Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Hey

im currently toying around with MA Agartha and find it very frustrating. I got the feeling it is by far the worst early game nation.

negative aspects
- expensive sucky troops
- no ranged troops
- mediocre moral values
- "elite troops" cold blooded (not a big deal but still..)
- low precision troops

positive
- amphibian troops
- versatile sacred mages
- interesting pretender chassis (ancient oracle, mother of monsters)

how to survive early game ? i think there is no way around a sc pretender. and what about the thematic golems ? no real option for the early game, but you need to get a foundation if you want to spam them later...

advices, thoughts are very welcome

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

And here I am, almost suffering from infarction over the thought that coobe might have written a nation guide. Lucky me... :)

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

That's not a nation guide? I thought it did a good job of outlining the positives and negatives. Maybe it's more of a "nation blueprint."

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

High dominion is probably worthwhile, since it increases the hp of all your golems. So that means either some mobile construct (what tag was it? inanimate?) but those are few and I don't think MA Agartha gets any, or something that benefits from Awe. A bit of Death magic would also be nice, so that you can leverage the low innate Death of your Oracles for something.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Indeed vfb, but Coobe, are you talking about EA Agartha or MA Agartha? True, I'd say neither are not good in early gameplay, but can grow up to be quite good.

EA have have trogdolytes, which are somewhat good in killing of indeps and human-sized opponents in masses, and all the earth readers can be used in quite a few ways (earth boots + earthpower -> blade wind for everyone). Access to e4 mages from the scratch (50% chance) is not bad either. And I guess you could go with some bless for those recruit anywhere ancient ones.

MA Agartha I haven't really played in MP so can't comment on that. And Single player I only play to gauge if I would like to play in MP or test out strategies for those that I've already chosen :)


Edit: Checked out MA, and it doesn't differ much from EA, trogdolytes are absent and mages are bit different, but recruit anywhere golem crafters can do the blade wind -thing without the boots straight away. Also the statues are not bad, enc0 troops with good prot. Slap them with weapons of sharpness/strength and the start hacking away pretty well, me guesses. And there are still those ancient ones, though recruitable only from cap...

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

im indeed talking about MA Agartha. really try them out, you will find it so hard to expand even against indies in the first 6-7 turns without a Cyclops pretender

@lch look at it as a prototype for a guide ;) just need more feedback since im really clueless about many aspects of that nation

Golems can be nice, but the useful ones (mobile, decent stats) are high in research

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

There, my post should make a bit more sense now. But yes, I agree, early expansion is probably going to be hard without a SC. I started with a lousy cyclops in EA with agartha, and was second when the game ended - though mainly because of inattentive/weak enough/not caring neighbors.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

well in ea you could clear oout indies with a e9n4 bless, but as soon as you engage another nation it´ll be difficult...

but back to ma :)
a powerbless might save you the early game, but with prec7 on your sacreds its really a gamble isnt it ?

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Well since precision is only used when firing missiles or spells, I don't see how that's much of a problem. You can pop a divine bless with a single oracle, blessing everything you have on the field, so you don't have to worry about not hitting those sacreds with your blesses either. While it's true that the precision sucks for agarthans, you can get eyes of aiming (indep mages, deer tribe if I recall correctly had 0.1a pick) if you really want those blade winds/magma eruptions to hit the spot. Also there's bound to be one a2 mage coming up as merc sometime.

Also, if you can get some death magic going on, umbrals are good with legions of steel (or even better, army of lead) & strength of giants. But they are mainly good late-game troops, since they require so high conj, which is probably not your first priority anyway.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

i thought precision affects melee as well ?

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Agarthan "elites" have low Attack rating as well as precision, and only the [b}former[/b] affects melee. It's not as low as their precision, and there's no double-effect of low base attack further lowered by low defence. They can hit a barn, just not most shielded humans, and their big size makes it impossible to swarm.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

I'm a big fan of the risen oracle...in my mp game as MA agartha I went with a 10 dominion risen oracle with 2e 6d. On the first turn have him forge black steel plate and he will go clean out most indies placed in the back of the map and set to hold hold attack (the armor is only necessary until he can self buff). That's a pretty much guaranteed 1 province/turn on top of whatever your epically sucky national troops manage to conquer (stick to the human infantry and build castles where you find decent indies)

In the mid-late game having the high dominion will aid the golem cult...more dominion, more hp for your golems/statues. Blade wind is decent early on but where your recruitable everywhere mages really shine is evo 6 where they can summon earthpower and magma eruption to their hearts content...pretty serious firepower. I ended up getting taken to town in my game as MA agartha by about turn 50 but it was a good learning experience.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

The mistake to MA Argatha is to think their troops are those crappy things on their roster. Yeah, they blow and there's not really any way to get around that. Good news though is that their national summons are very good and you can get them early enough to help with indie expansion and your first war. *Those* are your troops, and they're effective in small enough numbers that they can be your mainline troops much of the time. Your mages (properly leveraged) are also very good combat mages. True, you're gonna struggle in the very early game before any research is done, but if you're clever you should have a very tough army right around the time all the indies are snapped up and a good chance to roll over one of your faster expanding neighbors before his larger size can really be leveraged. Those dominion boosted golems are pretty viscous against light enemy mage action, and the golem crafters scale up very nicely as research progresses - not to mention the higher level summons like umbrals and marble oracles. The very early game is *very* tough, but you have a pretty wicked power curve from that point.

Those golem crafters I think are mages which you have to have a little bit of vision to really appreciate. As configured by default, they're fairly meh. Once you really appreciate their strengths though watch out!

Maybe I'll write a guide this weekend.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

I may be forgetting but someone recommended eyes of aiming....
For the single eyed, this is not a good option...

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

True, but still the golem crafters do have two eyes, I suppose. Being humans and all.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

And yet, don't have the same Precision problems that the Agarthans themselves do. :p

Personally I think the Golem Cult is a weak mechanic, when coupled with the fact that all of your summons are Lifeless.

From my experience, MA Agartha is a perfect turtle nation, and can develop into a late game juggernaut with a fairly mediocre number of provinces, good diplomacy, and a bit of patience.

I'm always wary of the Awake SC, and with useful Sacreds (yes, cap only, and they have serious drawbacks, but they -are- useful), as well as Sacred mages, a minimal magic SC with nothing going for it is going to sacrifice later game potential for only a few more provinces than your recruitables could have gotten, had you given them at least a little bit of a Bless.

I think if I were to go Awake, I'd want some Blood, so after some fast expansion, could push straight into a strong Blood Stone economy - no one is hungrier for Earth gems than MA Agartha.

Looking at them again, now, I think Agartha is very enigmatic. They actually have numerous ways to approach, and none of them are especially thrilling, unless perhaps they cater directly to your specific playstyle. Few nations have such narrow appeal, it seems.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

But but but ... the Risen Oracle is cool! You can try something like this:

Risen Oracle (Body 1581, 95 hits)
Magic: Earth 4 Death 5
Dominion 9
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat 2 Growth 1 Misfortune 2 Magic 1
Awake

Maybe Heat-3 Mis-1 instead, if you're not in a game with fire-resistant nations.

He's immortal, high HP, with awe and fear+5, and amphibious to boot. E4 Bless is nice for all the mages and ancient lord thugs, and D5 afflictions bonus is not a total waste.

Death-5 is also good since otherwise you're stuck with D1, and maybe D2 (~2% chance).

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

I played around with MA Ag a bit trying to make a guide, and while I failed horribly, I found certain things. Golem crafters, as has been pointed out, definitely don't get enough love. As far as mages go, they've got some fairly unique and useful paths and are dirt cheap to recruit and maintain. They, almost more than your national summons, are what makes this nation tick. I was actually playing around with starting a high dom PoD since you've got good synergy with death given your national dark vision and between awe, which benefits your golems through dom, and fear on the PoD, you get decent initial firepower to grab turf. It's probably not ideal since a death blessing doesn't benefit you much, but I found it worthwhile to supplement your pitiful national troops with death goodies.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Oh the Risen Oracle is a neat character, don't get me wrong. But with that build, your magic capacity, before Empowerment and boosters, looks like: F1/W1/E4/D5

That's really, really, really awfully sad.

And again, especially since you're likely confining him to actions within your Dominion, you can't really expect much more from him than you'd get from an N4 on your sacreds.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Nah, he's perfectly capable of playing outside positive dominion, especially when you get a little Alt. Since you're giving him gear, you don't want him dying anyway. The immortality is still nice for emergencies (very nice if you've got an army sitting on your capitol, head out every single turn and cast something nasty), and for removing afflictions.

D5 will give you astral through Spectral mages, MA has enough tribal indies to get you into nature, and at Const-6 you get boosted to W2. But you're right, this build is pretty much your Oracle for initial expansion, then mainly statues etc for the rest of the game. Boring! :)

I just hate the Ancient Ones: size 4, attack 9, a lousy spear and a buckler, and cold-blooded to boot.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Ma Agartha is actually a very strong middle - late game nation, sadly its early game sucks big time and totally lacks variety in what it can recruit via its national troops.

The reason its such a strong nation middle to late game is the golem cult (extra hps for gargoyles, golems, living statues, iron dragons etc), gift of reasoned summon umbrals and marble oracles. Plus it can spam earthquake and magma eruption very easily I believe. Forge of Ancients and Earth Deep Blood Well are just a matter of time for this nation. Oh yea, you have access to one of the best pretender chassis in the entire game, Risen Oracle.

Check out the nation guides, I believe alot was written about this nation a while back.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Just be aware CBM nerfs Agartha pretty hard, boosting the summoning level of Umbrals up, and making Risen Oracle more expensive.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

CBM also gives Agartha a slight indirect boost by moving the trample boots to construction 0. With the starting 5E gem income, they can have a trampling SC god on turn 2.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Sorta like saying but "hey I got high test gas" when the boat is sinking. The increase in the risen oracle cost is pretty much a guaranteed scale hit - which will last you the entire game.

All nations get the boot advantage. The boots are advantageous only to 2-3 possible pretender constructions, and you may be better off if you want trampling going with an earth mother anyway.

Using the boots to expand with any other chassis than a cyclops is probably a risky move, and I don't think it materially helps the cyclops.

You'd probably be better of taking a phoenix and forgetting the footwear.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

I messed around with MA Argatha and came up with this build. There's plenty of room for tweaking or adding paths to the pretender if there's something specific you want to forge.


Dom 8
Forge Lord
F2
E4
B4

O3
P3
H3
G2
Misfortune2
Magic1

In retrospect I would probably cut out the H3, and drop the Dom to 6 for better scales. You can't really afford to send your already heavy encumbrance troops into battle with even more encumbrance. They have enough trouble hitting the enemy as it is, no need to make that any worse.

The main point of this build would to be to turn the forge lord discount + dwarven hammer into an endless supply of extremely cheap blood stones. You can just blood hunt your capital if you want, or trade for blood slaves. Each earth stone only costs 3 slaves off your forge lord. I would use him for almost nothing besides sitting at home and forging which then in turn get put into an army of statutes. You can also use the E4 bless to goo effect on all of your mages, and even thug out with the giant E3 mages by giving them a frost brand and a shield.

Jazzepi

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Ancient Lords are size 4 sacreds with foot slots. Unfortunately, they can't bless themselves so you can't use them effectively in the early game, and they aren't that good even with Boots of Behemoth.

Fire Bolas will work fine once you get some Fire gems, but then you might rather recruit the Oracles.

6 or so Ancient Ones with e9n6 bless surprisingly conquered 6 provinces. They were lead by a prophet Ancient Lord and never got a hit in before the enemy was fatigued out, but they fared surprisingly well. I don't believe they'd be worth that bless, although EA Agartha might (they'd have the same problem with getting a hit in, but sacred commanders+thugs at every fort).

Legions of Steel, high hp + low-level N bless felt like it could make the troops useful, but each LoS would take an Earth gem or a cap-only Oracle, and in my test the mage cast it on himself rather than the troops.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

One of the things about both Ea/Ma Agartha that I would like to see, would be some free points from heat scale. You are wise to take heat 1 anyway because of your troops being cold blooded, so I think making the nation a heat 2 or 1 nation would be help them both out alot, without effecting the balance of the game.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

E/N bless is somewhat useless for MA Agartha as their statues won't benefit from most of it (lifeless, enc 0, no armour). At least I felt that non-human non-mages are not-to-be-used on those guys when I played with them in Perpetuality with some success.

Except in special cases like when casting Darkness.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

I think jazeppi is closest to the mark. They have an amazing thirst for earth and the statues have great patrol bonuses, so it makes sense to have a bit of a blood focus and crank out a lot of bloodstones.

It seems a waste not to throw a decent bless on those statues though, I'd be inclined to hit an F9 and high dominion, if you aren't going to leverage your statues not much point going ma agartha.

Dormant forge lord, Dom 9
F9 E2 B4
Turmoil 3
Sloth 3
Growth 1
Luck 3
magic 1

Your sacreds recruitable won't last any longer but will pack a very heavy punch, and your statues will be nasty - and having a magic weapon is pretty important


I still don't see it as being too viable though to be honest, with poor mobility, no fire/cold/shock res, it is too easy to take them down, and they will onyl be really strong in your dominion

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

I thought much along the same lines - I took a N4 bless just for the forge access. I *think* I took F4 for the +2 to hit, but as the seal guards have magic, it was not necessary to go to f9. One quick booster would allow gift of health.

I believe I used death scales.

At the start, with EA agartha you can choose to which mages to recruit - recruiting the death type cut down afflictions.

I realize ma and ea are different animals but perhaps some caries over.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

I really don't see the point in a bless for a nation like Argatha (at least one that doesn't also hit the big sacred recruitables). All you're going to do is gimp yourself in the beginning.

I messed around some more with the build I posted earlier. I'm pretty much convinced that you need lots of early production. IMO you either have one of three things. Early production, an awake pretender, or a bless. If you don't have one of those three things your early expansion is going to be too slow. I'm sure there's a nation or two that can get away without the production, but I can't name any off the top of my head, but I think it applies in general.

Here's an updated build for CBM.

Forge Lord
Dormant
Dominion 7
F2
E4
B4

O3
P3
H1
G1
Misfortune2
Magic1

I really like this build, even though I think you'd probably get rolled by a bless rush. It's difficult to defend with Argatha against something like that. In the end, though, I don't know how much spending good scales on an awake pretender would help. Many bless rush strats can't be beaten by a pretender alone, and you can only forge earth gear for him, so he probably has to be undead. Production 3 also allows you to reliable produce archers from indy provinces without planting a castle down on them. Also, and I don't know why this is, but Argatha has some of the worst, most expensive castles that I've ever seen. They're regularly 1k-1.2k in gold, with FIFTEEN admin which makes them useless for sucking up resources. With this build I would focus on finding good placements for castles on plains/nothing which gives you a fortified city that has 50 admin.

At the end of the day you want to hole up, and forge blood stones each'n'every turn with your god. When he isn't forging, he should be blood hunting if you aren't lucky enough to find someone to trade with. Towards the middle / end of the game, I would probably amass 20 scouts in a single province to do your blood hunting. You really only need a meager income (3 slaves a turn on average) to supply your god with stones.

Since the stones act as boosters, you should find it very easy to get high level earth evocations in every fight, including earthquake spam. You can mix bladewind and iron bane to good effect with your statutes. They aren't actually wearing any armor that can break from the iron bane which should help deal with argatha's most problem enemies; high armor, high defense units that archers can't hurt, and their basic soldiers, statues included, can't really hit because their attack values are garbage.

Jazzepi

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Another potential build for MA Agartha that has a little bit of everything would be as follows...

Awake dom 7 Dragon with W9 (Quickness for your sacreds and a solid SC for early expansion)

Scales as follows...

Order 3
Sloth 2
Heat 2
growth 0
misfortune 2
Magic 1

The magic 1 could be sacrificed for better scales and balanced out by forging lightless lanterns (which you might want to make anyway)
The 2nd attack would give your sacreds two shots at hitting their enemies with their poor attack skill and later on it would allow your marble oracles to bless themselves with quickness.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Have you tried a Dom7 Dragon? It's really likely to get gimped early on, before you get Quicken Self and Breath of Winter. I'd go Dom9, but preferably Dom10. Heat-2 really doesn't synergize well with a blue dragon either. And how many 19-resource Ancient Ones can you make with 2 sloth?

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Dominion helps your golems have hit points. If you're not going to go with a phoenix, try:

Dormant
O+3, P+3, H+1, G+1, L-2, M+3,
Ancient olmer 6 W 1 E

Research up the enchant tree. Each casting of claymen will get you 10 claymen - or 1/2 gem per clayman. Add further water boosters to make it even more cost effective.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Set to fire closest even with dom 7 I find the blue dragon generally manages against anything but heavy cav...because of his water magic he ends up with 18 defense which in combination with 18 prot and fear usually helps him avoid much damage against anything but elite independents. I've tested it, it's reliable expansion even with the heat scales which admittedly don't work incredibly well with the blue dragon...but you can't really take cold with agartha. If you get really unlucky with your start location and only end up with 2-3 crappy neighbors you do have a point in that you would end up not being able to make 7 ancient ones/turn. But it's not too big of a deal since the dragon is your crutch for early expansion; the ancient ones being decent is just an added benefit. I like the bless more long term for your marble oracles.

Still, you're right...it's kind of a forced match. MA Agartha just has a lot of trouble with early expansion.

Edit - gah just go with an awake risen oracle...seems a waste not to have a powerful death mage with agartha.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

The good thing about the agarthan castles is that cave cities have autocast darkness, which means that any of your recruitables will destroy whomever tries to invade it in the early/mid game. Very useful, though perhaps not good enough for the high cost and low prod.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Well, no one has picked up on it despite me dropping the hint several times. So I'll out and out state it:

For early game expansion under CBM, nothing (but nothing) beats a phoenix.

And agartha is a perfect fit. You don't want (or need) a lot of paths - you want scales. So something like an F4-6Ax. And for grins and giggles take H3.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Indeed :cool:

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Early expansion aside, what is your vision for agartha after that chris? The jazeppi/baalz concept of bloodstones to up earth income and strengthen all of your earth casters requires a pretender to hunt/forge. How would you play out agartha without that angle?

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

If you want to add blood to the phoenix you can do so. But the whole point of bloodstones is to add *earth gems*. Couple with ready made dwarven hammers...at the very least agartha isn't hurting for earth gems.

The strategy, to my mind depends a lot on whether or not you are in a fixed start with water, and how many other water nations are in the game.

With water, you are going to want to send a 2w/1n (at the least) mage to find you free castles. And this is probably the single greatest and most profitable avenue for agartha. So much so that with fixed starts, and no/few water nations, I'd probably start with an ageless olm with nature.

Absent that, a phoenix is a solid choice. The problem is usually decried as getting to the middle game- the phoenix will get you there.

Generally speaking, I'd research Conj1, and prophetize a cavern wight and use him to raise the undead killed by my Death scale. And/or my phoneix explosions.

After that, its a gamble. Probably the way I would go would be to expand solely with my phoenix/prophet and thugs, relying on them till I researched up to umbral. Ie I don't think I'd build a national troop, plowing it instead into forts and mages.

Although you could add blood to the pretender... I wouldn't.
All of your mages are sacred. If you add death, things like blade wind, and rain of stones, seeking arrow, flames from affar now *afflict*. Plus its a good segue into tartarians.

one other little tiny secret: give your phoenix reinvigoration items. As long as you don't die the final death - you will keep them through each phoenix reincarnation.

Adding 13 to his rinvigoration and scripting hold x5, boots the median respawns from 2.5 to somewhere from 5-7 depending on the whether your pretender has awe, andn his stats.

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Ok, so you're advocating advancing the conjuration path rather than enchantment, going for wights/umbrals rather than the statues. Compeltely different strategy, interesting. I'm not sure what strengths of agartha you are utilising there though? wights/umbrals aren't anything special, golem cult dominion and darkvision are pretty much all agartha has going for it that I'm aware of

I wonder if a strategy could be built around rushing up construction and generating an astral income to build and thug out heaps of normal golems.. they are the most useful construct normally afterall...

As an aside, how can a median not be a whole number of respawns? ;)

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

{3, 6, 9, 10} is your ordered data set. There is no "middle" element so you find the average between the items next to where the middle element would be.

6+9 = 15/2 = 7.5 <= median is not a whole # of respawns!

Jazzepi

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Ok, sure, I suppose - but this isn't theoretically a limited data set of 4 points. Surely mean would be a more useful measure?

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Probably! Mean is offset by outliers more than median is, but the dataset is so small it makes more sense.

That said, I was just answering the question that you asked ;)

Jazzepi

Re: Getting the max out of MA Agartha
 

Umbrals are probably the *best* thing agartha has going for it. Better in ea than ma.. but still

I don't have dominions on this computer, however... as I recall they are a pathetically simple summon 1E1D? And cheap.

This is one of the reasons I think add N4 on your pretender is preferable to blood. Site searching, GOH, Gift of Reason. Poison alternatives, (which also work underwater).

Now they are perfectly valid as troops - but if you do GoR them they are great thug chassis..

68 Hpish, ethereal, magic weapons, full slots as I recall.