Ermor balance?

[Sheap]

Dispossesed Spirits (havent tried those, sound pretty sucky)
Shadows (Weak! and only two a turn, even at high dominion)
Apparitions (Which require unburied corpses, so you can't mass 'em).

Dispossessed Spirits are the same as the Spirit Mastery spell, and the autosummon you get in provinces with neither temples nor forts. Which is to say, not real good, but still ethereal. And they require corpses, too. So not real good.

Shadows aren't real hot either, you don't get very many of them and they aren't very strong.

Apparitions, on the other hand, are very good. They require population (not corpses) and lots of it, but in freshly captured territory you can reanimate quite a few before everyone dies. They aren't intended as troops of the line, anyway, but more as special forces; you don't NEED millions of them. And, a level 3 priest can make them (level 4 required for horsemen), although level 4/5 are much faster.

And since for the same level of priest you need to pay more with SG and since AE has "Protection of The Sepulchre", I think AE is stronger.

Both themes have Protection of the Sepulchre, but SG needs it less. Still useful for summoned low-MR troops like Longdead Horsemen/Archers.

I find that with AE my priests spend most of their time making longdeads. With SG they spend most of their time killing things.

[Agrajag]

Originally posted by Sheap:

quote:

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Dispossesed Spirits (havent tried those, sound pretty sucky)
Shadows (Weak! and only two a turn, even at high dominion)
Apparitions (Which require unburied corpses, so you can't mass 'em).

Dispossessed Spirits are the same as the Spirit Mastery spell, and the autosummon you get in provinces with neither temples nor forts. Which is to say, not real good, but still ethereal. And they require corpses, too. So not real good.

Shadows aren't real hot either, you don't get very many of them and they aren't very strong.

Apparitions, on the other hand, are very good. They require population (not corpses) and lots of it, but in freshly captured territory you can reanimate quite a few before everyone dies. They aren't intended as troops of the line, anyway, but more as special forces; you don't NEED millions of them. And, a level 3 priest can make them (level 4 required for horsemen), although level 4/5 are much faster.

And since for the same level of priest you need to pay more with SG and since AE has "Protection of The Sepulchre", I think AE is stronger.

Both themes have Protection of the Sepulchre, but SG needs it less. Still useful for summoned low-MR troops like Longdead Horsemen/Archers.

I find that with AE my priests spend most of their time making longdeads. With SG they spend most of their time killing things.

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By the time you capture a province with SGs weaker troops, everyone is already dead, so no apparitions for you...
While Longdead Horsemen require a 4th lvl priest, the 4th lvl holy priest is the standard priest for AE, while SGs standard priest is 3rd lvl, to get a 4th lvl you need to use your pretender, not very good...
SGs Etheralness is pretty weak, they still get hit a lot...
Also, SGs freespawn damage is negated by magic resistance, which pretty much sucks...
Also, since AEs freespawns are much better than SGs freespawns, a fort+temple on an important province (such as one with a mine) is VERY useful.

[Boron]

i think too that ae ermor is slightly better .

you get lots of freespawns and lots of mound kings or censors .
sg gets "only" the shadow tribunes . they are cheap temple builders or can reanimate 1 shadow / turn .

the sg leaders are cool because they are immortal but for this they are quite expensive and in midgame you prefer bane lords / wraith lords anyway .

the main strenght of ae ermor is that they can build several raider armies with their freespawns/freespawnleaders which require still a respectable force to stop them .

because they are so huge in size they can deathpillage a conquered province in 1 turn .

while you can easy field 3-4 armies of 300-500 freespawn undeads midgame your enemy still needs about 10 priests with tough guards ( about 25-50 ) or 5 mages with tough guards who can holy pyre or wither bones .

fortunately ae ermor is thnx to swarming quite resistent to most sc's .

300 freespawns have quite a good chance to kill 1-2 scs with not too big losses .


unfortunately ermor has always a serious lack with deathgems and is only a mediocre clamhorder at best . so lategame you will have serious problems against especially arco , pythium , ryleh , caelum , tien chi if they were left alone long enough to start clamhording .

pythium because of communion and caelum because of flyby attacks is already earlygame nasty for ermor

[NTJedi]

There should be one or two nations more powerful then all the rest so the AI opponents can actually be more threatening during a single and multiplayer game.

[Boron]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
There should be one or two nations more powerful then all the rest so the AI opponents can actually be more threatening during a single and multiplayer game.

you can easy achieve that :
use impossible ai with cohens crusaders and Agrajags first Version of his umbarthium mod which wasn't balanced .
this way you will have really scary ai opponents

[Agrajag]

Originally posted by Boron:

quote:

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Originally posted by NTJedi:
There should be one or two nations more powerful then all the rest so the AI opponents can actually be more threatening during a single and multiplayer game.

you can easy achieve that :
use impossible ai with cohens crusaders and Agrajags first Version of his umbarthium mod which wasn't balanced .
this way you will have really scary ai opponents

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The unbalanced Umbarthium mod (I should get to work on 1.03 already =P) isn't that good for the AI...
He is too dumb to use the really good (AKA Gifted) troops...
I beat the crap out of him in a game that I tested against my mod =P
An overall overpowered mod will give the AI enough power though, you can just mod half price for a certain nation =P.
The one thing I hate about those things though is that most computer games (I think that doesnt include dominions) use cheating AIs anyway, if you played the RTS game "Blah blah's city of Evil" (fictional name, DUH) when you put the AI on "Super Tough and Impossible to Beat without Resorting to Reprogramming of the game" difficulty, it would just get half prices for all units, or free income, or double stats for units or any number of other things.
Which is bad! Because it means the developers are too lazy to program a good AI that they have to give it cheats to be worth something...
SO if you give the AI cheats by yourself, you are going against everything that is good!

[Boron]

Originally posted by Agrajag:

quote:

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Originally posted by Boron:

quote:

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Originally posted by NTJedi:
There should be one or two nations more powerful then all the rest so the AI opponents can actually be more threatening during a single and multiplayer game.

you can easy achieve that :
use impossible ai with cohens crusaders and Agrajags first Version of his umbarthium mod which wasn't balanced .
this way you will have really scary ai opponents

---

The unbalanced Umbarthium mod (I should get to work on 1.03 already =P) isn't that good for the AI...
He is too dumb to use the really good (AKA Gifted) troops...
I beat the crap out of him in a game that I tested against my mod =P
An overall overpowered mod will give the AI enough power though, you can just mod half price for a certain nation =P.
The one thing I hate about those things though is that most computer games (I think that doesnt include dominions) use cheating AIs anyway, if you played the RTS game "Blah blah's city of Evil" (fictional name, DUH) when you put the AI on "Super Tough and Impossible to Beat without Resorting to Reprogramming of the game" difficulty, it would just get half prices for all units, or free income, or double stats for units or any number of other things.
Which is bad! Because it means the developers are too lazy to program a good AI that they have to give it cheats to be worth something...
SO if you give the AI cheats by yourself, you are going against everything that is good!

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hm i am looking after a new game for sp with really good ai which i can play a bit too .
unfortunately i know no game with good but not too serious cheating ai do you know any ?
has space empires IV gold a good ai i don't own that one . or galactic civilizations ?