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Old September 24th, 2009, 02:46 PM
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Default Re: Agartha, Pale ones - a study in darkness (CBM)

Quote:
Originally Posted by pyg View Post
Nice guide! Just a couple of notes... The minor Death bless combined with the low precision of the artillery really racks up the afflictions on those close to and behind the front line. I started with 5 troglodytes in one expansion army and after a short while noticed that three of them were either limping or crippled. Kind of funny actually... Anyway my solution was to either not care too much or delay/don't bless during indy expansion.
Oh,yeah I guess I should have been more clear about this. Generally do NOT put troglodytes directly in front of boulder throwers, these are quite separate tactics. The exeption is when you are thugging out a trog lord or when buying troggs to flesh out a force for a single cruical fight. If you have big enough frontline and trog on the sides on attack rear you can keep the trogs away from the boulders for a while, but there is always a big risk the trogs will run into the line of fire so...A better alternative to combine with boulders are Barathrus pact (earth elementals) as they have regeneration.

I think that if you use trogs you better not care if they die, grenades...

Quote:
Also, I think a GoRed Umbral is quite a nice thug. Not as nice as a Golem, but cheaper and easier to access even without Nature on your pretender due to the prevalence of indy Nature sites and mages. Like others have noted, I too have found Astral to be a little hard to come by in some games. Playing Argatha quite similar to your guide has never left me short on Death gems though. I think your guide could say more about Umbrals. They are pretty amazing IMHO.
I might do a follow up talking about late mid game and end game. This guide so far only outlines your power curve until winter year three or so, which is early mid game as I see it. I need to play some more endgames with Agartha to be sure of myself here but I have some ideas...

I also like GOR:ed Umbrals. If you let a indy shaman/druid borrow one of those rings of sorcery your pretender forged you can build up some nature power until mid/late year four and start pumping them out.

But umbrals come into play much earlier than than I think. If you go by my strategy you will/can have marble warriors+umbrals by winter year 3, which is a pretty awesone addition to your armies. Especially if you add curse of stones, iron bane and darkness to that.

I suppose there is a whole lot more you can do with umbrals but I haven´t tested them enough so others can probably give better advice on that. I´m thinking some kind of stealthy raiding squads. But I´d like to try stuff myself in MP before recommending them in a guide so I´ll be back on that.

Right now I´m testing to go Enchantment instead of alteration after construction 7. Dropping deep well then make a statue/hidden in sand factory. I think this is a good alternative if you´re not in war. Hidden in sand gives you nice mages and dust warriors who are very good in combination with fire evocations, and you have perfect mages for magma eruption. Statues works well with boulder throwers. Riches from beneath isn´t too bad in CBM either, and lets you pump out those cavern guards like no tomorrow.

Last edited by Fantomen; September 24th, 2009 at 02:55 PM..
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