How to handle early game(MP) of EA Agartha ?

[Eressil3]

I would like to play EA Agartha in MP. They got strong mages who are also strong priest. Most of their units got a bunch of HP. A lot of them can be blessed. You got a scry site. etc.

But,

They got poor att/def scores !!! Even blessed with a fire or water bless they seems pretty weak in the battle of an early game. So in MP it's not a surprise to be rushed as EA Agartha.

So my question : how do play them in the early phase of the game ? Can you give me BTW some idea of pretender design ?

[Ygorl]

You can take death with reduced consequences, and your guys are cold-blooded so taking heat can be nice. With death and heat turned up all the way, and maybe a little other tweaking, you can make a pretender (the obese trampling woman) with level 9 fire, earth, and nature. Bless a few sacred soldiers and watch them kill everyone.
In single-player, you'll do fine. In multi-player, there are obviously ways to counter this strategy, but it's not trivial (and you certainly shouldn't fall victim to an early rush - you could even try one yourself)

[RonD]

I went with a F4A4W1E4S3D2N8B1 sleeping master druid. Expanded with armies composed of 2-3 Oracles + 10-20 Ancient Ones, with the Oracles scripted Divine Bless; 4x Smite until Blade Wind was researched. Worked great, got 5 or 6 Oracles into the HoF.

You'd get totally squashed by any of the uber-bless nations. I started next to Niefle, so I conceded a couple of plum provinces to them to cement our good relations, and sat back and cheered on boths sides as Niefle fought a long and costly war with his other neighbors.

I won the game, thanks in no small part to the air and nature magic on my pretender (once diplomacy had saved me from the giants).

[Yrkoon]

A double bless earth/nature works quite well with Agartha, if you use ancient ones and ancient stone throwers. With a dormant pretender. High dominion is preferable. Other magic paths paths up to you.

Don't count on the ancients ones only to dish out the damage - you need the stone throwers to do the killing. They have 5 boulders each, doing considerable damage, with a big strength that's even more damage. Even troops with a shield blocking the boulder are likely to get killed. And it works on cavalry too (defense doesn't count against boulders).

The ancient ones are just here to keep the enemy away and act as a wall really. Lots of life, with the bless they have a good armor and regenerate. And you can boost their armor even more with earth spells that agartha can cast easily. You can also boost the strength of your units with earth spells - great for the ancient ones AND the stone throwers (increases range and damage).

For the scales, take heat (being cold blooded and need not eat), probably order because blessed troops and oracles are expensive. The rest is up to you. Personally I don't like death - bad for old units (like oracles) and I like to think of myself as a benevolent god, so no death for me.

If you can get nature indy mages, casting tangle vines is good (lowers defense) so your ancient one will become real killers. But tangle vines are weak with death scale. So again no death for me.

Later on you can cast darkness, which will really play in your favor.

[MaxWilson]

Yrkoon: I'm kind of dubious about relying on stone throwers, because they seem to like to wade into melee. Also, the manual describes missile attacks as being *directly* impacted by shields, as opposed to melee attacks where they can punch through. That is, in melee a shield adds its Protection to your unit's Protection unless the hit succeeds by more than <ShieldParry> points, but with missile weapons <ShieldParry x2> is added directly to defense. I do not think thrown boulders can punch through with high damage the way melee weapons can.

I haven't found ancient ones to be all that terrible in melee, actually, so I agree they might work there. The Earth bless helps you hold out until your enemies get tired, and the high strength of Agarthans (especially Seal Guards) does let them punch through shields in melee. A light fire bless helps a lot, too. But even with a high bless, Agartha can't expand as efficiently as Lanka or Helheim.

Don't forget to use Earth Meld to entangle enemies. Don't try to use Darkness against Lanka or Yomi.

-Max

[mr_Logic]

i just want to note here, that for some auspicious reason, the oracle of water has an extra basic defence and attack skill compared to other oracles, at no extra cost.
and that if you find that the killing isnt doen quicly enough, you arent using enough troglodyte lords. even without them being blessed, they outkill any ancient lord with whatever major blessing. and all they really need both to kill and to survive is a black steel plate armor.