Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

I am playing as Man against late Ermor. I've been able to maintain a defensive line for most of the game, but they just crushed two of my provinces. All of my provinces have castles and 125 defense. One that was crushed also had an army with my prophet and pretender there. Both of them were killed, but are thankfully immortal (Lich and Wraith Lord) and it was a high friendly dominion province so they are okay.

I had all priests on repeated Banish, but it just does not work against almost 2000 undead. What are my options?

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Well, the funny way is to cast undead mastery and capture all those 2000 undead to use against ermor the next time around. But probably the easiest way, with little cleverness or strong paths outside the national, is just to build some thugs/light SCs that are basically invulnerable to undead, give them lightning immunity, and use a pair of a3 magisters arcane, one of which casts storm, the other casting storm power and then wrathful skies. Obviously the mages need to be immune to lightning as well. If you had to, you *could* use just one mage, but it would be much slower and waste more gems. Unless you can make staves of storms, in which case you do that and use a single mage. Note that PD is negatively useful here and can cause you to lose battles you would otherwise have won due to routing.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Another fun way is rain of stones. It's often suicidal for human casters but you can buff them with BE and luck to improve their chances of survival (put some kind of prot buff on your army/PD as well). And if you're playing SP of course the AI won't adjust and will keep walking right into it.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Best advice anyone can give you is to just stop playing SP. As it turns you into a terrible player with awful habits. Such as for example, making you think buying insane amounts of PD, which you have done, is ever a good idea. As it is not, ever. And using or indeed relying on such awful strategic ideas in SP games is only teaching you how to play the game incredibly badly, and pretty much guarantees you will never learn how to play the game properly.

SP games offer little value to improving as a player, but if you also make no attempt to play properly in SP game, then SP games become genuinely harmful and the end result will only ever be a dreadful player who has no idea how the game should actually be played. But if you're happy with that then please carry on.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Playing against AI hordes is ordinarily bad enough. Playing against Ashen Ermor AI is just masochistic. Against a horde of 2000, there aren't many good options. Are you using H1s or H2s to banish? Your Bishops will do a better job. Archers are also pretty effective. Keep in mind that you will want armies of dozens of bishops each carrying 10-15 archers, along with winebags/cauldrons for entering his territory.

What other opponents do you have in the game? you'll want to make sure you own their territory first before exhausting yourself on Ermor and getting nothing for it.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

If you can create some items such as Herald Lances it can be a big help.

Even more if you gift those lances to other AIs that might border Ermor altho that tactic is best done to gift to your "enemies" that are between you and Ermor before you ever reach Ermor. Gives them a chance to slow Ermor down while you expand. And those lances wont help them much when it comes time for you to attack your old "allies"

TIP: many players make the mistake of thinking that if the game is too hard they should turn the independents down. That makes the AI opponents stronger and makes them rush you. Try turning the independents stronger next time. You tend to make better decisions on what to attack so strong independents can slow down the AIs long enough for you to build up more.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

I always set independent strength to 9.

Without PD, what defensive strategies do you recommend? What sort of defensive force would I keep in each province?

I was using H2 priests to banish, but I guess I didn't use as many of them.

Looks like Ermor crushed my neighbors and now has hordes of undead troops all around. I did have some luck beating as many as a thousand undead and the force that defeated me took quite a bit of damage itself.

What thugs are immune to undead? My favorite thug is Wraith Lord since he is immortal and I have a high death gem income.

By the way, the reason I bought a lot of PD is because I have a LOT of income and I am playing a nation of man with an imprisoned pretender and very good scales. Bless is useless for man IMO as its sacreds are not that good. Archers + fire arrows is a better bet.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Regarding thugs and undead, you'll need low encumberance, good protection, and an area effect weapon. A bane lord with a vine shield and a fire sword will stand up well. But you're playing Man; I'm not sure you have easy access to any good thugs. A Golem at least has zero enc so that's a big help.

If you have more cash than you know what to do with, make sure you have lots and lots of temples, bishops, and archers. Any other troops will just get devoured and spat out by his freespawn.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

Another thing--push your dominion on him. It won't help you now but it will down the road.

Re: Defeating Ashen Ermor?
 

copy paste from IRC. With colors!