MP Guide to LA Ermor - The Ashen Empire - Page 2

Shovah32 · #1 June 14th, 2007, 06:11 PM

Very good point there Taqwus. If a player is spreading their dominion properly mines(or other gold sites) are likely to end up as their main source of income.

mivayan · #2 June 14th, 2007, 06:12 PM

Perhaps add that it can help to script Protection of the Sepxxxx several times since there's an mr check at +4, which is a bit unusual for buff spells. (but not unique).

Baalz · #3 June 18th, 2007, 05:12 PM

Well, I played around with fear and banshees this weekend, and there are some interesting things you can do, and as you'd guess there are some pretty effective niche uses for the banshee. The thing with the banshees is with that 0 protection and no shield you're gonna take casualties and they're so damn expensive you're not going to want to use them for run of the mill expansion. They're also not terribly effective in very small numbers, they're definitely in the bucket of stuff that needs critical mass to work right. With the opportunity cost of the death gems and caster turns I really couldn't come up with an effective use of them until you're getting "Greater Lamentation", at which point you've got some other really nice stuff to cast to.

So, what does this PITA to use, fragile and expensive unit buy you? A hellaciously offensive weapon. Their attack is a AOE 1 soul slay, and if the MR roll is made the target is still struck with a greater fear effect (which seems unresistible) and stacks with the fear aura they radiate. The practical effect of this is when you bring a dozen of these ladies up to melee you'll see a whole bunch of little red 999's floating up and the rare guy who saved is gonna have a -38 moral (I'm not kidding, that's what I saw). Nobody ever really counterattacks.

On top of the obvious use to punch a hole through enemy lines (at fort gates in particular, where LA Ermor tends to struggle) it seems like this would work well against SCs to. A dozen MR checks vs death (AOE 1, so defense and protection are useless), and even if they're passed the fear effect should be enough to overwhelm anybody (probably ineffective against golems or other unbreakable units). If you're anticipating the SC fleeing and cut off his retreat....seems like a good way of dealing with that artifact laden badass who just waded through 5000 of your undead.

Loren · #4 June 18th, 2007, 07:13 PM

Has something changed with the domain effects?

I decided to try what was in this thread in a SP game. It's working pretty well. I took dom 10, all scales terrible and gobs and gobs of magic on my lich queen.

It seems to be working pretty well but I'm seeing something I didn't expect. My core provinces are mostly down to 190 population--the *SAME* number in many provinces. With nobody dying I'm still getting as much freespawn as when there were thousands of people.

I'm also wondering why the #1 and #2 (in area, I am of course #1 in army size) empires both decided to pick on me even though I was #3, my domain wasn't pressing into either of their empires and there were plenty of weaker opponents out there.

Shovah32 · #5 June 18th, 2007, 07:52 PM

Your freespawn isnt based on population but purely on dominion(iirc), if you want to make use of the corpses get some priests over to reanimate soulless. The AI is pretty stupid and usually quite aggressive so you should always be expecting them to attack you.

Velusion · #6 June 18th, 2007, 08:00 PM

Shovah32 is right, LA Ermor's domain doesn't care about population or fresh corpses... it is happy raising corpses that might be hundreads or thousands of years old.

Now if you recruit a bunch of priests you can raise those fresh corpses and have even more!

I need to add a section for indy priests and update with Baalz's very handy info.

Loren · #7 June 19th, 2007, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Shovah32 said:
Your freespawn isnt based on population but purely on dominion(iirc), if you want to make use of the corpses get some priests over to reanimate soulless. The AI is pretty stupid and usually quite aggressive so you should always be expecting them to attack you.

My memory sure was that the raising petered out once the population dropped to zero.

I also wish it would raise a few more commanders. It's annoying to have to send them back from the front lines to collect more troops.

Viajero · #8 November 11th, 2009, 03:06 PM

I have started having a few games against the AI to practice this advice but i seem to run into gold problems constantly. The main advice is to build castles everywhere as it helps with the better quality spawn but how you guys build tehose with no gold?

rdonj · #9 November 11th, 2009, 11:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viajero

I have started having a few games against the AI to practice this advice but i seem to run into gold problems constantly. The main advice is to build castles everywhere as it helps with the better quality spawn but how you guys build tehose with no gold?

When you are playing ermor, you should really overtax at 200% as much as possible and patrol to keep unrest down in any province you have dominion in. This is particularly wise to do in your capitol as it will soon be a smoldering ruin anyway and not do much for you otherwise. Relish (and overtax madly) any province you capture outside of your dominion that has a large population, as you can get a significant increase to your tax base from them. And if you have priests available, reanimate all the dead peasants this creates to swell your armies. Luck scales as others have mentioned are very important as well, as your lands quickly become useless and luck events can provide a useful source of income.

Viajero · #10 December 16th, 2009, 04:47 AM

Currently on turn 16ish of a MP game, and playing as LA Ermor. Enjoying quite a bit as expansion has proven to be explosive with over 30 provinces conquered while the next contender has about 18.
Research is going at good rythm and troop numbers are stratospheric. I even got Etimmu as hero which is lovely.

My current concern is magic path access and magic object forging. As Dusk elders are limited to D3 +1 elemental level, my magic options are quite limited. On top of this random magic sites seem to be sparse in the map, forget about indie mages. So currently it is only my rainbow pretender who can build anythng meaningful. Got to construction 4 and would like to build a few shields/brands for my banes but cant unless I use my pretender, who is busy site searching.

Any advice magic and item construction wise?