Revised:

A lot has been said about Agartha's poor troop availability. It's all true. They're miserable, with few exceptions. One extraordinarily good exception, though, is the Ancient Lord. I love this guy. I'm pretty sure he's recruitable anywhere, which makes him even better.

First of all, the Bless for these guys is very important, if you're going to get the most out of them. An imprisoned Risen Oracle is probably your best bet, with Earth 9, Death 4, Nature 4. That's a pretty big bless, but the Risen Oracle gets new paths slightly cheaper than most other SC Pretenders.
For scales, I'd suggest Heat 3/Death 3/Turmoil3, and Luck3. Use your own judgement on what Magic and Productivity to use, but I'd recommend Drain 2 or better, and Prod 0 or better. High Dominion isn't really necessary for Agartha. Deciding how much Drain or Magic to give your Nation is important, because on one hand, the MR boost is nice for your Sacred units, but on the other hand, Agartha is a pretty magic-intensive Nation, with relatively weak access to researchers. Infact, having good Magic is, in a lot of cases, going to be much more important than having good Productivity. Again, use your judgement.

Don't bother recruiting any Agarthan unit, *ever*, except the bronze-cuirassed Stone Hurler. You'll mostly use these to boost your PD, and to support/bodyguard your Oracles.

The exception that makes the rule is the Seal Guard-they're useful as a defensive force, for your Capital, and other fortresses, especially if you start having big problems with fast SCs or etherial units that your Ancient Lords can't catch up with, but they're very niche.

I don't think you'll ever need more than a dozen in a single Province, though, even your Capital, but they *are* better than Stone Hurlers for some tasks, and since they're Capital only, unlike Stone Hurlers, you won't be building them quickly, anyway.

You'll only be recruiting 2 Commanders for a while-and the first one you'll be recruiting will be the Ancient Lord. He doesn't seem like much, and he's not, at first, but Agartha offers a wonderous selection of low-level, cheap equipment that will turn him into a juggernaut that can easily contend with even a Niefel Jarl.

Trust me-this guy is the ultimate clothes-horse.

You can start building Ancient Lords right away, 1 per turn if you have the funds. Prophetize the first one, and build enough of these guys to take the Independents around your Capital. 3 should be enough to deal with most things you'll run into, with the help of your starting army. Build another fortress as soon as possible. From here you can start generating more of the low-powered Earth apprentices. Set them to researching Construction, while using your Capital to churn out Ancient Lords, and the occasional Oracle. Easy on the Oracles, they can begin elderly, and you don't have a good way to fix that. Extra funds go into armoured Stone Hurlers, independents, and PD.

Build atleast 3 fortresses producing apprentice earth-readers, and as many as possible, producing Ancient Lords.

Your PD is crap, by the way, but try to get it up to atleast 25 in the important provinces. Recruit independent archers, slingers, and stick-monkeys as needed, and try to find a fast commander. You can use him/her to move your Stone Hurlers to areas that need extra protection.

You really, really want Nature mages, and Nature sites. And if you find a blood/air site, or blood/air mages, hold on to them at all costs!

Sadly, there's not a good way to give Agartha blood with this setup, and Oracles really need Boots of Youth, so try to break into Blood, somehow or other.

Use your apprentice Earth-Readers to research Construction up to level 2. That's all you really need to make your Ancient Lords dominate the Early game.
With *just* Construction 2, you can equip them with the following items: Star of Heroes, Black Steel Plate (or better yet, if you have air gems and air mages, Copper Plate), Lead Shield, Horror Helmet, Burning Pearl, Bracers of Protection, and, with Nature, Birch Boots. That's enough to last you until well into mid-game. Maybe even Late Game.

Advantages: Cheap as hell items (none cost more than 10 gems each, 8 with dwarven hammer) + Cheap as hell, recruitable everywhere commanders.
Here's a breakdown of the bonuses to the base Ancient Lord chassis:
Out of the box (no Copper Plate/Birch Boots) version:

+8 Attack (burning pearl, star of heroes)
Damage +12 + Armour Destruction + Magic Weapon (star of heroes)
Afflictions +100
Regeneration +5%
Reinvigoration +4 (bless)
Shield + 20% chance air shield (bless)
+4 MR (lead shield)
Basic Prot +25 (black steel plate + horror helmet + bless) plus Bracers effect.
Fire Resistance +50% (burning pearl)
Fear 0 (horror helmet)

Missle weapons are laughable-any that somehow get through the air shield AND the shield, aren't going to get through the improbably high Prot. If by some dark miracle they do, you'll just regenerate the damage. Other units don't stand much chance against you, since you can hit etherial units, destroy armour, reduce morale, not to mention, kill most units with a single hit. With that fire bless, you've also got great synergy with your Magma Children summons, and have a fighting chance against Abyssia.

If you *do* get into a war with Abyssia (or Hinnom, or Fomorial, or Niefelheim) right away, look no further than Brimstone Boots, which will grant you +5 Str (not that you need it, for much other than Hinnom, Fomoria, or Niefelheim, but it's enough to raise your damage to...I don't know...40? 45? Somewhere around there-enough to kill even a Niefel in 2 shots, especially since the first shot destroys his armour), and a total of 150% fire resistance, without giving up a single benefit.

Against Niefelheim, Caelum, or any water/cold Nation, you've got immediate access to cold resistance rings, if you need them, which can replace Bracers.

All that is plenty to get you through the early game-and it's all forgeable by your mages, and available from your capital's gem production. With dwarven hammers, it comes down to about 40 gems per Ancient Lord, most of them Earth. That's less than some high powered non-artifact items cost, by themselves, and a lot less than many summons.

I'd suggest that one Ancient Lord thus equipped could *probably* take out a fairly weak Independent Province, if only he were self-blessing. Sadly, this is not the case, so you're going to want to bring along atleast 1 priest unit. Oracles are ofcourse preferred.

Even unequipped, though, you'll still have an excellent leader (80) with better than average Protection (especially for the Early Era), who regenerates, lasts all day, and is likely to do an affliction per hit to whatever he can't kill outright.

Adding Copper Plate and Birch Boots gives the following benefits:
Reinvigoration +2,
Shock resistance +%100
Cold and Poison resistance +50% each
Charge body.
Your Ancient Lord is now resistant to every elemental path. You need Nature and Air to accomplish this, but they're both on your Pretender, and they're pretty common paths on independents.
This will reduce your basic prot to +20, plus bracers effect, but I doubt you'll miss it much. The cost will be 4 each Air and Nature, if I recall correctly, which is pretty affordable by mid-game.

You don't really need to add any high level items to this. For 48 gems, you're already immune, or atleast strongly resistant, to almost anything anyone's going to throw at you. Just make more of the low level junk that's winning you the war, while supporting your ever-increasing Ancient Lord SC legion with Oracles, Summons, and healers, and do your best to build a small blood economy, boots of youth is all you need, to keep your Oracles young. You will eventually want to research to Construction 3 for Legions of Steel (another +3 Prot), 5 for Watchers, and 6 for Shadow Brand, Evening Star, Gate Cleaver. That's ok though-there's plenty of exotic Construction 4 gear your Oracles can use. And you don't have to rush it.

Thoughts:

I'd suggest sending these guys out in armies of 2 Oracles-1 fire/earth, 1 earth/water, (so you can spam Magma Eruption, Quickness, Bladewind, and Earthquake), 4 Earth Lords, and maybe 12 armoured Stone Hurlers, for backup. National Summons just add to the fun.

Early Rush isn't a big problem, since you'll have your Ancient Lords on hand. If it becomes one, add a few Stone Hurlers to your Capital. You might want to maintain a small unit of Seal Guards there too, incase of SC.

Numbers are a problem for these guys, but they become less of a problem over time, since they're tough, and won't suffer as much attrition-in-ranks as most other Nations.

There really isn't a lot anyone can do to phase you, once you're established and have access to healing, since you're not likely to lose units very often, and they only get better over time (except Oracles, until you have Boots of Youth).

Stone Hurlers are also Sacred, so that's +4 Prot (which is why you should only ever buy the armoured versions), 20% Air Shield, +4 Regeneration, 5% Regeneration, and %100 Afflictions for them, too, making them very surviveable against enemy archers, and even melee units, and their boulders (28 damage) will cause Afflictions to whatever they hit. A wall of them makes an extremely effective honor-guard for your Oracles-and they also make exceptional personal bodyguards, since very few assassins can get through their rain of rocks before the Oracle kills the assassin.

Oracles give you plenty of artillery spells, and are tough enough to survive assassins/horrors. They can also be equipped and turned into self-blessing, self-buffing SCs. Gifts from the Sky are still a problem, but they're a problem for everyone.

You've got the priests to take care of any demonic or undead pests, plus bad events, plus dom death. Those little apprentice earth-readers are *also* sacred, by the way, and are self-blessing, self-buffing, too, so if you want to equip them, they can be turned into very marginal thugs.

Global Darkness just means "make more Umbrals".

Heat 3+Death 3 makes your lands hard to take, and the lands surrounding them hard to live in, especially for Niefel and Caelum (heat).

Glamour troops don't fare so well against massed Stone Hurlers, who can kill most glamour units in a single shot.

Hinnom and Caelum can't trample you very easily, because your Ancient Lords are quite large.

And you've got ready access to amphibious troops and water mages, so noone's safe from you.

You could summon Tartarians, but there's really no reason to do so-you'd be spending about as many gems just to get them and GoR them, as you would for a fully equipped, unafflicted, sane Ancient Lord.

Build as many fortresses as you can put on the map, without shutting down your ability to produce an Ancient Lord or an apprentice earth-reader a turn.

Oracles are ultimately going to be the key to Agartha's greatness, so convert your Capital to their production as soon as possible. The best thing about a kitted out Ancient Lord is that Bladewind and other artillery spells are going to hurt your enemy a *lot* more often than they do you. You'll very rarely suffer from friendly fire with these guys.

Thanks for the input, everyone!

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

How about /any/ expansion or research before turn 6?

There are some interesting ideas in this guide, but overall if you played that way I'd say you'd be absolutely mulched in MP.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

I feel somewhat compelled to try this out

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

So, let me get this straight. You're ignoring any expansion for the first half a year. You're ignoring any research for close to the first year. You have crippled your income and ability to research through the whole game with your scales so it's pretty much impossible to catch up even if everybody leaves you alone. Then you equip "Cheap as hell items" on these guys at 40 gems apiece (ignoring hammer cost) to still need 4 of them at a cost of 160 gems (which are coming from your...uh aggressive site searching?) plus an expensive mage just to take out indies reliably?

I don't mean to sound rude, but I don't see how this is feasible in the most remote sense.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

I think you should expand using agarthan militia as chaff. After all, their low resource consumption means you can pile large ammounts of them.


BTW: ancient lords as supercombatants: They have encumbrance issues. I´d suggest a strong earth bless to cope with them.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

yeah you seem to neglect early expansion, i would say take a nice bless (earth works, water works to boost you're naturally low defence, fire doesn't work because you already do lots of damage but i guess a minor bless to get you hiting would do) and start by recruiting earth readers for research and to lead armies (40 leadership, can bless, limited magical skills - not bad to start) and a range of sacreds, mainly seal guards because they can take most units out in one hit and hurlers (unarmoured would do, they only need to sit just behind the front line and lob over boulders to mutilate the enemy front line - water bless starting to sound nice here), get that earth reader to bless troops and you should be killing indies too quickly to worry about fatigue (especially 2 boulders from each hurler per turn).

research head straight towards conjuration 3 and summon all the magma children you can (hideously cheap and fire strike tears through enemy lines unless it's abysia this early) then construction for equipment to tool up oracles (self blessing, battle commander - forget ancient lord)and evocation for stuff like bladewind and magma bolts to harrass enemy lines from the safety of the backlines(as if quickened hurlers wasn't enough.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

yeah, I was thinking about that. Since you will be limited by the ammount of items you can forge anyway, why not use the oracles as SCs?

Or at the very least, use very few items on the ancient lords, and crack them out as blessed thugs, and use oracles as actual supercombatants

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

You can't just take this and apply it to the actual game, that's completely unfair. He didn't use the game to write it and you shouldn't go bringing the game into it.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

I think you're missing the point here, and I think that's my fault for not making it all that clear...

You don't have to take bad scales, and you don't have to take Air bless, I'm just saying that it's possible to do so. Agartha doesn't really need a terribly high Dominion, for example. You also don't have to build 6 Ancient Lords right away, use your own judgement as to how many you need to take the provinces around your Capital. If you only need 1, just build 1, make him your Prophet, and move on to building another fortress, as soon as you can.

The idea is that a handful of Ancient Lords can deal with whatever is around your Capital, and then start expanding.

And while you might not be doing a lot of research for the first year, Agartha doesn't have a lot of ways to *do* good research for the first year. Those Ancient Lords will also put a stop to early rushes, while you get enough money to set your second fortress up.

Once that's set up, you can research to your heart's content.

With a risen Oracle, you're getting Earth and Death for free. Both of those will benefit you throughout the game. You'll want Nature, because that's replacing a regeneration item, and again, is a great benefit for Agartha.

I guess I'll rewrite this thing, hold on...

There, I redid it to make things a little more clear and a little less extreme-sorry, I wrote this through a bout of insomnia, and I wasn't thinking as clearly as I could have been.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

Thanks Sombre. I appreciate you sticking up for me :)

I know Baalz has his finger on the pulse of what works and doesn't work in the game, though. So I do understand his point of view, and appreciate the input. It's true that I do expect people to make their own judgements about what will work and what won't, in this guide. I just wanted to get some strategies that *I've* recognised as viable, out there, in a formalized way.

It's not meant to be all-encompassing. by any means. I just don't have the facilities (aka the game) to do that-and I don't know enough about the MP game to be a real authority, even if I did have access to it.

So everything here is from memory, using the manual, and Nerfix's excellent Agartha guide as references.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

Poopsi--

The reason not to use Oracles as SCs-atleast not in any comparable way to Ancient Lords-is because you'll never, ever, have the numbers to do so. Oracles are fantastic units, and I'd love to be able to SC them out on a regular basis, but that won't happen, because A: they're elderly, so a lot of them aren't fit for SC duty, B: they're Capital only, so you won't get very many, C: they cost 400 gold a pop. I *think* Ancient Lords cost 90 gold each... D: The ones you *do* get, that are still youthful, you need to put Boots of Youth on, to keep them around. Agartha is *literally* like squeezing blood from a stone.

Occasionally, you will get an Oracle that's youthful, and eventually, you should be able to produce Boots of Youth. They have other considerations than Ancient Lords, though, because of all their magical power. Oracles are probably oing to want a Staff of Elemental Mastery and Elemental Armour.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

Unfortunately, Sombre was not sticking up for you in his post. Reread it.

But, he does have a point. Drain with this nation is not an option. The research mages are subpar at best. There are also other glaring weaknesses with your guide which you fail to mention nor give a solution to. Low income. Heat 3, death 3 and Sloth 3 you are totally depending on luck to get you money. Even your plan to thug out Ancient Lords has a HUGE flaw which you fail to note. Fight in your dominion and a heat 3 province and they gain 2 extra fatigue from extreme heat. Along with your gear, your 4 reinvigoration can't keep up. Your "SC" fatigues out and dies. Fight in enemy dominion and god forbid it has just one tick of cold scale to it. Your encumberance goes through the roof due to cold blood. Even a ring of cold resistance will not save you from that penalty. Thus, you are forced to fighting in your own dominion if your opponent has a cold dominion. No offense is a recipe for lose. And you totally neglect the best part about Argatha which is their summons. What strategies for those cool Umbruls or magma childeren? OOPS, you have none because you are using all of your gems making equipment!

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

Actually I´m getting many youthful oracles in a row right now. Not dramatically youthful, but youthful enough to avoid old age for a decent number of turns.

Now, dont get me wrong, I´m not saying that the Ancient Lords shouldn´t be used as SCs. What I´m saying is that despite you´ll be able to have higher numbers of them, it´s not that likely that you´ll have the gem numbers to eçuip those numbers into SC range. So I was commenting that perhaps using more ALs with more limited eçuipment (say, spend around...20 gems on each one) and then using handpicked youthful Oracles with very expensive stuff as actual self-boosting SCs might work better.

More things: I have a mind to recommend a Forge Lord Pretender instead of a risen oracle, as he will help you economize the number of gems you spend in items. On this same line: breaking into blood is very interesting for that same reason: blood items are cheap, and thus you will be able to eçuip more thugs with decent eçuipment. It will also help your earth gem economy through the creation of blood stones.

As for the ancient lords fatigue issues: I´m still testing things, but I´m torn between cramming into them a heart of life, or using multiple reinvirgorating items. I think that a E9-El0 blessing is a must to provide them with a decent level of natural reinvirgoration.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

Rytek, the reason I rewrote this was because people-including you, obviously-aren't getting that you have to actually use your brain to deal with things you encounter in the course of the game. Sombre figured that out right away, without having his nose rubbed in it, which I thanked him for.

If you can't use your brain, then no, you're not going to do well with this guide. Or any other guide. Agartha has *plenty* of ways to deal with cold nations though. If your Ancient Lords are having trouble with fatigue, certainly reinvigoration is going to help-and if you can beat cold Nations with just a ring of cold resistance, then you just go and do that. The bless I suggest will still help you there, and without Air, it's not an overly expensive Bless, anyway.

Not every single Ancient Lord has to be built identically, because-guess what?-every game is different!

Against cold:

you can Dominion Push, which means you don't have to fight them in the cold. No cold Nation has your priests, so this is a real option--and you're more likely to be fighting them in weather that Agarthans find comfortable, with Heat 3.

you can use your summons, because you won't be blindly throwing every single gem into equipment, if it's not working for you. Umbrals and Magma Children both are great against cold enemies.

you can use Ancient Lords with only a little bit of equipment (ring of cold resistance), while you use better equipped Ancient Lords in other places, against other enemies. That's one reason I favor a strong bless, because your sacreds are still very good without extra equipment. Their bless will certainly help them deal with cold fatigue.

You also are allowed-I give you permission-to forge cold weather gear, if that's what you need.

The point isn't that you have to follow this guide exactly to win the game with Agartha. The point is that EA Agartha has tons of gems, and easy access to all the right Forges to make cheap, excellent SCs-and compared to other SCs, yes they are cheap-extremely cheap compared to Late Game SCs, and yes they are excellent.

They're not the best SCs the game has to offer ofcourse, and you're going to want to use your Oracles, and maybe GoR some Umbrals, but Ancient Lords are extremely good for the price. They also aren't going to be SCs forever-eventually, you'll have to organize them into units, with Oracle support, to get very far.

Agartha's probably the best EA forging Nation outside of Ulm, considering that they have site searching right out of the gate, and access to all the right paths. They have ridiculous amounts of gems, and they get them sooner than other Nations, because they can find them faster. And Ulm lacks any good recruitable chassis, so Agartha actually has better synergy with forging than Ulm does.

And the builds I've suggested go perfectly well with Agartha's summons. Burning Pearl is probably the best thing you can do for an Ancient Lord, because it improves his lousy attack, and gives 50% Fire Resistance-which, combined with Magma Children, gives you a mixed force that's hard to beat.

You just have to be able to think for yourself when you're playing the game, this guide-like any other guide-is just there to help you, and offer advice, not to play the game for you. If you were expecting that, then I'm sorry, but I'm offering some tips, and a basic strategy, not offering to hold your hand, or to come up with a solution to every single problem you might encounter in any given game. That's something you need to be able to do for yourself, anyway, if you're going to have any success in MP.

Poopsi-if you get lucky with Oracles, that's great, go with that!-I'd still suggest you consider building some Ancient Lords for melee purposes, though, to keep your numbers up, since once you've got more fortresses going, you can build them alongside Oracles, and that way, you can get the most out of your bless.

And you're right-you're not meant to equip every last Ancient Lord to the hilt. That's something else that people are missing. These guys aren't Sidhe Lords, where every last bit of stuff has to be put on the unit to make them fully effective. You can send Ancient Lords out with no gear, some gear, or a complete suit of gear, and they'll still be a decent unit. They're generic melee giants, and as such, they're very flexible.

Some, you can equip with Gate Cleaver (yet another cheap item for Agartha), to destroy castles and to dismantle SCs. Some-as mentioned-you'll want to put cold weather gear on. Some will be heroes-meaning that you can allow their heroic abilities to define them-I've used 2 weapons and a horned helmet on ambidextrous Ancient Lords. Obese Ancient Lords, you may want to switch Bracers for a Ring of Regeneration. Heroic Leaders, you might want to equip with Herald's Lance and Shield of Gleaming Gold.

Fit the gear to the situation, and you'll do much better with this guide.

You can make them well-nigh-invulnerable with the *right* gear-all of which you'll have access to at low levels and low cost, but it's not necessary, or even a goal, to fill every slot on every last Ancient Lord.

Having a dozen that *are* almost invulnerable-and have several stars of experience-for every 1 Tartarian or Seraph or whatever, that another Nation has finally managed to summon up, has to have it's benefits, though.

And relying on Luck is a viable solution, Rytek, because Agartha has the ability to negate bad events. Luck 3 + Turmoil 3 - Bad events = a decent income, when you're not relying on huge armies.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

One observation, HB:

At any given moment, the number of Ancient Lords you can outfit for battle will be limited by (assuming an unlimited disposable ammount of gems) the number of mages you have. This basically means oracles. This limits escalation of the operations, because even if you can build, say, ten Ancient Lords a turn, you wont be able to outfit ten ancient lords a turn.

This being so, why use ancient lords at all (except maybe as a thug), and not go for Oracles as SCs? (with boots of youth, I agree about their importance) Their self-buffing provides extra advantages, imho

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

This thread is amusing in so many ways.

Re: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.
 

You don't need Oracles to build the items, Poopsi, you can use either your apprentice earth-readers, for forging earth items (which are the majority of what you'll use), or your regular earth-readers and their random paths, for forging other items (death items are easier, since you can also summon low level death mages).

Oracles are great on the battlefield, with the spells they can cast, and that's where they should be--but I think it's reckless to risk them in melee. Let the Ancient Lords do the actual fighting, and even let stone-hurlers and independent archers handle the softening up of the enemy, while you use your Oracles to do heavy damage spells at the back of the battlefield, surrounded by bodyguards.