[Blitz]

Good questions. I'll try to answer as many as I can. I'm sure there are lots of other Arcoscophile players out there who can help too.

1) What is the independent difficulty level you have in mind here? Does a no (or low)-magic wyrm stand up well against level 7-9 indies? How about your elephant/hypaspist army?

Most of my games are on difficulty 5. Naked wurms have to pick their spots on larger settings. Avoid large Groups of barbarians, and anything with a lance for starters. However, in my Last MP game I lost my wurm to a tough indy on turn 6. Normally this is a huge blow (it hurts still), but it took only 3 turns for a few of my researching priestesses to call him back. It sucks still, but as noted, he's no worse for the experience, and all it cost me was around 60 research points. He died I believe 4 times in that game, the rest to opponents. If you can bear the taunts, feel free to pick fights you might normally avoid.

2) You avoid the routing trampler problem by grouping your elephants in with your hyps: The elephants don't hurt the overall morale too much by doing that? Also - if your elephants are lumped in with your main melee units, don't you end up with lots of situations where your elephants end up standing around in the middle of a mass of your own units, while your very front row of units does most of the work?

This happens with larger armies. I don't usually have more than 4 elephants in an expo army, and maybe 8 in a midgame offensive. Use two Groups of 20 units (4 tramplers + 16 morale boosters).

3) I don't think you mention chariots at all - do you think they're not worth it? As I see it, they're smaller (size 5 = less damage) and more easily killed, but they're also far cheaper (30 vs 100, I think), and have 1 extra morale over the elephant.

In my experience, these are inferior. They get annihilated by lances on the flanks, and elephants take a bigger pounding in the middle. If there's a good way to use these, I haven't found it. The Golden Age choriots are much stronger, I use them quite a bit... but the attrition is awful. It's not unusual to have 4-5 star mammoths later in the game with your priestesses around. Every star gives a morale point, a definate bonus.

5) You seem to prefer hypaspists over hoplites. To me, the hypaspists seem to cost more and have less armor and a shorter weapon than hoplites. The only benefit is they are faster - is that worth it?

Hoplites are MUCH better toe to toe than Hypaspists. This is one of the unique situations where unit synergy makes one choice superior. The 2 move rate and extra morale point of the hypaspists mean they work well with elephants. Try grouping them together and watch how little actual fighting they do against independants. The tramplers charge ahead, and in 1-2 rounds the enemy usually routs. Hypaspists in expansion are only there to keep your elephants from routing and mop up. You will find that there is little or no attrition in their ranks with expansion, and it is the elephants you must replace from time to time, not them.

I love heart companions. At times I will use a 6D Archlich pretender, which happens to give them +fear and +morale. It wasn't something I took into account when designing the pretender, but it's a nice bonus. 16 fear aura units combined with the killing power of 4 elephants is a rout waiting to happen, and the morale boost with bless means you will almost never rout. So yes, heart companions, bless effects, and elephants have very nice synergy. Without significant blessings I prefer the hypaspists.

6) You also slightly mention Cardaces, but not Peltasts. I like putting a big group of Peltasts on "fire closest" behind a wall of hoplites, which seems to work fairly well. I haven't seen much use for Cardaces, though.

Well you start with both, and that's all I ever use them for honestly. Playing Golden Age I use both to a great extent until I can summon better, but only by default. If I were facing a specific opponent (say, Marignion or Ulm) when I expected to see very little shield use I might buy a few... but that's theory and something I can't remember doing in practice.

7) I like your staff of storms/no missile unit army plan. Slingers are stinky. I'm guessing, though, it must make the attrition rate for your melee-ers a good bit higher, since they'll have to do most of the killing.

Slingers are the worst unit in Dom2. Having made that statement, I'm sure someone might come up with a worse example, but I doubt many could come up with a use for them. Flaming Arrows? No idea. Seems their only use is to make Arco PD worse, it might actually be decent with peLasts in their place.

Melee attrition isn't so bad, it's the elephants who die a lot. Using body earthreal on them isn't a bad idea, if your mages cast it properly that is. Crossbows are a *****, but humans tend to target the elephants first. In the middle stages of a game you definately want to augment your troops with summons. Seasonal spirits on the flanks (bear/lion) and on their archers (spring hawks) do well. Longbows do a far better job than crossbows against elephants incidenly. Don't even bring any against Man. Best case they die. Worst case they rout. Either way leave them behind.

8) I love the priestesses, but I sometimes find it frustrating that the tend to start casting wimpy 1-nature buffs once their scripts run out, rather than, say, "sermon of courage" or banishment. For my priestess-prophet, it's even more annoying when they're casting Protection on some slingers instead of casting Fanaticism! Do you find yourself sometimes wishing Arco had a Holy-3 non-mage as well, like I do?

The strategos and hypaspists should keep your mammoths from routing until they've taken some bad losses. Herald Lance is key here, because the elephants outrun the commander and you need range to compensate. For 5 nature gems you can extend the range (horn of something) further. It's not a big investment, and it helps against undead as well.

As for the protection on slingers, solve that by not using them. Protection on the elephants on the other hand is quite nice. I do understand your meaning though. My armies usually have a 4:16:1:1 ratio. 4 Elephants, 16 morale troops, 1 strategos, 1 priestess. As your troop numbers increse, add support troops to match. Don't bother bringing mages until later (maybe one to earthreal the elephants, but that's it)

9) I also think the lack of a cheaper Holy-2 priest is a bit of a gap for Arco. The high cost of a priestess (110 vs say 50 for a H-2 priest), makes me tend to have less of them in my armies, making me more vulnerable to undead. Indie priests are easy to find, but I often don't think to recruit them.

I make TONS of priestesses, remember they are your best researchers and get better as your magic scale goes up (sacred reduces upkeep cost, which will be exponentially higher than your initial investment), as well as your combat medics.

As for dealing with undead, indy priests are cheap. Augment your armies with independant druids. They are decent priests and can cast relief with a thistle mace. They are a staple of any army I play without strong nature magic. On that topic, might as well mix in some indy shamen for healing light and more earthreal. Try scripting one to cost body erthreal 5 times... more often than not she'll hit all 4 elephants and herself.

10) Another Arco weakness is death magic. It takes some effort (and a lot of death gems) to bootstrap your way up to be able to cast the higher-level death summons.

Great point. Death magic rocks, which is why I often use a lich pretender. However, death boosting items are the most plentiful around, and you can scan for death sites with both dark knowledge and of course AR (which you should be using asap). With all those sites and nowhere to spend the gems, it's 40 death gems to get an astrologer to death 3 (empower for 30, then a skull staff). That's enough for most stuff, although the nice astral/death rituals often have me augment him further, even when I have my archlich in play. Always keep an eye out for those indy raptors, the leader has DD and flying. She's impressive to say the least. There are a few other rare sites which give death leaders, but empowering an Astrologer is more likely. Don't expect high level death summons with Arco, look to astral and elemental magic for that.

11) While priestesses might be more efficient researchers, cost-wise, I would never recruit them expressly for that purpose. I'd much rather spend the extra 70 gold for a roll of the dice on a mystic. I can never have enough level 2 and 3 elemental path mystics for site searching and item forging, and of course they also research when not doing those things. And for pure research, I rely on sages once I can find some.

Sages are better. Usually I keep 10 or so priestesses in the capitol, that's almost enough to bring back your pretender from death in a single turn. Use the wizard's tower as you might expect to... to crank out the wizards. On turn 20 you should have 3 bases. That's not exageration for effect. Using Acro, you only have to invest 600 gold for a fortress with the works. That's 150-300 gold cheaper than other nations (depending on castle and with the exception of Man/Pangaea). This is one of your strengths, and by using a no-magic Wurm you are playing to them. You should have the gold from scales, and the territory from your big lizard. Expand, build up, make wizards, and build temples. Eventually your dominion will start to invade neighbors, and they'll start wars. The idea is to control the choke points, or at least have a wall of wizard towers on the border. Dominion power means they play on your turf by your rules. Advance slowly, templing and towering as you go. Your magical advantages are at their highest in the lategame, and your expansion at best in the earlygame. It is the midgame when you lack a SC answer when you are vulnerable. Make this period as short as possible through massed research in several fortresses throughout your empire.