Strategy advice wanted

[PDF]

For a start I suggest just you forgot to empower anyone, it's a very inefficient way of wasting tons of gems unless you really know what you're doing (eg boosting that mage to Air4 and you have Cons4 and still a lot of Air gems to make Bags/helms booster).

I'm unclear about what you did encounter : in SP I've never seen the IA empower mages, rarely boost them and overall it doesn't have enough of it by far...If you're playing MP well that's life with a better opponent
With Ermor Early you should get as much Augur Elders as you can, using them as artillery with Fire spells (they have access to the Fire Skull item), and research to Ench4 and Conj3 to summon Banes, Wights and Behemoths for example, these units are strong. Give some a Skull Staff to make them up to D4.
Also make some Skull mentors to boost research, give them to Flamen or such that you can recruit anywhere.
Then go Ench5 for Pale Riders, Ench6 to summon the dreaded Banefire Archers, and Conj5 for Bane Lords, those are even stronger and with some equipment can kill many foes.

A Water9 bless on Equites is not really efficient but fun and usable in SP, as they have a good def. Fire4+ is required in this case IMHO as they have a paltry attack (that's weird as they're supposed to be super-elite ?)

[Loren]

PDF said:
I'm unclear about what you did encounter : in SP I've never seen the IA empower mages, rarely boost them and overall it doesn't have enough of it by far...If you're playing MP well that's life with a better opponent

Single player--I don't think about playing a game MP until I can consistently beat the AI.

It was a whole pack of mages with death 4. My troops would rout before they could close.

Also make some Skull mentors to boost research, give them to Flamen or such that you can recruit anywhere.

I never found a death gem the whole game.

Then go Ench5 for Pale Riders, Ench6 to summon the dreaded Banefire Archers, and Conj5 for Bane Lords, those are even stronger and with some equipment can kill many foes.

I never lived long enough to reach such levels.


I finally won one as Ermor. 4 opponents. One attacked me, basically the whole game was my cav stomping on him. I had two provinces with contact with other hostile forces, I put high defense in both and they kept wasting their troops on inadequate attacks on those. I dominion-killed both of those. As I was closing in on the guy I was dealing with he was dominion-killed by the remaining enemy--and then a few turns later I dominion-killed him.

The only difference I can see is that I started out with a more defensible starting point. I was on a peninsula and there was no water enemy.

[Shovah32]

You never got to around lvl5 research? You realise that you should be aiming to recruit atleast 1 mage per turn right?
And as for never finding a death gem, afaik all ermorian eras have some starting death income and mages who can cast dark knowledge(remote death site searching)

[Lasu]

Shovah32 said:
And as for never finding a death gem, afaik all ermorian eras have some starting death income

They don't have any in the early age.

[Shovah32]

Then alchemy will be needed early on.

[Endoperez]

Shovah32 said:
Then alchemy will be needed early on.

Manual site-search can be done. It is easiest for Death, because some Death sites can be recognized from the fact that they change the Death scale. Even if they aren't found with D1 or D2 sitesearcher, Dark Knowledge can be cast once even a single site has been found.

[Edi]

The death sites that increase death scale are all lv3 or above. Death does have proportionately the largest number of low-level high income sites, so the D1/D2 manual searches could very well pay off.

Edi

[PDF]

Yes it was 40%; not 50%, but it doesn't change the numbers much... Anyway I didn't say that Acashic everywhere was a good idea, just that it can pay for itself if you cast it from time to time on a high magic freq province (waste, swamp, "magic rich if marked on map..).
Manual searches don't cost gems but cost valuable mage-time and are a lengthy process, evreything has its pro and cons (hi Gandalf ! ) and I usually use all methods - first "manual" searches, then magic, and possibly Acashic if I have the resources later on.