrated that there were no sites whatsoever surrounding Ermor (an Akashic Record on each site later confirmed that). Since my borders were so fluid, I mostly searched in my safest provinces.
4. If I were going to play Ermor: Soul Gate in MP play, I would still use the same basic pretender, but I'd push for Skull Mentors, then Tartarian Gate, with just a single turn in each other path once I got over 30RP per turn. I would also build more of the 'elite' Ermorian magi, since they're the ones I used to lead armies (the other guys would just sit around researching or reanimating soulless). Not to mention I like Longdeads. I wouldn't expect to win, but it feels nice and warm to have a strategy.
I'd say I hope I didn't bore you, but generally I like my AAR's so long and full of numbers and stuff that the text on-screen has an actual, measurable weight. In that light, I hope this quickie AAR didn't bore you, make you wonder at potential inaccuracies (I didn't start the game intending to post an AAR), or leave out significant facts.
Ermor: Soul Gate: AAR [Easy, Slacker SP Game]
Linear Mode
