Priests and LA Ermor

[Edi]

Sombre said:

As far as I was concerned I was only asking you a question. But if you want to read that as me telling you how to do your job, you have my full permission

Sorry, I guess I overreacted there somewhat. Point taken with that, you were only trying to be helpful with the suggestion. My apologies for snapping like that and no hard feelings.

[Lord_Bob]

Lord_Bob, I didn't know the discussion was about Marignon and Ermor. Marginon's H3 Inquisitors should really lay some smack down on the undead hordes. And making one H5 by prophetising & Crystal Shield is a good plan. Trade someone for a few Crystal Matrix too (also only Const4), or take a god with earth and astral to make them yourself, and 4 cheap S1 Chartmakers turn your H3s into H5s and your H5 Prophet into H7.

I don't have them, I was trying to give Eyes of the Void to Marignon. They are now staling, and presumed dead.

[Lord_Bob]

if you are, try a mass damage spell like wrathful skyes or earthquake.

Earthquake doesn't work.

I assume the shield value is added in for Castle Undead. Cause I hit them like 4 times and killed only about a 1/3.

40% of them were the armourless, Tower-Shield wielding castle guys. 5 hitpoints and no armour.

[Edi]

Lord_Bob said:

Blah, blah, blah. In the last thread I was continously bad-mouthed. Unfortunately, I am better at dealing with bad-mouthing than they are at bad-mouthing. So they've stopped that. This is just you arriving at the "answer" you were going to reach no matter what. One of two things would happen:
A.The bullies, that have stopped all debate on these things, would be endlessly rude to me, and I would be polite. You would observe that I was being such a silly-little boy, and so wrong. Bully-boy has made so many, wrong, but oh-so-tough statements.
B.I would argue back. This would make me "rude", and you could condemn me for that.

I love these Post-Western arguments. We always know the answer, even before we've figured out how we are going to get it.

So, somehow, all real debate has stopped. Why is that?

It's because you have all the tools needed for the job.

Lord_Bob, please do not bring the earlier monkey PD threads into this one. They are a past issue, over and done with. They have absolutely nothing to do with this thread. If you try to drag them in here, it's going to end really badly.

[Lord_Bob]

I am not playing Marignon. Marignon is dead. I tried to talk to them and they are no longer responding. My posts said I tried to give them Eyes of the Void.

Archers do not work against Tower Shields. I'm not even bothering to run the simulation.

[Kristoffer O]

Lord_Bob said:

Blah, blah, blah. In the last thread I was continously bad-mouthed. Unfortunately, I am better at dealing with bad-mouthing than they are at bad-mouthing. So they've stopped that. This is just you arriving at the "answer" you were going to reach no matter what. One of two things would happen:
A.The bullies, that have stopped all debate on these things, would be endlessly rude to me, and I would be polite. You would observe that I was being such a silly-little boy, and so wrong. Bully-boy has made so many, wrong, but oh-so-tough statements.
B.I would argue back. This would make me "rude", and you could condemn me for that.

I love these Post-Western arguments. We always know the answer, even before we've figured out how we are going to get it.

So, somehow, all real debate has stopped. Why is that?

It's because you have all the tools needed for the job.

Hmm.

A 'Blah, blah, blah' would be percieved as rude by most people I know of. If one of my students said 'Blah, blah, blah' to me when I asked him or her to listen I would consider him or her rude.

You do not win when people stop bad-mouthing you. You win if they never start bad mouthing you. Friends at least.

In regards to A.
I don't think they would be endlessly rude to you. Most bullies stop bullying if they don't get attention, since attention is what they crave. If they would be endlessly rude to you the admins would presumably talk to them about unacceptable behavior.
You would be polite, you say. Why not? Sounds like nice and normal behavior. I would approve.

I don't think real debate has stopped, but I believe that how you come across to people makes them less interested in having a debate with you on the matter at hand, and instead turn their focus towards how you present your opinions. If you like to debate I think you should work on how you present your arguments, lest you will find yourself in situations where all debate stops.

Edit: I hope you dont mind me saying that.

[VedalkenBear]

Then, if I may ask, Bob, so that we can give the best advice possible, who _are_ you playing?

[Lord_Bob]

The reason you're not liking the answers you're getting, Lord Bob, is that you've presented these people with an unsolvable problem.

You say 1200 undead on turn 25. Well has the Ermor player become a powerhouse in your game or is he fairly modest? Have you become a powerhouse or are you fairly modest or not doing well at all? What magics have you unlocked? How much gems are you getting? Hell, even what nation are you playing?

Looking at your third post, your army has apparently changed from just posting on the forum. A Crystal Shield doesn't cost 25 pearls when you've got earth mages searching sites for earth gems. And you certainly do have earth mages if your priests are switching to Blade Wind, an E3 spell.

Neither have you specified what buffs the Ermor army is getting or that you anticipate they will get, and even the composition of their 1200 undead seem to get distorted as they have shields in one moment and not the next.

It's just plain unfair for you to switch the situation every time they suggest a resolution by countering the Ermor's spells and assets and to make your empire weaker whenever they suggest a resolution by overpowering.

I'm talking about having an Archbishop of Eldergate spam the spells available at Turn 1. They can be summoned, but are expensive. Any Ermor player should have an H3 or H4 priest present at every major battle unless they have a very good reason. That is the only "undead buff" I am talking about. So that's it for Ermor "buffs".

I would prefer that we talk about Castle Undead, as was stated in the beginning.

I deliberately left things wide open on the other side, but did want to exclude races that have H3 priest, because, obviously, that is race specific. I have also admitted that Blood Priests can power communion themselves to mighty levels. However, this doesn't cover all races, at all.

The fact that I have stated certain common answers don't work is true. That is because they don't work.

I looked it up, and a crystal shield costs 15 Astral Pearls and 10 Earth gems, which is still really, really expensive. Even with a Hammer, it is expensive. Good for a Prophet, not so helpfull for H1 priests.

40 H1 priests cost 2000 gold, and must be built from at least 4-5 temples, costing 1600-2000 gold. That is a total investment of 3600-4000 gold. For turn 25 that is not "moderate resources". This is a huge investment that is COMPLETELY USELESS against non-Blood, non-Ermor nations. It is, in fact, more effective against Blood nations than Ermor . Sadly.

Archers are useless against Castle Undead. Every one of them has a Tower Shield.(Some low chance longdead may have shields)

Solar Rays doesn't work either.

Earthquake bizarely doesn't work. I thought it would work to.... in the test, 4 of them will kill about 1/3 of a Castle Undead force.

Some people have suggested solutions that work.
-Telestic Animation is cheap, and could probably be "spammed" into a province that is going to be attacked
-Communion and Sabbath for priest(which is not that simple)
-Crystal Shield for prophet
-Cleansing Water(Evo-6)
-Various Level-7 spells that work against all national armies
-Wither Bones(Thau-6)
-Herald Lance(very poor solution)
-Various Marignon solutions, which wasn't what I was looking for, I am not playing Marignon(I am looking for "normal race" answers)
-Power of the Spheres, if you can prevent your mages from casting other spells.
-Penetration items, Spell Focus, and Eyes of the Void
-presumably SCs

I do read peoples answers.

[VedalkenBear]

Point by point.

Yes, the Archbishop is expensive. It takes a skilled player to juggle the death gem income that Ermor starts with. The best time to take out Ermor is, ironically, early.

We can restrict ourselves to talking about 'castle undead', but that is not fair, as your opponent will not be fielding only those troops (unless he micromanages to an alarming degree). Someone mentioned before that even in MP games, Ermor's army is only about 40% 'castle trops'. Therefore, I see no reason to restrict ourselves to 'castle undead'.

Let's talk about the nations in LE, and their Priest availability. The only nations that do not have L2 priests recruitable are, IIRC, Man, Tien Chi (maybe), Caelum, and maybe Patala (Oh, I think Pangaea might be in here too). (I'm sure people will point out if I'm wrong, and where.) Therefore, I am not sure why you focus on the H1 issues.

If 'common answers' don't work, then you really should specify under what conditions they don't work. If by that you mean 'by turn 25 against a 1200-piece undead horde', then you should specify that. The better you define your problem, the better answers we can give.

Yes, 40 H1 Priests are completely useless against nations unless:

1) They use Undead.
2) They want their Dominion in your lands (Temp ones mostly)
3) They use weak demons.
4) They are not mages (which I assume is the case).

and:

5) You don't need to build temples (i.e., you already have enough priests for that).

So, you see, your statement is quite hyperbolic. And I would like to point out again that the vast majority of LE nations (by my reckoning) have access to Holy-2 Priests. Yes, some of them are capital-only. On turn 25, this is not much of an issue.

And Archers are not as useful as they normally are against 'castle undead', true. However, we have the countervailing point that Ermorian armies (especially by turn 25) either are huge OR they have solely 'castle undead'. Not both.

Finally, I would ask again for what nation you are playing (or were playing). Given the diverse nature of the game, what can work for one nation (buying national Holy-3 Priests) won't work for another. So instead of us trying to shoot blind finding answers that might work for your nation, it would be much easier if you tell us your nation so that we can tailor the answers to the specific situation.

[Micah]

Good post, Bob.

Without knowing the specifics of what map you're playing on I can't really say for sure, but on reasonably large maps my income by turn 20 is often over 2000 gold, so 40 priests and temples would only be 2 turns' worth of income...the temples will help keep Ermor's nasty-*** dominion away from you as well, which is a nice benefit. It is, granted, a large investment, but in MP games you should be able to find some help dealing with Ermor from other players to help defray the cost, and in a duel the fact that the priests are useless elsewhere doesn't really come into play.

That being said, I've personally found that Ermor is pretty OP on a smallish map/duel, as they can keep enough pressure on their opponent to stunt their research when they start out close together. In addition any province-trading via raids will always benefit Ermor, as they can rapidly pump the unrest in all the border provinces and slowly choke off their opponents' gold supply even without dominion spread. The difficulty of assaulting Ermor's capital due to needing supply items compounds this, since there isn't a reliable way to counterattack effectively.

A lot of the tactics discussed (e.g. herald lances) DO suck pretty hard, but they're better than having gems sitting in your vault if you're getting overrun. Lances also have the benefit of being mailable, so your neighbors can send them to help out.

Destruction will pop tower shields nicely, and it's only level 4 research, combos well with blade wind if you have good earth magic. Good option if you have earth. Falling fires has been mentioned I believe.

The real killers vs Ermor are the battlefield-wide spells though. Fire storm, wrathful skies, solar brilliance, etc. They're hard to get to in a tight game, but they'll pretty much auto-win battles for you as long as you've got some chaff that'll last long enough to let the BE do its thing. This is pretty much the turning point against Ermor, as before you get these spells you'll be hard pressed to fight them, but after you pick them up things become much more manageable. LA Ermor is just one of those nations that it sucks to start near, much like Niefelheim. Both are very hard to stop early but kind of sputter out later on in the game. In MP you have to diplomacy your way around the problem by getting allies or at least convincing the big bad to go after someone else, and in a duel you'll just have to accept that it's probably not a fair matchup, and don't duel them if you want a fair fight.

SCs will also work pretty well. I had my cyclops pretender turtle by himself against a huge legion of undead and he lasted 50 turns against them without regeneration, causing the entire army to dissolve on turn 50...he picked up a mess of afflictions though. Regen would obviously help with that, and the opponent had a D9 bless to boot. On the flip side of that equation you do have to be careful not to attack into too much chaff with an SC without an escape route, since 400 longdead chaff will probably last 50 turns against a lot of SCs, causing them to run and possibly die.