MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Agartha is a challenging nation to play because of their stark contrasts. They have both obvious strong strengths and obvious crippling weaknesses, to successfully play them one must be able to effectively leverage the former while getting around the latter. Properly balanced though, MA Argatha has everything needed to be a dominating power. The way I like to think about it, fighting Argatha should feel like fighting with a mountain. All you accomplish is bloody knuckles and winding yourself. Now, just to head this off at the pass I’ve got no interest in arguing who came up with what ideas as some of this has been discussed in a recent thread, this is my take on a comprehensive strategy for MA Argatha and there’s probably not an idea in here that a dozen people haven’t had before. This guide is geared towards CBM.

The most obvious weakness is their national troops. They just plain suck, and by default will struggle against even indies. This is a bit of an exception for a nation with giants, but the ancient one’s low attack and size 4 coupled with a dinky little spear (which results in them dealing no more damage than a good human with a high damage weapon) makes their offense atrocious. They lack any archers whatsoever, the smaller pale ones are even worse than the big ones (an 8 attack!), and their human infantry is on par with indie infantry. Clearly these guys are not going to be winning any wars for you.

Now, the obvious choice in this situation is to take an awake pretender, and if you choose to go that route it’s a very tough sell to go with anything other than the risen oracle. The charms of this unit are obvious and well known so I won’t belabor them, but I also want to point out how terribly expensive that awesomeness is. 150 points, on first glance seems expensive but not that bad, thing is you have to consider the other costs. 1) Obviously you’ll want to start out awake. 2) The magic paths you get do nothing for your magic diversity, and new paths cost you 60 points. 3) Not only do the paths do nothing for your diversity, they don’t do much for your bless options. True, an earth bless could be nice, but specifically fire is a great blessing for Argatha, and a minor nature very nice. You can make it work with a risen oracle, but I think you can do better by focusing on Argatha’s strengths.

Consider a build like this: sleeping forge lord with F4 E4 S4 B4. Turmoil-3, Cold-3, Growth-3, Luck-3, Magic-1 with a 7 dominion. This is probably a bit counterintuitive and has some room for alteration to better align with whatever your playstyle is, but bear with me and I’ll explain the odd choices. First off, as you look at those scales realize I don’t plan on doing much with those crappy national troops. That blessing will turn the ancient ones into decent troops for assaulting enemy fortresses (out of your cold dominion, supported by other troops), but really the only concession I make to the troops is *not* taking sloth-3, and this is solely to give me at least some initial expansion.

Your initial expansion is going to be using your human infantry, and I’ll tell you right now it’s gonna be slow – probably the slowest in the game if everyone’s at the same skill level. This is the weakest part of Agartha’s game and I didn’t help it by gearing my design choices towards mid/late game power. Still, in sufficient numbers your infantry isn’t *that* bad, and without having sloth scales you can build up critical mass. It works a lot better if you resign yourself to a slow initial expansion and don’t try to send out expansion parties with less than critical mass. Those Agarthan light infantry actually do a pretty decent job against indies so long as they outnumber them.

Now, I’d like to talk about the first of my “controversial” design choices. Turmoil/luck. Plenty people feel like this is never a competitive choice, but I think this is the perfect situation to use it. Consider that you’re expanding slowly and probably avoiding the highest income (and best defended) territories, the primary advantage of taking an order scale initially is the income from your capital. While this is not inconsiderable, the income bonus from luck isn’t either. Additionally, Agartha has some very nice national heroes, a couple of which will greatly improve your initial expansion if you luck into them early, and will greatly compliment your magic diversity as they show up through the game. Finally, while gold is always very useful, this is a nation who can go a long way on a little gold, what you really want is gems. After your initial expansion you’re not going to be recruiting many troops at all, and while more golem crafters are always welcome they’re cheap and holy so you can field a respectable number of them on a modest gold income. This strategy is still viable if you decide to go with order/misfortune, but in this situation I prefer turmoil/luck.

So, in that light, it’s no surprise that I’m also going to say to get out there site searching early. Golem crafters make surprisingly good manual site searchers with an emphasis on what you need the most urgently - earth gems. Have a couple out site searching some mountains while everybody else researches enchantment and by the end of year one you’ll likely be sitting on a hundred E gems and closing in on ench-4. Now, as painful as it is you’re probably also going to want to overlap that site searching with an oracle of the ancients. This is terribly expensive for a manual D1 site search, but it’s the only way (unless you get that nice national hero early) to prime the pump for your remote site searching. After you land just one or two D sites pull him back and just research until dark knowledge is done. You’ve got fairly light access to D magic, but it’s enough to do your site searching and with the boosters you’re forging later on (more on that in a bit) you should certainly consider yourself a death power.

At this point you’ve expanded very slowly and the indies are running out, but your pretender has just awoke and you’ve got the first of your national summons available. At this point of the game a force of attentive statues (shields) and enlivened statues (heavy hitters) is very difficult for many nations to deal with. Avoid picking a fight with anybody fielding heavy air mages and there’s not a lot of effective combat spells against them at this level and they’re plenty tough enough to chew up most enemy troops when heavily outnumbered. You’ve also conveniently researched strength of giants which stacks on your blood and fire minor blessing, their high strength and good weapon to bring your sentinels up to 29 damage and a 13 attack…with a 22 protection and hitpoints pushing 50. Your attentive statues don’t have the same offense or hitpoints, but they do have a big old shield and are half the price, so they work nicely together. Granite guardians give you 50% more hitpoints than the sentinel for the price (2 sentinels for 1 guardian), but sacrifice half your offense, so they each have their uses. Very broadly you’ll want sentinels at first then switch to guardians as your golem crafters gain the research to be the damage dealers. Sentinels certainly have a role through the whole game though.

I’d like now to talk about another of my scale choices. Cold-3 seems a bit surprising at first given the cold blooded nature of some of your troops. But remember, we’re not using those troops! What we’re using is our summons who are encumbrance 0 and tough as hell. One of the angles we’re going to leverage is fatiguing out our enemies, and in addition to the simple fact that our constructs don’t care that they’re fighting in cold-3 nor take supplies we’re going to be using several things with cold auras. As far as your mages go, we’re going to be using your oracle of the ancient’s very sparingly, and it’s extremely cheap to stick a frost brand on any of them going into combat. Your golem crafters are going to be casting breath of winter (sense a theme yet?) so they don’t care. You can also go with cold resistance if you don’t want the cold aura because of other friendlies around. I wouldn’t take the cold-3 scale just for this angle, but it’s got great synergy as we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for the design points we need to get those paths on a sleeping forge lord while really needing to take a growth scale because of all our old mages.

One thing you want to pay special consideration with for MA Agartha is to avoid being a one trick pony, which is a tempting prospect at the point in the game that your opponent starts throwing kitchen sinks at those cheap juggernauts chewing tirelessly through their troops. The previous paragraph gives you a clue as to my first suggestion for a switchup, consider this cheap and early combo. One oracle of the ancients and a couple golem crafters with ten or so cavern wights. Golem crafters are equipped with frost brands, shields of beaten gold, and any cheap armor. Buff cycle includes support mages casting enough iron warriors to cover the wights (bonus: buffs the golem crafters to without needing the extra fatigue for a self buff), blessing, earthpower, invulnerability and breath of winter for the crafters while the oracle is buffing strength of giants, legions of steel, etc. The freezing effect stacks to nasty proportions as your enemy tries to chip away at these awesomely tough units. As your research/magic ability progresses you’ll probably want to switch to regular wights who can be summoned by a revenant with a skull staff and are useful in small enough squads (especially buffed like this!) to make sense to summon one at a time. Umbrals also make wonderful additions to this strategy, though you’ll have to be clever with your scripting to avoid them charging too far ahead of the slower infantry. Umbrals, with their hitpoints and life draining attack are quite fearsome buffed with iron warriors and the supporting cold auras are icing on the cake. You can also mix mechanical men in for further filling of these cold based squads.

This brings us to another thing which might not be obvious, your national ability which buffs golem’s hitpoints affects all constructs in the game, not just your national summons. This has several delicious implications, but probably my favorite is mechanical men. Why? Because while your sacred constructs are your big stone fist, mechanical men are your big metallic middle finger to foil most of the things your opponent scraped up to combat the other juggernauts you’ve been fielding. Lighting? Middle finger. Frozen heart/incinerate? Middle finger. Dust to dust? Middle finger. There’s precious few spells which do squat to these fabulous troopers, and they’ll obviously be buffed with strength of giants and weapons of sharpness so who the heck wants to engage them in melee when their hitpoints are doubled? Use them as bodyguards (buffed, of course) for those golem crafter’s wearing something like: frost brand, golden shield, fire helm/chestplate, ring of tamed lighting (haha, your frostbrand also benefits from that weapons of sharpness you cast for the mechanical men!). Solo golem crafter thugs are a bit dicey, but fortunately there’s no reason at all to use them like that and with any of their several good choices for uber-tough bodyguards these guys are plenty nasty and immune to almost everything.

Light thuggin’ is actually a side note for these awesomely cost efficient golem crafter though. As you’ve no doubt noticed from some of the things I’ve mentioned so far, we’re obviously going to focus on construction research fairly early. This is very important for your golem crafters, because without any boosters you’re going to struggle to see them as much more than solid earth mages. Once you start leveraging the wonderful world of boosters though your golem crafters go from ‘nice’ to ‘top of the line’. Now, of course, is when I gush over my choice of a forge lord pretender and explain why I think he’s an even better choice than the more flashy risen oracle.

Your forge lord, obviously, is intended to crank out blood stones at first. With a dwarven hammer he can pop out a bloodstone for 2E + 3 slaves. This is fabulous, because not only do you obviously not have any national blood hunters, I think I mentioned how urgently you need to start cranking out earth summons early on. With your forge lord doing the forging though there’s never a contention between blood stones and summons, the stones pay for themselves in two turns! Also, with such a low blood slave requirement it’s perfectly possible to have the forge lord himself bloodhunt then forge several bloodstones from that one turn’s bloodhunting. Obviously as you get established it’s a better idea to have some scouts provide the bloodslaves as your pretender has so many other things you want him to do, but this can be a powerful jumpstart as you’re hitting that critical beginning of the second year and everything starts happening at once. As the game goes on and you reach a more stable income in earth and slaves leverage your forgelord to forge super cheap blood boosters and pass off the bloodstone forging to another mage so we can put the forgelord to other uses. Initially though, just consider how much of a boost it is to go from a (purely theoretical) 10 E income to a 20 E income in the first year. Considering the leverage you get on E gems, that right there practically justifies the forge lord – you’ve doubled the amount of troops you’re fielding.

I suggest using earth readers for your secondary bloodstone forgers – stick one of those blood stones on them, two blood boosters and a blood empower and you don’t have to worry about sticking boots of youth on them to protect your empowering investment (they’re not old). This is actually another point I wanted to briefly mention – earth readers are *fabulously* cost efficient support mages once you start swimming in bloodstones. Why use a 200 gold golem crafter for those staple buffs (blessing, legions of steel, strength of giants, iron warriors, etc.) when a 90 gold (holy!) earth reader will do? Your upkeep will thank you if you add these guys to your mix, and heck, you need somebody to hold your bloodstones anyway, right? Remember, one of the sacrifices I made in this build is a significantly below average income so you’ll need to be very mindful of your upkeep costs. Thankfully, most of your troops are upkeep free summons and all your national mages are holy (and everything except the oracle is cheap) so you’ve got a lot working in your favor.

So, what other things are we going to use our forgelord for now that we’ve got apprentices handling the bloodstones? One of the first obvious things is fire helms. These boosters are usually too expensive to make it to general line mage use, but your forge lord can pop them out for 5f with a hammer. That extra level of fire pops your golem crafters up to phoenix power, so it really opens up a lot of fire options. Also, I have to be honest, there’s one item in particular which I had in mind for this forge lord – a crystal shield (for 2e + 2s!). You’ve got several flame helms, lots of water bracelets, are swimming in blood stones and a rack full of crystal shields…I think maybe you’re starting to see the potential of the golem crafters? Now in addition to this realize that forge lord can pop out a ring of wizardry for 12 pearls. So, it’s not really all that difficult to get several (flame helm + phoenix power + crystal shield + ring of wizardry) 5F (bracelet + robe + shield + ring) 5W guys….or ‘merely’ level 4 without even splurging the 12 pearls on the ring. In actuality you’re probably not going to put the fire and water boosters on the same guy most of the time, but the point is you’ve got no problem whatsoever having a powerful fire and/or water mage for any battle you care to.

One consequence of this is that grip of winter is an obvious goto spell. This spell works wonderfully with your sacred statues even though they’re not cold resistant because they’ve got that reinvig from your blessing and aren’t accumulating fatigue from combat. They’ll gain a little bit of fatigue, but the effect on your enemy will be much more drastic, and obviously this works like peas and carrots with your cold aura troops. This is particularly true when you add rigormortis to the mix. Skull staff + ring of sorcery + 2 D gems on a simple revenant. This should also be a standard goto spell, your mages have enough reinvig to be plenty resistant. What’s this? Oh, we’ve also got easy access to rune smashers, S1 indie mages are usually not too much of a problem to round up for void eyes and we’ve got tons of powerful earth mages and earth boosters so let’s spam curse of stones from a couple mages and see what happens. One word – amusing. Oh, well a couple more words I guess – the enemy can’t even run away when they start routing so you’re looking at probably close to 100% casualties. One thing to be mindful of - be careful not to get in a situation where you can’t kill all the enemy before the turn limit expires or your mindless statues will all die. Not generally a problem though with the damage outlay you’ve got. Now, just as your opponent thinks he’s got a handle on this, switch this up to use heat from hell and summon some fire elementals to bolster your mechanical men to…you guessed it, give the big middle finger to those cold immune troops/SCs who thought they were going to give you a problem. Don’t try to cast both heat from hell and grip of winter though, they cancel each other out!

Another spell you’re going to add to the regular mix is quickness. You’ll be cranking out the water bracelets, and having 2 or 3 crafters spamming quickness while others drop weapons of sharpness & strength of giants and there is absolutely *nothing* which is going to want to engage your 0 encumbrance guys in melee. Problem is, they probably don’t have a choice. Quickening is an obvious upgrade for the end of the game, but certainly don’t neglect the much earlier quickness, with the smaller size squads you’ll be using, 3 golem crafters can cover a lot of ground. Plus, of course, they then switch to other nasty stuff to rain down for the rest of the fight after the buff cycle.

With all the love I’ve been giving to alteration, don’t for a second forget that your golem crafters are top shelf direct damage dealers. Not really much reason to put any boosters other than a blood stone on them for this, from blade wind to magma eruption these guys are supercharged from your E bless and summon earthpower to keep going like the energizer bunny. In some situations though you might want to switch up to the fire and water evocations, particularly when you’re leaning on your mechanical men (no friendly fire). Also don’t neglect the obvious vector – earthquakes. High hitpoint, high protection units and ubiquitous strong earth mages, this spells is great for everything from snatching those enemy mages from the back row to exploding that undead hoard who thought to counter your uber-fatigue strategy with sheer numbers.

Now, here’s another bit of nastiness from your bag of tricks- clockwork horrors. These are some underappreciated units in my mind, and even better with double hitpoints. They’re size 1 with two attacks apiece, which means each block of them attacks 12 times – but you can hit 6 of them with an aoe-1 spell, so quickness comes right to mind. Try this recipe on for size: Take a couple dozen clockwork horrors. Use your pretender to create a golem (who make even more excellent heavy raiders than usual because of your dominion). Nab one of the ubiquitous N1 indie mages who’s got a ring of sorcery (8 pearls from your pretender) and a thistle mace. Finally mix in half a dozen golem crafters with water bracelets. Most golem crafters cast quickness, nature mage drops a haste, while one golem crafter casts strength of giants and the last one casts….iron bane. Each square of clockwork horrors will charge straight across the battlefield in one turn and attack 24 times dealing 16 damage each attack to the now naked opposition. If you’re facing guys with magic armor (SC/thugs) swap out iron bane for weapons of sharpness. The golem, what’s he for? Hold, hold, hold, hold, vortex of returning. Vortex of returning + clockwork horrors is a fabulous combo.

Golems actually fill a number of important rolls for MA Argatha. Battle fortune is an easily accessible doubling of your already retardedly tough guys staying power (perfect for smaller squads), and with your reliance on mindless units why not stack an astral tempest to the rest of the nasty battlefield enchantments you’re dropping? Antimagic is a great buff when your opponent gets annoyed at your immunity to everything else. Finally, with a cap, coin and ring you’re up to a versatile S5 adding astral travel (use leadership boosters) to the threat vector your opponent must fear (consider those clockwork horrors dropping out of the clear blue sky….). Astral travel actually bears special consideration as it allows you to enter critical fights straight from your strongest dominion, and thus highest hitpoints. Gateway gives you much earlier flexibility to jump around and recharge your lifeless constructs into your strong dominion. Just because you don’t have any national mages who can summon them, don’t forget this is the *golem* cult!

As I mentioned, you can leverage into nature pretty easily. N1 -> ring of sorcery -> haurespex (yeah luck-3 to prime the pump) -> ring of sorcery -> ring of wizardry -> ivy kings, fairy queens, etc. D1 -> dark knowledge -> ring of sorcery -> skull staff -> mound fiends, etc. So, you should have a good income and strong mages in water, fire, nature, death, astral and retarded strong earth power. Fairy queens can get you a touch of air, and you’ll ignore blood other than pumping every slave you scrape up into bloodstones.

Now, as you round into the late game you are going to have some good uses for your oracles. Ever had 10 earth attacks dropped on you ever turn indefinitely? This is arguably the best assassination spell in the game with not a whole lot you can do to counter it other than swarms of decoy commanders. Crumble and wizard’s tower along with a very strong earth income will let you dictate castle control. Petrify is good. A whole lot of petrify is great.

Marble oracles are good in an obvious way. You’ll use them, I don’t have anything particularly interesting to point out about them. Likewise, darkness is almost too obvious to mention, but don’t forget about it.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

You just had to do it...
I have to tell you I'm a little surprised to see a forge lord instead of a rainbow mage. :)

Like the guide very much, especially the blood stones part. But still there's a very good chance of being eliminated in the first 20 turns.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

I did not notice that the forge lord has a 50% forge bonus in CBM until I read this guide...good to know, certainly ups his usefulness...with a dwarven hammer the price he can forge things for is amazing.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Very nice.

Though, your guide has the same thing that keeps bugging me with MA Agartha every time. The research is just all over the place. When normal nations can concentrate on few paths, Agartha has Ench, Alt, Const, Evo and Conj for its go-to spells...

...or then I just need to sleep a bit before reading so much text.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

the thing is, most of these tactics seem to demand a fair amount of research, and/or gem income for items. however, MA Agartha's problems are not that the mid-game is too difficult for them, but to survive and prosper in the early game; especially w/ having a giant target painted over top.

I'm not sure how having prod 0 for their esteemed mm 1 hvy inf is going to be sufficient to protect them...

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

What? No props for the B4 bloodstone factory Forgelord idea? :O

Jazzepi

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

You don't even need B4, as by the time you can actually build secondary stone forgers, you'll be able to forge yourself a Ring of Sorcery. I haven't looked at the points, but that might buy you a scale, maybe get you to Turmoil2.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Heh, despite my disclaimer that I don't claim to have come up with any of these ideas myself, I will admit there was a bit of teeth grinding as you posted this straight out of the written portion but as yet unpublished guide I was putting together. ;)

The B4 blessing is not inconsiderable, and as long as you're going to B3, the points to get an extra +2 strength on your sentinels is worthwhile. It really adds up when you look at battle after battle.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

I guess great minds think alike?

If you're going to turn your forgelord into something other than just a blood stone ***** (BSB), I would consider dropping the silliness of all those high level paths. Give him S3, F1, E2, B3. Forge boots, a hammer,a crystal coin, a starshine skullcap, then you can push out the next two levels of rings from there. Personally, I don't know where you're going to get all this astral from. With no natural mages, you better hope you find some lizard shamans. Not that you can afford to dump a temple + lab into an empty province with such bad scales ;)

To me, Argatha is a lot like Ulm, but with national mages who don't happen to have a forge bonus. I wouldn't even bother trying to get secondary bloodstone mages up, I would focus exclusively on making the forge lord your sole source of bloodstone forging.

But I think I'll get in on a CBM MA game with Argatha, and see how I do.

Jazzepi

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

When I was trying (and failing) to hammer out a guide for Agartha, probably the most fun I had was with golem crafters on the field behind the golems. You've got the earth/water/fire for all the rust/acid spells which don't faze your armorless summons in the case of friendly fire and even the 16ish AP of acid rain isn't really that detrimental to your mid to high 20 prot. On top of this, I've found it brutally effective to hold the line with attentive statues, break down the armor with rust/acid spells and then finish up with that old chestnut blade wind. Your high prot statues will laugh it off but whatever they're holding in place(who've recently had their armor nuked) won't be laughing long.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Again, I don't think you should underestimate the benefit of the minor blessings to your holy statues. +2 attack means that awesome damage gets delivered *much* more often. +1 MR helps against the biggest threats you'll have to face through most of the game. +2 strength really adds a significant amount against ultra-heavy opposition, and the 2 reinvig not only helps your mages (significantly) it makes quite a difference in fielding your non-cold immune troops under grip of winter, etc. Those points you're paying for the blessing, not for the forging.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

I don't know, I think it's easy to mistake a wealth of options for a large amount of requirements. With just moderate ench you're fielding strong enough units to carry you through the early game with no real support. This carries you through the construction phase of your research where you're not really gaining immediately useful stuff, then by the time you're getting into the midgame where you need something more than unsupported statues you start dropping weapons of sharpness & mechanical men, strength of giants was already picked up on the way to getting the sacred statues. At this point your bloodstones are starting to pile up and you can decide what you expect to face in the near future and either go down evocation or alteration, either path giving you a very strong hand without the immediate support of the other. The way I see it, you've got a lot of great stuff but you don't desperately need it all up front...it's just a steady building of your power curve.

I also don't think that you really need to worry too much about fighting a war with your infantry. How early are you realistically going to have to fight in earnest? Maybe if you get heavily rushed you'll loose a couple provinces stalling to get to ench-4, but I can't imagine you'd have to defend your capital before you have had a chance to spend a turn or two dumping the gems you've been site searching for into 20+ sacred statues which will stop almost any rush dead. No doubt, as I mentioned the very early game is by far MA Argatha's weakest time and an aggressive rush is almost certainly a bad thing, but I think there are much softer targets I'd be considering rushing if I was the rusher.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

I think the strategy is fairly sound in terms of building a solid army of golems with earth support, but I'm concerned that the gems and research needed for any diversity will be very difficult to achieve..

It is difficult to build up a decent fire or water income and extremely difficult to gather much astral. Mechanical men are very useful in giving some elemental resistance but they are way down the research tree.

What does agartha do in the mid game against elemental evocations? Especially when on the attack without your dominion giving extra HP, I can imagine sitting in high dominion they might survive, but dom 7 will mean very little if any push past your boundaries, and you are definitely a target for dominion push, without the gold to fight back effectively. An enemy doesn't have to domkill you, just drop it enough for the golems to be weakened, then hit with area effect evocs.

How can it counter flying/stealth raiders?

It really does seem to be a one-trick pony without the path diversity to really change that. Yes having the forge lord makes things a lot cheaper, but when you start talking about equipping a heap of mages.. and to get an earth reader forging bloodstones how much blood do you have to gather using either your pretender or scouts?

I do like the destruction/iron bane with blade storm combo, that is very viable, as is earthquake. Magma eruptions yes. Anything requiring heavy fire/water/astral I don't think is highly feasible until very late game, if you survive that long.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Nah, I think you're thinking about the dominion bonus the wrong way. A bonus is exactly what it is, your units are straight up good without it and only get better from there. Mechanical men are *merely* as good as what other people can summon when out of your dominion for a length of time - hardly worthless. They certainly don't stop being useful. Your "do not heal" constructs such as your national summons carry that hitpoint bonus until they take the damage, so unless your opponent is piling their own bodies up to wear you down you're really only counting "real" battles, not turns out of dominion. I also think it's a mistake to confuse not being immune with being vulnerable to elemental evocations. Yeah, as I mention lighting is a problem early on as it is with any small concentrated group of units - heck, that's exactly what lighting is best at. Outside of that though....how many falling frosts is it going to take to drop the 22 protection 50 hitpoints guys? How exactly is the fact that they can be brought down by powerful enemy mages with access to the right spells any different than every other unit in the game? I also think you overestimate the hurdle you're facing here. If, as I suggest, you focus tightly on construction research after a brief time in ench, how long is it until you get to constr-7? Varies of course, but outside of rough luck should be by midgame when you're facing any real concentration of enemy evocations. I also don't think its that difficult at all (with this setup) to get the fire and water mages. You're site searching early with 1f 1w h1 mages, so you'll almost certainly line up a couple sites (holy -> astral income) while you're playing with luck-3 in a positive magic scale so gem income events are extremely common. With that in mind, how high is the bar to clear 5f (flame helm), 2S + 2E (crystal shield) for a total of 9 gems to get to F4 with phoenix power? You scarcely need to outfit all your mages like this, just outfitting a couple per year from your pretender will give you all the big fire you want. Water is a bit more expensive, but hardly prohibitive. For one, with your luck 3 scales it's quite likely you'll get a couple of the Great Olm national heroes who will commonly net you W3-4 with no further effort, and also likely you'll net some of those big water gem income events. Outside of that, you just B-lined to const-6, so water braclets are a no branier, a ring of wizardry for 12 pearls is a deal even if you have to alchemize 24 other gems for it, and with another crystal shield you're up to W4 for under 20 gems (assuming you didn't have to alchemize). Again, that's hardly a high bar when you're talking about scraping those gems together over half a year.

True, you're not going to have amazing fire, water or astral incomes, but neither do you have amazing output requirements. Everything you're doing is uber efficient and you scarcely need tons of big fire/water mages, just one for each major army is plenty.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Actually your searching for H3, at least initially, since you're overlapping with an Ancient Oracle. Also, I posted in the other thread, but Cave forts/cities have autocast Darkness when they're stormed, so that Agarthan LI can be pretty vicious in defending them, not to mention your statues, Umbrals, or whatever else you have in there.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Do cave forts actually do that now? I thought it was still broken.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

I just don't think it's necessary. It feels too narrow to me. I'd rather have more troops on the field, then less troops that are slightly better. Also, if all your golem crafters have W1, there's no reason to worry about the 2 reinvig off of the bless when you can simply script them to cast cold resistance, and you can forge 3 gem (with hammer) rings of cold resistance for the few oracles you might want to field in a battle. IMO, the statues aren't going to be fatigued a significant amount to even make it worth worrying about. Obvious 0 fatigue is better than 10 fatigue, but the difference isn't by much. The +2 reinvig bless is the only one I would really consider worth while out of all of them since it makes it easier for your mages to spam spells when combined with summon earth power.

To make my point I compared the magic paths you posted above to the ones that I did. To pay for the bless you're advocating it costs 152 more points then the build I pointed out, which is 3.8 ticks on the scale chart (I'm sure you can work 4 ticks out of it total by fiddling with dominion).

At the end of the day I'd rather have better scales, then a minor bless.

Jazzepi

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Unless the indies you're looking for are usually plentiful N1, I don't think any major tactic which requires you finding indies (especially without the appropriate path to start with) is really optimal. That said, a trickle of gems will be enough to get forging going with the costs so low.

Agartha has got expensive secondary options accessing astral magic via death summons (Spectres often seem to crop up with S random) or empowerment (alchemising plentiful E gems if necessary) if indies are unavailable.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

I agree mostly, but here are some more tricks to make it less painful early on.

Under CBM Legions of steel is construction 1. If you go for that right away and try to send an oracle with some of your expansion parties you can cut your losses a great deal. Divine blessing also gives all your troops +2 morale. You also have strength of giants coming up next to add into the mix before you´re done expanding

Your medium and heavy infantry has kite shields with parry 6 (compared to 4 for LI) Just buying a few of them as arrow catchers isn´t a bad use for leftover resources. They are also slow, your light infantry will run past them into melee and keep them alive longer.

Your sacreds might not be that good but they are dirt cheap(for 40hp sacreds), just 40 gold. They average 15 prot with legions of steel and hit for 27 damage with bless+strength of giants. Mixed with size 2 light infantry they can add some punch and meat against tougher indies. Mixed with Attentive statues they can expand under water.

If you´re attacked really early don´t forget Armor of achilles spammable by your earth readers behind a few attentive statues. Add in some indie archers and you can deal with many elites. There are other low level spells worth looking at as well. Dessication, earth meld, slime, geyser...

Massed archers behind statues and destruction spam is a great and cheap option as well.

Your pretender is capable of the following trick in certain situations: Teleport on top of something, place in the rear, cast Horror mark(or astral geyser)/call horror/call horror/returning. Requires only blood 1, thau 3, 3 slaves and 5 pearls. Only do it if you are out of options and sure what you´re fighting, there are many counters. Still a useful surprise. Can also be used to pick of that odd leftover indie out of range of your troops (take it with a scout).

When you can´t afford oracles, which is quite often, and have some other forts to buy golem crafters, why not turn your capital into a battlefield thug factory? Ancient lords are just 60 gold for 44hp and full slots. Just a golden shield and a frost brand and he´s ready to join the statue front lines. With hammers thats just 9 gems, and you should have lots of hammers. The can also be adapted easily to your enemy. What about 10 of these with fire plates and bells of cleansing sprinkled along your front line against abysia for example?

I wish there was a way to add a n4 bless into this build, that would give us:
*Stronger nature access (like gift of health stacking with dombonus for statues)
*Old diseased mages would heal in battle or use shrouds.
*Dirt cheap nature items.
*Ancient lords more thuggable, less afflictions on oracles and Ancient ones a lot more worthwhile(especially under water against all those poisoned spears)

I´d Consider dom6 turmoil3 cold3 growth2 luck3 magic1 and f4 e4 s2 n4 b4.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Sounds nice but I'm wondering if a good bless wouldn't be better. I don't have a proposition yet though..

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

EA has better bless prospects due to recruitable anywhere Sacreds. MA wants to tailor the bless for their statues (thought I argue N4 really is a powerful tool for MA Agartha), and there's almost nothing that works well with them.

Fire - Minor is a no brainer, Major won't play well with geared Oracles.
Air - No seriously? Major has niche use, can't imagine worth the points, and Minor is a joke for Agartha.
Water - Minor is nearly useless on such low Def units, Major could be fun, but is a weak path for Agartha to invest so many points into.
Earth - Minor is excellent for mages, Major is no good for statues.
Astral - Minor is good for statues, Major will largely be wasted on Oracles who will want more than 18MR.
Nature - Minor is great for recruitables, and for path access, Major would be silly.... can Mindless Constructs go Berserk...?
Death - Minor could be powerful, but it makes Earthquakes dangerous to you as well, Major is also bad for geared Oracles.
Blood - Minor could be alright, Major, no.

So really taking into account the entire picture, the ONLY Major bless that even makes any sense for MA would be W9, but it's hard to justify the expense for that. That is, unless statues can Berserk, in which case, running an N9 could almost be worth it, as Berserking would turn these critters into juggernauts.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Good guide Baalz.

However, I would like to point out a fatal flaw with this Ma Agartha guide and that is Ma Caelum. If I was playing Ma Caelum and was next door to a Ma Agartha with cold 3 and lots of statues I would be laughing all the way to Ma Agarthas capital and that very pleasent E income it has.

Lightning will wipe the floor with most of the golem cult and the mechanical men will be defeated easily by Caelums troops in cold 3 dominion.

So if you use the build you after be very friendly with Caelum, hope its not in the game or starting along way from you. Even other nations like Eriu, Vanheim, Man and T'ien Ch'i may well fancy there chances in the early to mid game vs this Ma Agartha build. Also, Jotunheim may do okay with its CR and heavy hitting power.

Ma Agartha has a hard time of it in the Ma, as there are so many nations in the same age as you that can exploit the one dimensional nature of Ma Agartha.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

The main problem I see with this strategy is absolute lack of mobility. All that constructs and mages (except golems, but golems alone can't win the game for you) will be just crawling around, while majority of nations can easily outrun them. Who wants to fight that stone park if one can just avoid it with flighting/teleporting/stealthy/remote stuff until it'd be possible to destroy it with a proper SC? And if you want to push your mobility, you'd have to trade/alchemize/invest most of your E income.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Interesting. Both Brilliance and Darkness can help Agartha. Darkness due to darkvision - and brilliance because Blindness affects agartha less than others, since they hit so badly all ready...

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

How do you blind a statue?

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

well... first you make him very very angry....

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Do statues' afflictions get healed when they visit a friendly lab, along with their HPs? Also, you'd think that statues would be blind...

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

If a statue with boosted hit points wanders into enemy dominion he keeps his HP because he doesn't heal, as baalz stated. Should you capture an enemy province with a lab, would his hit points then drop back to their base amount?

That would be a cunning trap, seed a lab into a province to be invaded, then attack the weakened army

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Hmmmm, I'm curious Meglobob, what do you have in mind to field as Caelum against mechanical men with a couple golem crafters for support that so dominates them? To be sure, there's not much you can do against heavy lightning until you get there, which is one of the reasons it's your second target (and I can't really think of any reasonable way to do much before that point). Once you make it there though I actually think it's Caelum who's going to be hard core struggling in major fights even in cold-3 (raiding is, of course, a Caelum advantage against many nations). Mechanical men and weapons of sharpness are kind of implied to mostly be used together along with strength of giants, so those mechanical men are hitting for 22 AP damage, with a 14 defense, 18 protection and (in dominion) hitpoints in the teens while being immune to every spell Caelum can drop. Meanwhile the golem crafters (holding lighting rods to keep from being picked off as the only valid lighting targets) are relatively shortly coming online with magma eruptions/earthquakes or destruction/iron bane which the Caelum troops most definitely are *not* immune to, quickness is starting to be dropped on those mechanical men and rigormortis + penetration boosted curse of stones doesn't really need the grip of winter to cripple those high encumbrance flying heavies. What did you have in mind?

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Nope, for the lifeless units the hitpoints only ever go down from taking damage. They go up any turn they're at a friendly lab, the amount determined by your dominion (no bonus in a hostile one).

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

post the most agarthan fan fic you got itt

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Not entirely true. The big problem is that your mages are map move 1, your constructs and undead summons are (I believe) universally map move 3. If you spread your castles around your territory and thus have mages close to anywhere you need them, you can shuffle boosters/etc. around instantly in the labs to get what you need around. To move your units around is as easy as sticking a crown of command on...oh anything with good movement will do, a mound king has a movement of 4 and only costs 3 gems. True, you're always going to limp around your slow mages a bit, but cleverly deployed you certainly aren't 'crawling around' and 'easily outrun'. As to flying/teleporting/raiding stuff, a couple people have mentioned that. This is almost too easy - you've got golem crafters *everywhere* and boosters coming out your ears. Depends on what exactly is raiding you of course, but weapons of sharpness + strength of giants + legions of steel will sharply adjust peoples assessment of your PD. Bloodstone + earth boots + summon earth power = petrify. Drop weapons of sharpness first and that raiding SC is now paralyzed and being hacked with AP weapons. Blade wind, destruction, magma eruption....just sprinkle a couple of your golem crafters around scripted appropriately behind your PD and there's not much you have to worry about WRT raiding... Oh, and just one or two golems in your stable and you've got incredibly solid anti-raiders ready to drop. Later on earth attack is fabulous in this capacity.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

[quote=Fantomen;684194]You make a lot of very good points Fantomen, but though I agree a nature component would be very nice (and I tried to figure out how to squeeze one in myself) realize you're giving up rings of wizardry for 13 pearls with this build. That one item opens up so much versatility. I also find that adding more paths to the forge lord doesn't really scale as much as it initially seems like it would. Dirt cheap nature items seem nice until you realize that to forge one you're giving up a ring of wizardry or a crystal shield or a fire helm or a blood stone or a golem or...well, the point is you always have several very good potential uses for the forge lord every single turn which dilutes the advantage of more options. Not worthless to be sure, but each extra path has a diminishing return with an increasing relative cost. Still, a reasonable person could certainly go with your suggested build.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Lightning [orb lightning], Lightning [orb lightning], Lightning [orb lightning], retreat.

On the rare times that caelum loses, he's trading gold pieces for the gems required for agartha's summons.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

aren't mechanical men shock resistant?

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Yes they are are 100% resistant to lightning, fire, posion and cold. However, one of there weaknesses (surprised no one said it) is they are size 2. No doubt caelum will have alot of expensive mammoths who after the expansion phase (or during) would love nothing more than to trample some size 2 mechanical men into the ground. Even with 16 hps from golem cult those mechanical men will be crushed, sure you will lose alot of mammoths but you want to lose them before mid game anyway because of the expensive upkeep.

Also, does weapons of sharpness make the weapons magical or does it just give armour piercing? If it does not make the mechanical mens broadsword magical then body ethereal on mammoths or caelum protection 20-22 (in cold 3) iceclads will defeat those mechanical men. Caelum can also bring quickness and luck to the party without any real effort.

Also, when spamming lightning doesn't the AI account for SR 100% and avoid targeting those, so would instead target those mages of yours? Not completely sure on this one, I am constantly forgetting and remembering Dominions rules.

Remember, everything I have said Caelum can do is gold recruitable. Pretty much everything you want Ma Agartha to do is via earth gems. You will run out of earth gems alot faster than Caelum runs out of gold.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Probably yes, since Baalz mentioned you have to forge lightning resistance items for the mages. Iron Rods are cheap, though.

Good points about mammoths and high-prot troops, although the protection Baalz's Agartha can deal with. Strength of Giants, Weapons of Sharpness, Acid spells, Armor of Achilles/Destruction, etc.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Seeking Arrow is good against Agartha if you're not seeing Ancient Oracles in the field. It's pretty painful for Agartha to watch an army of his Mechanical Men evaporate because his mages got turned into pincushions. You can sacrifice a scout in Agarthan territory and attack the province with orders to Holdx5 at the back; that's enough time for all the Mech men to die.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Ah, yes, you missed one twist I suggested which is giving your golem crafters lightning rods to keep them from being picked off as the only valid targets for lightning spells. 100% shock resistance for your whole army. I thought you might be thinking about mammoths as they're really the only thing MA Caelum has a prayer of fielding effectively, but there are also quite a few mammoth counters available to MA Argatha along the paths of research I'm suggesting. They're not completely shut down, to be sure, but it's still going to be a struggle for Caelum I think.

Crushers are size 6 and just a couple are a brick wall that mammoths will never break through by themselves. They'll have an in dominion hitpoints over 200 so anything less than massive lightning spam will take many rounds to blast them down from long range while the flying mammoths hold still for point blank magma blasts (or simply magma bolts if it's a small number buffed by gift of flight). Heck actually if you're trying to take the crushers down with lighting its a pretty tough combo to do flying mammoths at the same time because your mammoths are going to take significant friendly fire. Against large number of non-flying mammoths penetration boosted curse of stones is going to utterly dominate them - I'd bet 40 mammoths wouldn't make it through moderate PD against this spell to get to the mechanical men holding to get buffed from the back row - particularly if you hold a few bottles of living water (ice elementals!), summon a couple fire elementals, hit them with a couple prisons of fire, pelt them with massive magma blasts, and/or stack on rigormortis - which is what you're looking at by the time we're talking about mass flight. If you feel like getting your pretender involved horrors are another fabulous mammoth counter, both sending and calling. If you can line up some rings of tamed lightning (scarcely a tough trade proposition) stick a rat tail whip (+3 animal awe) along with a blood thorn (he's gaining life) on a marble oracle (don't forget a ring of frost to!) and you've got practically an all-in-one anti-caelum silver bullet (heheh, he's a holy avenger to, extra nice against the mammoths). Oh, that reminds me, simple smite spam from several oracle of the ancients will stop moderate mammoth action dead.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

*slaps forehead* I can't believe I forgot to mention this when I intended to emphasize it. Acid has *awesome* synergy with MA Argatha. Why? Because it is AP and there is no way to gain a resistance to it. It also destroys armor just like destruction. This means that that the only thing that helps is to have high natural procection, no non-magic armor you care about, and high hitpoints. Argatha has....all of that! Vitriols are awesome and should be staple troops, and acid rain is like falling fires + destruction in one spell than nobody is immune to, but the apple of my eye is acid storm. 4 AP doesn't sound like all that much, but the important thing here is that it destroys armor, so that 4 AP attack is only blocked by natural protection the second time it hits. This adds up *fast* to anybody without very high natural protection. It also (unlike iron bane) destroys the armor on a battlefield wide scale without it having to be hit in melee first. Think about charging into blade wind spam with no armor or shield. How long does it take to chip away at those sacred statues again? ;)

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Thanks for another great guide. Althrough it's kind of disappointing that all recent guides are assuming the use of CBM, so those who play vanilla have to re-check every given strategy before trying the nation in MP.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Just play CBM! Why would you not want to?

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

CBM is like LateX.

First you find it hard and difficult to understand. Then you take it up due to peer pressure. After a while, you're so addicted you think there's no alternative. In the end, you start pressuring others to use it too.

CBM is like smoking.

First you think it smells and makes you feel bit queasy. Then you take it up due to peer pressure. After a while, you're so addicted you think there's no alternative. In the end, you start pressuring others to use it too.

(disclaimer: I've played with and without CBM. Used LateX for years. Never smoked regularly)

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Vanilla is comfortable. You know how it works, you know when it doesn't. CBM is a weird beast. It's unknown. It's Here Be Dragons and Exploding Phoenixes. It's scary. I've tried and it is in fact pretty nice, but it's still not familiar.

That said, there's no reason not to use the SCALES portion, and the PRETENDERS portion is pretty awesome too. You don't have to change the spells if you don't want to, you can download the mod in separate parts.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

[quote=Baalz;684311]ROW are s6. s2 + cap + coin + ROS = dang! 1 level short. But surely this can be overcome? Either scrape together the points for s3 (ditch a scale? or blood bless? or dominion?) or scape up the 45 pearls for an empowerment (alchemy worth it?) or get first to the artifacts and one of the unique s boosters.(hmm seems like there is just the dimensional rod without air = bad option)

Another cool thing about nature and agartha is the Treelord. Normally not a good use of nature gems but in CBM they are 35 gems and you will do the research anyway (ench 6 for oracle and 7 for deep well) All three of them are useful in some way (vine ogre factories, big n rituals etc.) but one of them has blood and is therefore extra useful to supply your bloodstone factory without having to hunt around for empowerment. It´s also super cool to have an ancient grove of treelords in your kingdom.

Then there is Lamia queens... Fairy queens... The first thistle mace to fire up haruspex via indies... moonvine bracelets... armor of twisting thorns...

+ all the great benefits mentioned before. (especially the bless)

I can´t really comprehend how all that isn´t worth the investment of... 45 pearls?

I see your point of opportunity cost for the extra path but you don´t need many turns to get *a lot* out of your investment. The bless pays of in itself and then 1 turn for a thistle mace early on, later 1 for any of the n globals, 1 for a fairy queen or treelord most probably and thats all you need to do to make a huge difference.(ok 1 extra for the s empowerment) Then any nature items or spells you cast because the time is right at some point, well thats just extra fluff.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Lamia queens are great! There's a 75% chance you'll get at least one of either W or B.

The W's can be used to make clams or cast Foul Vapors with your 100% PR army.

The B's can hunt of course, but also can cast Rain of Toads, Cross Breeding, etc.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

Llamia queens are indeed great, but require D as well as N. Yeah, as I said a reasonable person could make the sacrifice to get N, it does open up some nice things. It's all about opportunity cost though. You're scraping up 45 pearls to empower for a RoW (that's almost 4 RoWs), but make sure you consider the other sacrifices you already made to get to that point as well compared to my suggested build. You've given up a point of dominion (= hitpoints off of all your troops), given up a point of MR from all your sacred troops, given up a point of growth with both the direct hit to income and small increase in diseased mages. It's in the realm of reasonable opinion, but there's something to be said for focusing on your core strengths.

Re: MA Argatha - go punch a mountain
 

I'm not sure if the treelord can blood hunt at all, it never seemed to work when I tried it, but that was a lot of patches ago.

Also, I wouldn't put money on iceclad vs mech men, since they'll fatigue out pretty quickly and their good prot will drop off. Caelum's troops are just too assy.