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Cyclops: Old faithful a good earth centered + another high path SC unit. A bit un-thematic. I highly suggest you give him at least 5 death magic. Great Enchantress: This is the cheapest rainbow pretender chassis you¿re going to find. Not a bad choice if you are somehow limited on your pretender points downside is that you will be paying a lot for dominion and she can¿t be used as thug/SC. If you really want just a pure rainbow mage (with limited combat potential) this is the best chassis. Dragons: All of these will help you expand early they suck with magic though a big downside.
Here is where you will spend all of those points saved in the scales. It¿s up to you and the chassis you picked. You can either go for the rainbow/site searching route or the SC high magic in a few areas route. One thing to keep in mind is that if you don't take a highish death (at least 5) you'll have trouble being able to cast the higher death rituals. This can be overcome by empowering/boosting, but it's a bit of challenge. Personally I prefer to spread out amongst a number of paths because one of LA Ermor¿s primary problems is lack of magic versatility so hence I usually go with the Master Lich or the Ghost King. But other builds are viable provided you have an overall game plan for your research. Bless: LA Ermor is not really made for a bless build. Their only sacred spawns are brittle undead knights. Banshees and Lictors are sacred but extremely gem expensive. A good bless for your cavalry charges can be very helpful and would be great on a large group of Banshees but the impact on your early/middle game will be very minimal. Typically you won't have enough sacred troops for blesses to be effective until the late game. So you can keep the bless in mind when you build the pretender but realize it should probably not be a very big part of your initial strategy. I mostly ignore it. Units You can¿t buy any initial units, so everything needs to be summoned or spawned. Here is a quick overview with the cost in death gems in () and all of them are prefaced with their location in the Conjuration Track (C#) if you need to manually summon them. I¿ve intermingled some of the default death summons to compare them with your unique summons. Keep in mind that things like Lictors and Wailing Ladies get cheaper with higher level spells. Soulless/Longdead (Free): You get this these for freespawn without any requirements. This is your chaff. Ghouls (Free): You get this these for freespawn without any requirements. These are mostly chaff. They are not mindless so they can rebuild fortresses 10x as fast as normal units and can help defray the damage of combat mind attack spells (ala mind burn). This is your only freespawn that is not some sort of amphibian. Typically I don't treat them any different than soulless however. Longdead Velite/Legionarries/Principe/Triarius (Free): You get this free spawn from provinces with fortresses. These will make up the bulk of your armies. Longdead Horsemen (Free) These will spawn in provinces without any requirements. They are brittle but very useful en mass against archers/rear positioned mages and for front line storming of fortresses. These can be raised by level three priests. Knight of the Holy Sepulchre (Free): These sacred units will freespawn in provinces with fortresses. They are basically stronger Longdead Horsemen. If you have a good bless you¿ll want to protect them and use them carefully as they will be one of your more powerful units. Shades, Ghosts, Spirits (Free): You will get these ethereal forces as freespawn in all areas (regardless of dominion) if you have the Global Ritual ¿Soul Gate¿ up. Spectral Velite/Legionarries/Pricipe/Triarius (Free): You get these ethereal forces as freespawn from provinces with fortresses if you have the Global Ritual ¿Soul Gate¿ up. C0 Lictor (3): A decent sacred unit. You might consider summoning them if you have a good bless but they are usually never worth the gems. If you really want lictors make sure and use the lictor summoning helm and/or use the higher level spells (Lictorian Legion) so you get more bang for your buck. These also freespawn, but are extremely rare. These can be summoned by H3 priests but aren't usually worth the trade-off (go for longdead horsemen instead). C0 Censor (4): Decent sacred leader.These freespawn from citadels so are never worth summoning. C0 Acolyte (10): An undead H1 priest. Summon these to build your initial temples and start reanimating. They also make decent leaders for your undead troops. This summon should be completely replaced with Revive Shadow Tribune once researched. C0 Bishop (16): An undead H2 priest. Usually not worth summoning as H3 priests are much more useful. C0 Arch Bishop (23): An undead H3 priest. A good leader for large armies and they can cast ¿Protection of the Sepulture¿ which is a mass +4 MR to all undead on battlefield. If you prophetize him to H4 you can cast ¿Power of the Sepulture¿ which gives a +4 attack to all undead on the battlefield. When they aren¿t busy they can reanimate longdead horsemen. You will want one of these in every sizable army. C0 Spectator (12): Your base 2D mage. If you have a magic bonus these should make up the bulk of your researchers. They can site search for death in a pinch. They can also be used to skelispam, shadow blast and disintegrate. C0 Dusk Elder (20): Your premier mage. You¿ll want a variety of these to get into the various spell paths. If you have drain, you¿ll also use these as your primary researchers. They will need to be empowered later unless you find good indy mages. You'll use these to cast the high level combat enchantments (Rigor Mortis, Darkness, etc...) C1 Shadow Tribune (10): An Ethereal 1H Priest. Basically completely replaces the Acolyte summon. C1 Black Servant (5): An Ethereal Scout. Should only be bought to make a cheap thug. Use indy scouts to actually scout. C2 Wailing Lady (15): A very good sacred unit. They have an AOE 1 Soul Slay and even it fails they get hit by an unresistable fear, which stacks with an existing fear aura! However they are extraordinarily expensive and with 0 prot and no shield they will take lots of losses. Only summon these if you have a great bless, are flush with death gems and are casting the higher level summoning spell ¿Great Lamentation¿. These also freespawn but are extremely rare. C3 Bane: Usable as a decent thug. Better than a Black Servant, weaker than a Wraith Centurion. C5 Bane Lord (12): A good unit to outfit as a thug, however usually you will want to use a Wraith Centurion instead. C5 Wraith Centurion (15). Basically a Banelord with worse melee stats but with Immortality, Fear and Etherealness. Can be made into a good thug and you¿ll usually want to use these instead of Bane Lords. C6 Wraith Senator (25): Basically a higher costing H2 Bishop with fear, etherealness and immortality. Not usually worth the gems keep recruiting Arch Bishops instead. C6 Spectre (20): A sub-par Dusk Elder. Its only possible use is to try and get the 2 %100 WESD picks which could give you 2W, 2E or 2A¿ impossible to get with a Dusk Elder. C7 Wraith Consul (35): Basically a higher costing H3 Arch Bishop with fear, etherealness and immortality. These can replace your Arch-Bishops if you are flush with gems. However, as they shouldn¿t be entering melee there isn¿t a huge need for them (unless you need to go underwater then they are pretty handy). C7 Mound Fiend (28): 3D 2H Ethereal Mage-Priest. Not generally ever needed. C7 Wraith Lord (40): Ethereal and immortal these can actually be super-thugs or even SCs. Their D3 allows them to cast Soul Vortex which is an extremely useful SC spell. Only summon these for their SC/thug possibilities. C9 Tartarian Gates(10): End-game SC/thug. Very cost effective use of your gems. You have about a 1/5 shot of getting a Tartarian leader with every casting. If you go high in Conjuration you¿ll want to use this spell a lot in the late game. You'll really want to cast "Gift of Reason" on the non-leader, non-feeble minded ones. They will then have +5 random magic paths - very handy for branching into other paths. E8 Lichcraft (30): This is the rare summon spell that actually isn¿t in the Conjuration track. A 4D Immortal Lich is great for the late game as you are looking for high death mages in order to summon tartarians. Though you should get some dusk elders with 4D through random paths Lichcraft is a ¿sure thing¿ and the fact that it is immortal can be extremely handy if you need a high death caster in your own domain. General Strategy Here are some general strategy tips: Key Point: To maximize your growth in the long run build temples and fortresses as fast as possible. The only other thing you should spend money on is indy mages, priests and in a rare case - mercs. The amount of domain in the province determines the amount of troops while the forts increase the quality of the troops. Think of temples as troop generators and fortresses as troop enhancers. Ideally you will want a fortress and temple in EVERY province crowd them in it doesn¿t matter! Independent Mages: Unlike normal nations you will probably be forced to use lots of indy mages. Use them to supplement your research and to get into magic paths you normally can¿t reach easily. Independent Priests: Indy Priests can be useful. They can preach down to reach a domain kill (your undead priests can't preach!). You'll need them to bring back a pretender that died. They can build temples. Most importantly however they can reanimate chaff! (soulless or ghouls). How much you want to reanimate is up to you, however it seems a shame to let all those corpses you produce naturally to go completely to waste. I will usually have 10-15 recruited by mid game spread out throughout my high dominion provinces just to raise the dead. Usually they are the last thing I will buy after Forts/Temples/Mages. Independent Scouts: Independent scouts can be used to build your forts and to scout. Independent Troops: Generally you never want to recruit indy troops. You will have problems in supplying them and they will funnel money away from your forts/temples. The only exception might be good aquatic based troops if you are planning an underwater campaign but keep in mind they need to be GOOD aquatic troops - most indy aquatic troops suck or are too expensive. Gems: You'll have a vast hunger for death gems in the early game so you can summon your mages/priests. Try trading away your non-death gems for death with other players if possible. However LA Ermor is one of the few nations where you will probably have to empower some mages (unless you find some really nice indy ones) to be viable in the late game. It¿s very hard to get into any magic path except death without empowering. Eventually you'll have a great hunger for non-death gems. Expect to waste (err invest) lost of these non-death non-death gems on magic boosting items and empowerments. This is one of your biggest weaknesses and limitations. Blood Magic: LA Ermor is one of the few nations than can start a blood economy relatively early. Realize the money you lose from these provinces is going to directly impact your temple/citadel production which will impede your undead spawn. However if you find a recruitable blood indy mage (e.g. Garnet Sorceress) it is much easier to kick start the blood economy early and you should seriously think about doing it. Without an indy blood mage the prospect becomes a lot more intimidating but possible. Check out the forums for guides on Blood Economies (I recommend Baalz¿s) if you are interested. I've heard comments that LA Ermor has the hardest time trying to get a blood economy going. Personally - I don't think this is the case since LA Ermor isn't as reliant on gold as some other nations. The key is finding a populated safe province or two to blood hunt that doesn't have your -3 death domain. Usually there are always a few next to friendly neighbors. If you don't have any friendly neighbors then you have bigger problems than blood magic... Water Provinces: Being a poor amphibian means you can go into the water but that doesn¿t mean you should. You can¿t really stand up against a real established aquatic nation without totally devoting all your forces to the endeavor which will be costly. It is very handy to ally with another water-nation to take down another though. Fighting in the water does have one very nice advantage the opponent cannot cast Solar Brilliance which is an extremely powerful anti-undead battlefield spell. Research Strategy Like any nation you will need an overall research strategy to be successful and most of the time they will revolve around you putting up a global spell. Here are the more powerful/useful death spells you can aim for. I recommend building your initial strategy around some of these spells in the same magic tree. Conj 2: Dark Knowledge Site searching spell. If you don¿t have site searchers this spell is essential for early death gem generation. Conj 8: Soulgate: There is some confusion as to what this spell does. See the separate section on Soul Gate later. Conj 8: Well of Misery: This global gives you death gems and is probably one of the more likely not to be dispelled. On the downside it increases income around the world¿ Conj 9: Tartarian Gate Excellent summons for a cheap cost. GoR for lots of magic powers. See unit section. Very powerful spell. Conj 9: Ghost Riders A very cheap way to bring lots of pain to your enemies. They can take out almost any PD. I recommend casting it on a poorly defended enemy province and then attacking it with a Scout the same turn. Alt 6: Soul Vortex - An extremely good spell for Thugs/SCs (i.e. Wraith Lords) facing chaff. Alt 6: Darkness - A great battlefield spell against non-darkvision troops. As long as you can mitigate the fatigue this can dominate the mid-game until Solar Brilliance comes out. Alt 7: Bone Grinding A very hard spell to use properly but can be wickedly effective in battle. Alt 8: Disintegrate A cheap death version of Soul Slay with more limited range. Good when spammed. Massive spamming with penetration gear can often take down an SC unless he has very high MR. Great at taking out low MR costly units (Iron Dragons, Abominations, etc...) Alt 9: Utterdark: The death spell to end all death spells. When you cast it everyone will go after you and try to take it down with a vengeance. If you can hold out and keep it up you¿ve won! Risky but powerful¿ Evo 5: Shadow Blast - A great AoE combat spell. Spam it on armies and watch them go down. Works underwater! Const 4: Skull Mentor This is an item to forge, not a spell. Very, very useful for research bonuses as your Spectators can all forge these. I¿ll sometimes go for Construction 4 immediately so I can start using these ASAP. Ench 3: Raise Skeletons - The ¿skelespam¿ spell. Useful for your spectators to cast en masse in open field battles (not fortress storming) - also a good spell to script to body-guard your powerful casters. Ench 6: Rigor Mortis: Extremely useful combat spell. Works very well against forces with lots of enemy mages. I love this spell. It is semi-countered by the Nature spell Relief. Ench 6: Arrow Fend: Not a death spell (A3) but a very useful defensive spell against archer heavy armies. I usually empower a Dusk Elder up to be able to cast this quickly. Thau 5: Burden of Time: A lesser Utterdark usually hurts everyone but you but not enough to be crippling. Be prepared for the same diplomatic results as if you had cast Utterdark (to a lesser extent). Realize this will hurt your indy mages though you might not need them anymore by the time you cast this. Boots of Youth do not protect against this. Thau 5: Foul Air: Another lesser Utterdark like Burden of Time.
LA Ermor has this very unique global that can be very useful. You will start to recruit new ethereal undead troops instead of some of your normal troops. These troops will always be ethereal and will sometimes have non-standard attacks (steal strength, drain life, plague). Against normal troops they will dominate because they are ethereal against thugs and special troops they are chaff. These troops are spawned differently than normal troops while the amount of dominion in a province does seem to affect the amount/quality what is even more important is if you have a temple or castle in the province. Hence, you will recruit weak ethereal troops (spirits) in a province with a temple even if it has enemy dominion. If you have a castle and temple there you will get stronger ethereal troops (spectral infantry). In a province with a castle, temple and a high dominion you will get the best and most ethereal troops. This will decrease the amount of normal corporal troops you get slightly and the spawning of those corporal troops is still tied to dominion. Overall you will spawn more troops but not vast amounts more. You still start to spawn ethereal H1 Priests as leaders. You mostly want to use these priests to reanimate more undead however they are also good leaders if need be. Having these extra priests can be VERY handy because as they reanimate more and more your hordes will be huge. I¿ve found Soul Gate to be very powerful in the mid game. The longer the game goes the less effect it has as most large armies\thugs will be outfitted to take out ethereal troops. Diplomacy Strategy This is where the game is really won or lost. Because diplomacy is so important to LA Ermor this section is probably longer than it would be for a normal nation. Many of these tips can apply to any nation in a MP game however! Initial Start: Play nice, suck-up, placate, amuse, flatter, befriend, do whatever you have to do to make peace early on. It¿s in the first 20 turns that you will be most vulnerable. Contact each person as you meet/scout them out immediately and offer a non-aggression pact (NAP) that will last at least three turns. Offer to not build temples on his border to help him with your nasty domain. Turn on your charm! Most players know you are a big threat but also don¿t want to be the one to put you in check. You must play aggressive diplomacy initially to secure your future! Beware alliances! After the first 15 or so turns your biggest threat will be multiple attackers at once. Try to maintain relations with every neighbor and check in with them regularly to build a relationship. Try to make peace with everyone you can. Usually there will always be someone who wants to rid the world of your existence¿ there is usually no need to pick a fight. If you must (because you need to expand) pick players that you don't completely trust or try to form a group to take down a larger nation. Take advantage of the fact that many new players might not understand how powerful you can get in the mid game and that experienced players know how hard it is to attack you. Beware the experienced player playing one of the few nations that has national counters for the undead like Marignon. The longer the game goes on the more deadly they become to you. Make sure and mention/point out all the negative aspects to attacking you (low population provinces, endless raiding, supply issues, etc¿). Besides your high gem income capital, it is usually not nearly as profitable for nations to attack you in the middle-late game as is another nation. Exploit this. Combat Strategy (Early-Mid game) I've found that if you make your army big enough, you can overpower even the most killer opposing armies. The key is to have a battlefield casting trump card. I suggest either Darkness, Rigor Mortis, Shadow Blast (many!), or a combination of the three. These spells are your combat bread and butter. Of course if you find the right indy mages, anything that directly supports chaff like Army of Gold, Will of the Fates is great. Your strongest ability it to raid. Use your many freespawn leaders and troops to attack everywhere he is vulnerable simultaneously and move out of the way of his larger armies. You¿ll take lots of losses via the raids and many will fail, but don¿t worry too much about it. Go as far behind enemy lines as possible so he feels he must hurry back to save his homeland. Never let up the pressure. If a province is threatened raise it¿s taxes to 200 and (if you have nowhere else to attack) pillage it down. Don¿t be afraid to tear down castles of his that you can¿t keep but don¿t tear down your own as they are almost useless to the other player. Use your undead cavalry when you need to attack mass archers or mages they are the only fast moving units you have. I usually put them to flank and "hold then attack". Make sure you leave enough room for them to access to the battle field to flank - it is very easy to crowd them out with chaff so they never meet the enemy until it is too late. Always try to make sure a H3 or higher priest accompanies your larger armies. They can cast battlefield wide spells to Bless and increase your undead¿s MR and Attack. If you don¿t have a H3 a H1 can do this on a limited scale but they must be placed near the front lines. The MR bonus provided by these priests is essential to counter the banishment spam that will be generated by enemy priests. Your death mages should only be committed to battles if they can cast spells that will really make a big difference (i.e. Rigor Mortis, Darkness, or Shadow Blast). Otherwise let them focus on researching, forging or casting rituals. Sieges can be a bitch. I can't count the thousands of troops I've lost trying to storm a weakly defended fortress. What happens is that the chaff get up to the front gate but can never get through the defenders - all the while banishments/arrows/etc.. are constantly raining down on your primary forces. To break this either put some battle field mages up front that can clear the way (shadow blast, netherdarts, etc...) or put your cavalry up front and center so they can carve a way in. A cadre of Wailing Ladies would also work, in place of cavalry. Worse comes to worse just camp out and let the people inside starve and cut down the leaders with remote killing spells as you have time. Don't attack a moderately defended fortress with just chaff (no matter how many you have). Anti-Magery: Eventually you'll run into the anti-ermor spell like Solar Brilliance and Undead Mastery. These spells are devastating to Ermor's undead horde - which is why you need to be more than just undead. You need to start early in thinking of a way to counter these types of attacks and be able to kill those powerful mages casting them. First, avoid them with your undead hordes, then kill them. Remote killing leader spells like Manifestation, Earth Attack, Seeking Arrow, Mind Hunt, etc... are all going to be vital to killing the pesky mage buggers. High MR thugs might work. Carefully crafted anti-mage units that can cast rigor mortis are great against enemy super casters. You'll notice that lots of these solutions require you to have casters proficient in another non-death magic. Diversify ASAP! For more details on the specific anti-LA Ermor spells check out the Late Game Strategies below. Beware the mighty arrows! Archers that you can't get to (because you don't have troops fast enough to reach them quickly) can be devastating. Flaming arrows will cut through your troops like a sledgehammer through butter. I always give my troops orders to "Attack Rear" on the off chance they break through the melee they will hopefully keep going for the archers. Use your cavalry wisely and always attack rear. And finally... invest in an air mage with Arrow Fend! Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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