What do you recommend for Ashen Empire Scales and Domain ?

I don't believe Ashen or Soul Gate Ermor has many 'spare' gems. Considering the sheer amount of troops needed later in the game, you need as many fodder troop producing animators and semi-decent troops (Ladies, Bane Lords, etc) that you dont' have alot of gems to spare. And if you did you'd probably be forging skull staffs so your Dusk Elders could cast Darkness and Rigor Mortis.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
If you don't take luck and magic - what are you doing with the points? Sinking even more points into a pretender that can only be in one place at a time? I know you aren't spending them on order, productivity, growth (ha!)...

A pretender with 4+ in each path is nice for site-searching, as Ermor is gem-hungry. Such a pretender can do quite nicely in combat, too... casting any spell. If you minimize all scales, your god can even be immortal on top of having 4+ in all paths.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
Seems to me drain gives a good bonus to magic resistance, helping your forces survive banishment, which is rather important. No?

PvK

Drain is essential... your minions die like flies even with +1 MR. Without it, you'd be toast. You can always forge skulls and quills for research - con-4 is easily in reach of an Ermor pretender in a few turns.

Besides, it's good to make your dominion as hostile as possible to everyone else=)

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It's not really a very good idea to choose Drain-3. Your undeads, even in Dom 2, would be banished by the bundle anyway. There isn't too much point to protect them. It's better to improve your research using Magic Scale. Skull is possible but it's not gauranteed that you have many death sites other than the capital one.

On the Dominion side, there is opinion that your dominion strength shouldn't be excessive (more than 6 candles) in a MP game. You're usually hated and ganged up against by most people. But with a smaller dominions strength, you might have a larger chance to delay the inevitable. With a high dominions strength, you'll also have a very impressive number of units, most of which are *useless* undeads - another way to ask for an alliance to kill you if the world score is open for everybody to see.

But the balance between viable diplomatic scale and enough undeads is a hard one. That's why I always find Ashen Ermor difficult to play in a MP game.

[undead dolphin hacker]

Though the 4-ALL Immortal Pretender is tempting, if only because of all the great equipment you could create, I'm more for a Magic-3 scale with AE Ermor, and thus can't afford the 4-ALL Immortal.

I could have 4-ALL with the Grand Sage, but I don't want to have him die and lose ALL his magic paths. That would make me cry. Alot.

[ January 27, 2004, 02:50: Message edited by: undead dolphin hacker ]

[void]

Originally posted by undead dolphin hacker:
Though the 4-ALL Immortal Pretender is tempting, if only because of all the great equipment you could create, I'm more for a Magic-3 scale with AE Ermor, and thus can't afford the 4-ALL Immortal.

I could have 4-ALL with the Grand Sage, but I don't want to have him die and lose ALL his magic paths. That would make me cry. Alot.

You can design a immortal all-4 MAGIC-3 pretender.
choose master lich. lich/lich queen is ok if u dont want an extra death sphere.
have all scale -3 but magic +3, SP Ashen Empire.
dominions strength 8. not good enough,but not bad too.
all four,death 5. if you pick a lich/lich queen, death 4 here.
20pt castel.
19 points left.
That is what you want.

[ January 27, 2004, 03:17: Message edited by: void ]

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually if you take all the worst settings on scale and the default castle you can create pretenders with all-4 and a couple of 9's

Its a big trade off but for a nation with strong sacred units and if you try to stay at the edge of your dominion (in the dominion but not yet getting the worst affects) it can be a tactic. Especially for small-map/fast-games