[Tyrant]

Death and Earth are two of my favorite paths, and i like trolls too, so Argatha is one of my very favorite nations. I've been meaning to write a guide for a long time but instead i'll just add my 2 cents here.

1) Micah is of course right about the supply issue. No unit in your entire force pool except Trogs eats, so a crappy dominion will dissuade attacks by experienced players without nature magic.

2) Trogs are a usefull early game matchup unit, kinda like chariots. Against indies and some player nations they are an efficient way of killing things, but they will quickly become obsolete against a decent player, and won't work at all against any of the growing list of giant nations, anyone with elephants, etc. If you do use them you will find that they work best in fairly large groups - they are pretty vulnerable so they have to kill the enemy quickly or they will suffer too many casualties. Also they are expensive to field in mass and you will likely have poor candles, so IMO Trogs have a limited role to play. Other excellent players have extolled the virtue of Trog leaders with modest equipment (Black Shield, Amulet of Luck ,etc) as cheap trampling thugs, but when i have tried it they have gotten dead way too quickly to justify the expense.

3) A few Cavern guards may be useful to add bulk, but other than that the non-sacred are garbage and shouldn't be built at all. All the sacreds except the Seal Guards are build everywhere. Seal Gaurds have their charms, especially the magic weapon, but unlike the entire rest of your force they are move one. This annoys me so much that I do not build them till later in the game when i am rich.

Despite the fact that boulders hurt trolls and their precision sucks, i think a modest contingent of hurlers adds much needed killing power. Put them right behind the line and they will fire their limited ammo and then move to the flanks to help against the overlap that you will almost certainly be suffering.

4) Some of the other suggestions for blesses look perfectly viable to me, but my preference is 9E 4-8N. The reinvig stacks nicely with the reinvig from Earth Power for your Oracles. The armor plus the regen makes the Ancients Ones into a very serious living wall.

5)Ancient Ones are the rock upon which your empire should be built. AO's have two and a half serious problems- they cannot hit anyone, they are size four so they have horrible frontage, and since it takes forever for them to kill anything because of the first two and they have pretty high encumbrance, they tucker out before you win. The purpose of Ancient Ones is not to destroy your enemy, it is to form an extremely durable front line that can hold off and wear down the enemy army while you destroy them some other way.

6) I don't really see a point to the earth elementals, but Umbrals and Magma Children are spiffy. Put the Magma Children together in the same unit with the Ancient Ones (~50-50) and you get what i call the Flaming Phalanx, and it is an awesome killing machine. The AO's attract the enemy attacks 'cause they are bigger, but they mostly don't care and the Magma Kids do the killing with their AE attack. Yea, some of the AO's catch on fire, but they have plenty of HP and regen if go with my bless plan. Does not work against fire proof enemies of course, but it is otherwise a full six-pack of whup-arse.

7)Other's have mentioned the Blade Wind, and Blade Wind is great, but Earthquake is Argatha's national motif. Does not mix well with the Magma Children, but other than them no one in your army really cares and with E4 plus Summon Earth Power plus Boots a single Oracle can fire off several quakes, and there's no real reason to bring just one. Caster armies, hordes of scum and most regular human forces will simply disappear into the earth. It's beautiful.

8) A few random notes about Argathan weakness-

You need lots of forts 'cause your troops are resource intensive.

Though you have both fire and death you do not have them on the same guys and they are only level 2 so you are kinda hosed for power up items - no Fire Skulls, no Death Hats, no Flaming Helms. The death is more of a bummer than the fire - 2+ 1 for a Skull Staff is not enough to self boot death all the way up the ladder.

Though your land built armies can kick some butt underwater, the Wet Ones and PD are near useless.

Earth Readers are not much, so, like so many other EA nations, you are very dependent on the cap-only Oracles. Unlike many of the others EA nations however,you a are hard pressed to come up with any kind of dome and thus very vulnerable to province smites on your capitol later in the game.

Your PD is terrible, stealth raiders will eat you alive.