Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

I just took a look at Argatha MA. I know the powers that be must have had a good reason, but why is the pale one soldier have an attack of 8? And that is the unit they get on its pd after pd 20. The heavy infantry is a better unit, and they get that unit in the early pd.

pd over 20 is supposed to give you a better unit, with an attack of 8, i would prefer to just keep getting the heavy infantry. Since it is a special unit of argatha, i do not think it should suck. With an attack of 8 it sucks.

Argatha is not one of the tougher MA races, and i do not think any of its troops should suffer old age. I think the developers went overboard with old age. I can see marigon, ermor, caelum, and some of the tougher races getting hit with old age, but not the weaker races.

And to be honest, the ancient one should have an attack of 10. With many players using w9 bless, and other races having sacreds with unreal defense, you cripple Argatha by having its sacred units with attacks of 8 and 9. Make them 10 so they have a prayer of fending off w9 vans early in the game.

Argatha is limited enough with no ranged troops, and only a 30 admin. castle. They get no bonus like ulm on starting points. raise their sacreds to attack 10, remove old age from their mages, and they still not in the upper half of MA races, but it would help some.

I would not mind seeing the pale one soldier removed and a boulder throwing unit added at its capital similar to the giants. That may help them with high defense units early in the game.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Try magic +3 combined with magic penetration artifacts and then cast "weight of stones". Also darkness and utterdark (the last very high level though) work wonders as the enemies defense and attack will be halved if they do not have darkvision.
Another tip is to send in your human high protection high defense infantry first to raise the enemies fatigue and then send in the pale ones.

Any combination of this works.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

that does not help you if you have an army of double blessed vans at your capital on turn 5.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Early Age Agartha has boulder-throwing Ancient Ones. Unfortunately, they are too expensive and fragile to be of much use, much like their Jotun counterpart.

Pale Ones of Agartha have many abilities that make them better than humans: need not eat, good magic resistance, high strength and hp, natural armor, darkvision, siege bonus, ability to go underwater and long maxage. This is balanced by their low attack and defense skills, their cold-bloodedness (more encumberance in Cold provinces) and the fact that they only have one eye (more suspectible to Eye Shields, Vision's Foes and just plain battle afflictions).

Pale One Soldier isn't inferior to his human counterpart due to being of a different race, but due to using much worse equipment. Short Sword lets the humans deal just as much damage as Pale One does with a spear, and the spear's repel ability is useless because Pale Ones only rarely manage to hit an attacker. Instead of using big shields that'd help them to negate their lower defence, Pale Ones use small bucklers, and instead of chain mail, Pale Ones use inferior scale mail.

Even now they have their uses, due to being tougher, bigger, and thanks to them not eating and being able to breath under water. Pale Ones have trouble killing their enemies and won't be able to survive for much longer than normal humans, however, so they don't have many uses.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

With fear of repeating myself, try to use them in combination with magic; which in turn means do not use them alone early on.
When playing EA Agartha I see them only as "meat shields" in the beginning (before any defense reducing spells). They are there to let the Troglodytes (which are expensive) get to the archers and commanders. Later on I use them (as I wrote above) with "Weight of stones", "Terror" (they have good MR) and so on.
Without Troglodytes, as is the case with MA and LA Agartha, you should not use the pale ones early on. They do a much better job when they have some magic to back them up.

Some tips:
You could try an awake Risen Oracle who starts with both death and earth and let him deal out the damage whilst the pale ones protects him.
When I play I pretty much let him cast "fists of iron" which is devastating for almost any foe in close combat, especially when you have high earth magic. Combine this with a reasonable death magic skill (+ to fear) and you can rout a much bigger force. Which finally enables your pale ones to kill something easily (-4 to defense). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

I am talking MA argatha.

The extra benefits you mention of the pale one soldier, like being amphibian, offer no benefit when they are used in post 20 pd. They seem to be a weak unit for pd.

I am not sure what units early in the game, and before you have many spells, national summons, Argatha is supposed to use to fight off high defense blessed troops like vans, white centaurs, that attack you early in the game?

Talking about dark vision and such is nice, but not on turn 5 lol.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Well, the Vans are to be toned down in the next patch as almost every nation have problem with them early on, MA Agartha is no exception.

But as I wrote, do not use the pale ones early on as they pretty much suck without backup magic or thugs. They are for later game or taking water provinces. Instead focus on getting the most out of their human infantry.

Another thing, MA Agartha is a pretty weak nation in early game, so you really need to research defensive spells and the like. Do not anger your neighbors until you have summons and support magic for you pale ones.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

actually Pangaea(the race i play most)can hold off vanaheim's double blessed vans early in the game, as can races with size 6 tramplers. I think Ermor also could with its sacred undead unit, if properly blessed.

But you are right, many nations cannot stop a double blessed van early in the game.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

I like the Pales ones Low attack. It adds a lot of flavour.

What Agartha needsd to be balanced is their starting province to be cave province. Then it would be hard for anyone to attack them.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

flavor does not win battles! And the unit has no place being part of the pd after 20 in any event. If it is left alone, then at a minimum the unit after 20 should not be a pale one soldier.

maybe 1/2 pale one.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Pale One Soldiers are good units, especially _underwater_. They allow MA Agartha to expand quickly against indies underwater, which is a huge advantage. The attack score of 8 is compensated by decent armor, high HP, good ST & MR, a long weapon, and of course amphibian, need not eat, siege bonus, and 100% dark vision.

I agree though that it would be better and make more thematic sense to have humans for PD.

As for no ranged troops, everyone can get shortbows, but not everyone is so hard to hurt with shortbows as MA Agarthan troops.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Nah, I think the one-eyed attribute messes with their depth perception, that's why Pale Ones have horrible attack skill.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Also more than horrible precision (7).

Have any of you tried EA Agartha's "wet ones" in water? For me it was a bit of a surprise, and now I actually only use those instead of "pale one" in the water.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

I don't use the "small" pale ones anywhere in EA or MA given the choice (PD being the obvious "no choice" situation)

I'm ok with the "flavor" of them being slow and clumsy... but I'd like if they were a bit more durable than they are. Their extra hitpoints just dont seem to translate into extra survival on the battlefiled.

not too much, because i do think they're supposed to be a BIT underwhelming, but currently I find them to be darn near useless.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Endoperez: "and instead of chain mail, Pale Ones use inferior scale mail."

I think it's hilarious how scale mail is so often interpreted as having been somehow inferior to chainmail. It wasn't-infact it was a good deal better, since you've got overlapping *plates* of metal protecting your vitals, instead of a fine metal mesh.

Chain was cheaper to produce and repair-especially poor quality chain, but the only type that was as good as scalemail, protection-wise, was high quality double-chain, which put two layers of chainmail on you, which ofcourse was nice and heavy.

And in any case, scalemail of comparable quality would have distributed it's weight across the body more comfortably, and it simply was easier to create lighter versions of scalemail than it was chainmail, because the quality of steel could be regularly higher in a plate than a wire, in a midieval forge. The only real advantage a suit of chain armor has over scale is a slight increase to flexibility, but their are ways around this, and the factor would still be small.

If I were re-doing the armor in the game, I'd assign a base Protection for each type of armor, and then increase or decrease it based on the Nation at hand (different technologies, different methods/preferences, etc) and the materials used. Making armour was a highly individualistic artform, much more so than any industrial science of today. Two different suits of full armour-look at a collection of platemail in a museum sometime-are never going to be identical, unless they're identically poorly made.

To conclude-and not go completely OT-Agarthans would have to be ridiculously mindless to use bucklers over large shields, and to use spears-because spears require *PRECISION* to use (I know, I've trained with them for years, and they're my personal favorite melee weapon) and if they're using scalemail-especially bronze, which was actually better than iron/steel for armor, at the technological level we're talking-they should get a very decent bonus to their Protection.

Agarthans should lose the spears and glaives and whatnot and start using very long-handled obsidian-spiked or bronze morningstars.

And, I don't know if this is programmed in, but bronze armor should be immune to several spells, since it doesn't rust and isn't magnetizeable.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

HoneyBadger, I like your post, but consider that especially in Middle Era, the Pale Ones are really designed for use underwater. Consider using a morningstar (i.e. mace & chain) and a large shield _underwater_, compared to using a spear and buckler.

And again to everyone who looks at MA small Pale Ones and never tries using them, try recruiting a 2-4 turns of them and sending them into the ocean. In sufficient numbers, they can do well against independents underwater, allowing you to be a semi-decent underwater nation from the start of the game, which of course is a major national advantage unless you don't start anywhere near available seas.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

I agree with you, PvK-large shields and huge morning-stars are poor choices for fighting underwater. However, the spear and buckler combo is just as poor on land, for the Agarthans. I guess a solution would be to create some units who fight with weaponry suitable for land-based combat, and others for water-based combat. It's too bad they can't simply drop one weapon and pick another weapon up, though.

If I had to arm Agarthans for amphibious combat, I'd definitely go with a 5 pointed trident-weapon (four short, sharp points about 6 inches apart, surrounding a central spike or blade) and a weighted net. The buckler would definitely go, it's mostly just dead weight, underwater.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

No one has yet to justify using them in the pd for a post 20 unit. You are supposed to get better units after 20, not worse.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Yes, you should get better units-specifically: better armed and better trained units.

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

Well, you do keep getting the heavy infantry per point of PD. The Pale Ones are a free bonus, like a prize in a cereal box. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

-Max

Re: Pale one soldier-attack 8/old age
 

A slimey useless prize, yeah. I guess it just doesn't fit too well thematically - I mean their numbers are supposed to be dwindling, right? I can see why. One eyed useless at fighting warlike worm people. Evolutionary dead end, that.