Soul Gate Ermor tips?

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by LintMan:
I've yet to play as Ermor of any type, so I thought I'd try out the Soul Gate flavor. (Single player).

Well, I'm not that good at the game, but when I want a 'low-upkeep' game, I play SG Ermor.

Since I'm completely unfamiliar with SG Ermor, I'm hoping for some tips to help me get started off right. (My plan is to play the Cradle map, with 7-8 impossible AIs, rich world, 75% sites, indeps 8)

Sounds good to me.

- What's a good choice for a good SC pretender? I'm thinking about taking the Ghost King but am open to other suggestions

With the VQ's removal, I think the PoD would be the best choice. Ghost King is probably right up there too, especially if you plan on taking a lot of magic.

- What scales to take? Can I max out all the scales to -3 except Magic? Or would it be wise to take some order or luck or something? Is 6 a reasonable starting dominion for SG Ermor?

Luck-3 is your friend. You really don't want Misfortune. And I always take Dominion of 10 with Ermor. I don't know if that's the smart move or not, but see below.

- What magic paths are useful/necessary? Is taking more than 5 Death useful, presuming I can eventually get to 7+ with items?

5 sounds fine. With a Skullface and the Scepter, you can get to 9. Oh, there's also the book, so 10. IIRC, one of the best reasons to have a sky-high Death magic is Summoning Ghosts (Conjuration-6).

- I know that you can't recruit units with SG Ermor, and they just show up. Does a higher dominion provide more units and/or better units?
Do commanders also appear, or do they all have to be summoned?

IME, higher dominion improves both quantity and quality of troops. One reason to take a 10 Dominion. As far as commanders, you summon most of them. The nice thing is that you can get Shadow Tribunes (your low-level Unholy priest) randomly in provinces that have Temples (I think; I'm not sure about Temple or not). I've also heard you can get more Wraith Centurions randomly.

- Any good tips on how to start out the game? (Ie: what to do, what to summon the first few turns)

Well, what I generally do is make my starting Wraith Centurion my prophet. That more or less makes him extremely powerful, and _almost_ a SC himself (18 Prot Ethereal Immortal). First thing I'd do with your Pretender is Summon a Spectator. It's a DD mage for 12 gems. While not as versatile as a Dusk Elder (DDD? for 20), they can summon themselves, and under a Magic-3 scale, they definitely research faster. Under a Rich setting, you get 15 gems a turn. This coincidentally equals 1 Spectator + 1 Dark Knowledge a turn.

As far as what to research, if you have a SC Pretender, you probably want to research the schools for his buffing magic. Otherwise, Conjuration is probably the way to go.

Now, IF you plan on going the Conjuration route, you may want to summon Dusk Elders instead of Spectators. Dusk Elders can naturally summon Spectres (which are better researchers than the Spectators for less cost), and with a single booster can cast Ghost Riders.

Thanks!

I hope this helps. If it doesn't, feel free to ream me.

Scott