[AdmiralZhao]

I recently won a large game with EA Argatha, so I thought I would chip in a few more pieces of advice.

- A bless of E9N6 is very solid. You can expand quickly and cheaply against independents, and while you will not ever hit enemy national troops, it will at least take a long, long time for them to kill you. While being defeated slowly usually isn't a winning move, it does open up a lot of possibilities for your mages. For instance, have a few Oracles cast Curse of Stones x 2, while your troops are in the rear and set to hold and attack. Opponents who fail their save will reach 50+ fatigue by the time they hit your lines, and will quickly reach 80-90 fatigue, at which point your troops can actually hit them. This also gives you a good chance to catch exhausted enemy mages at the end of the battle. Or, you can throw in a Grip of Winter, which paradoxically will hurt enemy troops without reinvig far more than it will hurt your troops with re-invig. Darkness is always great, as is earth quake with your regenerating troops. For best results, combine several of the above. I haven't tried it, but Plague should work in the same fashion as Earthquake. Your regenerating troops should be effectively immune to it, and can sit there shrugging off blows and disease while your opponent's army falls to rotted pieces in front of them. This bless will also let you ignore missile fire, which is useful when attacking castles or when taking friendly fire from your own independent archers.

- You are surprisingly strong against the Heims. It takes forever for the Heimish troops to break through a block of Ancients, and while they work you can have independent archers rain fire on them. The boulder throwers are another great option, as they completely ignore glamour, defense, and most armor. 2000 gold worth of glamour-calvary with a heavy bless and 3 stars of experience can be quickly crushed beneath an avalanche of giant boulders.

- If you ever have any chance for air magic, take it. Even Deer Tribe Shamans with a 10% chance for A1 are worth pumping out. If you can trade for boosters, empower, or communion one of your guys to A2, you can get Wind Guide, which will turn your Boulder Throwers into pure murder. Additionally, forged air items can give you some much needed strategic speed, so that you can complement your plodding armies with flying raider-thugs.

- go for a relatively high dominion. Cold scales are the kiss of death for your armies, and there are a lot of nations in EA who take cold scales. You want to at least keep the cold out of your territory so that you are not tempting them.

- you are well situated for a mid-late game attack into the water. You can take your W1 earth readers that you were using for research, give them a cheap water bracelet, and then use water power to boost them to W3. This gives you all the vital UW spells like quickness, Shark Attack, Friendly Currents, etc. You can also use them to do Warriors of Nieflheim + Grip of Winter, which has great synergy with the above strategy of simply exhausting your opponents. Another neat trick is to take your fire elementals underwater with you. A simple Sea Kings Goblet lets you bring a group of 50 underwater, and since their heat effect doesn't work underwater, you can drop mages in the middle of them to cast quickness + Marble Warriors (or Army of Gold/Lead). This invincible, deadly, and untiring group will then proceed to annihilate anything in front of them without fire resistance. This is great for launching a surprise attack, since who expects fire elementals on land to come charging underwater, and who builds UW thugs with fire resistance? Very few people, that is who.

Don't bother making PD or national troops underwater though, they are if possible even worse than your basic land troops. I've seen 25 underwater PD get completely rolled by a small group of independent tritons. They are just absurdly bad.