Ermor Themes

[Alneyan]

And the Winged Shoes help avoid destroying *your* Dominion. I wouldn't put Stone Idols on skeptics though: it sounds kind of redudant, as only one of those is the better bargain depending on your situation (the Skeptic is usually a lot cheaper, but it means one less capital-only commander, so if you are swimming in gems...).

Everything related to increasing/reducing Dominion stacks, for both sides, so you'd better bring in heavy forces to destroy a Dominion -10 quickly. I think the Priest level only affects how high you can go, so it wouldn't help here: Inquisitors ought to work a lot better than regular priests, however.

Still, if you are serious about taking down enemy Dominion soon, don't be a miser and deploy a bunch of priests, and assorted things (Pretender welcome).

[spirokeat]

Are we sure about priest level not affecting it ?

Looking at what it says about inquisitors it would indicate that their preist level is considered double for attacking enemy dominion. But if priest level only affects how high you can get your dominion up then it has no effect at all as you would have to be in positive dominion to increase your own up.

Spiro

[Alneyan]

I doubt we are sure about *anything* regarding Dominion: I only expressed my own opinion on the matter, hence the "I think" (and not "It is written, in the Codex of the First Ones").

Good point about the description for those Inquisitors. I'm afraid I'm in the dark about how they work exactly then.

[Jurri]

Somewhere is floating a pdf on dominion spread. Also KO commented on the matter at some point. Probably both can be found in that manual addenda that Liga was doing. You can't get that closer to the codex of the first ones, I think Then there's the oral tradition... I bet if you made a thorought search you'd find all sorts of interesting stuff on the matter, and possibly even the two sources mentioned above.

Anyway, I think a priest's chance to get an increase on dominion is 10% times priest level. So, a level 4 inquisitor gets 80% in hostile dominion.

[Zen]

You can find some information here that has most of the information on how Dominion works in an easy to read format from Bruce.

Edit: Fixed link.

[spirokeat]

Thanks Zen, thats an interesting read and will alter substantially how I play with Dominion.

Spirokeat

[Scott Hebert]

I don't know much about MP strategies, and I know that the theme I'm about to suggest is perhaps a little sub-optimal, but has anyone thought of Fires of the Faith Marignon? IIRC, each of their provinces has a free Holy-1 Inquisitor preaching every turn, and if you start with a Dominion of 10 (Virtue or Glyph most likely), then it's just possible you might be able to win the dominion war.

If you choose to go the Virtue route, and you think you can keep your dominion up, you might also think about the Wrath global. Purgatory is another option.

[Zen]

Pangaea can beat SG Ermor when played with fighting Ermor:SG in mind. You can't make your dominion as heavy as Ermors, but thats okay. Pans can deal with early and middle game freespawn/spams and Centaur Warriors hypereffective especially 1on1 when you can send a dryad prophet (2+ other dryads) with 20+ warriors (depends on game settings) through indeps to Ermor land. Use tangle vine script on the early game thugs and expand as fast as you can with Pretender cheeze in your land (medusa's pretty good) and cut Ermor expansion.

If you can harrass Ermor long enough and cut their gold/thuggery to either A) Get Lamia's going or B) Blood (use xbreeding to fortify chaff provinces).

A good research strategy is:
Alt 3
Conj 3 (Earthpower, Call of the Wild)
Alt 4 (Swarm)
Alt 5 (Mother Oak)
Conj 6 (Lamias)

You should research about as fast as SG:Ermor even with early Dryads out causing havok. Depending on the mapsize I might not even search for sites, use Mother Oak to fuel the troops to get a critical mass of either blood/lamias.

You should be able to get Lamia's online around turn 16+ depending on how the early game goes.

Edit: Also this is no foolproof strategy. It's just one that works very well against SG. Alot of things can go wrong for you or you opponent can get lucky. The key to 1v1 dominions is being aggressive.

You could also do this with base Marignon. Though the formula is much simpler. Only make xbows (you should have a good 250-300 by turn 15) speedresearch Ench 4 then alt 4 (for luck if you want) go evocation until you get to firestorm (early game you are looking for falling fires). Use mostly Witch Hunters. Assume your opponent is going to become fully fire resistant and use Witch Hunter Communicant slaves as Astral Shield by setting their script to "hold, hold, hold, hold, hold attack"

With a Master with personal luck, resist magic, astral shield, astral weapon, fire resistance, retreat.

It's unlikely that SG Ermor will be able to fit more than 4-5 (if he's lucky) anti-missle and anti-fire. Use flaming arrows to cut through chaff, use your pretender to deal with opponents pretender (something big with regen usually works pretty good for stalling, make sure it has air shield and a ring of fire resistance).;

[shovah]

try a naga with N9 + whatever else you want and it will get 13 lamias per turn, add that to gift of health and boom...

[Graeme Dice]

quantum_mechani said:
Without relief the sauros will get overcome sooner or later, and getting relief going in the time frame you need would be quite difficult.

You should be able to get skull staves and drain life before you could get relief, but that's an expensive investment.