Not as bad as Helheim, Ermor started off in a pretty bad location, on an isthmus between Kailasa, Neifelheim and Tir. Starting on an isthmus is problematic because your troops cant get support easily from the capital.
I went one way and bumped into Tir, went the other way and bumped into some nasty indies(one with a great mother) and it kinda stalled me at about 8 provinces. Then Neifelheim came in and attacked. Our early rounds left each of us bloodied, and when we both withdrew, I figured we were going to live-and-let-live. I focused to the south where I found Kailasa. I had decided I was well advantaged against them, and was forming an army to march when the giants came back.
Niefel slowly circled my capital, and I waited - using every round to bring me closer to the spells i thought i needed to guarantee victory - paralyze, soul slay, phoenix power, and light of the northern stars too, if i could swing it. He was slow, and without mage support, and i probably should have hit him with fight and flee attacks to whittle him down. When he opened a gap, i sent small armies out to retake the lands he had captured - these were successful and so Neifel really wasnt gaining territory, merely trading it.
When he finally hit my capital, i thought i’d be able to hold him. I had all the spells I wanted, including LotNS (which i had just researched the round my capital was open to storming). Flaming arrows would have been ideal, but i had to make a call early on - either i could get ‘everything else’, or i could get flaming arrows. Given that i only had 40 indy archers with short bows, i went for ‘everything else’. I had something like Conj4, Alt2, Evo5, Ench2, Thau5. Unfortunately, the key to it all was LotNS - the successful casting of which would give me i think 6SS a turn, so about 25 scripted soul slays. Given the army was about 40 giants, i figured I’d some pretty good damage. The plan was to hold them at the entrance, and then whittle them down with soul slays, paralyze, falling fires, fire clouds and anything else I could.
Well, that was the plan - reality was a little different. First, my pretender never casted LotNS. It was something of a longshot - since i was just researching conj4 that round, i couldnt script it. Instead I gave him a pearl, set the first round as cast spell, the rest as soul slay and hoped he took the hint. He didnt. He cast body ethereal. So instead of 6SS, i had like 3. Ugh. Problem 2 was caused by Nate doing a really good job of setting his forces up. Placing them all in the rear, and holding, forced my armies to run out the gates like idiots. Principes are pretty good troops for early age, but they cant go toe-to-toe with regenerating giants, and they went down like wheat before a scythe. Problem 3 was really an extension of problem 2 - my mages, placed mid field, and scripted for an enemy at long range in the first round, and medium range by round 3, were out of range for most of their scripts(those that still had valid scripts due to the absence of LotNS) - and so, immediately went offscript. Shadow blasts, planned to arrive to meet an enemy congested at the gate entrance in round 3 or 4, went off on round 1.
So, I ducked into his uppercut, and went out like a light. GGs Nate!
Oh, and I went with a 9S oracle with good scales - like 2 order, 3 prod, 1 magic, 1 cold i think, maybe 7 dom. Endgame was gonna see me warping around, enslaving armies like scribble , or at least, that was the plan… :)
