MP Guide to MA Ermor

[IndyPendant]

Pretender Creation:
--Bless: Fire, Air, Water, Death, and Blood blesses are all somewhat useful as minor blesses if you have the points to spare, although the vestal isn't good enough to build a massive bless strategy around. Earth and Nature blesses are largely useless for Ermor; the reinvig isn't all that useful for your thaums, who will primarily be casting Holy, Communion, and other low-fatigue spells; the +4 prot from Earth-9 is unnoticeable for your Vestals--they'll die in one hit either way; and regeneration and berserk rarely have a chance to kick in since your vestals are almost always either unwounded--or dead. If you are considering a single-bless strategy, Astral is the easy winner for a variety of reasons (see 'Oracle' under Pretenders, below).

--Scales: Order is very useful to Ermor, arguably even critical; you want to build as many castles as possible to catch up on research (which you will always be behind on), to get as many thaumaturges in play as possible, and to recruit as many principes as possible. Production should be set to Sloth-3; quite simply, you don't need it with all the castles you will have. Heat/Cold should be neutral. Growth/Death is debatable; I like Growth-3 for the cumulative late-game income, but their skill in Death Magic allow your old-age mages to suffer much fewer afflictions, and they'll very rarely get feebleminded or diseased even with some Death Scale. Luck/Misfortune is by far the most debatable; I like Luck-3 for the extra income and gems (and not having to worry about retaking provinces lost to indies!), but Misfortune-2 can also be worth it depending on your preference and Pretender, if paired with Order-3. (But if you take Misfortune then do NOT take Death!) Magic/Drain should always, always be set to at least Magic-1; having your thaums go from 4 to 5 research is a 25% increase to your total research per turn--for only 40 design points!

--Dominion: Can be anywhere between 4 and 10. If you plan to lean heavily on vestals (as I usually do), you should go at least 7. Higher Dominion also helps spread your better scales.

Pretender Selection:
--Oracle: My favourite. Best taken with a S9 Bless, for a number of reasons: it's incredibly cheap with an Oracle; S9 gives your vestals and thaums MR +3 to help resist late-game spells; Twist Fate essentially gives them a second life--doubly powerful for early-game vestals in combination with their etherealness; and S9 also allows your Oracle to cast massively powerful late-game spells such as Wish and Master Enslave. The Oracle's primary disadvantages are its lack of both mobility and magical diversity, but with a little care and foresight these are not crippling issues. I prefer an Imprisoned Oracle with S9, Dom10, and OT+3/PS-3/HC0/GD+3/LM+3/MD+1. Sometimes I will sacrifice some Dominion, Growth, and/or Luck to take a few levels in a secondary path(s), for the Minor Bless and Crafting options.

--Rainbow Mage: The idea here is to take Dominion that is just enough to stave off a Domkill, balanced scales, and an awake or sleeping magic-diverse Rainbow Pretender. One example: Awake Enchantress with Dom4, OT+3/PS-3/HC0/GD0/LM-2/MD+1, and F3/A3/W2/E3/S5/D1/N3. Your options are almost limitless here though--with one exception: if you go this route, then you absolutely must take at least E2S2, for Hammers and Coins. Going Rainbow is a perfectly viable option, but harder to properly succeed with than the Oracle, since instead of playing to Ermor's strengths, you're trying to (somewhat crudely) patch some of the nation's weaknesses. You also have a slower start, since you usually have worse scales and less Dominion for Vestals than the Oracle build above.

--SC: Sacrifice scales and bless for an awake SC pretender. Helps for rapid early expansion--but is very difficult to properly utilize. Your SC is hard to properly equip due to Ermor's minimal early-game research and limited magical diversity, you sacrifice late-game scale benefits to get the SC, you already have rapid early-game expansion through your vestals, and you have other options available to counter early-game bless- or elephant-rushes. Simply put, the SC is not a recommended option for Ermor.

Research:
Your top priorities should always be Thaum-1 and Enchant-2, for Communion and Revive King respectively. Your research is always going to be at or near the bottom during the entire early game, because your Grand Thaumaturges should be Reanimating, and your Thaumaturges frankly suck for research. I have played MP games where my research has stood at zero for nearly twenty turns! Once you hit mid-game, all those castles you built should start to pay off, and you'll eventually (around turn 40 or 50) catch up in research to a solid middle position.

After Thaum-1 and Enchant-2, your options start to open up. You should concentrate your research to gain Astral and Death spells targeted towards your immediate needs. Elephant rushed? Research Thaumaturgy for Frighten, Mind Burn, Paralyze, Terror, and Soul Slay. Fighting Caelum or Vanheim? Research Construction for airshield robes against Seeking Arrow, or if you have time Conjuration for Manifestation assassinations for his Thunderstrikers. If you don't have or need a specific goal, some good general mid-game goals are Conjuration-5 for Acashic Record, Conjuration-8 for Well of Misery, and/or Evocation-7 for the wonderful Nether Darts.

Late game you will likely want Alteration-9 for Wish, Conjuration-9 for Tartarians, Construction-6 for crafting, and so forth. About the only schools you won't want to eventually have at level 9 are Construction (most likely best to stop at 6) and Evocation (best to stop at 7).

Oracle Strategy:
This is an example strategy that you can use in a MP game. I have used it in the last few MP games I've played as Ermor, and it has served me quite well. (I have yet to win a MP game with Ermor though, so you might want to adapt this example rather than adopt it. ; ) The first few turns tend to be slow, but you catch up very quickly.

On Turn 1, set your Centurion to Patrol, set your province taxes to 150%, move your scout out exploring, and recruit a Censor and the few vestals you can. On Turn 2, set your Censor to patrol, transfer your army (including the vestals) to him, set your Centurion to Become Prophet, and recruit a (regular) Thaumaturg and more vestals. On Turn 3, expansion begins.

Set your Centurion Prophet to Reanimate Horsemen, adjust your tax rate as necessary, recruit more vestals and a Grand Thaum, and set the Thaum you recruited, all your vestals, and half of your starting army to attack a high-resource, weak-unit neighbouring province. On the battlefield, place the Thaum a bit behind and at an angle to the vestals, place the Vestals to Attack Closest behind the regular units, which are set to Fire Closest, and set your Thaum to Unholy Blessing/Protection Sepulchre/Blessing/Power Sepulchre/Power Sepulchre. On Turn 4, set your Grand Thaum to Reanimate, add the horsemen and vestals to your patrolling Censor, have your battle Thaum attack a gold-producing province, and recruit another (regular) Thaum and vestals. On Turn 5, send out a second battle Thaum with your new set of vestals and the other half of your starting army. Leave your horsemen for now with the Censor to Patrol for coin, monitoring and adjusting your tax rate as necessary. Every two turns thereafter, send out a new army of vestals and principes led by a thaum, until you have 4-5 armies out there gobbling up indy provinces.

Meanwhile, asap--preferably by Turn 5 at the latest--start building a second castle, temple, and lab. (You did take Order-3, right?) Send out 2 Grand Thaums--preferably one with A1 and one with W1--to sitesearch, and every second turn send another Thaum out with vestals and principes until you have 3-5 armies gobbling up indies. Set the rest of the Grand Thaums to Reanimate. Build as many castles as possible wherever useful, using indy leaders. Recruit Thaumaturges and set them to research for Enchantment-2 and Thaumaturgy-1. As you approach midgame, start growing massive armies led by eight (regular) Thaums casting Communion Slave/Master and the Big Four Holy Spells, supported by Mound Kings as needed. Declare war on someone, or destroy the fool that declared war on you--they probably saw your pathetic research and thought you an easy kill. Secure NAPs with everyone else if possible. When your gold finally catches up with your castles, stop Patrolling your home province, and start using summoned Mound Kings to ferry a never-ending flood of vestals, principes, and horsemen to reinforce your horrifying armies.

By Turn 20 or so, your Army Size graph should be at least twice as high as anyone else's (except maybe Pangaea), you should be at or near the top of the Forts and Income graphs, and your Research should be dead last. You should constantly be at war with someone, to keep your hordes and hordes of undead busy. This is usually the period of the game where you are most vulnerable; try to avoid fighting on two fronts until your home territories are reasonably secure.

By Turn 30 or 40, you should be off the scale in the Army Size graph, scaring the *HELL* out of the other players. Your Forts, Income, Gem Income, and Dominion should all be at or near the top of the graphs. Your Research score should be somewhere in the middle--but pay attention to the angle of your line on the graph; it should be steeper than most of the other players, indicating you are gaining on them. Some fancy diplomacy may be required at this point to keep two or three opponents from ganging up on you. Ironically, you should try not to be too high in graphs other than Army for a while longer--to avoid the other players ganging up on you! This is a very common danger in MP games. If Graphs are set to Off, your options open up a bit more, but you should still be careful with diplomacy.

Try to diversify your magic as much as possible; if you have a Rainbow Pretender, this should be easy enough--and is the main justification for using Rainbows. If not though, Nature should be easy to find, but the other paths--particularly Fire--can be very difficult if you don't luck out with indy provinces and/or magic sites. There are guides available to help you with magical diversity, so I won't bother putting that here, except to mention that you should not bother trying for the Artifacts or Elemental Kings/Queens in (most) MP games; someone else will have beaten you to them, count on it.

[IndyPendant]

Random Stuff:
This is a grab-bag of brief general strategies, in no particular order, that you can add to your game as needed/wanted. I will probably add to this section semi-regularly.

--Ferrus, the Iron Wizard: Keep an eye on the Mercenaries. If you see Ferrus, you have researched at least Const-4, and you don't already have an alternative source of earth magic, buy him at (almost) any cost! (I once payed nearly 2,000 gold to ensure I would get him in a MP game.) Then when you have him, build one Earth Boots and two Crystal Coins. Pay whatever seems reasonable to you from then on, and if you keep him have him craft and/or cast Gnome Lore as needed until you lose him. (Of course, if you started with a Rainbow Pretender, or have some other way to reach at least 2S/2E, don't bother with Ferrus.)

--Obscuro and/or Mamor: Other good Mercs. Again, if you have Const-4 and no good source of at least A2 try to buy one of these mercs (although you need not bankrupt yourself to do it). Then get them crafting Winged Boots. Why? See next.

--Winged Boots: Grand Thaums were recently changed to have a mapmove of 1. Pain. In. The. ***. If you want to move them away from your home province, you're usually stuck with Teleport. Winged Boots will give them a mapmove of 2 however, and allow them to ignore terrain obstacles. Much better for sitesearching. I usually try to craft at least 3 of these, particularly since I rarely have a better use for air gems until very late in the game.

--Master Gibur: This is the last merc I will mention. You should buy him if you have Const-4, and no way to reach W3. Have him craft one or two Robes of the Sea, then perhaps site search for a while.

--Seeking Arrow: Another pita that deserves a mention here, since your mages are vulnerable. Two good counters are Robes of Missile Protection and/or simply flooding your armies with hordes of Mound Kings, scouts, indy leaders, etc. If you have 4 Thaums accompanied by 15 or more chaff leaders, Seeking Arrows become less of a problem.

--Province Defense: Ermor's PD is actually quite good, although not truly exceptional. I like to set all provinces to PD 1 in early game, then change it to 10 sometime in midgame, with 20-25 for castles. PD 10 should be more than enough to defeat even multiple Call of the Wild and Call of the Winds spells from other players, and PD 25 should keep most Misfortune-caused indy attacks from locking down a castle, even without patrollers.

--Countering opponents: In mid and late game, I like to field mega-armies composed of dozens of vestals, over a hundred principes, and hundreds of horsemen. If you do this, your biggest concern is caster-heavy enemy armies. Try to identify these and cast as many Manifestations (or Mindhunts if they have no astral leaders) each turn as you can on them; Leprosy can also do well against some armies. Against bless-heavy armies, your best bet is often overwhelming hordes of horsemen. Against SCs, your horsemen may work well; if not, your only real counter is either the standard anti-SC spells (some research should find good advice for you) or in late-game, SCs of your own.

--Midgame Battlefield: I usually have 8-10 (regular) thaums, accompanied by some Mound Kings and Indy Priests, with every massive army. My standard array is to have the first 4-5 thaums set to Communion Slave/Nether Darts x4, and the next is set to Communion Master/Divine Blessing/Holy Avenger/Terror/Fanaticism. The others are set to Communion Master, then one each to Unholy Blessing, Protection Sepulchre, and Power Sepulchre, followed by anything you want from the third round on. Some good choices: Personal Luck/Resist Magic/Astral Shield (which all will be cast on the Communion Slaves as well); Fanaticism/Raise Skeletons/Terror/Enslave Mind/Soulslay/Disintegrate; and if you have the gems, Power of the Spheres/Darkness/Doom/Shadow Blast/Antimagic/Will of the Fates. There are other options, but these are a good start. As to the units, I like having Principes right at the front edge set to Fire Closest, with Shadow Vestals just behind them set to Attack Closest. On either flank I have horsemen set to Attack Rear. The casters are spread in a line either just in front or just behind the Vestals, while the mound kings are set at the very back to Stay Behind Troops.

--Endgame: Is all (and I do mean exclusively *all*) about SCs and massive battlefield spells, with armies all becoming so much generic chaff, their unique qualities rendered almost completely irrelevant. All the variety between the nations, that makes Dom3 so special, blends into the same few limited strategies, making every end-game play out pretty much exactly the same way (with only minor differences here and there). I frankly despise Dom3 endgame (can you tell? ; ), so I don't have a lot of advice to give here. Some brief research on general endgame strategies should give you enough material to apply to Ermor.

--Attrition: By mid-game, you should be producing more units than the second and third nations combined. You should be trying to reduce your own losses whenever possible, but don't worry if you are losing twice (or even thrice!) as many units as your opponent, so long as you are hurting him in the process. You can almost always replace your losses much easier than he can. I love drowning my opponents in endless waves of undead in MP games, adjusting my tactics and positioning based on his actions. It can be crude, but it's a delightfully effective strategy for Ermor. --However! If you lose a battle without harming your opponent at all, that is a huge red flag, warning you that you need to change your tactics--and quickly!--to start wearing your opponent down again.

--Pale Riders, Manifestation, Mind Hunt: Great spells to ruin your opponent's day. Be careful to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, and to use them appropriately.

--Well of Misery, Astral Focus: Great globals to cast, and rarely dispelled.

--Burden of Time, Utterdark, Arcane Nexus: DO NOT cast these spells, unless and until you are ready to take on every player at once. If you do cast any of these spells (and they're not just immediately dispelled by the other players pooling their resources), you will almost always instantly be at war with everyone. And note that your thaums are not so skilled in Death Magic that they'll be able to shrug off the effects of Burden of Time.

--Your Vestals have stealth. One viable tactic is to research Conjuration, summon an undead-capable stealthy leader, and raid your opponent's provinces. I usually prefer Pale Riders for rading, but this can work as well.

--SCs: Tartarians are no longer the no-brainer choice for end-game SCs they once were, now that they have 25% insanity, and often with malicious effects such as pillaging and destroying temples. Bane Lords can make surprisingly effective thugs if you equip them minimally (Bow of war, Eye of Aiming, and maybe Pendant of Luck is one good example; Frostbrand, a good shield, Pendant of Luck, and maybe Boots of Quickness is another--but your options here are almost limitless). Wraithlords are also good with Ethereal, Fear, and Chill--but a little fragile for their cost. Harvesters of Sorrow can be effective as well. And Tartarians used as army units (as opposed to leaders) can be a good way to spend your death gems as well.

--Blood Magic: MA Ermor can get into blood magic if you want, easier than many other non-blood nations. If you want to go this route however, you must plan for it from the beginning. The rewards in the end can be massive if you manage to pull it off! A brief search of the forums ought to give you some example strategies you can adapt to build a viable blood slave income.

[IndyPendant]

(Reserved for later, in case I need more room.)