Soul Gate questions

[Merry Jolkar]

What determines the rate pop dies off under Soul Gate: simply being in Ermor's dominion (and if so, candle length?)? Province owned by Ermor?

Is there a formula (or a rough estimate) of how many undead get auto recruited? This depends on the pretender's level of death magic, right? Or, is it the province's domain strength? I understand some creatures appear in provinces with temples, others with fortresses. Do these numbers depend on province's domain strength? Death magic level?

Thanks,
Merry

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Merry Jolkar:
What determines the rate pop dies off under Soul Gate: simply being in Ermor's dominion (and if so, candle length?)? Province owned by Ermor?

Population death is a percentage based on the dominion strength in the province.

This depends on the pretender's level of death magic, right?

No, the auto-generated troops have nothing to do with the pretender's death magic, only the dominion strength in a given province, and whether there is a castle and/or a temple present in the province.

[Merry Jolkar]

What effect do temples and castles have on Ermor's auto troop recruitment? I occasionally see really strong units appearing -- like vampires. What determines this, and is there any way to alter it?
Thanks,
Merry

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Merry Jolkar:
What effect do temples and castles have on Ermor's auto troop recruitment? I occasionally see really strong units appearing -- like vampires. What determines this, and is there any way to alter it?
Thanks,
Merry

Vampires are not a part of the Ermorian troop roster: They appear probably because you're using a VQ. IF you don't build a temple and castle, you won't get any troops other than disposseseds. Once you build a castle, your legionnaires, shadows, shades, and apparitions will appear.

[rabelais]

I noticed in reading user created docs today that SG allegedly gets dark knowledge as a starting spell, and while neither BE or AE do.

Is this actually the case, and if so, anyone have a theory as to why this is?

It seems to me that SG, being more defensively oriented, is much stronger in MP than the other themes, I find it odd it should receive a huge bonus in the form of insta-remote searching.

What am I missing?


Rabe the Broken, Ashen Man

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by rabelais:
It seems to me that SG, being more defensively oriented, is much stronger in MP than the other themes, I find it odd it should receive a huge bonus in the form of insta-remote searching.

Dark knowledge is conjuration 2, which is not a difficult target for a magic scale Ermor. It also slows their expansion down, as a death 9 pretender with raise skeletons can take just about any province from turn 2.

Soul gate suffers from the fact that their troops are much less numerous than Ashen Empire Ermor's. They are also extremely vulnerable to magical damage. While they might take damage only 25% of the time from the troops of most nations, they are also only able to effect opposing troops 54% of the time with standard MR values. The antimagic spell is the equivalent of giving all of your units a large boost in protection against the Soul Gate forces, as they will have a very hard time causing damage.