MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips

[alexti]

mivayan said:
You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

With dom9 it can beat many indies, and with care it'll never get permanently hurt (immortal). Enc0 to wear heavy armor... not sure if it's worth forging early on. Just be *really* carefull about staying in friendly dominion.

I think Dom9 is too expensive. I would go with the following baseline:
Awaken Risen Oracle, Dom6, E1D2. Order 3, prod 0, heat 0, growth 0, misfortune 2, magic 1.

This leaves extra 120 points too spend. From here you can either add 3 scales or 1 scale and Dom7 E2D4.

Baseline by itself is enough to fill the main objectives - you can forge heavy plate armor and use Oracle to expand. Fear will be enough to route indies, and it will be tough enough to survive, it will probably get few afflictions, but being immortal it's not a big problem (especially considering that they won't affect its fighting capacities much :>) For more safety you can forge helmet as well. You can also benefit from the nearby oceans with this setup as Risen Oracle will be able to expand there right away and sea is harder to raid for most of nations.

Magic+1 should be enough to make research with earth
readers efficient, I'm afraid of misfortune 3, as it seems much more likely to lead to disaster than misfortune 2.

Later, Oracle's D2 will be enough to branch out into death magic. With F1W1E2 mages you should probably research Evo-1 for Geyser (while buying those mages), which should be enough to deter rushers - even for uber-blessed nations fighting you is likely to be too costly and risky. E2D4 Oracle would be even better for that due to affliction chances, so I'd probably go for production scale, D7 and E2D4, but some combination of Prod and Growth scales looks good too.

I think your main problem will be what to make your winning plan. At some stage you'll need to conquer your neighbours, and your best weapons are probably your national summons. With some of them being sacred it my be a good option to get some blesses on the oracle. You could get some 4-bless by sacrificing a scale. Or you can make Oracle dormant with 3 4-blesses, but it will cripple your expansion (though you would still probably be save from rushers due to Geyser). Though I'd probably opt for more conventional plan with awake Oracle, fast expansion (and following quick build of second fort) - your troops might not be that good in the future, but with extra gold and gems from expansion, extra number of troops, summons and mages you can field will probably overcome weaker blesses.