Ermor AE findings

[Graeme Dice]

Tyrant said:
Upstreamedge, in answer to your simple question, yes- AE Ermor is unbalanced. This is well known and accepted.

Accepted by whom? Ermor is a powerful nation, but is hardly unbalanced. It can be easily countered by the use of magic.

Have you noticed Burden of Time yet?

Burden of time is a powerful spell that you will be lucky to have last for five turns at most throughout the course of a game, unless of course, Ermor was already winning before it cast the spell. Ermor cannot afford to spend its death gems
in sufficient quantities to keep the spell from being easily dispelled.

They are not unbeatable or anything, but they are very strong, especially in the early game, and there are some nations that have sepecial problems with them.

Ermor is at its weakest in the early game. In the first ten turns, Ermor can only summon 10 D2 mages, or 7 D3?1 mages if it wants to completely ignore reanimators (Which is probably the strongest long-term strategy). Ermor doesn't become truly powerful till turn 20, peaks by turn 40, then diminishes rapidly as other nations overtake it's slow research.

[thejeff]

Burden of Time can, however, be brutal in SP if you're not playing an Astral nation and Ermor is on the other side of the map.

[KissBlade]

Ermor's strength doesn't lie in it's reanimators.It lies in it's offensive dominion that leaves much of a scorched earth policy. In my last mp game I didn't even bother attacking Ermor who was my neighbor since as long as I kept his dominion out, it was a lot more profitable to simply attack provinces with you know ... population in them. =)

[Blofeld]

BTW, how numerous are provinces with indy priests in LA? While playing demo I came to the conclusion that undead nations would be a blast in EA, with the abundance of tribal and barbarian pops and consequent scarcity of cheap indy priests.
Fortunately there are no undead nations in EA at the moment, are they? Oh wait, does Pangea exist in EA?

[Morkilus]

In my experience, banishment is good enough to make some of the weaker reanimation spells obsolete. The AI seems to really like priests, so ye olde skelly spammer strategy might have to be retired.

[PDF]

Teraswaerto said:
Inkpot End is still there at least.

Maybe the other ones too but you can find them only with Acashic Records. Or they might all be death sites now.

IIRC Inkpot End is and always had been a Death site...

[Daynarr]

IIRC Inkpot End was never hidden site so it doesn't really matter if it was unholy or death.

Also, there can be only one Inkpot End on the map.

[ologm]

Anyone notice that undead commanders like bane lord start moving slower when you equip heavy armor on them.

[DominionsFan]

AE Ermor looks very good in Doms 3. also, I only had 2 games with them so far, because I am very busy in these days. Graeme is correct, Ermor can be countered, and their early game is not so great. If Ermor is played correctly, it can be one of the best nations. I will show you in some TCP/IP games, when I will have some damned time to play finally.

[Teraswaerto]

Pretty sure Inkpot End is unholy in Dom2, but yes it's true that it doesn't matter much since it's always visible.