A severe problem

[Novi]

Hi, everyone!

I've been playing Dom III for quite a while now, but I feel as though I barely got to know it... (If it were otherwise I would probably not be making this topic)

The situation is as following:
I'm playing EA Ermor with my pretender a wannabe SC (I picked a cyclops 3A 6E 2W, but I still have no idea how to use him properly xD). I focused on dominion quality rather than on magic (since Ermor does not possess any stupendous holy units) so now I have growth 2 order 3 and dominion 6 (well, a bit more due to empowerment and temples).
However, I'm facing 2 major threats, one of them being an enemy SC and the other Agarthan bone-crushing dominion and their troglodytes (damn trampling!).

The enemy SC seems to be almost invincible - a father of winter (methinks that's his title) with W9 A4 E4 N5, chill effect and buffed (invulnerability - 30 prot., 20 MR).
My units can't even scratch him, so I'm wondering about other ways of defeating him (Soul slay maybe? Powerful summonings?).

As for the Agarthan threat - most of their units are incredibly easy to kill (with little or no losses on my side) the only exception being their troglodytes and oracles (who can cause PLENTY of losses using magma eruptions, blade winds and so on - that's also the reason why elephants don't work as well as they should). So what to do? Should I try to overwhelm their dominion or is there a faster way? Note that my research and my gem income are both high.

Any suggestions?

[vfb]

Is he attacking solo?

Have you tried anything like this?

Summon a big CR 100% undead chaff army.

Get a few D3 Auger Elders & item them up to D4 (skull staff). Use undead twiceborn Augers if you can. Give them some gems, and cast Darkness (to make your chaff last longer) and Rigor Mortis. Spam Drain Life.

[Novi]

Erm... So if I understood you correctly a mass of longdeads should do the job? (CR? Chaff army?)

[Endoperez]

Lots of longdead would give your mages time to kill the Father of Winters with spells. Darkness makes him much less powerfull, Rigor Mortis makes him fatigued very quickly, and Drain Life can damage him.

Many Fire combat spells (mainly Evocations) are armor-piercing, and most Air and Astral spells (former in Evocation, latter in Thaumaturgy) are armor-negating. Both would work well against the Father of Winters. Your Cyclops could probably cast something like Thunder Strike and so deal him severe damage. Petrify (Alteration/Earth spell that either kills or paralyzes) would also work very well.

[vfb]

CR 100% is the innate 100% cold resist of undead.

They are 'chaff' because they aren't there to hurt the Father of Winter, their purpose is to stop him from getting to your mages, who will do the damage with their spells.

Does he cast 5 spells then attack? Or just charge up and start hacking away? What kind of support does he have? And did you Spirit Curse him already?

[Saxon]

That Father of Winter is an AI favorite. The described plan is pretty much how I have stopped him in the past. Get the fatigue up one way or the other and, once he passes out, pretty much anyone can hack at him.

Since he kills pretty much whatever he hits, you don�t care about armor. Cheap troops are easier to get large numbers of, which is a key to this strategy. Morale is important, but as Ermor, you can get around that easily. With regular troops it is harder, but still possible. Summons are nice, since you don�t have to pay for them.

[Nick_K]

Invulnerability gives a substantial weakness to poison. You could probably take him out with some poison attacks, if you have access to them

[MaxWilson]

Without checking for EA Ermor's paths, one easy thing comes to mind vs. SCs--get a couple of cheap commanders with Vision's Foe (Const-4, A1D1 so 10 gems total) and have them potshot him. The chill aura is great at stopping melee attacks but it takes a while for him to finish killing them, so you should be able to get a lot of shots off. Two hits from VF quarrels and he'll be blind, which makes him effectively useless in melee and very poor at battlefield spellcasting. Depending on your Construction level and gem wealth, you could also have your Augur Elders make a few Standards of the Damned. That's 14+ AN damage, 100 Prec, unresistable by anything I know of. Three of those ought to take him down pretty quick if you can get them to target him (which they should do because he's size 6).

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Oh, and vs. Agartha, since his tramplers and mass-damage spells are causing you difficulty, you might try hitting back with mages yourself. Marble Warriors should make you pretty much invulnerable to Blade Wind at the cost of 1 Earth gem (actually I'm kind of surprised Blade Wind works at all against your armored troops--even Legions of Steel should do a lot for you and it costs no gems). I'm not sure what to do about Magma Eruption. You could try using your assassins to pick off his Oracles one by one--they're capital-only so he'll have a hard time replacing them, and Earth Readers can't cast Magma Eruption without item-boosters. I'm not experienced with Astral magic so there are probably a lot of options I'm missing.

-Max

[mathusalem]

you can try horror mark too