Soul Gate Ermor tips?

[LintMan]

I've yet to play as Ermor of any type, so I thought I'd try out the Soul Gate flavor. (Single player).

Since I'm completely unfamiliar with SG Ermor, I'm hoping for some tips to help me get started off right. (My plan is to play the Cradle map, with 7-8 impossible AIs, rich world, 75% sites, indeps 8)

- What's a good choice for a good SC pretender? I'm thinking about taking the Ghost King but am open to other suggestions

- What scales to take? Can I max out all the scales to -3 except Magic? Or would it be wise to take some order or luck or something? Is 6 a reasonable starting dominion for SG Ermor?

- What magic paths are useful/necessary? Is taking more than 5 Death useful, presuming I can eventually get to 7+ with items?

- I know that you can't recruit units with SG Ermor, and they just show up. Does a higher dominion provide more units and/or better units?
Do commanders also appear, or do they all have to be summoned?

- Any good tips on how to start out the game? (Ie: what to do, what to summon the first few turns)

Thanks!

[Master Shake]

If you want to get a feel for Ermor, you might want to try Ashen Empire first - it's easier to handle and better against the AI imo.

Dominion is very important, so build temples. It determines how many units spawn in each province. To get the best units to spawn, you need castles/temples/labs.

I would not suggest taking minus Luck - it's a pain to lose temples to random events, especially since you don't get a huge income base. Research is tough to get going - some sages early on can really help and make some skulls (+9 research).

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by LintMan:
I've yet to play as Ermor of any type, so I thought I'd try out the Soul Gate flavor. (Single player).

Well, I'm not that good at the game, but when I want a 'low-upkeep' game, I play SG Ermor.

Since I'm completely unfamiliar with SG Ermor, I'm hoping for some tips to help me get started off right. (My plan is to play the Cradle map, with 7-8 impossible AIs, rich world, 75% sites, indeps 8)

Sounds good to me.

- What's a good choice for a good SC pretender? I'm thinking about taking the Ghost King but am open to other suggestions

With the VQ's removal, I think the PoD would be the best choice. Ghost King is probably right up there too, especially if you plan on taking a lot of magic.

- What scales to take? Can I max out all the scales to -3 except Magic? Or would it be wise to take some order or luck or something? Is 6 a reasonable starting dominion for SG Ermor?

Luck-3 is your friend. You really don't want Misfortune. And I always take Dominion of 10 with Ermor. I don't know if that's the smart move or not, but see below.

- What magic paths are useful/necessary? Is taking more than 5 Death useful, presuming I can eventually get to 7+ with items?

5 sounds fine. With a Skullface and the Scepter, you can get to 9. Oh, there's also the book, so 10. IIRC, one of the best reasons to have a sky-high Death magic is Summoning Ghosts (Conjuration-6).

- I know that you can't recruit units with SG Ermor, and they just show up. Does a higher dominion provide more units and/or better units?
Do commanders also appear, or do they all have to be summoned?

IME, higher dominion improves both quantity and quality of troops. One reason to take a 10 Dominion. As far as commanders, you summon most of them. The nice thing is that you can get Shadow Tribunes (your low-level Unholy priest) randomly in provinces that have Temples (I think; I'm not sure about Temple or not). I've also heard you can get more Wraith Centurions randomly.

- Any good tips on how to start out the game? (Ie: what to do, what to summon the first few turns)

Well, what I generally do is make my starting Wraith Centurion my prophet. That more or less makes him extremely powerful, and _almost_ a SC himself (18 Prot Ethereal Immortal). First thing I'd do with your Pretender is Summon a Spectator. It's a DD mage for 12 gems. While not as versatile as a Dusk Elder (DDD? for 20), they can summon themselves, and under a Magic-3 scale, they definitely research faster. Under a Rich setting, you get 15 gems a turn. This coincidentally equals 1 Spectator + 1 Dark Knowledge a turn.

As far as what to research, if you have a SC Pretender, you probably want to research the schools for his buffing magic. Otherwise, Conjuration is probably the way to go.

Now, IF you plan on going the Conjuration route, you may want to summon Dusk Elders instead of Spectators. Dusk Elders can naturally summon Spectres (which are better researchers than the Spectators for less cost), and with a single booster can cast Ghost Riders.

Thanks!

I hope this helps. If it doesn't, feel free to ream me.

Scott

[Taqwus]

Scales: I would take +3 magic, but would be reluctant to take misfortune. Do take 3 death, sloth and turmoil; you'll lose your population anyway, and even if you had the production to recruit indies you'd have trouble paying the maintenance (even with order-3; taxpayers don't count once they're dead).

Pretender magic: I would aim for a rainbow-ish pretender (2, pref. 3, in most of the magic paths, ignoring blood, and minimum of 5 in death). Above 5 death isn't that important compared to, say, having a good dominion strength (you won't be able to afford many temples quickly, but it affects your undead auto-reanimation) and probably a good castle (one with towers, for instance).

I would largely ignore blood magic on the pretender as you won't be able to make good use of, say, a Mount Chaining, even if you found one. Most of the blood sites you'll find will cause unrest and let you recruit weak indies, if you had the money, which you won't. If you want to prioritize, I'd put Earth-3 fairly high on the list of wants, for the reasonably common Firbolg Fortress (saves you considerable money), Fire-2/3 for alchemy reasons... and would not use astral unless it were at least 4 and pref. 5 min with intent to have starshine cap and somebody else toting a Banner of the Northern Star.


BTW, unlike Ashen Empire, you auto-generate unholy priests (weak ones, but priests). Your highest-end summonable unholy priests are very, very expensive but immortal and have better stats than their Ashen counterparts. You will have no cavalry unless you explicitly summon Pale Riders. You will have far fewer sacred units. Your troops will have trouble against high-MR troops (phantasmal weapons are resistable) and will be mauled by flaming arrows (magic weapon ignores ethereal) or even Blade Wind (spells ignore ethereal), as your troops have low prot. Be careful.

Oh, and death is not too hard to boost madly if you research Construction and Conjuration. Construction gets you the +1-death staff and helm, as well as a unique +3 sceptre (!). Helm/sceptre = +4. If you can build the unique blood/death tome, that's another +1. Conjuration gets you a demilich, which is a death-4 chassis, and Dusk Elders are d3/?1.. Yowch. D7 + Conj-9 gets you Tartarians, although it's hard to exploit them without strong nature magic.

[Starfighter08]

I'm thinking about startig an Ermor game (SP) too, but I've trouble distinguishing between priests and mages. Could a kind soul tell me which units are mages and which are priests in SG and AE? Thanks in advance.

Actually Demilich's are in the Enchantment School. Though you can get a D3 Wraith Lord or Mound Fiend in the Conjuration Path.

Edit:

Mages: Dusk Elder (3D?), Spectator (2D)

Priests: Shadow Tribune, Wraith Senator, Wraith Consul, Acolyte, Bishop, Arch-Bishop

[ June 11, 2004, 16:10: Message edited by: Zen ]

[LintMan]

Thnaks everybody for all the information/advice!

I created a test game and played some turns and have a few more questions:

1 - It seems the unholy priests are unable to preach. So you're left with just temples, prophet & pretender to boost your dominion? Does this prove to be a big liability?

2 - My home province only started with ~7K pop - is this a map setup, or something related to SG Ermor?

3 - Is it worth pillaging your provinces to try to eek a bit more money out of them before all the pop dies? Or summon apparitions at 100 pop(!) apiece? Or is it better to try to prolong the pop survival to get continued tax income?

4 - I notice that my home province has some gold income despite having no population in the province. And the Ermorian castle is 0-admin,so there shouldn't be any income from surrounding provinces. On my most recent turn the 70 income dropped to 66, and I'm puzzled by that also. I built another castle to see if they all do this, but it does not have any income. I assume this is some sort of home-province bonus?

5 - If my domain spread out into indy provinces, they should start to die off. If I wait long enough, will this serve to starve out the indy troops and eventually kill them off?

6 - I like using mercs a lot, but the gold situation seems really tight... Are using mercs a bad idea for ermor?

7 - A rabble of troops gathers in all provinces. Actually getting those troops to where they're needed seems rather micromanagement intensive. Do people tend to keep circulating leaders to constantly gather up these forces, or is it more typical to wait unti there is a large horde waiting before sending a commander over to collect them?

Thanks everyone!

[Chris Byler]

The other reason to ignore blood as a dead Ermor is, of course, that you need population to hunt blood slaves. Demons want *living* sacrifices.

I don't know if this was mentioned before, but along with death, sloth, and turmoil 3, take cold 3. Some undead, including some of your summoned commanders, have a chill aura; all (IIRC) are cold immune (while most living troops take extra fatigue in extreme temperatures). This gives you plenty of points for luck and magic, which combine very well to give you extra gems often. This is important because you will have relatively few mages.

Beware of priests. SG needs a magic scale to keep their spectral weapons from being resisted too much and compensate for lack of mages, but that also makes them more vulnerable to banishment. Although spectral legionnaires have higer MR than Ashen Empire's junk troops, losing them hurts more. It might not hurt to spend a few gems on banish-bait (they will tend to go for the closest and/or lowest-MR undead), or better yet, get some flyers and form a priest extermination squad.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by LintMan:
1 - It seems the unholy priests are unable to preach. So you're left with just temples, prophet & pretender to boost your dominion? Does this prove to be a big liability?

Yes, this is a significant liability for Ermor: You have no real ability to spread your dominion beyond taking a strong dominion, and spamming temples: The dominion spread of your pretender and prophet cannot be considered to be significant beyond a localized basis: At best, they can temporarily disturb an equilibrium situation.

2 - My home province only started with ~7K pop - is this a map setup, or something related to SG Ermor?

Dead Ermor receives less starting population than other nations. SG gets slightly more than AE.

3 - Is it worth pillaging your provinces to try to eek a bit more money out of them before all the pop dies? Or summon apparitions at 100 pop(!) apiece? Or is it better to try to prolong the pop survival to get continued tax income?

Jack taxes up to 200, loot, pillage, and burninate. That's what I always do. If you're having dominion control issues and have taken some rich provinces which persist in remaining outside your dominion, it doesn't hurt to farm them and perhaps rake in a bit of blood if you get an get one of your D3B elders there, but don't count on this occurring, and definitely attempt to rectify the problem, so you can go back to looting, pillaging, and burninating.

*DO*, however, greatly value the provinces with gold mine sites: Pillage them down to 0 population so you don't have to deal with the whiny peasants, then crank the taxes up to 200. This will double your income....because the undead always pay their bills in full.

4 - I notice that my home province has some gold income despite having no population in the province. And the Ermorian castle is 0-admin,so there shouldn't be any income from surrounding provinces. On my most recent turn the 70 income dropped to 66, and I'm puzzled by that also.

I don't think that's your provincial income, but your entire nation's income. You may have misread the display. It is still possible for Ermor have to income even under 0 population, though: It's possible that you received a lucky gold mine that will now yield income: Always crank taxes on these puppies up to 200, so they'll yield double the income. The undead always pay their bills in full.

I built another castle to see if they all do this, but it does not have any income. I assume this is some sort of home-province bonus?

This is either you misreading the upper display, or receiving free gold sites in your home province as a result of luck scale.

5 - If my domain spread out into indy provinces, they should start to die off. If I wait long enough, will this serve to starve out the indy troops and eventually kill them off?

I've never seen this happen, but I rarely care to wait that along, either.

6 - I like using mercs a lot, but the gold situation seems really tight... Are using mercs a bad idea for ermor?

Using mercs is great for Ermor: Mercs demand no upkeep and offer properties that your one-dimensional undead horde doesn't, such the ability to actually consistently hit and kill targets of decent MR. They're even better if the other players in the game have neglected them, causing their price to fall.

7 - A rabble of troops gathers in all provinces. Actually getting those troops to where they're needed seems rather micromanagement intensive. Do people tend to keep circulating leaders to constantly gather up these forces, or is it more typical to wait unti there is a large horde waiting before sending a commander over to collect them?

For SG Ermor, a Shadow Tribune will eventually spawn in the province sooner or later: He's capable of commanding 70 undeads and is generally what I use to collect the local rabble. Otherwise, they can be collected by any passing commander on the way to the front: Rarely do I need to specifically circulate a commander just to harvest the horde, although sometimes too many Tribunes spawn in one province, and I boot them into a nearby province that is commanderless to collect the horde. Other times I just leave them to raise shadows, or spirits if there are still corpses. Or burninate the countryside.

[HJ]

I'm not an Ermor expert (nor expert in general) but in my experience:

1. Yes, no preaching. Even holy priests you recruit are going to be unholy (unholy level= holy-1). It's not a liability in SP, but you have to be more careful, and protect your temples better than usual. Surpressing enemy dominions is a bigger obstacle than maintaining your own.

2. It's always like that with dead Ermor themes, IIRC.

3. Yes, if they are in your dominion pillage to squeeze out more gold for the temples while you can. One good application of implementor axe here. If you don't have dominion in the province, if it has high income/population, and if you don't need to devastate it for strategical purposes, you can leave it for the time being. This is what I usually do with enemy capitals for a few turns. Btw, you can also crank up the taxes if you want the population to be gone quicker, and also to squeeze out a bit more money in the short term (or get rid of those annoying Last 10 people in it).

4. Hmm, I wouldn't know about that.

5. Yes. Cast Burden of time to speed up the process.

6. Yes. But with free summons, it's not too terrible of a loss. You can still use them at start when the supply issue is not too bad if you can afford them.

7. It depends on the situation. It also depends on the luck of getting free autosummoned commanders. You should usually play aggressive, so replenishing armies is important, and whatever suits the current situation better (many small armies coming all the time or few large ones at greater intervals) works. You'll more often run into problems of not having enough commanders to pick all of them up (like if you wait too long). And yes, it's micro-intensive, but it's hard to resist not using all those free troops.

Hope this helps a bit.

Cheers,