[Squirrelloid]

So, i've run economic builds with sleeping pretenders as *marveni* and *bandar log* and foiled or deterred rushes. Its all about choosing your early research appropriately and knowing how to counter bless rushes with magic. Earth meld is great for nations with earth magic (so long as their native precision is high enough to hit the broad side of a barn), Fire Prison and its lesser cousin work great for fire nations, etc... Basically, hard research shafts some nations against early bless rushes. (this won't necessarily lead to a bless rusher winning the game, but it can cause a player to lose the game because they can't accomplish sufficient research early enough). Most early rush foiling spells are level 2, and hard research makes it take 60% more RPs to reach level 2 in a school. That's a substantial difference.

So, its been awhile since i was in YARG2, so there are things I don't remember. Lets talk about Agartha first.

(1) their troops are bad. Really bad. Incomprehensively bad. Lets start with size 3, ie, outnumbered in every fight because they can only stick 2 in a square. And unlike most size 3 units (even monkey's bandar), they don't even have any real stat advantages except excess hp. In fact, their stats are pretty awful. So they just die in droves - even the 'elite' cavern guard unit.
(2) Their sacreds are worse. Base encumbrance 4 (before armor!), size 4, lackluster stats at best, and weak armor. The typical giant bless is probably the best thing on them, but its not very good on them. Now, on a unit basis they're better than the average troops, but on a cost basis? Much worse, and they require an investment in a bless which Agartha can't afford. Sure, they're recruit anywhere, it doesn't help. (Seal Guard at least have decent armor, but they're cap only and require like *50* resources, making them impossible to mass since taking production scales and a bless is impossible, because you need other things. Also, they still aren't that good.)
(3) Oracles are inefficient with respect to other nation's mages, make terrible thugs (though you pay for their enhanced stats), and are cap only. They have base 5 encumbrance, and no starting armor, so to thug them you basically need full gear, and even then they can basically only thug PD or indies. And of course thugging them requires a bless. So you have really expensive researchers, battlecasters, and ritual casters, because we aren't going to thug them (not cost effective, would be better off using banelords or something).

Next we consider their magic paths. E3X1 + 110%EX where X is W, F, or D. This is actually kind of crappy.

-no cross-path combinations except with E. This means, among other things, you need a pretender to carry F+D for fiery skulls (despite having F+D nationally!). You also have a hard time getting to F4 for the helm, or D4 for the skullface. You can't tart-farm notably well. (Have to bootstrap like a non-D nation).
-No good way to D4 means no good way to cast Darkness, which might make their troops *almost* useful. (Seriously, Agartha should be able to cast darkness early and often. Instead its a struggle to even get a caster to be able to do so.) Lack of W+D combination means you can't use Streams from Hades to expedite this.
-Precision of ~7, which is terrible. Yet most of the good spells they can cast are combat evocations which require aim. (Bladewind and Magma Eruption are some of your most useful). No native N or A magic for targetting help (and N on indie mages doesn't help...).

Despite all that, Oracles are the only thing arguably good about the nation, but they aren't really that good, especially not comparatively. Also, given they're the only thing agartha has going for it, they're stupidly overpriced. Other nations with better troops have much more affordable cap only mages with equal or better magic paths. Lanka's Raksharaja is stupid efficient, as is TC's cap-only mages. If you kept everything else the same about Agartha, the Oracles should cost ~275g apiece at a maximum, and they still wouldn't be winning the efficiency award (that would be EA TC).

(4) Recruit anywhere mage is mostly useless. E1+100%EFWD. Sure, its sacred, but its average for a sacred 2 path mage, not very useful in combat (E+F randoms can be made combat useful with earth boots, but that's quite a heavy gem investment if you're going to be doing that in numbers that matter. W1s will eventually be useful, but its a long time coming, and frozen heart isn't that useful after midgame.)

So, your magic is pretty bad. Your troops are worse. You can no longer effectively mass Umbrals anymore because they require 3d instead of 1d (a +200% increase in cost, which is huge), which was the only thing the nation had going for it. You don't tart rush better than anyone else, in fact, worse than many because you can't natively forge the chalice or cast GoH. You can't dragonmaster into massed cave drakes or similar. In fact, there are no good E summons for you.

Which brings us to your pretender. Your nation has weak troops and a really weak early game, so you might want an awake SC. But your cap only mages are fricking expensive, so you really need good scales. You also desperately need Mg1 or better yet Mg3 so your research isn't useless, since you have to hang your entire game on the performance of your cap-only mages. To get any use out of 50% of your recruit anywhere mages, you're going to need to mass produce earth boots (among other things), so a Forge Lord is also a good idea. And have i mentioned how bad your magic diversity is? You basically have to treat your nation like you only have E magic natively because you don't get any of the useful crosspath combinations, and your non-E is pretty weak. (And if you wanted a bless, well, good luck with that).

Hmm... this was longer than i intended. AAR in next post.

Edit: oh yeah, for those who don't know, everything but trogs is cold blooded.