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[Kagus]

Eternal Ermor of legions, Jesus and priests of ancient faith learning secrets of dark arts from lizardmen to make said eternal Ermor more eternal.

Eternal Ermor, which went a bit too eternal and happily wants to share its eternity with everyone.

Ermor of averege eternity  trying to outeternal too eternal ermor and snek ermor by reasonable necromancy.

Ermor, which tries to figure out, how to stay eternal without necromancy, but with HYDRAS and snaeks.

Even more eternal ermor then all other eternal ermors alltogether, so eternal, that it even got back dudes, who made first mentioned eternal Ermor so eternal with just gladius and pila, and they want to make it great again.

I think you're missing I Can't Believe It's Not Eternal Ermor: More heresy, same great snaeks.

I believe lorewise Marignon is also an offshoot of Ermor, who felt that Ermor got too eternal for its own good because it simply didn't go to church often enough. Ulm used to be as well, before pre-Ulm was introduced.

...y'know, I'm just waiting for them to introduce a LA Oceania, and it's exactly the same as the first two. "Nation of change" my ass.

Mostly the cheap/freespawn reanimators that can put out mostly better chaff than skeleton ermor or people ermor (though massing the reanimators is arguably easier with people ermor)

I think I'd have to disagree on them having better reanimations than skellymor.  Sure, an H1 being able to summon 10 size 1 ethereal paralyzing ghosts with massive morale but that aren't actually mindless is great, but the main problem Lemuria has is that most of its freespawns and reanimations simply don't do any damage.

One thing is the spectral legionnaires and velites and whatnot with their MR-negates weaponry, that's a perfectly fine price to pay for being ethereal... But dispossesed spirits and shadow soldiers only have paralyze as a weapon, which deals no actual HP damage (except in bizarre, undocumented overload-situations which I don't really understand how they work). The only reanimations that have health-damaging weapons are apparitions (which are a laughably poor substitute for the wailing ladies, but would've made great assassins if they were commanders. And stealthy) and shade beasts.  Now, mind, shade beasts can be kinda cool, provided they don't get killed off thanks to their inherent squish... Hell, I even had one get the last bite in on a formless spawn, which somehow reanimated it as a soulless jotun.  But the problem with shade beasts is that only H2 and up can summon them, and then only 1 at a time for H2, 2 for H3.

Ermor would also get usable (ableit weak) freespawn in "empty" provinces, while Lemuria *ONLY* gets dispossesed spirits in provinces without a temple. Having a temple will allow for a smattering of shade beasts and apparitions to show up, and having a fort will allow ghost Romans to spawn.  But putting a temple in every province is perhaps a wee bit pricey, especially when your province defense is probably the worst of the bunch (the extra commander at 20 PD is actually WORSE than the one you get at 1 PD, as well as having only a small number of the generally whiffy spectral legions as your front line).


Oh, yeah... I also just lost my Lemurian pretender in a test game. Not to the enemy, which was getting soundly trounced, but to the pretender's own damn stupidity.  He apparently felt that being behind everyone else was just TOO BORING, so the little frost father ran straight through everything until he could stand next to the apparitions in the front row.

Y'know, the ones with the plague cloud that diseases everything nearby.  His tombstone shall read "DUNCE".

[ZebioLizard2]

I believe lorewise Marignon is also an offshoot of Ermor, who felt that Ermor got too eternal for its own good because it simply didn't go to church often enough. Ulm used to be as well, before pre-Ulm was introduced.

Ulm still is as well, it got conquered before the middle age and made apart of Ermor.

[Jilladilla]

But dispossesed spirits and shadow soldiers only have paralyze as a weapon, which deals no actual HP damage (except in bizarre, undocumented overload-situations which I don't really understand how they work).

If I remember right, if you paralyze a target that's already paralyzed, the duration of the existing paralysis is compared to the new one. The victim is paralyzed for the longer of the two and then takes damage equal to half of the shorter.

[E. Albright]

Though that does cause the amount of ermors in this game to strike me again. I forget about it occasionally. People ermor, I think splinter people ermor, skeleton ermor, ghost ermor, pretty sure there's a lizard ermor or two, too? Might even be forgetting something. Illwinter likes ermor, apparently.

Would this be a bad time to mention that the next NG update is very probably gonna be ErmorGen? 'Cause it is.

[Cruxador]

Though that does cause the amount of ermors in this game to strike me again. I forget about it occasionally. People ermor, I think splinter people ermor, skeleton ermor, ghost ermor, pretty sure there's a lizard ermor or two, too? Might even be forgetting something. Illwinter likes ermor, apparently.

Would this be a bad time to mention that the next NG update is very probably gonna be ErmorGen? 'Cause it is.

Actually, that sounds good to me. Anything that brings the output of NG more in line with the vanilla flavor (under default settings) is a positive change in my opinion.

[E. Albright]

Well, it'll just be another flavor of humans, but with much more rigid army structures (because legions). Okay, and maybe imperial themes for some of the other races, and/or synergistic legion/auxiliary poses for imperials' secondary races. I may end up going a bit overboard on some points of it as far as ambition goes, actually.

We Shall See.

But if you're hoping for a rebalancing of default nation-type probabilities, you'll probably be disappointed, as revisiting that particular mess is not something that seems particularly interesting or TBH currently all that pressing.

[Frumple]

I think I'd have to disagree on them having better reanimations than skellymor.  Sure, an H1 being able to summon 10 size 1 ethereal paralyzing ghosts with massive morale but that aren't actually mindless is great, but the main problem Lemuria has is that most of its freespawns and reanimations simply don't do any damage.

Eh, think you underestimate things, possibly because you actually remember dispossessed spirits exist

Less tongue in cheek, it's the shadow soldiers you're after, especially the UW variants (frogs have +1 hp, tritons +8 AP). A lot of the MR resist issues become less when stuff's paralyzed, and unlike the spirits (or ghouls, for the other ermors) the shadows are actually worth a damn, heh. Workable attack, base 14 defense with dark power (incidentally, if you have deep water on the map, it's a good target for a reanimator pile. Harder to get rid of it, since any shadows waiting to get picked up get the darkness boost), actual HP even if it's still not much... they're nice. As chaff and for holding things down/fatiguing while your proper stuff kills them they're better than longdead in most cases I've seen, and for the freespawn H1s (and/or summoned ones, since the things are cheap gem wise) they're easily the best option you have.

... 'course, there's only two options, but seriously dispossessed spirits are friggin' garbage almost always, never waste turns reanimating them. You're getting the same amount of HP either way (unless you're underwater and get frogs, in which case you get more with the shadows), and the shadows are a lot better at everything else, particularly not getting hit, surviving at least a hit or two, and actually hitting things themselves, heh. You do still need the regular troops or somethin' as at least some degree of filler/dps, but it's not like that ain't true for non-ghost reanimation, too, heh.

Any case, as chaff qua chaff for reanimation about the only thing I'd think was better was specialty longdead, and I don't think there's many nations that can actually field that in meaningful numbers. 'Cept asphodel, anyway. Next time you give ghost ermor a whirl, beeline for the nearest water province, drop a lab on adjacent land, and start dumping tribunes into the water to build up shadow balls. Might have better luck, heh.

[ThtblovesDF]

By the time you could meaningfully exploit dark power, you can already meaningfully exploit Darkness and win with that...

Btw: Wouldn't it be grand if you could pick dominion effects from options like blessed in the upcoming Dom5?

"I choose... Trees animate to defend themselves  - 1 ent / dominion candle"
"                the ability to destroy gem-sites for 10x there gem production. Takes 3 turns of deconstruction and displays a warning symbol"
"                Freespawn... Frogs/Undead/Plants/Raiders/Dreamers/Wolves or "Every 100 unused supplies = 1 militia"

_______

My fav, if useless, spam nation is still EA maverni - with the holy pigs : )

[Kagus]

Statwise, there's not that big of a difference between the two. Shadow soldiers have +1 attack, +4 health (+5 if it's an atlantean), +1 MR, +6 defense and a +5 point paralyze (and +8 movement if it's a triton). In return, you're getting 1/5th of them per summoning turn, they have slightly less than half the morale of spirits, and only half as many can fit on a tile at once.

I suppose the extra defense means fewer repel deaths, but they're still just as vulnerable to ranged attacks as anyone. I'unno, I mostly use spirits to tire out an army and preoccupy them while the actual troops move in on the sides to bite and pretend-stab them.  But I'll focus on massing shadows next time around and see how things go (also try and not let my pretender go out for drinks with plague bombs, goddamn idiot).

EDIT: Nevermind, I see a big reason to swap over. Shadow soldiers have 3 map move, spirits have 2.

[E. Albright]

Spirits also require corpses, and are undisciplined.

[Kagus]

Spirits also require corpses, and are undisciplined.

True, but there are going to be a lot of corpses around at the start of the game, and being undisciplined isn't that big of a deal when they're neither ranged nor fast and have 30 morale. Considering they're chaff anyways, it doesn't make much difference which way you throw them to their dooms.


So, I've always had kind of a fascination with LA Pythium, and from what I've seen and what little I've heard, they're also considered one of the "difficult" nations to play, thanks to most of their magical diversity being spread between either heretics or cap-only mages.

However, I've come across a couple interesting little points in my data trawling... Namely, we have the Mystes, which is a 40g -2 research mage recruitable anywhere with a lab. This means they're the same price and research ability as vaetti hags, while being more available (any province, as opposed to just forests). However, while they don't have the amazing versatility of picking between any of the sorcery paths, they do have a 10% chance of an extra point in either earth or nature, which would bump their research up even more and potentially allow them to cast some more useful spells. The Mystes is also the only "mystery cult" commander that isn't actually a heretic, so you can freely stockpile them inside your dominion.

After that is the Leo, a slightly-better centurion with 1F, heretic, 5 fire resist (plus magic bonus), and fire power.  For fire magery the Leo generally falls behind the Heliodromus in desirability, even though they do have 1 less point of heresy, but the Leo has better combat stats.  Fatigue would be a problem, but as they're recruit-anywhere for 80gp and fairly robust for being humans, there might be something doable with pushing them out as minithugs who can cast fire shield and then kill a couple enemy mooks thanks to fire shield, combat skill and fire power.  Get a bunch of them together and they'll even make for a pretty hilarious raiding/invasion force thanks to the stacked heresy of having all of them together.  The fire resist lets them avoid the extra fatigue from exceptionally hot provinces, which also lets them make full usage of fire power.  They've got a 10% chance of an extra Nature pick as well, but I'm not sure what all you'd do with that...

[Cruxador]

Btw: Wouldn't it be grand if you could pick dominion effects from options like blessed in the upcoming Dom5?

Sounds like the system before there were ages. I think keeping a thing which differentiates nations is preferable, though.

My fav, if useless, spam nation is still EA maverni - with the holy pigs : )

Not useless. They're good blockers for your mages, which are also good by virtue of being cheap and therefore plentiful. Heavily blessing them is a trap option, but so it is for most things. Although since they're tramplers, the size increase bless in Dominions 5 should go a lot to make them more killy against human - sized things, which will be especially useful since Marverni has magic generally better suited to dealing with small groups of elites. Although the spell cast time change is going to nerf the heck out of them anyway, I reckon.

[Il Palazzo]

Does anyone know what happens calculations-wise if a hit is scored on a unit with two shields? Specifically, whether scoring a shield hit triggers both effects from each shield (e.g., eyeloss+entangle), or just one depending on which shield was hit (and how is that determined)?

[ThtblovesDF]

I had a fun MP game as full-pig-spam maverni - full nature + blood + death bless, for super-hp-pigs.

No money, they all starved if I went to far from my capital and some spells just killed em all instantly, but it was fun regardless.

_______

As for double shields, I recall reading that only the blocking one triggers, but both try to block. No source, so no certainity.

[Kagus]

That's odd, I would've thought that shields just gave the bearer the retribution ability directly, rather than have it be tied specifically to the shield. That is after all what's reflected in the status icons with things like the charcoal shield.