Some Ashen Empire Ermor questions,need some advice

Agrajag · #1 November 13th, 2006, 03:56 PM

Just to add a bit:
IIRC in dom2 the AE dominion killed 5% of the population each turn (I'm not sure if that's dominion dependant or not, but it definitely only kills in friendly dominion regardless of ownership)

As for strategy, if you don't mind the MR, then Turmoil-3,Sloth-3,Cold-3,Death-3,Luck-3,Magic-3 is pretty much the only way to go (with some variation on magic and luck).
You want the extra points from Cold and not from Heat, since more undead have cold auras, so you might as well give them a minor boost, the Luck-3 (maybe 2) is mandatory due to Turmoil, and works really well with it, especially with death ("a super rich person died in your province, you get a giant pile of cash").
Magic 3 is debatable due to MR, but your research won't be too amazing early one (atleast until you get skull mentors and enough gems), so the boost is really tangible.
Beyond that - Try and get some of those Arch-Bishops, they can spam Longdead Horsemen (or do they have a slightly different name?), which are atleast quick enough to suffer banishments for less turn until they (hopefuly) reach the enemy priests.
Remember that Reanimation (from priests) is also dominion dependant (unless changed from dom2), so it pays to have your Reanimators stay in your capitol for a few turns to get some beefy forces.
Make sure to cast Dark Knowledge on every province ASAP, death gems are your income.
If possible get some Earth on your pretender, not only will it help with finding valuable mine sites (which you need to completely clear of population and then tax to 200%), but its a great way to get nice forges for your death thugs, and generaly works well with death.
Another important thing to remember is that you need to forget about admin, forts are there only to protect bottlenecks and important provinces, so don't worry about placing forts next to each other.
Your priests can't preach, so build many temples and take good dominion.

Umm... That's all I can think of right now.

Taqwus · #2 November 13th, 2006, 04:22 PM

Hm. Earth also lets you find Firbolg Fortresses, possibly the most common free fort type. That's valuable since you won't have much income.

For the same reason of low income -- you do need to be careful with temples. 400 Au is a lot more of your income than it is of anybody else's. True, you don't spend it on troops... but a temple loss will hurt a lot.

thejeff · #3 November 13th, 2006, 04:22 PM

High dominion gives you more freespawns, so I'd go with a 10 dominion, unless you can't afford it. Which you should be able to do, since you can get so many points from scales.

What controls the spawning of the free Mound Kings? Just dominion? It always seemed to take awhile to get the first one, then they'd come fairly often. Nice to not have to use summons to ferry troops around.

thejeff · #4 November 13th, 2006, 04:39 PM

If you can expand rapidly, tax everything at 200% and have some luck events, you'll have no problems with money.

Temples are really all you have to spend money on. And the occasional fort.

Maybe a few labs and Indy mages with useful paths.

Graeme Dice · #5 November 13th, 2006, 04:51 PM

Quote:

thejeff said:
Temples are really all you have to spend money on. And the occasional fort.

Ermor should try and have a temple and castle in every province, since they need both to summon the maximum possible number of troops. You also want to be very careful of where you put temples, since it's relatively easy to destroy one that isn't protected by a castle.