EA Agartha - the game's red-headed stepchild (CBM)

[TheDemon]

Very nice guide, and I agree with a lot of it. Luck is definitely useful if you can afford it, although I would say moreso for gem events than heroes. Furthermore, make it a priority to search all your provs with an E3D2 Oracle. If you're able to get a small death income, you can power yourself to Const 6 with Skull Mentors and then spam Lightess Lanterns to hit all your research goals pretty quickly. EA Argatha is one of the few nations that can forge both items with ease and also benefits greatly from Const research.

In terms of manual searching, level 2 or 3 is usually sufficient. I typically do my with the aforementioned E3D2H3 oracle, because level 4 earth and holy sites are pretty damn rare.

I do disagree with your choice of the Fire bless over a Nature bless. Firstly, any regen, however small, gives a massive ammount of affliction reduction. It may scale (I'm not so sure it does), but the ammount is huge even with just 5%. Secondly, against EA indeps, you don't actually need to hit them very often. You just need to stand there and let them wail on you and kill a few occasionally. Giant Sacreds vs Indeps, the indep morale will break first. The exceptions are Barbarians and Cavalry, which actually do damage when they hit you. So I don't think a Fire Bless is needed, nor do you need to use Seal Guard over Ancient Ones.

I played a 10-player 15 prov/player multiplayer game with EA Argatha, actually it was the first multiplayer game I won. I took an awake Forge Lord with F2 E9 S2 N6, which I afforded by taking Drain 3 and dom 4. I expanded with teams of 6 to 8 Ancient Ones backed by an Oracle smitespamming, and eventually added 4 to 6 Stone Hurlers. My objective was one expansion team every two turns. I rushed construction to level 4 with the pretender, forged up a ton of Skull Mentors and Lanterns on the way to Const 8 (turn 33), and won the game with hordes of tartarians and many blood stones turn 90.

If you went with an awake Forge Lord, F2 E9 N4, you could probably take Magic 1, and do the same thing.

Conj 3 Alt 4 was my plan if I needed early magic, for Earth Meld and Destruction. I think I picked up Conj 3 and Alt 2 right after I got Const 4, and Alt 4 sometime between Const 6 and 8.