Battling Ermoria

[Arryn]

Molog said:
Don't only magic non-healing units get repaired at labs? Not ermors undead.

Correct.

[deccan]

To hijack this thread in the opposite direction, I want to what is the most effective way to play Ermor AE. I mean you have very little money, so what should the spending priority be: forts, temples, PD, independent troops (sages)?

And how do you push dominion as Ermor? I know Ermor easily has enough points to buy 10 starting dominion, but how can you help to make your dominion as fast as possible?

[Arryn]

deccan said:
To hijack this thread in the opposite direction, I want to what is the most effective way to play Ermor AE. I mean you have very little money, so what should the spending priority be: forts, temples, PD, independent troops (sages)?

I'm not an expert at Ermor, but I'd say sages (when you can get them, since Ermor's research generally sucks), followed by indies. You still have to be careful, even if you can afford to hire them, that you can also feed and pay them afterwards.

Ermorian PD reeks, temples are pricey given your serious lack of funds (due to population-killing dominion), and forts, while useful, are even harder to afford than temples. In short, things that cost money are things to try to avoid, unless you have something that can give you a steady income (however small that may be). Ermor is a swamp-them-with-crappy-masses sort of nation, and about the only economy you have to speak of is gems, and even that's not great. Your goal is to expand as fast as possible to scarf up new gold-producing lands before your dominion turns them desolate, and look for gem sites while you're at it.

deccan said:
And how do you push dominion as Ermor? I know Ermor easily has enough points to buy 10 starting dominion, but how can you help to make your dominion as fast as possible?

You buy that 10, and push it with your pretender and prophet. Your task isn't so much pushing your dominion as it is systematically crushing your enemies' temples so that they have nothing with which to impede the spread of yours.

[atul]

Arryn said:
I'm not an expert at Ermor, but I'd say sages (when you can get them, since Ermor's research generally sucks), followed by indies. You still have to be careful, even if you can afford to hire them, that you can also feed and pay them afterwards.

Ermorian PD reeks, temples are pricey given your serious lack of funds (due to population-killing dominion), and forts, while useful, are even harder to afford than temples.

How much difference is between Ermor-specific undead (velites, legionnares et al) and general ones (soullesses, longdeads) in terms of usefulness, you reckon? If I've understood it correctly you can only get the specific ones in a province with a fort, while unforted get you truly crappy ones. And adding temples should give you those knights. (speaking AE theme)

I mean, would Ermor benefit from castles enough for them to be worth it due to "quality" of troops? Yes, troops are crap anyway, but I'm talking about different flavors of crap here. The research sucks, but how much indy mages can you afford anyway?

[Arryn]

atul said:
Yes, troops are crap anyway, but I'm talking about different flavors of crap here.

I think I'll let someone else better qualified on Ermor than I discuss the finer nuances of crap ...

[Karacan]

deccan said:
To hijack this thread in the opposite direction, I want to what is the most effective way to play Ermor AE. I mean you have very little money, so what should the spending priority be: forts, temples, PD, independent troops (sages)?

Actually, you do not have a real money problem. If you slow down your expansion to pillage any province you conquered at least one turn, money will be avaiable in good enough quantities to buy the much needed temples and castles. Choose Dominion 8 or 9, unless you are on a really small map, because you want to build temples and castles anyway, as they cause the heavier of Ermor's troops to spawn. This is especially true for Soul Gate.

Also, don't forget to add at least 1 point of pd to every province. While you have tons of freespawns in there, they usually come without a leader, and a surprise sneak attack will not rout them but dissolve them (since they find themselves on a battlefield without undead leadership).

[jarenko]

So, what's a good magical combo to take for your pretender to maximize his undead slaying abilities? [or to best let him reinforce his armies with magic to increase theirs, which is probably more useful]

And man, those ethereal units. How to crack an egg like that? Especially as a physical nation like Ulm?

A friend I play with has a summer lion obsession and they really tear through my armies. I'm considering next time attempting to use more magic, and try some of the magical/dead destroying/control spells since he usually uses a small group of normal soldiers and a truckload of dead and magical/summoned creatures.

[Arryn]

jarenko said:
And man, those ethereal units. How to crack an egg like that? Especially as a physical nation like Ulm?

Forge lots of magic weapons. No nation forges better than Ulm. Now you know why. They need it. [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/ooo.gif[/img]

[Pickles]

A Black lord makes a "moderate" combatant with jade armour charcoal shield plus flaming sword. Maybe reinvigoration belt or some other fatigue relief, lucky pendant or MR item, a hat (expensive).
As Ulm you can get the basic for 130 gold & 12 gems using smiths with hammers. The armour needs the pretender or an indep or forge of the ancients, which Ermor canot easily dispel. Forge of the Ancients makes the gem cost 5 too.

They are not all powerful but they are cheap enough to spam.

Pickles

[Agrajag]

The different kinds of crap are actually quite different, as said before, soulless aren't [censored], they are lower than [censored], they are what little micro organizms [censored] when they eat [censored].
On the other hand, you have the longdeads which are just ordinary [censored] (hence, much better than soulless), and if you take an arch-bishop (AE) and reanimate longdead horsemen, they are quite good.
They are easy to mass (~5-7 a turn in a good dominion), they are big and (relatively) strong units, but you can't kill them by massing troops on them because they come in huge numbers.
Also, using indies for research is not recommended imo because it keeps draining your funds, which are tiny anyway...
Your bucks are better spent on (cheap) castles protecting temples.
The best province you can get is one with a gold-producing mine, if you get one, castle and temple it for freespawn masses of protection (and if that province is deep in your territory, you can use them in the front lines).
Just my take on AE - Arch-Bishops are your friends.
They mass units easily, are great Undead leaders and are vital for your army's survival (increasing MR through blessings to avoid unwanted anti-Undead spells).
Also, if you want a strong elite mass (much smaller mass though) you can prophetize one and he can reanimate Lictors (even though it says something else, Ghouls IIRC).
One other awesome (yet super cheasy) tactic to take light fortifications is to take your huge mass of Longdead Horsemen and put it all on one Arch-Bishop:
What you do is you take a whole lot (the max his leadership allowes), give him only 1 horseman, put that horseman in the front and then put all the other horsemen (again, to the top of his leadership) in the 1 horseman stack.
Because they are so big (size 3 iirc) and in the front outside the lines of ordinary battle placement and in such a huge stack, they tend to start the battle INSIDE the enemy fortification.
The ones with wide walls and trenches are probably more "immune" to this "cheese" but its a nice tactic to pull against and AI (in MP - now that's just LAME).

Did anyone understand everything?