Is Ermor "broken"?

[onomastikon]

I am still a "Newbie", and I was just trying to experiment and learn, when I had a bizarre experience: I played Ermor with the Ashen Vale (Ashen Something) theme and found that I was completely unstoppable without having to think or consider the tiniest bit of strategy. And this without knowing at all what to expect.
(Aside: I do find this a bit off-putting from the manual and from the in-game tips: you choose a race but dont know what units you will get; I chose this Ashen Thing and imagine my surprise when I wanted to check out the units by hitting "recruit" -- and there were none! it took me a round or two to realize I get them by "animating" with death jewels, but I had no clue that I get units for free too! The blue "Boxes" just kept growing, so I thought to hit "T" in my hometown, and there were all these Undead piled up waiting for action. I had an entire army for free. I also spent all my magic and dominion points wrong, because in the description of the "race" it said Ermor uses astral magic, but apparently not for Ashen Land. Anyhow, it would be nice to have some overview of the units for a race somewhere, if not in the manual then per click, like a link to the "recruit" screen?)

My guess is because there is just nothing you have to worry about. No supplies (you have no living units, really, unless some zealots join your cause or you hire some, but who cares?), no upkeep worries. I didnt even need money, I even stopped bothering to pillage, since I needed no corpses (I seemed to get units piling up for free no matter what I did), and I dont really need buildings since I cant recruit anyway. A hurricane hits or brigands cause unrest? Who cares, no one lives there anyway and unrest is way over 200 anyhow. I was kind of confused, because these are the things I like about the game normally: you have to make sure your kindgom runs ok. But here you dont really have a kingdom, you sort of have a big angry morgue that just wants to get bigger.

After winning easily, I tried again, this time knowing how it works: I set the scales to full death, high sloth, high turmoil, and had all these points. So I had Dominion at 10 and just bought a bunch of magic points I never really used. (I still havent figured out why magic is so important. All my mages did were cast animate skeletons although I had level 7 Thaumaturgy research and gave them all death gems too.) I had chosen a Statue which basically did nothing but research, although she did cast a few spells such as Leprosy and some of those global ones whose names I forget.

The game was over by turn 46, and I am a complete newbie. With other scenarios, I am usually starting to become beaten around then.

So I am wondering these points

Is this intended? Or does it need a balance fix? Being able to ignore unrest, supply, resources, recruiting, and most importantly: income seems a bit out of hand.

Ermor Ashen Empire and Soul Gate are 'broken' as far as SP is concerned. You don't have have to worry about everything that any other race has to worry about initially and the AI has a hard time dealing with Ermor.

This is not the case with MP, however (just so you don't think the entire race is broken). The AI doesn't understand how to counter Ermor (building masses of priests, scripting the powerful anti-undead spells) or keep it's dominion back so you arn't eating away their empire.

You should in the near future see an AI fix regarding at least some of it (as they did with Smite Demon).

If you want to play Ermor and make it challenging vs the AI, try making the settings much harder than you would playing any 'living' nation. Or alternatively have alot of nations so you can't just sit and get units without fear of invasion.

[onomastikon]

Thanks for that reply.
I play only SP.
So I wont just keep getting units under other conditions? OK great.
Wow an AI fix (one in general too -- like having the AI build some fortresses now and then) would be great.
Thanks I will try different races until then. I didnt realize this.

[atul]

Originally posted by onomastikon:
(I still havent figured out why magic is so important. All my mages did were cast animate skeletons although I had level 7 Thaumaturgy research and gave them all death gems too.)

Did you script your mages to cast high-level spells? The tactical AI seems to favor animating skeletons...

... I just started a new game with C'tis and Prince of Death, on second turn used my pretender to attack some weak indie province and put him on 'cast spells' being sure that since there wasn't any other spell applicable than C'tis' beginning Terror he'd use it and would rout the opposition easily.

How wrong you can be. On the same turn as I attacked, my first sauromancer researched Enchantment 1, and my PoD cast all the time 'Animate skeleton' (one wimpy-wimpy-wimpy skeleton per casting). Result: one truly dead pretender where there would've been an easy victory had I just had stamina to script him 'Terror, Terror, Terror, Terror, Terror, Cast spells'. Live and learn. From now on, I script spesific orders.

[NTJedi]

onomastikon ...

try playing against Ermor with a setting of AI Difficult.
Guaranteed to shake your world.

[General Tacticus]

The 5 skeletons Version of this spell, however, is very powerful. 5 undead commanders casting it non-stop annihilated my special "destroy Ermor quick" force of 50 Ulm super heavy infantry supported by 25 "banish undead" priests. 12 of which were in the hall of fame at this point, from banishing massive numbers of undeads I was actually slowly grinding ahead, but my infantry finally routed (enough is enough ! they must have thought) and my priests quickly died.