What to do about Ermor ....

[magnate]

Dear All,

I'm really up against it in an SP game (as Iron Woods Jotunheim, 12 opponents, "Inland" map, turn 41). All my resources have been devoted to containing Ermor for about 10 turns, during which time Tien Chi have expanded across must of the rest of the map (they're still smaller than me, but catching up fast).

I tried to take the Ermor citadel, but my priests got shredded by the spears from the towers. I'm thinking of just laying siege to it forever and preaching him to death. Vanheim is the only other nation fighting Ermor, everyone else is just ignoring them ... Caelum are way ahead on research but also contained (I hope). I've wiped out 5 nations so far (Mictlan, Arco, Ulm, Pangaea and Machaka), and I'm about to lay siege to the capitals of Abysia and Pythium. The only threats are then Tien Chi and R'lyeh.

So, a few questions to tickle your strategic brains:

1. Is it worth laying siege to Ermor itself? I currently have an adjacent province very well defended and he's not attacking me but might be expanding elsewhere. I've heard that it stops him reanimating if he's under siege - but what about all the other provinces?

2. How does Ermor work - how many new units does he get per turn? Is it per province? What sort of army do I need to maintain the siege and withstand attacks? There is a water (lake) province right next to his capital, which I won't be able to take for some time. I should be able to mop up the others though. He hasn't taken any new provinces for at least 6 turns but still has doubled the size of his army.

3. The only ones I'm at war with (other than Ermor) are Abysia and Caelum. How long can I wait before attacking Tien Chi? They've recently expanded from about 7 provinces to about 18, but they've hardly any money or gem income to show for it. I guess they could get quite strong soon though. Any thoughts?

4. Finally, what's the spell that causes independents to attack a province? It's happened three times in the Last four turns, but it hadn't happened at all before. There's no "event" message, just a battle message giving the result.

Thanks in advance,

CC

[magnate]

P.S. I need more money. Is there a spell that increases my tax revenues? I'm low on fire and earth gems ....

[Karacan]

Of course, it all depends on Ermor's theme. Considering his growing army, you are probably playing against one of the two undead-only themes.

First of all: If he shreds your priests, there haven't been enough priests. Don't rely on bringing your expensive giant priests with you, but rather, hire a swarm cheap indy ones. Don't place them all in one spot. Banishment, which is the key to beat off Ermor (unless you have death magic on your own), has a very long range.

Second, Ermor usually tends to have a very strong dominion. Preaching it out of existence takes its time, and I find it especially obnoxious if the lands that feed your sieging/preaching army are barren.

Ermor gains troops for free, depending on the Dominion of the province (at least, the two undead themes do so, I am actually not sure about Broken Empire), or by reanimating them with priests. In the first case, the quality of the troops is determined by such facts like if there is a castle or temple in the province, and the reanimation process generally requires either corpses in the province or population.


For more money, you can always wish for it via Alteration 9 and lots of astral. Oh, okay, a more feasible way of getting more money is to hunt for fire/earth sites, or forge items that produce gems for alchemization.

[magnate]

Of course, it all depends on Ermor's theme. Considering his growing army, you are probably playing against one of the two undead-only themes.

First of all: If he shreds your priests, there haven't been enough priests. Don't rely on bringing your expensive giant priests with you, but rather, hire a swarm cheap indy ones. Don't place them all in one spot. Banishment, which is the key to beat off Ermor (unless you have death magic on your own), has a very long range.

Second, Ermor usually tends to have a very strong dominion. Preaching it out of existence takes its time, and I find it especially obnoxious if the lands that feed your sieging/preaching army are barren.

Ermor gains troops for free, depending on the Dominion of the province (at least, the two undead themes do so, I am actually not sure about Broken Empire), or by reanimating them with priests. In the first case, the quality of the troops is determined by such facts like if there is a castle or temple in the province, and the reanimation process generally requires either corpses in the province or population.

Does this mean that if I reduce his dominion he'll get fewer troops? He's definitely all-undead - I've seen only one or two live units all game, and he brings 100-150 undead into each battle (and animates more during them).

I don't mind how long it takes to preach him out - I've got seven other nations to conquer. I just want the best way to contain him without tying up too many resources. Laboriously taking each of his provinces is going to take a lot of time and a lot of priests and troops. I think the AI tends to focus on a besieged castle, meaning I could mop up the other provinces with less trouble ... providing the sieging force was strong enough ....

[Agrajag]

Are his Undead units etheral or not?
If they arent, then he must be ashen empire Ermor, which means he can reanimate with no need for corpses OR population.
Sieging him might work, but he still gets his hordes of freespawns.
He does get less if his dominion is weaker, and even less if he has no castle.
If you intend to sieg his capital, you'll need to constantly increase security as he will constantly recieve new units and (probably) will use them to break the siege.
Also, supplies arent a problem for him, so his castle army can grow without worry.
For income you can wish or use "Gift of nature's bounty" if you are capable of casting any of these spells (the Gift is an excellent income spell, especially with all the provinces I assume you have.
Another good idea would be researching all the mass undead destruction spells, Grind Bones iirc is very useful against undead (if you can find someone to cast it).
Oh, and taking his capital will weaken him alot because it will take away his Sepulcher, his best death gem income site (and we all know that AE and SG Ermor live and die by death gems, not sure about BE though).

[Taqwus]

Regarding money, you could research Construction 8 and then forge the Alchemist's Stone, which is a bargain if you were already planning to research that high in that path. You could also be sure to methodically cast Gnome Lore and Auspex to get every Last earth and fire gem site.

Dominion is important to Ermorian troops; he won't get any autogenerated troops in hostile dominion, if memory serves. OTOH, a sane Ermorian player (not necessarily including the AI) will normally take a high dominion, and will attempt to protect his temples with fortresses and significant garrisons or at least reaction forces. On the other hand, Ermor normally has trouble preaching.

You could attempt to siege/preach him out in conjunction with raids to destroy unprotected temples. It may take a shorter time than you think if you can build Gate Cleavers or Wall Shakers, as Jotuns are strong and mindless undead are heavily penalized at castle maintenance.

[magnate]

Are his Undead units etheral or not?
If they arent, then he must be ashen empire Ermor, which means he can reanimate with no need for corpses OR population.
Sieging him might work, but he still gets his hordes of freespawns.
He does get less if his dominion is weaker, and even less if he has no castle.
If you intend to sieg his capital, you'll need to constantly increase security as he will constantly recieve new units and (probably) will use them to break the siege.
Also, supplies arent a problem for him, so his castle army can grow without worry.
For income you can wish or use "Gift of nature's bounty" if you are capable of casting any of these spells (the Gift is an excellent income spell, especially with all the provinces I assume you have.
Another good idea would be researching all the mass undead destruction spells, Grind Bones iirc is very useful against undead (if you can find someone to cast it).
Oh, and taking his capital will weaken him alot because it will take away his Sepulcher, his best death gem income site (and we all know that AE and SG Ermor live and die by death gems, not sure about BE though).

Damn, that's what I was worried about - he is indeed playing AE (the undead are not ethereal). So there's no real point laying siege to the castle unless I can actually take it - he will eventually break the siege. (Laying siege doesn't deprive him of the death gems, does it?)

My only ways to reduce his free troops are to take his provinces and lower his dominion (which are essentially the same thing), right? So that means a slow grind, while Tien Chi get ever stronger.

I don't think I can take the Ermor castle - the entrance is quite narrow (only 4-5 giants wide) and the towers fire deadly ballista bolts or something, 4 or 8 at a time. My priests didn't seem to be nearly as effective as on an open battlefield (does Banishment require LoS??). He has a LOT of commanders in there - about 15, all of whom cast Raise Skeletons EVERY ROUND. Bastards. I went in with 18 priests, just after he had sent out over 100 undead (which I annihilated on open ground without loss), and he had ANOTHER 140 in there with the 15 commanders ....

Thanks for the tip about nature's bounty - I have a lvl5 nature mage somewhere so I'll look into that.

I've not come across Grind Bones - did you mean Wither Bones? I'm researching that now (Thaum 6), but I only have one Death-3 mage to cast it ...

This game is going to be hard to win. I think I'm going to have to leave Ermor where he is, hope that he doesn't take too many more provinces, and conquer the rest of the world first, before taking him on. I may already have wasted too much time, with Caelum's mages and Tien Chi's massive army to deal with ....

Hats off to the devs - I've not lost so much sleep over a game since MoM.

CC

[magnate]

Regarding money, you could research Construction 8 and then forge the Alchemist's Stone, which is a bargain if you were already planning to research that high in that path. You could also be sure to methodically cast Gnome Lore and Auspex to get every Last earth and fire gem site.

Dominion is important to Ermorian troops; he won't get any autogenerated troops in hostile dominion, if memory serves. OTOH, a sane Ermorian player (not necessarily including the AI) will normally take a high dominion, and will attempt to protect his temples with fortresses and significant garrisons or at least reaction forces. On the other hand, Ermor normally has trouble preaching.

You could attempt to siege/preach him out in conjunction with raids to destroy unprotected temples. It may take a shorter time than you think if you can build Gate Cleavers or Wall Shakers, as Jotuns are strong and mindless undead are heavily penalized at castle maintenance.

Since he's AI he's not building any fortresses, for which I'm pathetically grateful. The main Ermor citadel has proven very hard to take - any tips on what sort of army I should use would be gratefully appreciated. He has an undead pretender (not a GK, a Prince of something) with huge MR (25 the one time I saw it), so Banishment is prob not going to work (maybe that's why my priests didn't banish the troops - were they trying to banish him instead and failing?). I think the damn thing is ethereal as well.

I've just got Conj 5 and am summoning Firbolgs and Bane Lords this turn, both of which come equipped with magic weapons.

I still think I might try and leave Ermor until Last though, and hope he doesn't expand away from me. I'm getting very worried about the size of the Tien Chi army.

CC

[Boron]

for jotunheim iron woods ae ermor is evil .
ways to kill ermorian hordes really fast :
- preach
- dust to dust / wither bones
- holy pyre
- mass damage spells : especially storm / wrathful skies combo
- lighning spells ( e.g. orb lighning ) and fire spells . they in general target either a area or have a number of effects >1
- blade wind is an excellent anti ermorhordes spell too

in your current game i would do the following :
leave ermor alone , on your borders with ermor castle all + build temples and have pd + indy priests guarding the border + 1 emergency squad .

kill all other ais first . then you should have a bigger empire and lots of indy mages which have good magics against ermor .

then build some special semiscs and enjoy

example : airqueens , with staff of storm , cast wrathful skies , take some lighning immune troops with ( the air queens summons , spring hawks , storm demons ) and script the airqueens to e.g. massive orb lighnings .

or you can lategame do 2-3 flames from the sky on the ermor legions with 1000+ undeads and they will be reduced too 300 or so and easy to kill

the easiest way to kill the undead hordes are vampires / vampire lords .
when you leave ermor alone now lategame you can wish for blood and build a pack of them . they will wreak havoc on ermor . you can wish for dominion then too to ensure that your vampires always fight in positive dominion
finally you can wish for armaggedon it kills 20% of ermors troops but your jotuns and other tough troops survive because it most likely kills only weak troops .
so you will lose per armaggedon about 1-10 units while ermor loses about 20% so some thousand .
finally there is a global i think it is called purgatory which kills undeads in all provinces where you have positive dominion . since ermor can't preach and you have more territory in the long run you will outdominion ermor .

[LintMan]

Since he's AI he's not building any fortresses, for which I'm pathetically grateful. The main Ermor citadel has proven very hard to take - any tips on what sort of army I should use would be gratefully appreciated. He has an undead pretender (not a GK, a Prince of something) with huge MR (25 the one time I saw it), so Banishment is prob not going to work (maybe that's why my priests didn't banish the troops - were they trying to banish him instead and failing?). I think the damn thing is ethereal as well.

I've just got Conj 5 and am summoning Firbolgs and Bane Lords this turn, both of which come equipped with magic weapons.

I still think I might try and leave Ermor until Last though, and hope he doesn't expand away from me. I'm getting very worried about the size of the Tien Chi army.

Since Ermor kills off his provinces, I recommend taking him out before he spreads further, particularly since it sounds like he's on the ropes anyway:

It sounds as if your armies took down most/all of his army except for a core set of commanders and his prentender, but you just can't crack his citadel and fear that eventually his auto-summons would overwhelm your seiging force.

My suggestions:
1) Use part of your army to seige his castle. Expect occasional attempts to break the seige, but without his castle defenses to help him out you should be able to handle this more easily - also considering he will likely leave some commanders/units in reserve when he attacks.

You can occasionally attack with a scout set to retreat to get a peek at how he's building his forces up. Have all your priests preaching here as you seige. Keep buying priests to preach (and banish in combat).

Set up a nearby lab and start summoning up some undead of your own as fodder. The undead cavalry (Pale Riders?) is a fantastic summon, but behemoths, banes, and even dispossed spirits are all useful. Use a few mound kings as leaders and to shuttle the undead fodder to the seiged castle.

Simultaneously, use the other part of your army to take *all* his surrounding provinces. They probably are weakly defended for the most part (since if he had another big army, he'd be attacking you with it) so you shouldn't need too big a force for this. When you take his provinces, put up temples wherever you can afford - especially in the provinces around his castle.

Your goal here is to reduce Ermor to a single province so no outside relief/income is available, while also reducing his dominion and gem income (and increasing yours!) Lowering his castle province's dominion will also weaken his pretender for your eventual assault.

2) While doing that, build yourself up an supercombatant or two that can probably crack Ermor's citadel force alone if necessary. Easiest would be a pair of good 'ol Banelords with Starshine Skullcaps (Horror Helm is worthless against most (all?) undead), Jade Armor, Flying Boots, anti-magic amulets, and luck amulets. I usually equip them with wraith swords, but they don't do so much against undead. You could try herald lances though, which are good against undead.
Two of these banelords can probably take on his citadel force by themselves, but since you have a seiging force right there, just send everybody in (ie: banelords, priests, jotuns, undead fodder). Have the banelords on hold-hold-hold-attack rear so that his forces and arrow defenses will engage your fodder forces before your banelords jump in.

Hope this helps!