Ermor themes, too strong?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
They will prevent enemy dominion from spreading through the province they are in however. There is also some chance that even a dominion that is not at the maximum in a province will spread, which is seen most commonly in the very beginning turns.

This is true, but the chance of a temple check attacking a neighboring province appears to be independent of the strength of dominion in the current province, except for the case where the current province is at maximum dominion strength: Then the temple has no choice BUT to attack a neighboring province.

The interesting question is how a temple check propagates out beyond the immediately neighboring province, as temples are clearly capable of spreading dominion further than a neighboring province: Perhaps there's a chance that a temple check which attacks a neighboring province instead bounces and attacks a neighbor of that neighbor: Obviously, this may be forced if the temple's neighbors are also all at full dominion, and perhaps contain temples of their own: If this is what happens, and the nation is jampacked with many temples and is at max dominion in most provinces, the dominion spread may be forced outwards like a giant tidal wave, which WOULD very much account for the overwhelming force with which it overran your own dominion, since the above profile fits my empire.

]I don't particularly like how the rich setting also doubles resources, so I was thinking that I would just mod the amount of gold a given population produces to double gold income only.

Can that be done in a .map file? If it requires a full mod, the Cradle map may be fundamentally unfavorable towards gold-dependent races.

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At least there's lots of gems: Have you tried converting gems to gold by alchemy? That's where most gold I use is from.

I have been, but Caelum has a particularly hard time finding both fire and earth gems.

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Caelum is also a water nation, with cheap national water mages. High Seraphs can easily roll a random in Astral, which can then jumpstart the process. Surely you can afford to simply use Acashic Record to search for those necessary fire and earth gems, since Gnome Lore and Augury are not castable by basic national mages?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Can that be done in a .map file? If it requires a full mod, the Cradle map may be fundamentally unfavorable towards gold-dependent races.

That's a mod only change.

Caelum is also a water nation, with cheap national water mages. High Seraphs can easily roll a random in Astral, which can then jumpstart the process. Surely you can afford to simply use Acashic Record to search for those necessary fire and earth gems, since Gnome Lore and Augury are not castable by basic national mages?

To get a high seraph to astral 3 takes a good 75 pearls, and then you are going to be spending a lot more pearls to search provinces that have been almost totally searched anyways. You're really better off just sending around a search team of two high seraphs of fire 1 and earth 1.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
To get a high seraph to astral 3 takes a good 75 pearls, and then you are going to be spending a lot more pearls to search provinces that have been almost totally searched anyways. You're really better off just sending around a search team of two high seraphs of fire 1 and earth 1.

75 pearls? No way. It takes 40 pearls: Take an S1 High Seraph, empower to Astral-2 at the cost of 30 pearls, and forge a Starshine. You can use him for the purpose of scanning any new provinces you take for a full search. If you can take F or E High Seraph and give him a booster, you can then easily do probings for Fire and Earth on your searched provinces as well. If the terrain around you is so apparently poor in gold, then it will be rich in resources and gems, because mountains and forests are higher-resource provinces, and wastes, swamps, mountains, and forests again are also richer in magical sites: Acashic Record is very much to your benefit on such targets.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
75 pearls? No way. It takes 40 pearls: Take an S1 High Seraph, empower to Astral-2 at the cost of 30 pearls, and forge a Starshine.

Bah. I need to pay more attention to what I'm saying.

Acashic Record is very much to your benefit on such targets.

Except of course when you've already completely searched for every other type of site (except blood).

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Ermor is not as strong as many would believe. Here's a breakdown of Ermor, from the perspective of an avid Ermor player:

You've missed their major advantage, which is that they are still balanced for the Dominions 1 economy, whereas every other nation now has half the gold production available.

It is popularly believed that if Ermor is left uncontained, it will grow to be unstoppable. This is not inherently true, or at least more true, of Ermor: All nations, if left unchecked, will reach a point where stopping them becomes very difficult.

I believe that that statement is quite literally true. Ermor has absolutely no limitations on the maximum number of troops it can support, and pays no upkeep on its mages whatsoever. That alone is an incredibly massive advantage. Every other nation requires high population in many provinces to keep their troops and mage numbers high, and population only drops over time.

If your dominion is weak, however, you must shore it up with priests and temples, or Ermor's temple spread will quickly overwhelm yours and ruin your lands.

This is the major problem with them. Ermor has absolutely no need for population, so once they have captured a province it becomes useless to anyone else within a few turns.

Don't let yourself be goaded into a rash campaign: Act with patience and prudence, not a knee-jerk reaction of "Ermor must die!".

I think that this is poor advice. Once ghost riders comes into play, which tends to be before turn 40, you basically have no chance against an Ermorian player. This spell makes building fortreses necessary in every province with a temple, which drains gold reserves incredibly quickly.

Both population killing Ermorian themes should probably cost 200 points just to match the other reanimating themes that exist.

[Teraswaerto]

Both population killing Ermorian themes should probably cost 200 points just to match the other reanimating themes that exist.

You mean Desert Tombs? I though the consensus was that DT is too expensive, and quite weak compared to, for example, base C'tis.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
You mean Desert Tombs? I though the consensus was that DT is too expensive, and quite weak compared to, for example, base C'tis.

That comparison might be valid if Ermor had to pay upkeep on its mages and troops.

[Teraswaerto]

No upkeep, sure. But no way to recruit them either. Ermor is constantly short on death gems, so whether or not needing to/being able to to summon mages and priest is an advantage isn't so clear.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
You've missed their major advantage, which is that they are still balanced for the Dominions 1 economy, whereas every other nation now has half the gold production available.

I don't happen to have Dominions 1, so I have no idea what you're talking about. Besides, it is irrelevant: Ermor will always have a more ridiculously huge number of troops than a living nation: Undoing Ermor's troops cannot be accomplished by hamhandedly throwing more troops at it, and if use the correct tools for the job, losing ANY troops in a clash of conventional armies is completely optional.

I believe that that statement is quite literally true. Ermor has absolutely no limitations on the maximum number of troops it can support

Incorrect: There is a maximum number of troops that Ermor (or any nation) is allowed to have, after which Ermor will not be able to receive any more troops, and any attempts to summon better troops risks failure due to this limit.

and pays no upkeep on its mages whatsoever.

This is certainly an advantage, but I don't see it as overwhelming: Other nations are perfectly capable of switching to summoned, no-upkeep mages as well.

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Don't let yourself be goaded into a rash campaign: Act with patience and prudence, not a knee-jerk reaction of "Ermor must die!".

I think that this is poor advice. Once ghost riders comes into play, which tends to be before turn 40, you basically have no chance against an Ermorian player. This spell makes building fortreses necessary in every province with a temple, which drains gold reserves incredibly quickly.

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Impulsive, poorly considered, knee-jerk attacks are invariably the cause of total army loss. An impulsive, badly planned rush with poor strategic support will leave you in a very awkward position if it fails horribly.

I see you've caught onto my remote temple burning strategy. Building fortresses in every province with a temple, this is basically necessary anyway: Ghost Riders is not the only remote-raiding spell, and fliers, or flying SCs, can easily maraud completely unchecked, leaving you to try to guess their next move in a giant, extremely aggravating, whack-a-mole, unless you build forts. Province defense can stop very lightweight attacks, but is generally worthless against a human player, and there is really no point to using it other than to run off scouts. Fortresses, no matter how lousy, however, do something that NO amount of PD can do: No matter HOW large the attacking army is, you will always buy yourself a minimum of one turn to respond. Furthermore, your attacker is unable to pillage the province, and the amount of savaging he can conduct merely by raising taxes to 200 is far more limited. Lastly, if your attacker is unable to breach the wall, he can't kill your army: Forts are particularly effective against lone SCs, because SCs tend to be exceedingly poor at sieging even the weakest forts, and will be forced to either bring or request backup, give up, or camp out in front of the gates until the defender can muster a suitable response and run him off.

It should also be noted that Ermor is not even the only nation capable of using remote summons, including Ghost Riders. I regularly employ the use of Ghost Riders for temple burnings as living nations as well. Forts are mandatory, and are by far a better long-term investment than troops that invariably die ineffectually, as I tend to see them do often: After all, if you can't defend your land and prevent the enemy from taking it, all you have really accomplished is clearing the indies out at your own expense so that your enemy can use the land. This is stupid: If you can't hold onto it, it's not yours, and you're just conquering it for the enemy.

Both population killing Ermorian themes should probably cost 200 points just to match the other reanimating themes that exist.

CW Pan is a zero-point reanimating theme. DT C'tis costs 200, an amount many believe is far overpriced, and only seems to warrant any cost at all because it (allegedly) lacks the killer dominion that will render your lands devoid of income, and thus permits the simultaneous use of living troops, removing the one-dimensional limitation of other reanimation themes.

[Yossar]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
CW Pan is a zero-point reanimating theme.

More like a 160 point theme. 200 point before the patch. Being forced to take growth in a death theme is pretty useless.

[ April 11, 2004, 08:02: Message edited by: Yossar ]