[Alpine Joe]

First off....Great guide Baalz it is really good. Ea Arco is a fun nation to play.

Having just come off my first dom3 win ever (nonforum game), as EA Arco, let me explain my build in case anyone wants to try out something a little different.

I humbly submit this as my preferred Arco build:

Awake Forgelord F2A3E4S3
Dom 10 O3S3M2D2

Awake, this pretender can expand as well as Baalz' bull but offers a lot for the mid-end game.
With Dom 10 he has enough awe against line troops, Cast Air shield to protect from arrows.
Forge yourself a midget masher on turn 1, start expanding from turn two. This guy can take on normal indy concentrations just fine. Your philosophers research alteration which give the FL the buffs he needs to take on tougher indies while you also expand with slingers/chariots.

Once expansion is done the FL really shines. He can forge some really useful stuff for arco. Cheap rings and really cheap staffs of elemental mastery mean you can get oriads and mystics up to casting any elemental spell. I particularly liked mobile orieds with SoEM and RoW dropping first round Fog Warriors/Wrathful Skies/Rain of Stones/Army of Lead/Gold depending on what I was facing. Crystal Shields instead of SoEM if you want a staff of storms along. All this can be done really cheaply with the forgelord. If they bring lightning immunity it is not hard at all to reach firestorm, heat from hell, grip of winter, or other big elemental battlefield enchantments. Even with Drain you have great research, particularly if you use skeptics to create a neutral research province, so I think you have a good chance to get to artifacts first, and your forgelord can forge almost all of them dirt cheap (I did this in the game I won). I really like to build up icarids in my forts, they are weak, but can fly. Once you are dropping Fog Warriors and Army of Gold in every fight what really starts to matter is their mobility.

Of course, a lot of this can be done with communions, but they are really unwieldy, so having cheap rings and staffs to boost levels makes you a lot more flexible. It is particularly handy to have an independent oriad along with the communion to first-round fog warriors or army of lead/gold incase they try to kill a big communion with rain of stones or firestorm.

No death makes thugging hard. I took away a Necromancer site from an enemy in my game which made it not too hard to get into death with rings already forged, but before that I made do with sleepers, golems and oriads. In retrospect with all my savings from forging I probably could have gotten some of the elemental royalty but I always assume they are already gone.....

With elemental boosters you are in reach to cast all of the big gem-gen globals. I found EBDW with my pretender particularly useful.

Of course, this win was against some pretty noobish players, so probably doesn't mean much, but I think it is fun to at least think about a pretender who can both expand and be an awesome forging machine mid-game in contrast to Baalz' bull (which has its own advantages).