[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Scale ratings:
Order: It helps, but less than other civilizations. You don't have much chaff, your standard infantry all costs 10 gold and your mages sacred, so you won't be spending much on upkeep. You'll be relying on summons who don't need chaff, anyways. There aren't many situations where you'd want turmoil.

Productivity: It's a heck of a lot more meaningful than order, but needn't be in every build. If you're going with a dormant pretender, or need to expand quickly in your strategy, this is a good choice. If you're not planning much expansion, and have a supercombatant, there's no problem taking a little sloth. I wouldn't take more than one, though.

Heat: Heat's good for your coldblooded units, but bad for your cavern wights and mages. I'd take heat one, or neutral. Some people may take more. Cold is just bad.

Growth: Never take more than death one. Higher death scales kill your Golem Crafters ridiculously fast. I'd only take Death if I had magic 3, since I could use indeps and Earth Readers for research. Growth, on the other hand, is nice. It does the obvious, but also makes it a little harder for your Golem Crafters to die off. However, I've never needed the extra supplies. It sometimes seems like a waste.

Luck: You're going to take misfortune, often. In the vanilla game, MA Agartha has no heroes that I'm aware of. You have to download a mod to get any. And you've got all the gems you really _need_, if not want. So there's little benefit to luck. Even with misfortune one, you can get good events frequently. Though when you lose two provinces to earthquakes/troglodytes, you'll hate it. Misfortune three is dangerous.

Magic: You can benefit from tilting this scale in both directions. Taking a high magic scale will allow you to cast lots of spells, research better (or younger), and make the enemy more vulnerable to spells from most paths of magic.

Drain scale can be used to your advantage. First, only two earth spells target magic resistance, therefore, your spells remain effective while spells like Opposition fail more often. Second, earthpower grants +4 reinvig, and earth blesses anywhere from 2 to 5 on all your sacred mages. With A1N1 (random possible), you can forge Rainbow Armor (enc1, invig3), and n1- available anywhere- you can forge Birch Boots(invig2), Boots of the Messenger (invig4). There's also the Girdle of Might (+3)x2.

Unfortunately, you don't have great researchers, so drain will cost you. You'll have to plan around that somehow.

Dominion strength- higher is better, of course, but don't strain yourself too hard. You Golems start out tough.

Blesses:

Fire is again, one of the better all around blesses, helping everybody but your mages. Fire 4 is a big help.

Air is of use only to mages and Ancient Ones, but considering how vulnerable they are to arrows, is another good choice. Shock resistance is irrelevant.

Water benefits your your ancient ones, and your golems. While your golems have enough protection to not need defense, fewer open-ended die rolls are always a good thing. And quickness doesn't hurt, either.

Earth is troublesome. Reinvigoration helps your mages and Sacred ones, but the problem with the high level protection bonus is that it is applied to armor, not natural protection. Golems receive no benefit whatsover from this bless.

An astral bless is wonderful. Magic resistance is always handy, and Twist Fate won't win you battles, but will cut mage casulties. You know, that one lucky arrow that hits your stoneskinned mage in a clump of soldiers and does ten damage, gibbing all your golems if he was the last one?

Death bless isn't really worht talking about, but can make enemies very cautious about attacking with their pretender. Your strong dominion + Ancient Lord w/Gate Cleaver + 100 bless equals wounds. That said, it seems the affliction rate affects spells too, not just melee. There are ways to take advantage of this.

Believe it or not, I'm under the opinion that your pretender design and scales aren't that important to Agartha's early game. Though they will, of course have a long-term and short-term affect. And you can do very different things early on - a Wyrm Astral-3 is a SC.

But for simplicity's sake the basic strategy I'll outline assumes you'll have a pretender like this - And I've deliberately left the cost low, so you can tweak, play around and experiment in a easy SP game. Not because this is a viable MP build, just a puny baseline to compare against.

Dummy, my Baseline Pretender
An Awake Crone (350/350),
with 2 points Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Astral. Default 1 point death. Total RP 14 (costs 130, 220/350)
Dominion 5 (costs 70, 150/350)
Magic Scale 1 (costs 40, 110/350)
Standard game settings, random events -> Rare

gold is unpredicatable, as result of random event.

turn 1, spring
dummy, 14 -> research -> enchantment
recruit golem crafter, 7 LI

turn 2, 14 completed late spring
recruit golem crafter, 7 LI (179 gold left)
21->enchantment

turn 3, 35 completed, early summer, start with 456 gold
recruit golem crafter, 7LI, (186 gold left)
28-> enchantment

turn 4, 63 completed (ench1), summer, start with 483 gold, 54 upkeep
recruit golem crafter, 7LI (213 gold left)
35-> enchantment

Turn 5, 98 completed (ench1), late summer, start with 476 gold, 65 upkeep
42-> enchantment with crone, 28 without, only 102 rp until Attentive Statues

Here, you can start searching with your crone, recruiting other commanders, and get attentive statues by Earl Winter
early fall (74), fall (46), late fall(18), early winter (-10), winter (-38), late winter (-66), and still get 28 RP/a turn. This is what I'd do, recruiting two earth readers, and sending them & my current pretender out to research.

Or, if you recruit another golem crafter, and keep with the research, you'll get attentive statues by Late Fall.

early fall -42 (60), fall -49 (11), late fall -56 (-38), early winter -63 (-101), winter -70 (-171), and late winter, enchantment four. You'll start year two with up to 84 rp/turn (if crone's still researching).

In this sample game, I didn't expand any, or overtax, but I regularly recruited troops, to show you what you can achieve. If this was a more chaff oriented, non-sacred nation, then you probably couldn't afford all this.

In a real game, you'll have a totally different pretender, and likely, better scales.

With a dormant pretender and 5 rp a turn (mag3, earth readers, drain1, golem crafters), you can achieve about
(0+55)/2*11 = 302 by the end of the first year. That's enchant 3, 58 points away from enchant 4.

In most games, your strategy will actually depend on a) your pretender, and b) your terrain. On a random map, you may be stuck with three crappy, low resource connecting provinces. It may be worth your while to pinch pennies and hire mercenaries, to compensate for a complete lack of recruitable troops. In other situations, you'll have independent or mercenary researchers to pitch in.

With a high magic scale, seriously consider setting up a sacred-research indie as an early research station instead of throwing up another fort.

Pretender Commentary- practical advice

Risen Oracle: the most common choice, and for good reason. Unfortunately limited in magic paths, he comes with fear, so each point of death goes straight into a boost. Remember fear also gets stronger every +5, whether its natural or boosted. Doesn't add much to your golems, though will open up a poison golem. Opens up Skull Mentor, Skull Staff, and other nice artifacts that will help with darkness and drain strategies.

Generally better than lichs, unless you find yourself needing very high death.

Sacred Statue: Great potential lies in the astral path, but the difficulty of finding astral gems will hamper you. Alchemy can be used to help, and get rid of those unusable gems. For your very first Astral Pretender, you'd be better off with an Great Enchantress.

Oracle: Four accessory slots, but 20 hitpoints. You won't be teleporting it around, but you probably won't have the gems to do so, anyways. Better choice than the Sacred Statue. Try this once you've practiced with a Great Enchantress.

Wyrm: A classic. Everything to be said, already has. Combines well with nearly every path of magic. Has two heads - something to keep in mind. Want an easy supercombatant?

Titan: Opens up watchers, bless is great for your mages and Ancient ones, not so hot for golems, though the golems don't need them nearly as much. Worth a second look, despite the poor thematic match. Also opens up those Owl Quills you'll need if you take any drain.

Sample pretenders - perhaps not the best, but fun enough for single player or a relaxed multiplayer game.

Forge Lord (dormant)
Fire 5, Earth 5, Dominion 6, Productivity 3, Magic 1.
Basic goal is to reach construction 2 and enchant 3 (total 300 RP) around the the time your Pretender awakens. Meanwhile, you'll be depending on infantry or heavy infantry to expand.

First have have him forge a Dwarven Hammer, then start churning out artifacts, and kitting your Ancient Lords. Dedicate your mages to researching and casting battle magic. Eventually, you'll have access to Earth Attack, King of Elemental Earth, King of Elemental Fire, Melancholia, Volcanic Eruption, Raging Hearts, Purgatory (With a flame helmet), Forge of the Ancients, Mechanical Militia, Riches from Beneath, Earth Blood Deep Well (earth boots).

If you're not interested in globals, you can take a point of heat (good for your Ancient Lords anyway), drop a point of productivity, take 7 dom, and take 4 earth, 4 fire, and either air or water. You now can forge the staff of Elemental Mastery, and boost your Golem Crafters even further. With staff, Helmet, Boots, and Robe of the Sea/Water Bracelet, you've got a FFFWWWEEEE mage. Not bad- still, quite expensive. Though way too many options for just one mage, who'll die of old age. Earth boots is all they need for Magma Eruption. And you can STILL get forge of the ancients and Hammer of the Forge Lord. This will get you Acid Rain, Acid Storm (with water gems, and golems have no armor to be destroyed), get Curse of the Desert, Grip of Winter, Curse of Stones, Heat from Hell, Prison of Fire. Is short, all sorts of ways of ways to mess with your opponents. On a mage one arrow will kill. Base costs: Dwarven Hammer (15), Earth Boots (10), Robe of the Sea (15), Flame Helmet (25), Staff of Elemental Mastery(25,25), Hammer of the Forge Lord (25, 15), Forge of the Ancients (80).

However, if you get the Forge of Ancients up, the Hammer of the Forge Lord, The Staff of Elemental Mastery can be forged for only 3,3. If you find one of the forging sites... The mechanics of forge bonuses are discussed elsewhere in these forums, but there's a limit of 10%. With only a 50% bonus, and Forge of the Ancients, a Ember blade would cost 2,2. With the 75 bonus reachable by a Forge Lord and Forge of the Ancients, that comes down to 1,1. Your Golem Crafters with Dwarven Hammers and Forge of the Ancient comes to 3,3. So... Overkill? It's certainly a little easier to get up and running with the forge lord. And you can waste time forging 5 gem items for free. The problem is, this is all practically endgame. At least the bless isn't useless.

Good diplo build, though arming your eventual enemies is always a questionable tactic. You'll come out on top of any item exchange. Though people will consider you stingy if you keep your best (Dwarven Hammer?) items to yourself, its worth considering in a MP game. It is possible to pull off by year four, though I didn't do a great job of orchestrating my test game, and went about it all wrong.

Other people, please mention a build for people to try. And state whether its competitive or fun. I'm trying to put together a blood strat, myself, but it requires a bit of work and experimentation.