EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

This is not exactly a guide. It's a brainstorming aid for me and it's definitely not complete. And it's intended for CBM 1.92 because the older guides were for vanilla or older versions of the CBM, and thus assumed dwarven hammers.



Early Age Agartha is a nation of supremely idiotic and overweight cave dwellers. They're sort of like a stereotypical America, except instead of a large and disciplined army they have a collection of imbeciles, and instead of rednecks they have troglodytes. Also, they live in caves. So they're not really that similar to America.

Their regular soldiers have skills comparable to militia; their elite infantry doesn't even reach the level of a normal human. And instead of using accurate weapons and large shields to compensate, they wield spears and other polearms along with freaking bucklers, which provides amazingly little synergy with their abilities. To see an attack skill in the double digits, you have to look to their sacred giants - more specifically, the Ancient Lord and the Seal Guards. The most skilled Agarthan unit isn't even an Agarthan: The Troglodyte Lord has a whopping 12 attack. So you can't depend on the pale ones to be competent when it comes to hitting things or avoiding being hit.

Furthermore, they're cold blooded. This is a big fat glaring weakness because a lot of nations have a cold dominion, and Wolven Winter is a very easy spell to cast. This is a significant factor in your strategizing, since you must plan around it.

Their non-cap mages, or rather mage, singular, is not very impressive for early age mages, being H1 priests with 2 picks of magic. They're not too bad for researching though - they're sacred, and in CBM they're also fortune tellers, so putting a bunch of them in a fortress and telling them to research until their brains leak out is a good idea. Agartha's true magic potential lies in its capital, and you'll want to recruit oracles there every turn.

So what advantages do they have? Well, they're tough and strong - plenty of HP, natural protection plus armor, even the militia has 14 strength. They just can't hit anything with those powerful blows. They have sacred giants - crappy sacred giants, but sacred giants nonetheless. Their boulder throwers are actually useful in CBM, since they do AoE damage now. Putting a couple of hurlers behind a line of infantry is a valid and effective tactic.

There's also the Umbrals, who are kick-*** summons. The Rhuax and Barathrus Pacts are useful and easily-accessed spells. Earth Communion is a remote-search spell costing 8 earth gems, and reveals the four types of sites your national mages need - useful and efficient. You have a half-price version of Gateway available from the start, but only an Oracle can cast it. It's nevertheless incredibly useful.

All your units have darkvision, and in CBM, your second PD commander is now a new unit: The Locus of the Seal, a statue that autocasts darkness. It's not an automatic 'I win' button, but it's a really big help since your troops will all have darkvision.

All pale ones are amphibious, need not eat and have siege boni. You can't compete with a true underwater nation, but you can go underwater and can even have underwater PD.

So let's go over the units we have:

Pale One Militia: Pale Ones are incompetent. Militia are incompetent. Put them together and what have you got? A unit you really don't want to recruit.

Wet One: Slightly more competent than your militia. Still not a unit you want to recruit, however.

Pale One: A Wet One with a buckler. If you need chaff, that makes these guys better than the previous ones, but they're still not very useful.

Pale One Warrior: Come in three varieties. One has a spear and buckler plus some armor, another has a spear and buckler plus more armor, and the third has a trident and net as well as decent armor. The third type is the most useful one, because nets will not only stop enemies but also set their defense to 0 until they get out of it.

Cavern Guard: Not really impressive for supposedly elite warriors. Glaives aren't really that great for these guys. Still, using a mix of these and net-wielding warriors makes for a more effective fighting force, since they have better morale.

Troglodyte: Tramplers with good morale. Useful in some situations, but they will die quickly so you have to consider them expendable.

Ancient Stone Hurler: Ever since boulders got an AoE effect, these guys have been useful. Put a bunch of them behind your blockers and watch them slaughter entire squares with each throw. There's two versions of these, with and without armor. You're probably not going to be limited by your resources when recruiting these, so try to recruit the ones with armor.

Ancient One: A sacred giant who's not really that impressive. His giant spear has length 5, but with his attack skill of 9 he's not going to repel a lot of attacks.

Seal Guard: Sacred giants with better skills and equipment than Ancient Ones. Their obsidian glaives are nice, and they've got better protection and more HP than their recruit-anywhere cousings. They only have 1 mapmove however.

Pale One Scout: Worse than your typical scout because it takes more resources, but why would you be recruiting scouts out of a fortress anyway?

Pale One Commander: Bog standard commander guy. Nothing interesting about him.

Troglodyte Lord: Actually makes for an interesting light thug: Just stick some armor on him and let him loose. Main weakness is terrible magic resistance. He has no head so he can't wear a horror helmet, sadly.

Ancient Lord: Another possible thug. He's sacred but can't self-bless. Give him an AoE weapon - the frost and fire brands are always popular, but a midget masher is another possibility.

Earth Reader: Your only recruit-anywhere mage. Not a bad research mage, really, since he's sacred and fairly cheap, plus he's a fortune-teller which means your research forts won't suffer many bad events. Their picks aren't too impressive, but you can make use of them all:
2E: Can cast summon earth power without boosting, which leads to a host of useful buffs as well as evocations like Blade Wind and Earth Ripple, the latter being a unique Agarthan spell combining flying shards with earth meld.
WE: This combination can't do much without some boosters. With a water bracelet, however, it can drop Winter Ward which can be a lifesaver when all your units are coldblooded, as well as many other useful spells.
FE: Magma bolts! And with earth boots and summon earthpower, magma eruption! This combination is probably the best one for battlefield evocations.
ED: Not very useful on the battlefield, these guys have one main use besides research: Summoning Umbrals. Umbrals kick ***, so that's a good use of them.

Oracle of Subterranean Waters: Water magic isn't the greatest of paths, but a couple of levels are very useful. Despite being oracles with great precognitive powers, they are not fortune-tellers. But then again, these are the guys who doomed their entire race by invading the surface, so it's no wonder they're crap at this fortune-telling stuff.

Oracle of Subterranean Fires: Lovely guys, recruit some of them but note that they suffer more from old age than other mages. They occupy the same niche as FE Earth Readers: Battlefield evocations.

Oracle of the Dead: These are the best kind of oracle. Less susceptible to old age, and can summon and lead the undead. Note that your oracles can all do some heavy duty thugging, or even becoming alright supercombatants, since they're sacred giants with powerful earth magic and high MR.

I'm considering the following pretender:

Dormant F4E9N4 Dom 6 Forge Lord
Order 3 Prod 2 Heat 3 Death 3 Misf 2 Magic 1

The forge lord can still forge items at a discount without a hammer, so capitalize on that. A minor fire bless helps your sacred giants actually hit stuff in melee, and the minor nature bless will help prevent afflictions. The major earth bless is costly but useful. Your giants will almost all benefit from it - sticking a pair of bracers of protection on a blessed E3 oracle is almost as good as giving them a plate cuirass, and they're not even encumbered by it!

Order and production are there for the money, which you will never have enough of. Sacred giants are expensive and 20 PD is expensive. Heat keeps the cold at bay, which is important for coldblooded beings. Death and misfortune are for points, because we have to make sacrifices somewhere. Order and fortune telling earth readers will hopefully mitigate any bad events a bit. Finally, magic is great for your earth readers.



I've still not come up with a complete and coherent strategy yet, though. I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts on this.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

I believe the PD auto cast of darkness is going to be removed in the next release of CBM.

Those (O3P2H3D3M2M1) are a really awful set of scales, and will likely lead to a poor game. They are mainly bad due to some fundamental problems...

1 - CBM 1.92's new Growth/Death scale pop settings make taking Death scales a lot more unpalatable than before. Death 3 costs your capital around 1k pop every 4 turns compared to 1k 6 turns under the old settings. This is a significant change and could make D3 close to unplayable in any regular game (ie. non-blitz)

2 - Saying that "Order and production are there for the money" while combining them with Death 3 is just bad logic, as you are paying a high cost for an income multiplier on a figure you are then choosing to decrease at the fastest rate. I just ran a quick test....

O3P2H3D3M2M1 (your scales). Starting cap population of 29550

turn 1 - Income 365
turn 9 - Income 337, population down to 27490 (all scales same, no events or seasonal changes that affected scales or pop)

O3S1H3G0M2M1 (same scales except -3P and +3G). Starting cap population of 29770

turn 1 - Income 346.

So by turn 9 your scales are already bringing in less capital income than you would get by just swapping 3 scales of Production for 3 scales of Growth, meaning your scales designed for income brought in only +~250g in those turns, after which you are just losing money, and fast. And I don't think the results from the rest of your empire will improve the income from your scales compared to just this one alternative I've given (there are other alternatives for scales)


I won't ocmment too much on the rest of your build, but I would add Agartha can expand fine with just Trogs. Yes they are expensive but they don't need a bless, so Indy commanders can lead them without compromising their effectiveness. They also cost 1 resource to build so allow Sloth 3. Mass Trogs can also open up, and discourage, rushes better than your Sacreds will (depending on the other nation involved).

Selecting scales for EA Agartha is a bit tricky is general, as their cap has low admin meaning you gain less resources from neighbours (and less gold from your cap). But then the only troop this really affects are the Seal Guards, and I wouldn't personally be recruitng too many of these (too slow/expensive/poor), plus you have Trogs that were made for Sloth 3. EA Agartha look a tempting nation to take Death with due to their Never Eat troops, and so you can go high Death to hurt attackers. But Agartha are a fairly money intensive nation due to all their mages needing a Lab and Temple to recruit (and not being that cheap or cost effective), and as I mentioned taking Death 3 in CBM 1.92 is a tough sell that likely won't end well. I won't even go into the events Death + Misfortune can open up (which you will struggle to negate in your cap with fortune tellers until well ino mid-game unless you recruit Earth Readers there at the expense of getting Oracles)

But all IMO.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Still, for the next game, it is something to keep in mind.
Independent of the chassis, what kind of bless would you prefer, or have you tried? I'm looking at the ages olm, with its Water/Earth combination, and trying to figure out how Quickness with reinvigoration would work with the agartha.

Also, I like the earth bless with the Agartha, but with such powerful earth mages to begin with, it almost seems a waste not to try for some non earth goodness on them instead, but after saying that, I just don't see very many interesting chassis that can help with that.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

I can't imagine a bless would be worth it for agartha, your sacreds are outclassed by the normal troops of many other nations. A scales build using trogs for expansion would probably work better(or you could go for an awake SC I guess).

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

How important is astral access for EA Agartha? I'd be tempted to take it on my god for rings of sorc/wiz and amulets for thugs, but I also like the idea of an SC, and wouldn't want him to be magic-dueled.

Other than that, what other paths are wanted? I could see arguments for nature (more thug gear, summons), more death (rituals, boosters) and death/fire (fire boosters). But Im not sure any of that is essential.

I think an SC is a good choice because having more provinces boosts income even more than good scales, and I would want the money to crank out a steady stream of oracles. Also H3 priests synergize well with high dominion, which the SC will have. Im thinking a ghost king could be fun. Of course, H3 synergizes even better with a blessing, but I doubt it's worth it.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

This is correct. They will get some alternative way of laying down Darkness in chosen provinces, but it won't be via PD any more. PD Darkness appears to be significantly overpowered.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

A few comments.

1. Magic scale is very important. You have crap for mages. You need to spend a lot of mage time summoning umbrals at one mage action = 1 summon.

OR one mage action on your summons baracthus, children of rhuax.
OR doing your earth reading.

My point is: you need to max out your mage research on the ones remaining.

2. IIRC, your water oracles are less likely to incur old age, compared to your fire mages. So, I recruit a fair number of these, especially on maps with a fair amount of water.

3. Boulder throwers, Boulder throwers, boulder throwers. Unless you have reason to think you're competing in a cold domain in which case trogs.

4. Take heat 3 domain.
Sure - people can cast wolven winter. Make them cast it. It also helps if you "stunt". Its much better to concede a territory and make them blow WW expecting a battle than it is to lose your forces fighting in WW. You definitely have to pick your battles fighting any of the cold projecting races.

If you have a high dominions score in a province - it is only a few turns for temperature scales to return to normal.

You have H3 mages. The more you can make this races opponents divert resources away from military and into things like dominion - the better off you are.

5. While I agree with all of Calahan's comments about gold - I don't think it really applies to agartha.

Production lets you build out more of your armored boulder throwers.

Death might cause minor supply issues for your opponents.
Your armies don't eat and its a minor advantage but one your need to exploit.

But Calahans comments regarding earth readers vs oracles I completely agree with. I think you *have* to restrict yourself to only 1 or 2 oracles the first year, because the maintenance cost is too damn high.

And I agree with his comment about d3 combined with unluck. You do not want to go past -2/-2.

6. Blight. Earth meld.

There are a lot of approaches to take regarding your pretender.
Some believe that you need an awake pretender to expand, and to project dominion.

However, it is equally possible to start with an awake great sage. Earth meld will allow your troops to actually hit.

But more importantly, a lot of the nations that are inclined to rush you (EA-Niefle) have capitol only troops.

You have the ability to rapidly scale up gem income. Complement that by researching blight very very quickly.

If you start with an awake researcher, e4 n4 s4 are reasonable goals with a small synergy for your sacreds.

7. So what are Large Sized, High hitpoints useless troops good for?

The answer isn't quite nothing. Targeting mechanisms will tend to target your large useless blobs. So long as your effective fighters are smaller / fewer hp the can for the most part continue to mow down enemy troops while your blobs take the hits.

Of course, the only problem is agartha doesn't have any effective troops.

8. As I posted in the other thread - small troops, especially small effective troops are your friends. Two of them in the same square as your size 4 will drastically increase the survivability of your giants. Sure, you lose a few midgets. They're cheap.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Poor Cal :D

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

There are two units with Boulder Throwing. One costs 1 resource, the other (armoured) costs 11 resources. Both are sacred and so recruitment of both is limited by the Holy level. So Production scales is not going to help you recruit more of these guys from a resource PoV, and even with Sloth 3 your cap will get 100+ resources from any normal start location. Which is plenty enough to get Boulder Throwers (and they are not cap only).

Production scales help from a gold PoV of course, but then everything is helped by extra gold, not just the purchase of Boulder Throwers.

----------------------------

I had actually forgotten why I no longer bothered posting my advice here until recently, but now each post I make seems to cause all those reasons why to come flooding back to me. Strange that :re:

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

I'll post out a build when I get home from work.

but essentially you want to build out the net warriors and the armored bolder throwers.

----------------------------

Agartha is a nation that is *often* rushed. (although the situaion is muddled now due to darkness). It has difficulty expanding and consistently ranks at or near the bottom in the hall of fame.

So all the theoretical effects of the longterm problems of a death scale is problem I'd be happy to have as Agartha.

The numbers you posted say the same thing: If a production / death build help me pick up two more territories the first year then a "growth" build - the trade-off is more than worth it.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Thanks for all these replies! I'm really grateful for them, especially the ones that say 'This is stupid, don't do this' :)

I'll definitely take all this under consideration.

That's interesting. I guess I won't be emphasizing 20 PD in my strategy, then. How will it work, though? A normal summon that's immobile seems too limited, since you'd need labs everywhere for them. A normal summon that's mobile is too powerful to be anything but a late-game summon. A remote summon, whether or not it's mobile, might be hilarious but I'm not so sure it's a good idea.

Personally, I'd suggest a roundabout method - A normal summon that's mobile and can change shape into a second unit that isn't mobile and has #firstshape. The #firstshape turns it into an immobile unit that autocasts darkness. Possibly give that last unit a gold cost so you can't just slap it down wherever.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

As you've already shown before, numbers are not your strong point are they. The income figures I gave were just for the cap income, but when you expand those to cover a ~15 province empire, or ~17 provinces with the *two* extra provinces you are implying you are able to take with Production scales and resource hungry troops over Trogs, then with Death 3 you are likely losing around 30-40 gold (guesstimate) per turn depending on your scales spread. And to keep up with that volume of gold loss you need to be gaining roughly an extra province every other turn, which is a tall order as EA Agartha. And the moment you can no longer gain new provinces you are likely to be in trouble due to the inevitable consequence of falling behind in infrastructure and mage recruitment due to lack of gold and falling income (amongst other problems). So taking two extra provinces in the first year just isn't going to make up for the Death 3 scales unless you can keep that level of province gain going every few turns. (oh and don't forget you need to find points for Luck 0 as well, as playing heavy Death without that is asking for all sorts of problems)

And Agartha does not have any difficulty expanding with Trogs in my experience (or if someone can't expand well with Trogs then they need more basic Dom lessons at expanding), and the HoF rankings for nation victories is meaningless. (and those who think they have meaning need to re-examine their view). But I do agree that EA Agartha are one of the weaker nations in EA, but taking Production and heavy Death scales, as your comments seem to imply, only makes that matter worse IMO. Although I accept Production/Death would likely help you survive an early rush better than Sloth and no Death would. But then I have trouble playing and planning from a PoV of "I'll design my Pretender to ensure I don't get rushed, but will sacrifice any realistic chance of winning the game to do so".

But I guess all will be revealed later with your Pretender design as to just how well you know the game, and the realities of playing in actual mid-high level MP games, as opposed to just playing theory-Dominions in fantasy land. (and even if your build is no good for playing it should still be good for a laugh, judging from some of your previous comments on this thread and others))



Oh and if anyone wants me for the long foreseeable future, such as if they want to know correct answers to their questions about the game rather than having to sift through the rubbish that regularly appears here, then they can find me, and others with similar reliable knowledge, on the Dom3mods forum. As this incident was the straw that did it for me, and I now won't be posting on this main forum or the mods forum here for quite some time (I'll still likely post on MP forum when I see admin issues come up when I'm passing).

As I can't deal with the stupid people here anymore, since I have no idea why some players think they know so much about the game, yet have no verified experience of playing in mid-high level games to back their views up, or any creditable history being shown that they know what they are talking about regarding their claimed knowledge and expertise at the game. As most of the people I see talking rubbish are also happily playing in newb dominated games, and I can't figure out why such players think they know so much if they still consider themselves eligible for newb games. These players can't have it both ways, and can't claim to be expert or newb depending on their mood.

It seems to me that in recent times some newbs think they can buy the game, play it for a week or two until they can beat the AI every time. Then play their first MP game, win their first fight in a MP newb game, and suddenly decide they are now an expert on every playing strategy in the game, a master of all the mechanics, and are an absolute authority on any and all complex game-balancing issues. I love seeing new players around, and like other vets I regularly help them out in several ways when I can, and am usually only too happy to help them. But arrogant newbs are doing my fecking head in, because their arrogance is based on nothing but the piss and wind generated by their own mistaken view that they have mastered the entire game completely within three months of playing. Some newbs need to get a good dose of reality.

And with that rant over I bid you all good night and God bless. (not as philosophical as Norfleet's exit, but then I'll likely be back should the flow of arrogant newbs and the rubbish they spout be stemmed. If that never happens then I guess this will be my last contribution here, as it's just untenable for me to share my knowledge and experience on these forums by having to put up with people talking rubbish in return)


ps. @ IRC folks - If there's a poll going on IRC regarding who's playing under Bat/Man's alias then put me down for Chris Pedersen. As he's the only other person I've ever seen dumb enough to even suggest using Domes of Corruption to boost magic scales. As everyone who plays the game outside of Dominions fantasy land knows how ludicrous that idea is. Coincidence?! Maybe, maybe not, but who else would possibly even suggest that as an idea???

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

In your obviously *vast* knowledge of Agartha, I wonder if you've actually tried a few games multiplayer with them.

Since you claim so much experience - please do list for me the multiplayer games you've played with Agartha - in your infinite wisdom. And I'd love to hear the ones you've won.

Because I, for one, would love to hear how you deal with the extremely high attrition rate that expansion with trogs requires.

I'd love to hear how you handle trog shuffling.

And you're right - I'm lousy with numbers. I forget does a trog have an 8 MR or a 9? I'd love to hear how you compensate for spending thousands of gold on units so that, when you are finished with the indie phase of the game fall prey to virtually any magic counter.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

I dont know why people say this is a weak nation. I find it strong even with no mod.

The troops are probably the best for late game: no need to eat, high HPs ,siege bonus and amphibious. All what you need of your troops. The real damage is done by thugs and mages so

You have kickass earth mages. Capable of petrify thugs and evocations on troops.

You have the best SC pretender. The oracle: high HPs, immortal, enc=0.

Expand with troglodytes. Its easy, you just really need order to get the money.

Order+Sloth+Heat(coldblooded)+Growth+Luck(or not)+magic

Your oracles are lvl 3 priests so they can preach your dominion. No real need of high dominion.

You are not invincible but neither are the rest of the nations.

Ive used them in MP and they worked just fine. Ive survived an inasion by niefelheim (using Baalz niefel guide) and invaded Ermor before Ulm won by unanimous decision.

Oh and yeah lets see: 40 trogs 2000 gold. If they live call it 133 gold maintainence.

40 Boulder throwers: Oh, yeah, I forget, I'm bad with numbers- whats production cost 35? 1400 gold. Maintenance of what 46 per turn?

Whats that you say? The cost of the maintenance on the trogs exceeds the savings on the Growth scale?

No - that isn't so - the great calahan says so. So you're absolutely right Oh Great Calahan! IF you can expand to a huge empire with Agartha the costs of death scale dwarf the costs of maintenance.

Of course, thats exactly the problem every person reports with Agartha. How to handle the burdens of their huge empire.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

you dont need 40 trogs for expanding. Maybe you need to practice against the AI to get the numbers right. 8 trogs can defeat most of the indys. The more the better though.
Remember they can trample even cavalry.

Later you can use de 10 gold infantry. I find the more expensive ancient ones really a waste of money.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Torin,

I'm not saying you need 40 trogs to expand. You're right that 8 trogs can take many indy provinces. But the list of things that can kill 8 trogs are mindblowingly large.

Undead. Cavalry. Markatas. Barbarians. Longbowman. Blood henge druids. Sometimes wolf tribes.

If you use trogs as your expansion vehicle, and if you make an expansion team every other turn = 6*8= 48 trogs.

And I'm also not saying don't use trogs. But I am saying that under CBM, the boulder throwers get AOE on their boulders which is a huge upgrade.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Bat/man, should tone it down a bit. You have less wins than Calahan, and you constantly show that you clearly don't understand the game that much. (And you also constantly appeal to wins you should have, which are not logged or registered, Calahan has a way better understanding than you have from the game. And due to the way Calahan plays, he has little time for playing games).

From our personal messaging (regarding the usage of dome of corruption to boost your province scales to m3):

You cannot cast returning with a S1 mage. Returning requires a gem. To boost a s1 mage to s2 you need a gem. The max number of gems a s1 mage can use, you guessed it 1. So your trick doesn't even work.

And I really hope you aren't thinking about using the turkey mages to mesmerize the horrors. Vs mr 18/20 that isn't going to work.

And domkill isn't a flavour du jour, if you knew anything it has even decreased. Because the knifes have been made artifacts nowadays.

Luck 3 on EA Mitclan : http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=33753 baalz suggests you use it. (you know, synergy with turmoil).

You should really tone down. Or we could make the pm even more public. It will only humiliate you further ;).

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

No need to be rough, Soyweiser

The point with the indies. Is that they will not "fire at big enemy monsters" or "fire at rearmost" they always "fire at closest" so arrows are not a problem really. Its even better to fight against arrows because most of them will hit the ground unlike HtH attacks.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Jarrko, iirc, started the most recent popularity with Dom kill. In the time since then, Dom Kill underwent a huge increase in popularity.

I'm certainly aware of the changes to jade knives and blood rods and this has made it less popular. Still more popular than before jarrko's posts.

So much so that most guides now recommend Dom 5/6 to avoid the possibility of dom/kill - which previously was usually held to be more of a concern for water nations.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Calahan leaves because of people like Bat/man and Bat/man decides to kick him when down? And I am being rough? Surely you jest.

All the guides I have read advice at least dom5/6 and that is even cutting it close. So it isn't that new. It is a game tactic. Has always been there, and isn't going away.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Returning to Agartha for a moment.
I think the national which causes damage reinforces the benefit of a nature bless.

I also think this is a much bigger change for agartha than the changes to the life scale.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

I fail to see how you turn the water mages into a bigger advantage on maps with a lot of water. Care to explain?

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Water Oracles:

Generally oracles are expensive. But if you need to hit a research target by a certain turn, the research boost can be situationally useful.

If you start near water, and have no nearby water powers, being fully amphibious allows agartha access to uncontested indies.

If you plan to go the water route, the water path on these oracles is more useful than it would be on land. Likewise water forging.

Finally, I'm going from memory. But my memory says that water oracles have one higher defense than death (due to magic path). And again, from memory, are at least occassionally not old age.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Yeah, but all the oracles can enter the water, and you really don't want the oracles at the front line. (So the higher defense doesn't do squat, and there are no fliers or missile troops underwater, so that doesn't help that much either).

Against indies you lack the research to do something with your water mages. Against other underwater nations Agartha is going to have a very hard time regardless.

Water forging? Forging is the same above and under water.

Death and Water don't really increase or decrease age on oracles. ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showp...95&postcount=5 ). Only fire.

So I don't think it is that good advice to go all out on water oracles.

And even with old age, the fire or death mages have more combat potential later. (skelly spam and magma eruption for example).

Sure you want some of the water oracles. (They provide wards, rust mist, wendigo's, site searching etc). But going all out on them is imho a mistake. Might be a little bit easier to take the water provinces, but you lose late game potential.

You need one with w2, to get the second booster, and some site searching. But I don't think you need more than that.

And you are correct that water provides defense. But on a size 4 unit defense isn't that useful as they will be swarmed (each additional attack vs a unit gets +2 attack.

However, somehow the water oracle has minor better stats (more attack and def. Why I don't know. But 8 vs 11 def is laughable at best). So water ones have the best stats, and fire ones the worst.

On personal buff skills, early game personal quickness (watch the fatigue) might be better, but late game I would go for phoenix pyre. Or perhaps a nice shield with a brand. But that is a bit dangerous without further equipment.

Also, using CBM, remember that the olm spawn can be GoR'ed for a E1H2 mage with ?2.1 FWED unlinked randoms. Nature gems might be hard to find, but this provides a cheaper (although a bit random) access to the fire/death booster and the rune breakers, than just putting the paths on your pretender. Also, this creates more mages (upkeep free), and saves pretender turns. Sadly, you do need the Olm pretender, which might not be the best one (low dominion, high path cost, only water/earth). GoR'in some of the early expansion dudes for this. (Perhaps put a few of them on guard commander) will give you some bonus exp, and a nice HoF mage. Minor trick, but not that well known.

In conclusion about the underwater part. If there is an other underwater nation, he will own most of the underwater stuff. (you might sneaky get few early game underwater lands, and I advise you to do so, but a full blow underwater war will be mostly his). Without the underwater nation, grab all you can get. (Unless your game admin has put in a dead seas map. Just send angry pm's at the admin). You can build underwater PD. Dunno if it is any good. (probably not), and you do not get any worthwhile underwater recruits (only an armoured wet one variant prot 7 armour).

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Forging: Your oracles can forge water bracelets, wave breakers.
Casting: The water path is more useful, underwater than above (generally)

Already said agartha is not going to compete with a real water nation. (But then its not going to compete with a real land nation, either).

But, situationally useful if you start adjacent to water.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

So heres one of four promised builds. I'll post up the others later.

So a few ground rules.

Default settings in all cases.
I did not hire any mercs, or indie troops. Pure agarthan. Which also required a bit more troop shuttling.
Forts must have a temple, lab, and PD21

Ive run the following builds at least 4 times each, through the end of the first year.

Map was aran.


Awake Druid:
E9 N4 Dom 5. O3, P2, H3, G-3, L-2, M+1.

First Turn: Prophetize commander. Build 5 unarmored boulder throwers, earth reader, and as many net throwers as you can. This will be the only turn you build the unarmored.

Pretender researches. Personally I beeline for alteration-2 earth meld. Con-1 (legions of steel) is also valid.

See research below.

Turn 2: Recruit earth reader, 5 armored boulder throwers, as many nets as you can.

Dispatch first group. Leave net throwers on Cap. Put your med Pale up front with orders to attack. Boulder throwers two squares back with orders to fire.

Prophet divine bless, smite spam. Put the lights to one (or both sides). The are there to soak up 2nd round attacks, and prevent you from getting flanked.

This group is slightly fragile, due to the lack of armor, but do *not* choose the weakest neighbor. Expect casualties due to your own boulder throwing. Don't worry. They get better.

Turn 3.

Once you get the feel, you'll know whether to dispatch the second group this turn - other wise, just wait a turn.

5 boulder throwers and 10 net throwers is pretty reasonable.

Recruit another earth reader, 5 boulder throwers & nets. Repeat this, dispatch 2 turns of production as an expansion party.
Send out e2 earth readers if you have the chance, so when earth meld comes on line you can use it.

Position earthreaders in the boulder throwers with orders to bless, bless. When you get earthmeld you'll use that (and you may wish to recruit an oracle to ensure the e2 path requirement).
Very useful for tough groups.

An oracle, with 10 boulder throwers and 10 nets can handle up to about 60 barbarians. Reason: the boulders don't usually damage berserkers, so they don't go berserk, boosting the unit morale. Instead, they kill them, and cause an early route.

Start gingerly till you have the feel.


Research:
Option A: Beeline to Alt 4 for Destruction and blight. Blight is useful against cap only nations - such as nieffle. Earth Meld is go to, and is great spam.

Option B: Construction 1 for legions (+2 prot). Construction 3 for clock work horrors which are PERFECTLY sized for use with your boulder throwers.

Option C: Alt 2, then Con 4. Con 4 useful for the earth communion for gems and you're on your way to Umbrals.

Results:

As described my minimum expansion was 17 territories.
Max was 25.

Income ranged from 1308 --> 1721.
Maintenance ranged from 108 to 132.

Total maximum casualties (boulder throwers). 3.
Each case I built at least one complete fort, and had another started.
Research was 350 ish. Ie., 3/ 3 ish.

Handled carefully, there are no standard indies that these guys can't take out. Cav, barbs, undead.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Upsides/Downsides.

You are relying on your earth readers to prevent plague events. And, following this regimen, I don't believe I got a capitol bad event after turn 8 or so.

Do not lessen order, or increase misfortune.

You have F,E,W,D,N access. You are missing S. Lizard shamans are important to prevent mind hunt spam etc.

I'll leave it for others to fill in the blanks. Please feel free to try this out.


Edit: check on water oracles:
Soy disputed that Water Oracles are not as likely to get aged. I stand by my statement. Water oracles start at 385 (400). Fire mages 385 (395). For whatever reason, my fire oracles routinely started aged. Water did not.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

so are you just ignoring troglodytes completely because you're dumb or what

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Ooh a sound refutation! I yield I yield!

Actually, as I have said repeatedly, trogs are good units in the right circumstances.

However:

a. Have a higher upfront cost.
b. Take much greater losses through attrition.
c. Have a maintenance of 3.33 vs a 1.16 for the boulder throwers.
d. Suffer from an abysmal MR of 8.
e. Have trouble with lots of different kinds of indies. Longbowman. Size 4+. Blowpipe woodsmen. Barbarians.

Look, do as you like. But 15 territories is usually considered the benchmark for MP play - and this build will reliably get you well north of that.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

As others have pointed out Death 3 misfortune 2 is asking for trouble even with Earth readers (they're only fortune teller 5 after all)

And death in CBM 1.92 is a suicide pact.

I'll reiterate what Calahan said, why are you taking P2 and D3? What do you need P2 for? The income advantage is eaten away by D3 in about 5 turns, and all of you troop are gold intensive or holy limited and not resources limited.

Even if your recruiting stone hurlers rather than trogs you'll never be resource limited. Heck you start out with 80 with neutal p scales. You can recruit 7 plus an oracle and still have a few left over without even taking an adjacent province. You've taken a dom of 5. Thus you will NEVER be limited by resources unless you have a burning desire for seal guards.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Hey, so does anyone want to answer my question about astral? I feel like crystal shields and rings/amulets would be good, but im not sure if it's worth taking on your god. Thoughts?

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Astral/earth is always a good pathcombo to have. Problem with low astral on your god is the horror that is magic duel.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Forging, water bracelets don't add anything underwater. You want these even without water on the map. And sure wave breakers help. But those are the only ones.

And sure summon water power is nice, but you miss the really offensive spells underwater with water (or with any path really). Personally I don't think the water path is that useful underwater.

Still, I don't see why you would recruit more of the water mages to go underwater. A couple is more than enough. Let your troops do the water fighting. Keep the oracles in the labs. And get more death/fire oracles. They are more useful in combat.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

As for which Oracles are most prone to old age:

Fire Oracles have the shortest life spans, since Fire magic reduces the maximum age for a unit. So Fire Oracles will die fastest.

Water Oracles are middling.

Death Oracles will survive the best, since Death magic protects against getting afflictions from old age.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

...or, you could take an awake wyrm with dom10 o3/s3/h3/g1/l3/m1 (or adjust the order/growth/luck sliders to fit personal preference/game length - mf1 g3 m3 would be another option), be taking 3 provinces/turn by turn 4, and actually have the dominion to spread those great scales of yours... without giving up much in the way of magic diversity over your e9/n4 druid.

5x ancient ones and 5x 1 resource hurlers = 100 resources, which is remarkably easy to get at your capital even under sloth 3... and also more than capable of clearing weak indies after only 1 turn of recruitment. double it up, and even barbs/heavy cav go down pretty easily. (you'll eventually want to swap to hurlers with armor for the synergy with legions of steel, but really, even those are only 11 res... this isn't ulm.) Add in the fact that you need a lot of castles to be competitive on research, and... I just don't see it, ESPECIALLY if you're taking death to pay for production. there's just no way for agartha to keep up the rate of expansion needed to make that economically viable once the indies are gone, and no benefit to the gain in resources*.

*ok, if you have some crazy seal guard rush strat, go ahead and take production. I mean, who doesn't love 55g/37r giants with middling prot, no shield, no attack skill, no defense skill, and map move 1?

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

You are, in fact, resource limited for most of the first year.
The boulder throwers are 11, but the net throwers are 20 (from memory).

The netthrows have something like 22 hp and 14 armor. The combination of the two lets them be good screeners. They can take a hit. Whether calvary or your own boulder throwers.

Best of all - they actually turn around and hit with their nets. Let me repeat that. They are an agartha unit that actually hits. Not occassionally. Usually. Nets incapacite your opponent for a turn, and the defense is lowered. (so they can hit with trident).

Turning the question of misfortune around: Oracles are too expensive 350/7 = 50 gp/ rp. You simply *have* to buy earth readers. And since you are buying earth readers you might as well take advantage of their fortune telling.

In the 4 test games I ran, I never had a misfortune event after turn 8, in the capitol. With this build, money is *not* an issue. You have more money than you need.

You have the money to build a castle a turn and still fund expansion parties.

Look, can you replace the net throwers with other units, and lower the Prod value?

Yes. However, when you do that, if you use the standard light infantry, your losses will go from 0-3 units a turn (normally about 1 with the net throwers) to 10-12 units per turn, per expansion party. Which means more losses (gold) more chances to fail to capture the territory, and more frequent pauses to refresh your screeners.

My fundamental criticism of this build has nothing to do with short term. You have earth, death access for long term, and reasonable to great thugging with the earth bless / double bracers, and umbrals.

With the earth communion you will be swimming in gems. I'd like to see death access on the pretender to speed up the ramp up in death, and for afflictions on battlefield and remote spells.

I'd like to see astral access.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Yeah, that's all true, but - you're only resource-limiting yourself by buying net throwers (and armored hurlers), which... you just don't need. it's great that they have nets, and that those nets allow them to hit things with their tridents, but their trident damage is entirely superfluous - boulder hurlers have more than enough damage output on their own to clear indies, and only need blockers to hold for a couple of rounds. your starting army can fill this role fine for a number of rounds; ancient ones can do it better longer, especially on a per-resource basis. it's also worth noting that net throwers are mm1. can you expand quickly with prod-2/death 1? yeah, of course you can. you can also expand quickly with sloth 3/growth 3/one extra scale, only you're in a heck of a lot better position in year 3 when your high-resource national troops are near-worthless anyway.

I view sloth-3 as free points for ea-agartha, and I don't feel you've made a compelling case otherwise. I'd also note that while earth readers are wonderful, and *somewhat* synergistic with mf (yeah, you'll be massing them, but only in as many provinces as you're able to build castles in), I'd really rather take points from prod first.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

I made a practice game but ironically you cannot take sloth anymore without taking a big income hit
Order 3 + 18%
Sloth 3 -12%

I think CBM 1.92 makes extreme changes, now production has become very important even to nations who doesnt use resources.
Why was order nerfed. Its only important for the gold and now it has become dwarfed

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Where did the +18% come from?

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Three order ticks at +6% each I think.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

This whole eruption came about because while I generally agree that death under CBM should be avoided, I believe that EA Agartha is a possible exception to that general rule.

I made that assertion based on the following points:

1. The extra resources from a Prod setting can be profitably used to allow for rapid expansion.
2. No one is arguing that you will not have a long term extinguishing of income.

The argument however is that the net effect of a production / death scale is positive for the following reasons:

a). that the extra income in the beginning more than offsets the loss of income at the end.

Clearly, you can only extrapolate against indies so long before the usefulness of the analysis is suspect. However, I was reliably able to get income from 1300-1700 at the end of the first year, and averaged 3500 by the summer of the second year.

b). that the lower maintenance on your units offsets the loss due to death dominion.

c). that the lower attrition on your units 0-3 per turn against indies vs more offsets the costs.

d). that the ability to more reliably expand vs indies, and the ability to not have to shuffle troops matters.

3. Your death dominion will act as a small deterrent to invaders (supply issues).

4. Your oracles and seal guards are not build everywhere. Your earth readers, net throwers, and boulder throwers are.

You *need* a lot of castles to remain competitive in the research race. The fortune-teller ability of the earth readers will then prevent bad events on locations they are massed. Thus they mitigate the effects of bad luck.

5. CBM has made high hitpoints troops relevent longer. Regenerating, MR 13 Sacred boulder throwers are a better unit to have in the endgame than shortlived, MR8 trogs.


I've not said this is the definitive build for agartha. But I think its reasonable.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

I guess I don't understand why using net throwers as blockers with armored hurlers for initial expansion is 200 design points better than using ancient lords as blockers for a mix of armored/unarmored boulder hurlers.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Agree. I'm not on the trogs are the best way to expand side. Trogs are an expensive trap along the same lines as elephants. They can be used successfully but there are also a lot of counters to them. And you'll eventually be left will all those low MR guys sitting around eating gold.

I'm on the expand with a mix of Ancient ones and unarmored/armored bolder throwers. Now I haven't tested it extensively, but are the nets + bolder throwers really that much better than this mix that its worth taking death 3 and production for?

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

First, because ancient lords and boulder throwers are both sacred and so if you go with +3 -3 +3 +3 -2 +1 Dom 5 awake md you will be building a total of 5 units. Increase your Dom at the cost of either magic path, scales or awake. And to tell the truth, the next build I post up uses a dormant pretender.

But Second, people forget that Sloth *also* has events that are crippling too. They may not be as hugely negative - but a quick brigand on your capitol hoses you. Things like brigands, barbarian attacks. And some of the sloth events are unlocked at the beginning, wherease the plague events unlock at what is it, 3, 5, and 10?

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Expanding with trogs

http://i1084.photobucket.com/albums/...ions/trogs.jpg

I dont think your stone throwers could pull this battle.
7 trogs survived
And they cant trample elephants

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

This is completely false, there are no events tied to sloth listed in the event database.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Calling a spade a spade.. you are completely right, I was wrong about the sloth events.


But the boulder throwers didn't have any problem with elephants either. I'll try to post up a pic in a day or two.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

You seem to be confused about what "expansion" means. Expansion is ONLY the short phase where you fight indies to score a minimum of 10 - 15 provinces within the first year. Thats all it is. But it is still very important.

The MR is irrelevant since you only fight indies. You will not be "sitting around" with the trogs because they will die while doing their job. Counters? You are not fighting human players yet so who is going to do "counters"?

For the purpose of pure expansion against indies, troglodytes clearly give the best output in terms of provinces per turn. But why tackle the task so single mindedly? Against heavy cavalry boulder throwers are much better for example, and also some other poptypes. So I usually go for two or three trog mobs and one stack of boulders behind indy infantry.

Both trogs and boulders require a good understanding of battlefield mechanics, both require screens and a setup to lure the enemy to a favorable position. So if you haven't learned to do that then you probably should before discussing their effectiveness.

Death scale in current CBM is not a relevant choice for Agartha. A minor bless might be, but your sacreds get irrelevant soon so tailor it for the mages. Minor earth, nature and fire is fine. You can still take a little production, just not at the cost of a death scale.

Agartha has awesome heroes, so luck is not a bad choice either.

Strategy wise one of my most successful starts is to go underwater and surprise rush a nation with a coastal capital, using a crapload of sacreds to bring the wall down in 1 turn. Pulling that off offsets your general crappiness so you have a chance to step up to summons quickly.

My guide to the nation, link in my sig, is outdated. But many of the tricks are still relevant.

Re: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
 

Really? I was under the impression that EA Aga had kind of underwhelming heroes. I know they have that one E5 guy, who would definitely be great if they didn't already have so much access to E4, but I don't remember anyone else who really stands out. Am I just ignorant to some of them?