Bogarus Strat
 

I've recently been testing a new strategy with Bogarus. It uses an awake rainbow pretender with turmiol 3 cold 3 growth 3 luck 3 drain 1. What I've been doing is using the pretender to research the first 3 turns and building 3 of the level 3 priests. Then my fours smiters go out and and start exapanding, it works really well for the first year, sometimes I get a couple extra. With 6 smiters I just need a 30 man meat shield and then I usually have about 8 provinces at the end of the first year. I get a coupple mages to take up research slack around turn 5-6 and then send the pretender out to search for magic sites.

I've been research themeturgy and evocation to start and prevent rushes, although my priests do a great job at that. Smite is great LA for taking out the heavy calvery and nasty tramplers that Bogarus has problems with. It also lets me take a lower dominion because they spread it damn fast. What do you guys think of this strategy and where should I go for mid-late game?

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

One obvious tip, I don't think I've ever seen a Pretender build where Drain 1 is taken. Since Drain 1 and Drain 2 are both -1RP, so you may as well take the extra 40 design points and go for Drain 2.

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

Um sorry, 8 by end of year 1 is pretty bad for MP.
My goal is to have 15 and I'm no way the fastest expander but Bogarus isn't very strong.

Your scale are cool imo - probably others will tell you to take order but Bogarus can get into blood, which works against order, and the random gems can get you into the national summons that you don't have the paths/gems for naturally.
Except two things:
Drain-1 is wasting points, since you get the same research penalty as Drain-2.
Sloth is practically free points since your early troops don't use to much resources and your castle will get a lot from neighbouring provinces once you have taken them.
And I think one thing Bogarus does not need is an awake rainbow. You get good research from your mages, so take an SC god, let him do the conquering and your mages handle the research.
Earth is a good path to take at least level 2.
I toyed around with an awake Forge Lord in SP, Dom9 or 10, F2E4S4 and similar scales and had mixed results. He can forge himself a weapon on turn 1 and your research gets quickly to the point where he can cast body ethereal and stoneskin after which he can kill most indies. Using him before that and against very strong indies is risky but you can give him some troops to help. Later he is a powerful forger and can get you all astral boosters, including artifacts.

If you use the CBM mod using mages to call lesser horrors is a good way to expand.

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

Using smite for expansion and even war in certain circumstances is not a bad strategy. However the strat you've laid out needs works because as was pointed out by Illuminated your capture rate is too slow. You will need to get *at least* a capture rate of 1:1 provs per turn. Experienced players will shoot even for 2:1 or 3:1 if possible.

Another problem is that since you are effectively relying on commanders to do your expansion for you, you are trading off research for expansion. That can work, but getting less than a 1:1 rate is not a good tradeoff.

Unforutnately, I dont have any constructive advice to offer on Bogarus tho - I dont really play that nation much.

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

There's also not a whole lot gained by taking growth-3 without order-3 (or production-3, though that's less useful in the long run). You might as well just take growth-1.

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

How about countering the terrible old age of their ,mages?

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

I didn't run any tests, but it's always seemed to me there isn't much difference between growth-1 and growth-3 in terms of afflictions gained because of old age.

Bogarus has access to Blood for Boots of Youth. I was going to mention the Vilas, who can heal, but then I remembered that the 'Heal' command doesn't do squat for old age afflictions.

You could even consider putting N4 on your god and making shrouds to give regen to your Starets, but maybe that's not such a good idea. N4 is expensive on all the combat SC Bogarus pretender chassis, and IMO Bogarus needs a SC god to expand in MP.

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

Well, Bogarus army is such a joke you'll probably need a SC pretender in SP too...

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

I used to go by the accepted wisdom that Growth 1 was as good as 3 for old age - having played a lot of abysia with their old mages, the day i started playing with growth 3 was a happy one. it makes a big difference, and is also useful for a blood nation

Boots of youth are good, but they are constr 6, need 10 slaves and take a turn to forge. you don't want it or every mage. Nature bless can work, but it is again expensive and they will still get afflictions

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

As boots of youth are reinvigorating the mage too, they're not that bad of an investment. Plus ten slaves isn't much to nullify effect of old age, as you control(raise) your slave output much more easily your gem output. As long as a nation has efficient blood hunters, there is no need for growth 3. 120 creation points is too costly if you have another solution available (in your nation) for old age problem. BoY do use a slot though...

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

I disagree.
Yes, you loose that big o-3 bonus to extra gold.
But g-1 is much less powerful because of exponential growth dynamics.
If I had 4 scales to max gold income over the whole game it would be o-1 g-3.

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

You're really much better off getting an awake cyclops pretender. Give him Air and Earth. You can very quickly research construction 4, equip him with a horror marking shield (the defense on it is nuts), ethereal robe, lucky dagger OR amulet of luck and he'll decimate whole armies. He's absolutely ridiculous once he starts casting mistform, summon earth power, and invulnerability, not to mention the fact with those paths he has immunity to fire, and lightning.

Jazzepi

Re: Bogarus Strat
 

Your gold is coming in later in O-1 G-3, and the early game is when you really need gold the most. And G-3 is not going to be looking so hot in the late game when Armageddons hit the world and the corpses start piling up in the streets.

In any case, I agree with Jazzepi, an awake god is going to get Bogarus more provinces faster than scales alone will.