Why am I not able to win the Orania Map ?

[shovah]

with ulm ive had success with a full rainbow pretender: f3a3w3d3s3n3e5(forge of the ancients ect) and possibly but usually not b3. This beast searching your provinces is almost as good as a spell costing 25 astral, he can also forge practically every avaliable item and can cast a huge number of spells (and with boosters...). If you can afford it try it on a freak lord, load him with defence and reinvig items and send him into battle casting alot of defensive buffs(and breath of winter). You can even make black lords into uber thugs like this, if its un-modde give them wraith sword, jade armour, horror helm, amulet of resilence and luck (not all of those are needed but they help) and he will carve up armies like you wouldnt believe. Since his strength isnt that high it should also be ok using CB.

[Sandman]

Personally, I'd rather get better scales than have a rainbow mage with 3 in several fields. The search advantage is minimal, and it'll be quite a while before you see any benefit.

[Endoperez]

Sandman said:
Personally, I'd rather get better scales than have a rainbow mage with 3 in several fields. The search advantage is minimal, and it'll be quite a while before you see any benefit.

I'd agree if I hadn't just posted a 4-times-3 rainbow pretender.

2 is enough for most sites, but for the items, and the initial levels and equipment slots needed to get access to both Forge of the Ancients and Gift of Health, that's the best I can come up with. If you just want to find lots of sites and play with the gems, possibly with empowering as well, then 2 is enough in most paths, and 3 should only be taken for those you'd most want to have. Fire might be a good choice for Ulm, because their Master Smiths already get a pick and it will also let you forge a booster. Flaming Helmet is a poor battle booster, but better than F2 allows for Phoenix Power, and Fire 3 is already quite powerful.

[shovah]

I just lik the fact that 1 turn from my pretender basically saves 25 astral gems. Also my rainbow with only a few boosters can summon all elemental royalty and plenty of other nastys. I also like (in sp only) to kit out various black lords as thugs (rocks vrs ermor, give charcoal shield, amulet of reinvig, ring of regen, main gauche and if playing modded dragon scale armour)+ i like having all items avaliable (also i dont empower unless i really need to)

[Agrajag]

shovah said:
I just like the fact that 1 turn from my pretender basically saves 25 astral gems.

2 turns. One turn to move him to the desired province, and another for the search command.

[Arker]

On the castle storming, there are some good tips here. More archers, mages if I have the big spells ready to go (I usually don't get many of the spells mentioned before I get killed, but I'll try to prioritise them now) and put my cavalry up front.

So far I've basically had two ways to lose it, I'd put my SC prophet in front, he'd get whacked, everyone would run. Or I'd put a couple good squads of heavy infantry up front, they'd get bottled up at the gate, fight for many rounds, with everyone behind them getting cut apart by archery and spells, then finally everyone would run.

The only way I've managed to take a castle that had any serious defenses (i.e. a pretender) was just to keep it bottled up, covered with preachers, and build temples in the surrounding provinces. But I'll give this a try.

Thanks for the tips on Ulm. So far I haven't used the scales much, not totally understanding them I've pretty much just left them alone.

As to beating a big army full of crappy troops with a small hardcore one, yes, I've done that, but there's just a point where it no longer works it seems. I mean, with Ulm, I'm fielding maybe 60 men, top quality, maybe another 30 cannon fodder javelinists... and suddenly here's 700 Mictlan slaves, or Emor's undead hordes... and my troops hit 100 fatigue LONG before they can hack all the enemies apart, and then they die. If they aren't properly backed up I can route them I've found, and run off a huge army like that without losing a man, but when they've a bunch of priests behind them buffing their morale, I'm just toast.

I got the snot kicked out of me on my Ulm game last night, while trying to finish off the Mannish pretender I had bottled up in his castle, suddenly on the other side of my domain this enormous army out of Emor appears, I mean just unbelievably huge. Sieged my pretender before I could get any significant army near, my high defense fortress with +fortress defense troops garrisoning it still crumbled in one turn. I think there were about 800 undead... I tried to distract them with an attack by my prophet and a dozen knights in another province, and even there I lost... there was only ONE enemy, but he was a badass necromancer, and he kept raising dead faster than my guys could kill them until they finally all turned tail and ran... anyway I gave up at that point.

Trying again, this time as R'lyeh. So far so good. Think it's the longest game I've played so far at the moment. 52 Turns in. I have all but one underwater province (Ermor has the one I don't have, and I've avoided attacking them so far as I want to be completely built up and ready, I know they're by far the meanest under AI, especially against R'lyeh since the illithid mind blasts don't affect their troops.) Atlantis was destroyed by Emor before I ever got to them, not sure how, as their capital was not occupied, Emor only took one underwater province, and an Island bordering Atlantis. So I cleaned up the independents, got three free fortresses.

One AI declared war on me, not Mictlan, the other 'm' with the spiders. They only attacked once, though, and have left me alone since. I've focused on taking all the underwater provinces from the independents and building up a good base. Also expanded my terrestrial holdings a little, like 7 provinces with two fortified I think, but only at the expense of independents. Grabbed a couple shoreside provinces in random places that fell to independents too. So right now I have a HUGE army in the fortress next to Emor's capital. Forging stuff as fast as I can. Huge problem keeping these buggers fed, for some reason. I have gift of health up, and acashic record on every province I hold, so pretty good gem income. Really really hoping I can take out Emor with a surprise attack, if that works I reckon I might have a chance.

BTW, advice on Equipment? At the moment I've got two traitor princes with the endless buckets of slop and moon blades. The endless buckets are a pain, only my pretender can make them, but the wine just wasn't doing enough. In fact even with the buckets I still keep getting starvation warnings. I only have *maybe* 300 troops there... anyhow. I've been making the anti-fatigue items, the girdle and boots, I can't remember the names. Boots are easy, but a lot of my commanders can't wear them. Girdles I only have one or two mages that can make them. I have some spell focuses (do they help with priest-casters against undead?) and I've been making the spears that shoot solar flares and giving them to my starchildren since their mind blasts will be useless. Umm, the flameshooting helms - fire blasts should be good against undead, right?

[Vicious Love]

Arker said:
I have all but one underwater province (Ermor has the one I don't have, and I've avoided attacking them so far as I want to be completely built up and ready, I know they're by far the meanest under AI, especially against R'lyeh since the illithid mind blasts don't affect their troops.)

Erm... that's exactly what makes Ermor utterly useless against R'lyeh. Troops are mindless, so all of your mind blasts will target commanders (as long as they're in range). It's like having an entire regiment of assassins. Bear in mind that Ermor's troops don't rout, they disintegrate.

[Ironhawk]

Arker said:
As to beating a big army full of crappy troops with a small hardcore one, yes, I've done that, but there's just a point where it no longer works it seems. I mean, with Ulm, I'm fielding maybe 60 men, top quality, maybe another 30 cannon fodder javelinists... and suddenly here's 700 Mictlan slaves, or Emor's undead hordes... and my troops hit 100 fatigue LONG before they can hack all the enemies apart, and then they die. If they aren't properly backed up I can route them I've found, and run off a huge army like that without losing a man, but when they've a bunch of priests behind them buffing their morale, I'm just toast.

Just 60 guys? Thats not enough if you are fighting a pure military battle. If you were evening the playing field with battlemagic or summoned creatures, perhaps. You should really invest in a LOT of the cheap shortbow archers. They work really well with Ulm since you can shower your own men with arrows and it really doesnt hurt them much. And why do you only have 30 fodder? You should have at least 2x the number of fodder as you do hardcore troops, so like 120-150.

As for fighting Ermor thats a totally different situation, which is why several people suggest that new players not combat the ermor AI. You need to focus on recruiting priests for Banishments. Get like 10-20 priests together and set them against the army of 800 undead and watch them just evaporate.

[Arralen]

Arker said:
BTW, advice on Equipment? At the moment I've got two traitor princes with the endless buckets of slop and moon blades.

Ah, don't do that. Put 1 cauldron on a scout - a 2nd wouldn't do any good, "producing" items works only 1 per commander. Add a vineskin. Set the scout to sneak and let him move around with the army. While sneaking, he wouldn't get into combat at all (battle, assassines) and will be save from ranged spells, thereby making your gem investment much saver. You can even use him to hold magic gems for your battle-mages ... only have to remember to transfer the appropiate amount to the mages pouch each turn.

Umm, the flameshooting helms - fire blasts should be good against undead, right?

Undead are not paritcularly vulnerable to fire, but they aren't resistant neither.
The helmet is quite tricky to use, though: the range of the fireblast spell isn't that great, therefore you would have to script your commander to "attack, attack, "fireblast","fireblast","fireblast"; "cast spells") - and risk him in th e front line of the battle. Better use the heaviest armored commander with the biggest shield available - encumbrance doesn't matter as spellcasting from items is always "+5 fatigue" no matter how heavy the commanders equipment is.
Try using the "Sceptre of Authority" - while not so powerful, it lets you target the enemy from afar. If you give it to your priest (which you will have to buy to fight the ermorian hordes anyway), he'll gladly use the spells from the item, therefore being not totally useless againts mundane foes.
Later you might want to switch to the staff that lets you shoots fireballs - but you'll have to get a mage to fire-2 to forge them, and they are somewhat pricey.
With Ulm, you could even get the sceptre for 2 gems if you give a dwarven hammmer to a smith.