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| -> Vestals make great Death bless units. 9d4s makes them powerful, and they are quite resistant to banishing. Censors are interesting melee units but somewhat less versatile, best used against priest heavy nations like Pythium.
THE MOST ESSENTIAL thing you do as Broken Empire is make a Grand Thaumaturg a prophet. On turn 2. This lets you make 6 longdead horsmen for free every turn hence, something that is essential as BE as you lack any sort of recruitable national cavalry. Vestals really are very good, with high defense as well as etherial. They make great flanking units, and will generally survive in melee. -> About the creative pretender approach. Take a good look at the manual where the booster items are mentioned. Nature, Earth and death paths can be boosted with items at D2 or (N2, E2). The other paths need either a combination with another path, or rank 3 or 4 before you can make boost items. So, a pretender with primary Death magic could with and investment of F2 and N2 easily reach F3 and N3. You could even start with N1 and use the cheapest empowerment lvl1 to 2 for 30 gems if you are short on design points. That said. F2+ gives you a few weapons, F3 enables the Flambue. F combined with earth gives the charcoal shield. N2 gives the regen ring A2 gives acess to the thunderbow W2: Bottle of living water (could be w3, but think its w2) and a few good swords. D2: Mentor skulls, horror helms B2: the boots that stops aging B6F2: Soul contract for the Dom2 Devil factory tactic. F2N2: Fever Fetish, for Fire gem production. E2S2: the +1 Astral booster coin. -> Nether Darts, Nether Darts, Nether Darts. Evocation 7 makes those Thaumaturges a main ingredient of your army. Protect them at all costs - meat/undead shield, troops on guard-order. Add a Spell Focus and an Eye of Aiming (if enough Air gems) and watch them roll. Oh, and those Darts are armor negating and cause feeblemindness so even SCs need to think twice before taking on your armies. Victims get a resistance roll, but high precision causes more darts to land so... I say Dart 'em to death and let your priests sort 'em out! -> Communions. With them even your lowly mages can cast some great spells. A horde of longdead backed by darkness and the power of the unholy sepulchre spell(+4 attack and increased movement) should almost never miss regular troops, will rarely get him, and can generally do well. Communions are pretty essential since the best you can get out of your capitol is D1S1, and while that is nice, it just gets so much better later on. I keep most of my Grand Thaumaturgs for ritual casting, teleporting(they can take out SCs that aren't expecting them) and leading large armies. My regular thaumaturgs do most of the heavy lifting by reanimating, casting most of my battlefield spells and leading smaller armies/raiding forces which can replenish their numbers via reanimation. For the early game, blessed Shadow Vestals(even with the price increase they got a while back) are nice. W9S9 seems to be very popular, but my personal preferance is F9S9(on an imprisoned oracle). I find F9 gives more magical diversity(you already have water) even if it isn't a great path, and the F9 really ups their killing power - but either bless is nice. Even without a bless(if you don't take one, you must take earth magic on your pretender, because its great) you can do well. Reanimated and buffed undead, dether bolts and of course those very tough Legionaires(back with archers. You wont suffer from friendly fire) can easily carry you through the early game against many threats. Try to expand into earth magic as soon as you can(Ferrus the Iron wizard/Indy Earth Mages+Troll Kings Court was the easiest way I could get to E4 and above without rings or tartarians). Its a very powerful path, particularly for your nation(army of lead on a large army of chaff undead makes them insanely tough, particularly with darkness up) and waiting until you GoR tartarians to get it isn't much fun. Some battle spells to use with communions: Darkness: A hugely important 'buff' for your undead only/mostly undead armies. By reducing the enemies attack and precision your greatly improve your troops survivability(and with longdead horsemens naturally high defense they become incredibly powerful in melee) and by reducing the enemies defense you make them much more vunerable. Power of the Unholy Sepulchre(strong version): Gives all your undead units +4 attack and action points. Combined with darkness they should almost never miss(even units like W9 vans become fairly easy to hit). Rigor Mortis: Just to make the battle a little easier for your undead troops. Wears out the enemy quite quickly. Antimagic/Protection of the Unholy Sepulchre: Both boost MR but don't(to my knowledge) stack. Protection of the Unholy Sepulchre is easily resisted, so several castings are usually needed for complete coverage - but it is lower fatigue and costs no gems. Will of the Fates: A great buff. Gives all of your units luck, making them last must longer in battle. Soul Drain: Very nice. A great help if you can't rely on your slaves to stick around as it sorts out the casters fatigue problems. Soul Vortex: A buff for the caster and his slaves. Surround them with some living chaff and they will continually have their fatigue lowered, allowing you to cast high fatigue spells. Master Enslave: Pretty much requiring a Grand Thaumaturg, preferably loading with items including penetration boosters, this spell is worth it. You can steal enemy armies with this spell - what more do you need to know? Nether Darts: A great battle spell. Castable by all your mages even without a communion, but much better with one. When the mages (astral)magic level is boosted, the number of darts(base 15), the damage each dart does(base 15), and the penetration bonus all get increased. This should be a staple spell for you, and can even feeblemind unlucky SCs. Unfortunately, it can be blocked by shields in the same way as arrows and is MR negates, and that means you have to resort to its little brother. Nether Bolt: A lesser version of Nether Narts. Better precision, range and base damage(20) and it can't be stopped by shields, but its only AoE 1 and MR negates. A very handy early game spell for your thaumaturg-led raiding forces. Shadow Blast: Sort of like Nether Bolt on steroids. This requires a death gem, atleast D2 magic and is high fatigue. For that the spell gives you an AoE of 7+ and a damage of 20+(MR negates). Communion a few thaumaturgs up to D4-5(or grand thaumaturgs up to D6-7) and watch the carnage - add penetration boosters for added effect. Hitting and killing huge portions of the enemy army with enough damage per hit to take out giants, this spell is a monster. Terror: A very handy spell against regular troops, this spell works best with darkness. Regular longdead and soulless lack killing power, so this spell helps to win battles. The morale penalty from darkness, the morale check from being hit(reduced defense from darkness means enemy will get hit) and the hugely reduced morale from a high level casting of terror(or several, depending on the number of masters) will rout most enemies quickly. Drain Life: The monster killer. 100 Precision and 14+ base damage(D4 mage) that is completely unresistable by the majority of units make this a great SC killer(remember the teleporting grand thaumaturgs I mentioned earlier? Get a few up to D4 and let them take out an enemy SC while he's still buffing). For the few SCs that are immune to this spell, you can resort to spamming either Nether Darts or Desintigrate(100 precision, death on a failed MR check, only needs D2). 8.17.3 LA Ermor 8.17.3.1 About Pretenders -> There should be more Pretenders to choose from. SC for Ermor is not really all that useful as for other nations.(or at all in dom3) The army is so big that a SC is pointless or lets at least say not as effective. So Lichqueen and sometimes masterlich/ghost king seems always be a no brainer choice. I also tried to take Lord of the Gates for a bit diversity and making him SC and spellcaster.
Scales: turmoil3, sloth3, cold3, death3, luck3, drain2 Dormant Lord of the Gates, starting with dominion3, 1death magic path paths: 4 fire, 3 air, 10 death, 4 nature design points left: zero Example2 immortal Spellcaster: Scales: turmoil3, sloth3, cold3, death3, luck3, drain2 Dormant Lichqueen, starting with dominion4, 3death magic paths paths: 4 fire, 3 air, 10 death, 4 nature
-> The master lich is a strictly inferior choice to the Lich Queen. His base cost is 10 less than the Lich Queen, he has only 5 hitpoints compared to her 18, her attack and defense stats are superior, and his base dominion is 3 compared to her 4. It costs 296 points to bring him to Dominion 10, while the Lich Queen only costs 257 points to bring to dominion 10. (You want dominion 10 with LA Ermor since everybody is going to ally against you no matter what dominion you take, and because of the bug that caps temple effectiveness at the level of your initial dominion no matter how many you have built.) I cannot think of any comparison where the master lich comes out ahead of the lich queen. [Couter comment: lich queen is not as good as you guys think, that was in dom2 age. master lich is vastly improved in dom3. look his magic path cost, he makes for a perfect immortal rainbow mages. if you use him as rainbow mage with high death and good astral magic he is cheaper as the lich queen. i do not care about his attack or defense stats he is immortal and can be protected by his troops when in battle casting spells. using lichqueen as rainbow mage costs much more than master lich even if both are raised to dominion10. just try it. if you want no additional non-undead summons its your choice, but all that lichqueen empahsis won't help when it comes to wither bones and dust to dust. and ermor really needs an rainbow mages as spectators and dusk elders are more needed to cast rituals and for research.i playe thousand of ermor games. lol your only hope is a good gem income! The master liche also has an additional misc magic item slot. It's a modest bonus, to be sure, but can save you a lot of points on the right build - if nothing else, it's notably cheaper to buy the earth levels needed for a crystal coin than it is to buy astral 6 up from 5 (since rings, skullcap give +3) and then you have earth magic to boot. ]
On the other hand your lands can be a pretty nasty place to try an invade - anyone looking to lay into you is going to have to accept little in the way of gains. If you point that out you can play diplomacy a little more. -> i like ashen empire a lot its one of the reasion that makes this game so fantastic and innovative, the other is R'yleh, now if there would be new functions for the interface to controll all these free spawn chaff better it would be gold. can be really annyoing on big maps. Ashen Empire in dom3 is weak at the beginning of a game or on smaller maps. ON big maps its possible to pillage vast amounts of porovinces ruining everyones economy and force everyone to use food supply items or units that do not need to eat. ermor LA, however starts out really weak, not in single though but in MP its easy to exploit their low magic res chaff with banishments and priests. dust to dust is an ubber cheap spell anti undead spell availible with just 1 death mage pic. and this is much worser than banishment it ignores magic resistence. take an undead prince and see him killing dozens of priests and he never gets a scratch due to high magic resistence, additonally i use him with either magic res item or cast magic res as a astral spell. all my pretenders for ashen empire do start with high astral and death magic. so you need a good SC to survive early part of the game, taking something else is a risk in non SP games that ia m very sure of but inever got banished back to the underworld to hell must be fun too later soulgate is really fantastaic, i casted it in many games now with high dominion you get ethereal undead(also ethereal ermor legions) with good stats and no "never heals" ablity, so they do regenerate hp too. problem with it is conj8 and cost a ton too. for scales all -3(taking cold here, and magic drain just 2) and +3 luck. 3misfortune may give more design points but i am sure its not worth it on bigger maps. maybe smaller maps. on bigger maps with high luck they get extra gold, gem income and so on. the zealots and millitia are very annyoing...so i usually send them to death quickly to get rid of the annoying upkeep. my overall strategy with them so far is to summon a lot of dusk elders to get the most needed research up and scout the enemy if he is random to know his nation, its midgard or similar glamour abuse i go for enchant4 - Behemoth to trample them. alteriation is pretty much a no brainer with SC to have on at least lvl3 if he does not start with ethereal. rest goes into constr.4 to get skull mentor for quick research, its needed for magic drain scale anyways. rest goes into conjuration. additonal i make asap 2 groups of dusk elders with allt he 4 elements in magic paths + astral and rarely blood to search magic sites more quickly as it takes too long with just pretender on medium-large maps. my pretender had 4 nature, 6 astral, death9. with this you can try to go for the lictor summons and cast htem with black laurels still gives 2 additional lictors. they are all heavy armored and sacred and astral gives them most needed +2 magic res, with drain scale its +3magic res. usually its good enough on big maps to just conquer your nearest lands and pillage whats far away and slowly go backwards to your capitol using a scorched earth method, it gives gold for more temples, labs and castles and ruin everyones world except for yourself. with soulgate up soonish and high dominion the game will be in your favour quickly. except you get obliterated with dust to dust or wither bones....really unfair spells btw, i think dusk elders and arch bishops can be a bit cheaper...this hurts a lot early on. i am not sure to survive a rush with that? maybe pillage home province and surroundings take sphinx and using a lot of ghouls to defend with? anyways to summarize, i feel AE is a lot weaker now in the early phase of the game. and yeah, R'yleh and MA ermor is maybe a lesser risk than taking AE. also want to make a suggestion, namely. i would like to see more pretender choices here for LA Ermor. Since they are really focused on a powerful pretender more choices are logical. i think Ashen Empire could have a more powerful and special Prince of Death and i wonder why jortundheim/niefelheim always got the draco lich and bog mummy but not ermor where it suits much more. its nice to have the lich queen but more choices would be more fun here. i think we have her since dom1. i know lich, ghost king or lich queen is the most obvious choice, but PoD with immortaly ablity added and a better special ability(just gives like 1-3 longdead/turn) would have been more fun, just for ashen empire.....or else is just taking some lich and casting tatarian gate and make someone with a lot hp your prophet. -> Prophet: If you want a fun, skilled, immortal prophet -- wait for Etimmu the Wraith Lord and prophetize him. He's one of the better national heroes in the game, considering he comes with d3/h2, immortality, etherealness, equipment, nice stats, and all but the foot slots (being mounted).
Lictors:
Might be nice if you've built the laurels to make summoning more efficient. It's possible to reanimate them with an H4 (ex Archbishop prophet), if memory serves. Can't go underwater, 'tho. Eventually, wights -- a step up from lictors -- can be summoned in decent numbers at a time via Legion of Wights. Reanimation: Priest skill affects both number and type. You need a certain level to reanimate longdead horse, for instance. Death magic is irrelevant to reanimation. Helps for summons, 'tho.
8.17.3.3 Guide to LA Ermor The Ashen Empire The Ashen Empire is one of the most unique nations in the Dom3 universe and, IMHO, one of the most powerful. This guide is to help those who are interested in trying out this nation in a multiplayer environment. When deciding to play LA Ermor for the first time there are a few things you have to realize about their ¿play-style¿: LA Ermor requires LOTS of micromanagement in mid-late sections of the game. In a large game it can take you hours to plan your turn, whereas a normal nation might take 30 minutes. Also if you are anal and want to organize all your troops by unit type you will likely be extremely frustrated with LA Ermor. That the price you pay for fielding multiple 5k undead strong armies¿ LA Ermor forces you to play a certain way in order to be effective. You can tweak and try minor changes to this strategy but it isn¿t for the type of player who wants lots of options available to him especially in the early to mid game. That said it can be fun to try something outside of the norm just for fun (e.g. growth 3) It¿s hard to make friends with this nation expect to be on the short end of the diplomacy stick more often than not. Even with that fact it is vitally necessary to be extremely active on the diplomatic front. On the other hand it can be fun to have everyone fear you¿
It¿s pretty much a given that you should take an awake pretender. You could try to take Luck 3 and attempt to get a hero with death magic but that isn¿t a serious strategy and is ridiculously risky. You need an awake pretender to summon a death mage for the first turn. Scales: Order/Turmoil: Turmoil is a good option. The only thing you should be actually spending money on is temples, cheap forts and indy mages. Order is a bit of overkill. Typically I always pick Turmoil -3, though anywhere between 0 and -3 would work. Sloth/Prod: Sloth -3 is a no brainier. You won¿t need resources and the income hit is trivial. Heat/Cold: Usually you want to either pick Heat +3 or Cold -3. LA Ermor cares nothing about supply and the income isn¿t that big of a deal. Cold -3 is a bit more thematic however if you know you are going up against lots of cold nations you might want to go heat. Growth/Death: Usually you want Death -3. Again Supply is worthless and since your domain will be killing off your population wickedly fast a few more deaths are just drops in the bucket. Luck/Misfortune: Here is a scale you might want to boost to Luck +2 or +3. You probably defiantly want to do it of you have -3 Turmoil to maximize your lucky events. If you don¿t have Turmoil it¿s really up to your personal preference. As I usually pick Turmoil -3 I¿ll almost always take Luck +2 or +3. Magic/Drain: This is a tough scale to judge. On the one hand if you go drain you get more pretender points and your undead are harder to magically dispel/banish while in your own domain. This is especially useful against priests with their banish spamming. On the other hand without higher level magic in the later game LA Ermor is at a big disadvantage (the more players, the bigger the disadvantage) and it¿s tough for LA Ermor to get good initial research going as it must invest in lots of early summons. Also the drain only matters if you are getting attacked in your own Domain ideally you should be pushing into other players most of the time. It really is a toss-up though. In larger games I would seriously consider Magic +1, in smaller games I think it might be safe to do Drain -2, or -3. Dominion: I would always go with 9 or 10 dominion. The amount of freespawns you get is directly related to your dominion in a province so you would be crazy to consider anything less than 7. Of course the higher the dominion the harder diplomacy will become but that is something you will just have to deal with. Chassis: You chassis will depend on the magic paths you want to learn and whether or not you want a combat pretender. Luckily with your crappy scales you should have lots of points to spend on a chassis and magic paths. What to pick is highly debatable (very, very debatable), but I¿ll list a few of my own observations: Prince of Death: This is probably the best pretender for expanding early and fast. That fear works wonders against indy troops. Only downside is the expensive magic paths. Lich Queen: Pluses: High starting dominion and Immortal. Downsides: High magic path costs and initially too weak to seriously take on indy provinces. This is a great chassis for defensive pretender and you can get 2/3 magic paths very high. The Immortality is a great safety net to have and in the later game she can be a powerful SC in your own domain. Master Lich: Like the Lich Queen except trades battle functionality and a little domain for cheaper magic paths and slightly cheaper base cost. This guy will never be an SC but he can support in battle as he is immortal. He would make a good rainbow mage site searcher or initial researcher (which isn¿t bad if you took drain -3). Ghost King: My personal favorite. Usually this chassis is too expensive to make work but with all the bad scales LA Ermor usually takes you have plenty of points to blow. His biggest issues are his low dominion and that he doesn¿t have immortality. If used carefully however, he can certainly take weak provinces (especially if unholy powered/protected by a priest) by himself. He can afford lots of magic paths and can be made a rainbow mage for site searching. Add a few high defense items on him, a horror helm and make sure he can cast some alteration spells and you have a viable SC/thug for the early game. His awe and fear will scare the crap out of troops and with a really high defense + ethereal + luck he shouldn¿t be damaged by normal troops. Just be very careful with him he doesn¿t have immortality so if he bites the dust you are hosed. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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