Ermor Themes

[quantum_mechani]

Mark the Merciful said:
Base is what I know, so I'd rather stick to that. What maps do people normally use for 1 vs 1 games?

The usual maps are Urgaia, Clash of Titans, or The Nile.

[Turin]

Jurri said:

I smell a match brewing How about you guys face off, save each turn and report to the community your findings; I think there's a distinct lack of a detailed, good guide on how to handle undead. Now, I'm sure an archived game like that would be a concrete tutorial! (Even though my money's on Turin Still, even then you'd see what's the worst that can happen, which is perhaps even more valuable than a step-by-step instruction... So either way it's bound to be interesting!)

We did two matches, one on the nile with quantum as tien´chi , one on urgaia as c´tis desert tombs. The first game was pretty anticlimatic, I got a pretty good start and my prophet got heroic toughness. On turn 15 qm tried to invade, but my wraith centurions slaughtered his army and the game was over at that point.
My pretender was a f4a3s3e3d6n1 dom 10 lich queen. qm chose a dom10 lich. I saved my turns, but it was a pretty boring game.

The second took place on urgaia and was far more interesting.
I got a really crappy start, got a useless ability on my prophet (battle prowess) and had to wait until turn 20 to find my second death gem generating site, generating only 11 death gems/turn until that point. I never found firegems either, so I had money problems too.
So I just put temples everywhere I went, conquered provinces with my centurions and created 4 raiding squads with spectators and freespawns.
qm´s offensive consisted of an army with 9 sauromancers and tomb wyrms, they managed to knock over a few temples and kill quite a lot of freespawns.
But eventually he split them and a wraith centurion was able to kill off half the sauromancers. My raiding squads were running rampant in his provinces and I managed to capture one of his three forts. At that point we declared the game over.

[quantum_mechani]

Turin said:

We did two matches, one on the nile with quantum as tien´chi , one on urgaia as c´tis desert tombs. The first game was pretty anticlimatic, I got a pretty good start and my prophet got heroic toughness. On turn 15 qm tried to invade, but my wraith centurions slaughtered his army and the game was over at that point.
My pretender was a f4a3s3e3d6n1 dom 10 lich queen. qm chose a dom10 lich. I saved my turns, but it was a pretty boring game.

The second took place on urgaia and was far more interesting.
I got a really crappy start, got a useless ability on my prophet (battle prowess) and had to wait until turn 20 to find my second death gem generating site, generating only 11 death gems/turn until that point. I never found firegems either, so I had money problems too.
So I just put temples everywhere I went, conquered provinces with my centurions and created 4 raiding squads with spectators and freespawns.
qm´s offensive consisted of an army with 9 sauromancers and tomb wyrms, they managed to knock over a few temples and kill quite a lot of freespawns.
But eventually he split them and a wraith centurion was able to kill off half the sauromancers. My raiding squads were running rampant in his provinces and I managed to capture one of his three forts. At that point we declared the game over.

Yeah, he proved his point.

SG played well is almost certainly the most deadly 1vs.1 nation, with the possible exception of base game Caelum. The second game he got quite unlucky, while I played one of the best counters nations, which I don't think could have been played much better.

The key to it's deadliness is it's immortal thugs from the start, and freespawning stealth squads. It is quite posible to deafeat the immortality with raiding and dominion push, but you can't do that while being constantly harassed by powerful stealth raiders. And of course SG gets money from raiding (more temples) while you get at best a few more gems, and cannot hold the provinces you take because free spawns simply retake them as your army moves off.

[Jurri]

Hey, neat! Do you have the turns from the second game saved up? They would serve as a great tutorial for playing SG, and opposing it. (And of course, I'd like to see how to play in a way that can't be surpassed )

You should try unmodded Caelum versus SG, too! They got magic weapons and stuff, so maybe they would stand a chance.

[quantum_mechani]

Jurri said:
Hey, neat! Do you have the turns from the second game saved up? They would serve as a great tutorial for playing SG, and opposing it. (And of course, I'd like to see how to play in a way that can't be surpassed )

You should try unmodded Caelum versus SG, too! They got magic weapons and stuff, so maybe they would stand a chance.

I don't know about Turin, all I have is a few turns from the first game.

[shovah]

only problem with caelum is alot of arrows would miss from etheralness and the good assault troops cost **** loads of resources (FH spam anyone, would love to see that vrs raise skele spams)

[spirokeat]

Whats the stats on those centurions ? (im at work so cant check).

That is an interesting outcome.

Quantum, What tactics did you employ knowing what you were facing ?

As Tien Chi and Ctis ?

Spiro

[Turin]

Jurri said:
Hey, neat! Do you have the turns from the second game saved up? They would serve as a great tutorial for playing SG, and opposing it. (And of course, I'd like to see how to play in a way that can't be surpassed )

You should try unmodded Caelum versus SG, too! They got magic weapons and stuff, so maybe they would stand a chance.

Sorry I didn´t save the turns from the second game, I only have the last one saved. As for the strategy, it was quite easy: build lots of temples, make raiding squads and always send your wraith centurions into provinces with friendly dominion.

unmodded caelum could very well stand a chance. But I see them getting trouble with income and raiding with false horrors shouldn´t be that effective due to high morale and magic weapons. Raiding with troops should be quite hard, even with magic weapons they will have a hard time killing the soulless and then the ghosts.

But the mages should perform well, if you can get airqueens out soon enough that might be enough.

[quantum_mechani]

spirokeat said:
Whats the stats on those centurions ? (im at work so cant check).

That is an interesting outcome.

Quantum, What tactics did you employ knowing what you were facing ?

As Tien Chi and Ctis ?

As T'ien Ch'i, the strategy was masters of the the dead casting dust to dust to kill centurions, and quickened priests to clear the chaff.

For C'tis, similar dust to dust casting early with sauromancers, plus a few early forts for hierodules. Then I went straight for bones, which worked quite well except for the fact there was no way my sauromancers could take a large enough force to destroy temples to keep the dominion out, and at the same time stop the intensive stealth raiding.

[Jurri]

Interesting strategies, QM! I'm not sure they are the best for the purpose, however.

I would think perhaps fire-blessed Vans or Sidhe or anything, really, could work, since they should be able to hurt the spirits and in the case of these two and some others also have a lot of survivability against centurions. Also, vans can sac slaves to spread dominion, right? That could be useful, too, if the game prolonged. Lightning bolts should work fine against centurions, as long as they aren't especially protected.

Shouldn't sauromancers be more effective skeleton spammers than spectators? Thusly, one would think fighting fire with fire would work. (Not that I know if spectators were used for that purpose ) Also, base C'tis has these serpent dancers that have magic weapons, and a high def and an above average MR; they should be formidable against the spirits. Especially with some bless and a skeleton spam to soak the hits.

Fire/Astral flagellants would conceivably work, as they should have enough MR to resist many attacks, as well as well enough offensive capacity to beat centurions.

Perhaps the best bet would be fire (+a bit of earth, maybe) blessed white centaurs; you get the supply and the blessing from the dryads, as well as cheap banishment. Also, temples are easy to make with Pan.

Or maybe I'm missing something? Certainly these would have a hard time, too, but I wouldn't necessarily focus solely on mages and priests under circumstances like this.