Strategy for Agartha Early Age

[SunTzu84]

Hello. I'm trying to learn the game one nation at a time, and the first one is EA Agartha, also my favorite. But the nation seems to me pretty hard to control properly - my troops are incapable to dealing enough damage even to lightly armored opponents, and get always beaten in underwater provinces. Even elite units have serious problems overcoming far inferior foes. I tried to use summoned monsters, but is pretty difficult to mass them (btw, there is a way to queue the cast order for ceremonial spells for more than one turn?). I'm using a Risen Oracle. Any advice?

p.s.: sorry for the bad english

[Agrajag]

1) You can make your commander cast the same ritual repeatedly every month by using M for Monthly ritual.
2) Your troops don't deal enough damage? Agarthans have pretty high Strength, which means they deal quite high damage, especially the sacred giants.
My guess is your problem is low Attack, so your soldiers can't actually hit.
3) Your high-priced mages all have 3E - optimal for Bladewind (evocation 4), which is a very effective spell in EA
4) You should consider a bless strategy, you have the H3 to pull it off, and the Ancient One sacred could really use a Fire+Nature bless. (Fire so they can actually hit something, Nature because 40hp works well with regeneration.)

[SunTzu84]

Agrajag said:
2) Your troops don't deal enough damage? Agarthans have pretty high Strength, which means they deal quite high damage, especially the sacred giants.
My guess is your problem is low Attack, so your soldiers can't actually hit.

Yes, probably this is the problem. There is some sort of malus battling against lower size foes?

[Agrajag]

SunTzu84 said:

Yes, probably this is the problem. There is some sort of malus battling against lower size foes?

Well, I mentioned size only because the bigger ones have 18 strength and the smaller ones have 13 strength.
And if you look at the attack of the smaller Agarthans you'll see its pretty low (as well as their defence, which makes them pretty lousy)

However size does affect the change to hit, though not directly, but IIRC for every attack against someone, he gets -1 defense against the next attack, so if you use (say) size-3 units against size-2 unit, you'll have 2 units per square while your enemy will have 3 units per square (each square is size-6 big), so you'll be attacked more often.

[Maltrease]

I believe with Dom 2 it is a -2 defense for each attack (according to the manual). This makes swarming very effective vs high defense units.

The spell that summons 5 magma children for 2 fire gems is pretty good with Argatha. 1 out of 4 earth readers can cast the spell... and of course you can get the flame oracle if you want a guarantee.

I'm curious if it would even be worth taking a heat scale to make better use of these guys. Its a real shame they are not sacred or could get really interesting

You can hit Conj3 on the 7th-9th turn if you get an awake pretender. Or much faster if you build a sage for this purpose (then the sage can site search and help bring in all the gems needed to mass produce the units).

[Ewierl]

Originally Posted by Maltrease

I'm curious if it would even be worth taking a heat scale to make better use of these guys.

You should definitely take at least a moderate Heat scale as EA Agartha. All your units are cold-blooded, which means they take encumberance penalties in cold (and even neutral-temperature) provinces. I personally recommend Heat 2, though if you want extra points, 3 is manageable (you take "extreme heat" encumbrance penalties, but so does everyone else).

Generally speaking: go with a good bless; you want moderate F/E/N, but F/N can stay 4-6 since you don't need berserk or flame weapons (your Seal Guards have magic weapons already). Earth bless is partly for your mages, but E9 makes Ancient Ones quite tough. With even a small squad of those and a H3 mage to bless them, you can expand quite rapidly.

Later, have fun with Destruction and Blade Wind and Magma Eruption.

[PDF]

The Seal Guards have big magic Glaives rated at 10 dam or so, and they have 19 Str, so sure they can punch through shield and armor of medium inf.
Their problem is Att10/Def8, without F4+/W4+ bless they've difficulty hitting anything and get hit often...

[Endoperez]

PDF said:
The Seal Guards have big magic Glaives rated at 10 dam or so, and they have 19 Str, so sure they can punch through shield and armor of medium inf.
Their problem is Att10/Def8, without F4+/W4+ bless they've difficulty hitting anything and get hit often...

The magic weapons are good, of course. They cost lots of resources on a capital-only unit, but they are good. 11 dam, +1 att, -1 def, length 4 and ability to bypass etherealness. 30 damage total is enough to deal some damage even to any human that comes against them (46% chance of hitting Ambibate Noble Warrior for 3 points of damage).

Unfortunately, the recruitable-everywhere Ancient Ones have just spears or Boulders for armanent. Boulder-throwers don't have even spears, making them very hard to use. The Pale Ones also have just spears, except for Cavern Guards who have Glaives. Minus to attack? They would be better of with Great Clubs, with att 0 def 1...

[HoneyBadger]

A good Pretender strategy for Agartha (in my opinion) is an Imprisoned Forge Lord with turmoil3, productivity0, cold3, growth2, luck2, and drain 2. Forge Lord because if there's one thing Agartha does well, it's gems, lots and lots of earth gems. Might as well spend them wisely, and since your Oracles are going to be researching Conjuration and Evocation, you can use your Forge Lord just to crank out magic items for your sacred fighter captain, and you'll be doing alright, since you can practically make as many of those as you can your basic Seal Guard. Naturally, there are better uses for a Pretender, but it's a strategy to consider.
Turmoil3/Heat3 are taken purely for points, although Heat is more likely to help out your Magma Children than Cold, right? Productivity 0 hopefully lets you make Seal Guards faster, since they're by far the best unit you've got, and you can build up to 3 in a row (Dom3). Luck 2 lets Turmoil 3 be atleast a little advantageous, and I hate losing my Temple in round 3. Drain isn't as bad as it could be since you're making less Oracles, but they're individually more powerful, so the -1 isn't affecting 30 mages, it's only affecting 10.

Fire 8, Earth 9, Nature 4. Some Nature is pretty much a given, since supposedly it helps keep your units from getting afflicted, and those big, slow to produce Seal Guards become pretty useless if they're blind or lose an arm or something, and regeneration's always nice. The +4 to attack is also a given, and the Earth 9 helps keep those units from getting hit, and helps your Oracles stay in the fight.

[PDF]

I've only been battling against EA Agarthans, never played them myself, but they are pretty good with F9 (and possibly W4 or N4 as well) blessed Seal Guards, and Magma Children summons. The little warriors are not good though .
Their mages are potent (they can have up to E5 !) and quite tough, my Abysians assassins never managed to kill one...