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Your initial expansion is going to be using your human infantry, and I’ll tell you right now it’s gonna be slow – probably the slowest in the game if everyone’s at the same skill level. This is the weakest part of Agartha’s game and I didn’t help it by gearing my design choices towards mid/late game power. Still, in sufficient numbers your infantry isn’t *that* bad, and without having sloth scales you can build up critical mass. It works a lot better if you resign yourself to a slow initial expansion and don’t try to send out expansion parties with less than critical mass. Those Agarthan light infantry actually do a pretty decent job against indies so long as they outnumber them.
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I agree mostly, but here are some more tricks to make it less painful early on.
Under CBM Legions of steel is construction 1. If you go for that right away and try to send an oracle with some of your expansion parties you can cut your losses a great deal. Divine blessing also gives all your troops +2 morale. You also have strength of giants coming up next to add into the mix before you´re done expanding
Your medium and heavy infantry has kite shields with parry 6 (compared to 4 for LI) Just buying a few of them as arrow catchers isn´t a bad use for leftover resources. They are also slow, your light infantry will run past them into melee and keep them alive longer.
Your sacreds might not be that good but they are dirt cheap(for 40hp sacreds), just 40 gold. They average 15 prot with legions of steel and hit for 27 damage with bless+strength of giants. Mixed with size 2 light infantry they can add some punch and meat against tougher indies. Mixed with Attentive statues they can expand under water.
If you´re attacked really early don´t forget Armor of achilles spammable by your earth readers behind a few attentive statues. Add in some indie archers and you can deal with many elites. There are other low level spells worth looking at as well. Dessication, earth meld, slime, geyser...
Massed archers behind statues and destruction spam is a great and cheap option as well.
Your pretender is capable of the following trick in certain situations: Teleport on top of something, place in the rear, cast Horror mark(or astral geyser)/call horror/call horror/returning. Requires only blood 1, thau 3, 3 slaves and 5 pearls. Only do it if you are out of options and sure what you´re fighting, there are many counters. Still a useful surprise. Can also be used to pick of that odd leftover indie out of range of your troops (take it with a scout).
When you can´t afford oracles, which is quite often, and have some other forts to buy golem crafters, why not turn your capital into a battlefield thug factory? Ancient lords are just 60 gold for 44hp and full slots. Just a golden shield and a frost brand and he´s ready to join the statue front lines. With hammers thats just 9 gems, and you should have lots of hammers. The can also be adapted easily to your enemy. What about 10 of these with fire plates and bells of cleansing sprinkled along your front line against abysia for example?
I wish there was a way to add a n4 bless into this build, that would give us:
*Stronger nature access (like gift of health stacking with dombonus for statues)
*Old diseased mages would heal in battle or use shrouds.
*Dirt cheap nature items.
*Ancient lords more thuggable, less afflictions on oracles and Ancient ones a lot more worthwhile(especially under water against all those poisoned spears)
I´d Consider dom6 turmoil3 cold3 growth2 luck3 magic1 and f4 e4 s2 n4 b4.