LA Atlantis - frozen death from all directions

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

I doubt Pythium with it's sacred hydras, or Ulm with it's sacred-stoppers, or LA Gath (eats everything) have too much trouble competing, either. Ofcourse Mictlan is strong in LA, too. I'm not sure about the rest.

Gath..... certainly doesn't eat everything. They're kind of sad really. Potentially competitive against other non Ermor/R'lyeh nations, but not outstanding in any particular way.


Marignon would be the cure for Ermor if they had any native Nature access. As it is, they can only kill what leaves the wasteland, and try to dominion push.

[Nikelaos]

how about bogarus?

sounds like a bit of a david and goliath situation but done well.

think about it, Loads of high lvl priests, can natively acces undead slaying spells live solar brilliance, 5folds make exellent stealth preachers clearing the way in enemy dominion so troops don't starve, most major buffs accesible easily (this includes will of the fates, legions of steel, flaming arrows, fog wariors...etc), easily massed chaff (though they become more then chaff once you get some buffs down).

I think they might just be a great counter, the problem is offcourse they need time to prepare all these things and they aren't the best vs other non-ermor nations.

[Hoplosternum]

Originally Posted by Lingchih

LA Pan doesn't stack up too badly. They have heavy duty troops, and can recruit a lot of priests quickly and cheaply. They can fight Ermor, though against R'lyeh they would probably still have a hard time.

I am not sure. At least it didn't help me when I played LA Pan vs LA Ermor

The problem Pan has is that it has no Priests over 1 Holy until it gets high up its summoning tree (Enchantment). Plus the vine beasties don't seem to work against hordes of undead chaff. Not sure if they were simply overwhelmed or their sleep vines simply don't work vs undead

Nor do they have much archery. So there is little in the way of dishing out damage without being in close combat and once that happens unless you have essentially untouchable Thugs or SCs (or AoE damage) you eventually get overwhelmed by the undead hordes sooner or later.

I would have thought Mictlan or something else like it with a combination of good Priests and easily massable missle troops would fair much better?

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by Hoplosternum

Not sure if they were simply overwhelmed or their sleep vines simply don't work vs undead

I would be surprised by undeads falling asleep ^_^

[sum1lost]

Originally Posted by Hoplosternum

I am not sure. At least it didn't help me when I played LA Pan vs LA Ermor

The problem Pan has is that it has no Priests over 1 Holy until it gets high up its summoning tree (Enchantment). Plus the vine beasties don't seem to work against hordes of undead chaff. Not sure if they were simply overwhelmed or their sleep vines simply don't work vs undead

Nor do they have much archery. So there is little in the way of dishing out damage without being in close combat and once that happens unless you have essentially untouchable Thugs or SCs (or AoE damage) you eventually get overwhelmed by the undead hordes sooner or later.

I would have thought Mictlan or something else like it with a combination of good Priests and easily massable missle troops would fair much better?

I've had a fair amount of success using sabbathed/communioned preist mages with mictlan, actually.

[Ewierl]

Originally Posted by Hoplosternum

Plus the vine beasties don't seem to work against hordes of undead chaff. Not sure if they were simply overwhelmed or their sleep vines simply don't work vs undead

They do function against undead, they just aren't useful. Vine critters are great for taking out large things: 9 things making 6 attacks each for 33 fatigue will crush almost any SC. However, they simply aren't effective against chaff- if each enemy is only engaged by one vine critter, fatigue will never stack up enough to take them out.

[Lingchih]

Originally Posted by Tifone

I would be surprised by undeads falling asleep ^_^

The Vine critters work against undead, yeah, they fatigue them out just like anyone else. You gotta have hundreds of them though against a fair sized Ermor horde, and then, if the player is smart, Ermor will just dust to dust spam them.

[rdonj]

Since when are archers useful against ermor anyway? With the vast majority of their units carrying tower shields, I've always found them near invulnerable to archer fire. You can do a little damage, but a single holy 1 priest will kill more undead in one battle than 40 archers. And if you're trying to use said archery to take out soulless/longdead, LA Pan can always use bladewind for that. If you're going to use destruction etc to take out their shields, bladewind is still perfectly capable in that role. They also have some death magic, for the anti-undead spells.

[HoneyBadger]

Never, *ever* try to take even so much an Independent undead province solo, with a Carrion Dragon. Even if he's got great paths. Even if he's kitted out-I guess it might be possible with insane gear, but by the time you have good enough forged items, you shouldn't be soloing your Pretender, anyway.

A good (not great) Pan strategy for dealing with Ermor would likely be to mass Vine Ogres and stealthy priests, and turtle them to death. In MP, this would probably work well, because your Dominion-chaff, and the aforementioned Carrion Dragon, would be enough to keep you relatively safe against living troops, allowing you to commit as many resources as possible into spreading your Dominion, and holding what you've got.

[Otherling]

Baalz, I'd like to thank you for this guide. I used it, and to great effect, in my first MP game, which has just wrapped up. I decided to go all-out on the bless, with a E9S9N4 imprisoned monolith. The assartuts proved every bit as effective as advertised, and indeed were my primary troops for most of the game. Tore through almost everything. I can't speak too much to how effective the new underwater recruitables are, as the patch showed up well into the game, and I didn't get as much of a chance to use them.

I think the earth bless is definitely a must. I'd like your opinion, though: in a game without R'lyeh, what do you think of dropping the astral bless and going with a water bless instead? I was thinking an imprisoned Dagon with an E9W9 bless, and perhaps even a minor nature or fire bless. That would make for some nasty assartuts, and still leave you with a pretty strong combatant when it eventually woke up. Any thoughts?