MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips
 

I must confess, I'm bit at loss regarding MA Agartha. And I would need to get on track in like, 24 hours or something.

So, please: Pimp my nation.

My problem, as I see it:

• Everyone needs money, especially guys with expensive castles and 400-gold mages. So I need Order.
• The troops are actually nice if a bit resource intensive. Therefore, I need Production.
• The mages bar the least ones are old, so I dare no Death.
• My base researchers have but 3 RP, so I'd like to have Magic.
• The troops are heavy and lacking in bows, so I need my pretender to help me from the go.

In other words, where in the world I'm supposed to get the points I'm needing? Min/maxing is not my style, neither is playing an Ulmish nation, but I'd like to at least survive the initial fray. So, any imput is appreciated.

Also, research focus: any consensus whether it is the most urgent to focus on Buffs (Alt), direct Damage (Evo), Troops (Ench) or trying to outfit the recruitable one-eyes into Thugs (Const) first? Fortunately the MA Agartha mages can manage something in each, but the research time might be limited.

Thank you.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips
 

Dont have much time to type right now but take high dominion. MA Agartha has the same effect as dom2's golem cult meaning your constructs get a +10%(i think its 10) health bonus per level of your dominion they are fighting in. That dominion bonus along with your powerful sacred constructs is very nasty.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

well im guessing this is for the mega game that will start soon, so my advice is based on a very large game:
----
I would absolutly get order 3 (since you need the gold) and growth 3 (since growth pay off the larger/longer the game is).
----
If you must have an awake pretender I would go with dom 6, awake cyclops (earth 5) production 2 (nice to have for your units), heat 3 (you lose 15% income but you need the points), misfortune 3(its not so bad since you have order 3 and growth 3, you can say goodbye to any heroes showing up tho, but you need the points) and magic 1 (yes you need some research bonus). The awake cyclops have enough armor + fear to beat most indies, but use him wisely (don't throw him at knights or anything dangerous). Later on you can get gear for him and turn him into a good SC, opponents might think twice about messing with him.

----
Another choice is to make the cyclops sleeping and get production 3, magic 3 and only misfortune 2 instead for the extra 150 points. You will have a nice SC showing up in just 10 turns and with the high production and gold you should do fine early anyhow. With magic 3 you can do 5 rp with your very cheap mages, something that can lead to a nice endgame.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Thanks guys, and, um, I'll be seeing you in the aforementioned game. :>

Evilhomer, that's about the kind of push I was looking for, thanks. I would never take anything even resembling heat3 misfortune3 on my own. And gotta still think about it, guess I still like to feel lucky.

Too much to do, too little time. Had missed the sacredness of the constructs (but not the sweet high hp), I need new eyeglasses, preferably with a new head included.

EDIT: AND GO FINLAND GO! Lions to the hockey world championship finals, YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

...krhom, sorry...

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

With the build i suggested i would go for construction (2 or 4) first in order to equip the cyclops (or i guess you can try your diplomacy and hope to trade all items with someone) . then probably thaum 2 to get gnome lore. After that i guess it depends on the situation, but you probably going to go for evoc or enchantment. Your main problem later on is probably going to be magic diversity and gem income, so i would look for indie mages as well as trying to trade booster with other nations. well anyway, good luck to you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Likewise. :>

...and I'd like to see a nation that didn't have problem with magic diversity these days. When I was young you could see the specifics of the dominion by just looking at the map, use even scouts to find young girls and get high scores in any path you ever wanted.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

EA Tien Chi dosnt really have problems with magical diversity http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

:P

And there's a reason why TC Spring and Autumn has been my personal favourite since I got Dominions2.

BTW, does the misfortune 3 hurt or does it HURT? Is it totally normal to get turn after turn unrest increasing events on your capital? Speaking with order 3. Of course, having unrest just makes it more probable for new brigangs appearing, so it might just be bad luck, but anyway.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Missfortune is not that big deal with 3 order. The number of events you get is caped, so when your nation grows bigger you are not going to notice the missfortune really. The problem is early on if you have a stroke of bad luck i suppose, since it can hamper your growth if you get unrest at your capital. Im almost always using atleast mis 1-2, and im usually fine. You just have to cross your fingers i suppose http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Well i have gotten a plague in my capitol on turn 2 before(with great scales but misfortune 2) which reduced it to 14k pop.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

With my 6th choice i ended up with ma ctis.

On a huge map, here is my initial game plan.

Took a sleeping master lich 5d 2f 2a 2e with 3 order, 3 heat,
3 growth, 9 dom. Basically i will use pretender to hunt for gems and summon undead. Being immortal, it will not matter much if he is killed.

typically when i play ctis i have an awake thug pretender.

Any thoughts?

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

With heavy earth mages, Const also becomes a pretty nice buff school. Weapons of Sharpness, Legions of Steel.

In SP I generally go for Const-4 to get skull mentors early, and Conj-3 for Dark Knowledge and Summon Earthpower. Still working out what to do from there.

-Max

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

I didnt think MA Agartha had death magic or much of it atleast.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Sorry, I wasn't speaking specifically of MA Agartha about the skull mentors, more about any nation with access to Death. And... [checking game stats] it appears you're correct. Oracles of the Ancients can cast Dark Knowledge, and thus can bootstrap into the Death path eventually, but yeah, skull mentors are out as a research goal. My bad.

-Max

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Atul, Order 3, Misfortune 3 is a given in a game of the size you are considering. Its dangerous at the start but the number of events that can happen in a single turn is capped so once your nation gets to a large enough size you wont have to worry about bad events too much anymore.

As for Heat 3, I think its a TERRIBLE idea. Not only do you lose a huge chunk of income but you will be hobbling your spellcasters on the field of battle! Unless you are planning some strategy that works around battle magic I would not suggest Heat.

And if you want an early expander pretender, you should really re-consider the Cyclops, also. He needs equipment to really put the hammer down (ha ha!) and getting your cyclops equipped in a Very Hard Research environment is going to take you WAY LONGER then you expect. If you want a pretender to do your early expansion and are short on points you might consider an astral Wyrm. Or perhaps dom9-10 on one of the other Monster class pretender chasis (assuming that hp bonus Shovah speaks of exists).

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Oh, and isnt the strength of Agartha the Umbrals? Does MA get those?

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Ironhawk sure heat 3 will cost him in income this is true. However with growth 3, order 3 and production 2-3 as well as his starting pop bonus he will have an income that is good enough anyway. If he can avoid the heat 3 that would be good...but the points have to come from some somewhere, and heat is alot better choice than taking turmoil or drain (he will be kicking himself after turn 30 if he does this). And since the growth bonus is exponential, in a game this huge this IS a must if he wants a build that is competitive in the late game (sure if he want to go out in a blaze of glory he go with death i suppose ). With heat sure his mages will tire a bit faster on his territority, but so will his opponents you know. The cyclops is a top notch pretender as well and with dom <9 it is probably better at taking ind that the wurm (since the wurm has so low prot) - of course he still will have to be a bit carefull with it. And in the mid game it will definitivly be a better pick. Sure a dom 9-10 awake wurm would be kickass however, but where do you intend to get the points for that ? especially if you don't go with heat ?.

btw, the research seems to be hard not very hard.


edit: yes an awake dom 9 pretender with 0 heat, with order and growth 3 is possible, but the rest of the scales has to be like this:

1. prod 2, mis 3, drain 2. Works well early on but he will be left in the dark ages once magic starts to be used by everyone.

2. sloth 1, mis 3, magic 1. Could work i suppose, but the resource penalty will be pretty bad for a resource heavy nation like MA agartha.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

I don't think Order is as important as Production for MA Agartha. Magic is good for research. You don't really need archers to expand if you learn how to use heavy infantry well (see, "playing an Ulmish nation"...), though you might recruit some indy shortbows. One good early research goal IMO is Legions of Steel, though again that means learning to use your heavy infantry well. Fire Brands and Frost Brands give you thugs but removing the need for high Attack skill from your giants.

Don't forget that if there are water provinces in reach, you should be able to take them easily with a few turns' recruitment of your armored amphibian troops.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Im not sure if order or production is best for agartha, but im pretty sure he wants atleast 2+ of each. Recruiting indie archers are probably not a bad idea i agree, since he might just have some money stockpilling early. oh, btw ma agartha has summon umbrals, those are pretty decent, but it will be a while before you can get them (conj 7).

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

MA Agartha gets Umbrals at conj7? That is pretty lame because EA Agartha gets them at conj5.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

oh sorry, you are right, conj 5 in base game. Was using cb version when i checked if they had them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Wow, lots to chew on. Thanks people.

Ironhawk, I have a feeling that order3/misfortune3 meme comes into play when you play lots of MPs where you don't actually care if every now and then you have to bail out early because of bad luck as long as you've got a good shot for optimal end game. Might be wrong, though.

Gotta agree somewhat on cyclops, his magics won't actually help a lot a nation which has E3 mages and only ones at other paths. Also I never manage to keep him afflictionless for long without heavy kitting, and surprisingly pure Earth doesn't offer too many good alternatives to trinkets at const 2, at least. Slap the trinket armour on any scary guy and indies are as good as gone, but the people are of course totally different ballgame.

The golem cult is operational, I did wonder why many of the statues had about 100 hp or more, but it explains it. Should it work on all constructs? ...have to experiment some. Umbrals are nice but they 1) are of conjuration tree might not be a priority and 2) are summonable only by the 400 gold capitol-only mages. Gryah.

Anyone else having problems with lagging forum?

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips
 

Old age is a fairly small problem for the 400 gold mages, since their long max age and death magic lets them gain fewer age afflictions. But the 200 gold golem crafters, your main researchers at least untill you have several castles, have age trouble. Growth is very nice in a long game too...

You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

With dom9 it can beat many indies, and with care it'll never get permanently hurt (immortal). Enc0 to wear heavy armor... not sure if it's worth forging early on. Just be *really* carefull about staying in friendly dominion.

D4 to use the death gems your big mages can find with search spells, and +100% afflictions when blessed mages cast spells.

missfortune 3 sounds risky. Heat3 causes enc trouble, which heat2 usually doesn't do. Perhaps it's worth it for more production...

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

I'm no expert, but are you dead set on master lich? The saurolich costs a bit more, but has 17 natural prot and some hp, in contrast to master lich's pitiful 5. Saurolich could be useful also in battle, but you probably won't be able to pay for all the scales and high dominion.

I feel immortality's no use if you're not going to put your pretender into the line of fire, but YMMV as always.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips
 

Actually this is quite close to what I was gravitating towards, um, yesterday. Immortality is for wimps, but in this game I'm already scared how well I'm doing so I might take a shot at it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif The risen oracle seems to be a good a deal compared to other immortals, having high hp, all slots and good starting dominion.

It's nice to have such an active group, especially since the megagame appears to have spawn requests for help like rain spawns mushrooms. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips
 

I think Dom9 is too expensive. I would go with the following baseline:
Awaken Risen Oracle, Dom6, E1D2. Order 3, prod 0, heat 0, growth 0, misfortune 2, magic 1.

This leaves extra 120 points too spend. From here you can either add 3 scales or 1 scale and Dom7 E2D4.

Baseline by itself is enough to fill the main objectives - you can forge heavy plate armor and use Oracle to expand. Fear will be enough to route indies, and it will be tough enough to survive, it will probably get few afflictions, but being immortal it's not a big problem (especially considering that they won't affect its fighting capacities much :>) For more safety you can forge helmet as well. You can also benefit from the nearby oceans with this setup as Risen Oracle will be able to expand there right away and sea is harder to raid for most of nations.

Magic+1 should be enough to make research with earth
readers efficient, I'm afraid of misfortune 3, as it seems much more likely to lead to disaster than misfortune 2.

Later, Oracle's D2 will be enough to branch out into death magic. With F1W1E2 mages you should probably research Evo-1 for Geyser (while buying those mages), which should be enough to deter rushers - even for uber-blessed nations fighting you is likely to be too costly and risky. E2D4 Oracle would be even better for that due to affliction chances, so I'd probably go for production scale, D7 and E2D4, but some combination of Prod and Growth scales looks good too.

I think your main problem will be what to make your winning plan. At some stage you'll need to conquer your neighbours, and your best weapons are probably your national summons. With some of them being sacred it my be a good option to get some blesses on the oracle. You could get some 4-bless by sacrificing a scale. Or you can make Oracle dormant with 3 4-blesses, but it will cripple your expansion (though you would still probably be save from rushers due to Geyser). Though I'd probably opt for more conventional plan with awake Oracle, fast expansion (and following quick build of second fort) - your troops might not be that good in the future, but with extra gold and gems from expansion, extra number of troops, summons and mages you can field will probably overcome weaker blesses.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Just my opinion but i would strongly advice against taking prod 0. Since the latest patch production was made alot better, and you are giving up a very nice +45% production bonus. With production 0 you will be expanding alot slower than with prod 3. I would also advice against taking growth at only 0. In a competitive build it seems like such a bad idea since you are giving up a ton of income due to the exponential way that growth works.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips
 

Alexti, the guy who did beat me up in almost every dominions 2 MP game I played. *g* Thanks for the tips, especially the geyser. Or, thanks for making me more certain of the route I'm currently on, the design along with the plan has about formed.

I'd like to thank everyone who has been participating in this thread, you have been most helpful. Pretender sent, now off to actually learn to play...

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Strange thing I noticed of growth. It's about the only scale that scales so that the move from 2 to 3 is about as beneficial as move from say 0 to 1. For instance, prod 0 to 1 yields 15% relative benefit, whereas prod 2 to 3 yields only 11,5% benefit. With growth the relative benefit stays relatively same.

OTOH, growth only helps if you live long...

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

good luck atul http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

With MA Agartha it's not clear how to convert production into a serious advantage. The problem is that you don't have any troops you'd really like to buy. Heavy infantry has nothing for it except shields and heavy armor - skill-wise it's very mediocre. In the beginning I would rather use light infantry (which is not that light, in fact and also have shields). It costs a bit more gold, but you'll be expanding faster than with HI (even with prod 3). Faster rate of expansion will make up for extra gold spent. Besides, HI has strategic move of 1 vs 2 of LI. This makes expansion with LI is even faster in comparison with HI, because you can avoid wasting time moving (it takes careful planning though to bring replenishments, but luckily there's some synergy in using Golem Crafters heading to search for troop ferrying).

With that Oracle pretender your early expansion will be primarily bound by logistic rather than by lack of troops.

Later on, I can't see planning the game around HI. The core of the army will likely be national summons, backed with Golem Crafters casting something from magma or acid family of spells. HI will likely be just a complementary force. Besides, with easy access to armor buffs for your troops, heavy armors becomes much less important. So production scale is of relatively small benefit to MA Agartha. What are you going to sacrifice to take production scales anyway?

Golem Crafters will be very important mages through the whole game, because of their good choice of battle spells and their high survivability (even in the late game they are quite difficult to destroy due to their ability to forge cold/fire resistence items and armor or cast those protection on the battlefield). The more of them you can have the better - so you don't want to sacrifice income (or to spent it on other things with maintenance). Because of the same mages, you want to have decent research speed, so you don't want to go below Magic 0 (but I think Magic 1 worth it +33% bonus on your primary researcher). For fast initial expansion you need a pretender capable of expansion and Risen Oracle is pretty cheap choice that doesn't require any research and besides gives you easy access to higher level death summons (which will be important for Agartha for several reasons: magic diversification, stealth leaders for umbrals, exploting darkvision, undead priests for fodder summoning).

Growth doesn't really work exponentially, because if you survive long enough to be competitive raiding will quickly negate extra income from growth and effects of the growth early on are rather small. Considering poor mobility of MA Agartha (magical or otherwise), it's crucial to expand (by conquest) rather early which means that you won't be able to benefit from growth at this stage anyway, so the setup should be optimised to make this conquest phase most efficient.

Keeping this in mind, it seems that Luck, Growth and Production are the scales you need least for MA Agartha. I dislike Misfortune 3 from my [bad] experiences with it - I'm not sure if it is statistically justified.

Out of my earlier suggestions for the spare 120 points I lean towards Dom7, E2D4 Oracle and Prod+1 as a better choice (slightly better fear effect, quicker access to death summons and better death searches, slight dominion advantage).

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips
 

Sorry about that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Good luck in your game!

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

I was never suggesting any HI. You get +45% LI with that production bonus as well. The benefit from growth is exponential in your original lands (as well as the lands you take over), by turn 100 (if you are still in the game by then) it almost doubles your income (1.006^100+0.06=1.88), in effect giving alot more mages/fortresses. Of course you have to survive more than 20 turns for the growth to start to kick in, but in the build you should plan ahead since you are not building with the intent of loosing the game usually. Growth will help with that old age problem as well.

I stated earlier that i would take the points from the heat scale. Yes it gives slightly more fatigue, but it hurts your opponents just as much, or if you are out of your dominion it doesn't matter...And with growth and order+production gold bonus together (they all actually work together with good synergy) you can take the gold loss without much problem. Magic atleast +1 is a given, and i agree with taking points from luck scale (mis 2, maybe 3 i think).

Of course there is many ways to play dominions, and we all have different ideas how to play.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Even with Prod 1, you're already gold bound rather than resource bound if you're buying LI (assuming you're buying Golem crafters every turn and saving gold for your next fort). That LI isn't very good investment and you don't want to buy more of it than necessary for the expansion.

Heavy raiding usually starts much earlier than that and all those useful spells depopulate the land rather quickly too, and as Agartha you don't have too many defenses against raiding, so this is not very reliable plan. On another side, conquest usually increases your income by 50%+ in 10-15 turns. You should count on strong players conquering at least 3-4 nations by turn 100, so you need to match that pace if you want to have a chance.

I am not aware of any synergy between order and production gold bonuses. They give 7% and 2% completely independently. Heat is also independent and gives you -5%. So each heat + production scale decreases your income by 3%. Besides, with the good battle mages, extra fatigue is likely a drawback too.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

the synergy im refering to is the gold % bonus (order +production) together with growth (constant % bonus +population increasing every turn). Im not sure if the battle mages of ma agartha is so powerful compared to the other nations, not if you factor in the price. They are not bad either i guess, but i would not rate them in the top 20 (among the 62 available).

There are ways for agartha to deal with raiding even if they are few, one way is to use earth attacks to just kill off the commanders (just get 1 earth bonus on your e3 mages).

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Don't forget that your heat scale gets pulled by the seasons. If you have a heat 0 pulling hotter or colder both hurt your income by 5%, if you take heat-1 summer will hurt your income by 5%, which isn't any more than normal, but winter actually helps it by 5% by pulling it to neutral, so you lose less than the theoretical value by taking heat/cold scales.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Not sure how to rate (what criteria?) them, but you certainly need them on the battlefield casting offensive spells. Part of their strength is a nice power curve. They're getting better and better spells along Evo and by Evo-6 they have very good spells. So they can be efficient pretty early, long before you need to seriously worry about opponents anti-mage spells. Another strength is versatility - they can deal with thugs, SCs, heavy or lightly armoured troops. So at that phase of the game they're pretty high in the mage rankings.

Nothing efficient I can think of - Earth attack is a reactionary measure (and it doesn't work versus many kind of raiders) that doesn't prevent income loss. I haven't tried played MA Agartha in MP, but I would think that the late play would have to be based on raiding using disposable regular troops and stealthy umbral squads of various strength while moving randomly some small Golem Crafter backed squads randomly in your territory. Lack of mobility still hurts though. But even if you defend successfully you still lose income due to unrest. And with raiding, poisoning and destructive province spells, it is in general easier to hurt opponent's income than preserve your own. So I'm generally pessimistic about prospects of preserving the income. On a good side, Agartha is in a decent position as far as being destructive is concerned, and it's also can alchemise if needed.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Wouldn't it pull the scale further by making you lose 10%?

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Yes, it would be a total of 10%, but my point was that losing 10% a quarter of the time, 5% half the time and 0% the last quarter of the time is an average of a 5% loss, while a neutral scale will either be hot or cold about half the time, giving you an average of 5% half the time, or 2.5%. So the first point of heat/cold is only really a 2.5% loss, not the full 5 it seems to be. I'm not sure on the exact percentages on the season pulls, so that figure isn't exact by any means, but a 50% chance of a pull seems like a reasonable ballpark estimate. It's a significant amount, although it isn't a HUGE change. Taking a triple scale also kicks in another 'free' percent or two since seasons obviously can't pull you to a 4-point scale, so the only seasonal effect you can get is a beneficial move toward neutral.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Good point. I have tried few experiments and it seems that seasonal effects are rather random. I got average of about 6 out of 36 months when the scale was offset by 1 (Dom 7). Interestingly, that with Dom1, the average was about 9. Is season influence countered by high dominion? Number of experiments weren't large enough to make this observation statistically reliable. It still seems that seasons are not as bad as they initially look - costed only about 1% on average across all my experiments.

This seem to agree with my experiences - wrong scales don't work well if your preferred scale is neutral. Taking heat 2 when your preference is heat 1 is another story. It almost always result in a better income than taking heat 1. The drawback is that Heat 2 loses to Heat 1 in the first few months due to a large proportion of income coming from the capital.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Well, if the seasonal effect is checked before the dominion then the dominion will have a 5% per candle + 10% per scale tip difference to bring it right back, so yes, dom strength could have an effect. I don't know the order they're checked in though. I may have overstated the importance of seasonal effects from the looks of the low number of season pulls you got, but it is something to consider when taking heat scale.

And back to Agartha for a moment: A heat scale is also more attractive than normal because they're cold-blooded, which I don't think has been mentioned yet in the discussion.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

What I've often seen in the test is the heat scale appearing in the summer (ot cold scale in the winter) and then disappearing the next month (still in the summer). And I think (can't recall for sure) that in low dominion test, the scale stayed for longer period more often. Perhaps the scale is getting pulled off the balance with a certain probability and in the next round it's getting pulled back by dominion?

Only pale ones are cold blooded, and I'm not sure that anything but Oracles of Ancient are worth recruiting (unless you're waging underwater war, but in the water temperature scales don't affect fatigue AFAIK). I don't like pale one's poor att/def skills (they are even worse than their human troops).

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

I'm prepping for a mp game, I'm trying to choose between Agartha and Shinuyama. I was curious how the never healing affect combines with a regeneration bless. Any idea? I suppose I must test this...

And how does a reinvigoration bless combine with all your sacred mages?

Edit: In hindsight, sentinels are lifeless, contrary to the manual, so no regen...

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

As one would expect, a reinvigoration bless is significant in long battles (reinvigoration 4 almost doubles your fatigue recovery) and less decisive than more mages in short battles. It's a bit of a bother to get everybody blessed, though, especially if you spread your mages out.

-Max

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Agarthan mages have earth and summon earth power gives reinvigoration 4 as an extra bonus, so I'd think reinvigoration bless isn't that important. Does it stack, on the other hand? 50 turns of Magma Bolts!

Bless on MA Agartha overall isn't probably that big a deal since their recruitable sacred troops are capital-only and actually going up the Enchantment route (sacred statues) isn't that fast a strategy. By the time you're ench4 thau2 (for gems and decent statues) you could nearly have researched conj3 for earth power and gone either alt2 for earth meld or evocation tree, thus making the earth readers a power to be reckoned with. Taking mages to battle or putting them into summoning spree both prevent them from researching, anyway.

Edit: Max, on the other hand, MA Agartha has holy3 mages, so one casting of battlefield-wide blessing isn't that big a hassle. But, what I wrote previously still applies, somewhat.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Reinvigoration from bless and summon earthpower does stack. A single divine blessing priest with your other mages set to summon earthpower and cast spells will give all your sacred mages 8 reinvigoration, extra earthmagic and upgraded armour if they are using any.

Mages are about the only thing an E9 bless will really help agartha with however as the statues have no equipped armour or encumberance to benefit from it.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

I agree with the Wyrm, although I would suggest maybe Death 6 and 2 points of air magic to go along with the Dom 10.
It'll give him both fear 1 (quickly improveable with horror helmet) and awe 2, and allow you to get a jump on death magic.

You can cast air shield immediately-which will help a lot when it comes to avoiding afflictions, which-aside from curses-should be your major concern in the beginning turns of the game.

Eventually, you'll be able to cast other spells, such as Mistform, Fly, and Mirror Image, which will help your Wyrm continue to be a presence on the battlefield.

I personally wouldn't bother with Astral for your Pretender, just because it leaves him vulnerable to certain attacks, and you can eventually forge a Wraith Crown to cover etherialness, for his other head.

Unless you feel you absolutely *need* high astral magic or the MR bonus, then my opinion is to skip it, or at worst go for 10 astral so you can do unto others without them doing unto you, and eventually Wish, but it's just an opinion.

Make sure you get your Wyrm an amulet of antimagic as soon as possible, though.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Did you just suggest a death 6, air 2, dominion 10 wyrm? Well theres -172 points awake, -22 points sleeping and 78 spare points when imprisoned all before any scales so either you get stuck with very poor scales or lose your early game edge. It makes a very nice midgame pretender for crushing armies and stuff and can do ok later on too but with his low protection i dont honestly see him lasting too long against, say, a group of charging knights.
Usually i dont think nationals do much to combat pretenders but after seeing a group of my longbowmen kill a 200 health ethereal pretender with 80% airshield(and 6 protection) im even more concerned about protection than before(although his 2 head slots can give him great protection up there).

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

Well, really, I'd bump death back to 5 and Dom back to 8 (I think that gives Awe 0) if I wanted good scales, but it isn't very efficient. I almost always take horrible scales, though, and a quick rush+good strategy can cure scale-woes for a lot of nations.

Protection-wise, that's why the Death, it lets you forge that Wraith-crown. Once you've got one of those, your Wyrm isn't going to have a lot of problems against 80% of all nations, until the mid-game. Wyrm isn't what you want, if you want high Prot anyway. If you need it, though, empower 3 levels in Earth-how hard could it be with Agartha? That'll eventually let your Wyrm cast invulnerability.

Re: MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for
 

I'd been experimenting with a death-5, water-4, fire-4 crone, bless expansion (plan for magic boosting). Was too slow, but wasn't bad for merely testing the waters. That attack and def bonus makes for a huge diff versus the typical 10at/def indie. I also noted the regular infantry were very great at catching arrows, and was having trouble deciding whether to put my ancients in front, behind, or mixed in.

Interestingly enough, this is the only game I've played where my early goals include killing off my pretender as soon as possible. And the fruits of my suicide run were worth the effort, too.

Oh, and all this was a trial run, so I went with zero scales- barring a bit of luck, maybe. I've still got that game up, but at 4:00 A.M. I'm not opening up Dom3 again for my own good.

Edit:
Does anybody have a detailed guide to say the first 12 turns regarding expanding relatively quickly, barring use of a supercombatant? Or, if not a guide, a example.

Or, do I just need a super?

Edit Combined two posts...
My latest test game I took a ghost king, sloth 1, turmoil 1, luck 1, magic 1. Around 4 death, 4 water, 4 fire, six dominion, give or take a point or two of death/dominion.

Now, with this -1/-1, no active pretender, I managed to take about 8 provinces by the end of the first year. Better than my first game, which left me with that amount by year three. So... not exceptional expansion, but promising.

I didn't use my sacred troops, despite my run towaards the blesses. Only unit that got blessed was one well-equipped ancient lord who never got into battle before all my troops ran by.

Of course, it helped that I was in a resource rich area... I'm not certain how it would have turned out surrounded by plains. Probably be bidding double on mercs. As it was, I was definetly dependent on mercs. But it's not like I had many ways to spend my money, esp since I wasn't really researching yet. So... next, I have to try it without mercs... What's a good target province goal for the end of the first year w/ MA Agartha? In context of a 'new to mp' mp game, standard settings, largish map.

Edit Post three in to avoid tripleposting...
Now using your mages in combat, they have crummy precision, but your regular infantry is great at catching arrows... How would you suggest deployement, and spell focus w/regards to combat? Any situation in which you'd use Earth Readers or Attendants?