EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]
This is not exactly a guide. It's a brainstorming aid for me and it's definitely not complete. And it's intended for CBM 1.92 because the older guides were for vanilla or older versions of the CBM, and thus assumed dwarven hammers.
Early Age Agartha is a nation of supremely idiotic and overweight cave dwellers. They're sort of like a stereotypical America, except instead of a large and disciplined army they have a collection of imbeciles, and instead of rednecks they have troglodytes. Also, they live in caves. So they're not really that similar to America.
Their regular soldiers have skills comparable to militia; their elite infantry doesn't even reach the level of a normal human. And instead of using accurate weapons and large shields to compensate, they wield spears and other polearms along with freaking bucklers, which provides amazingly little synergy with their abilities. To see an attack skill in the double digits, you have to look to their sacred giants - more specifically, the Ancient Lord and the Seal Guards. The most skilled Agarthan unit isn't even an Agarthan: The Troglodyte Lord has a whopping 12 attack. So you can't depend on the pale ones to be competent when it comes to hitting things or avoiding being hit.
Furthermore, they're cold blooded. This is a big fat glaring weakness because a lot of nations have a cold dominion, and Wolven Winter is a very easy spell to cast. This is a significant factor in your strategizing, since you must plan around it.
Their non-cap mages, or rather mage, singular, is not very impressive for early age mages, being H1 priests with 2 picks of magic. They're not too bad for researching though - they're sacred, and in CBM they're also fortune tellers, so putting a bunch of them in a fortress and telling them to research until their brains leak out is a good idea. Agartha's true magic potential lies in its capital, and you'll want to recruit oracles there every turn.
So what advantages do they have? Well, they're tough and strong - plenty of HP, natural protection plus armor, even the militia has 14 strength. They just can't hit anything with those powerful blows. They have sacred giants - crappy sacred giants, but sacred giants nonetheless. Their boulder throwers are actually useful in CBM, since they do AoE damage now. Putting a couple of hurlers behind a line of infantry is a valid and effective tactic.
There's also the Umbrals, who are kick-*** summons. The Rhuax and Barathrus Pacts are useful and easily-accessed spells. Earth Communion is a remote-search spell costing 8 earth gems, and reveals the four types of sites your national mages need - useful and efficient. You have a half-price version of Gateway available from the start, but only an Oracle can cast it. It's nevertheless incredibly useful.
All your units have darkvision, and in CBM, your second PD commander is now a new unit: The Locus of the Seal, a statue that autocasts darkness. It's not an automatic 'I win' button, but it's a really big help since your troops will all have darkvision.
All pale ones are amphibious, need not eat and have siege boni. You can't compete with a true underwater nation, but you can go underwater and can even have underwater PD.
So let's go over the units we have:
Pale One Militia: Pale Ones are incompetent. Militia are incompetent. Put them together and what have you got? A unit you really don't want to recruit.
Wet One: Slightly more competent than your militia. Still not a unit you want to recruit, however.
Pale One: A Wet One with a buckler. If you need chaff, that makes these guys better than the previous ones, but they're still not very useful.
Pale One Warrior: Come in three varieties. One has a spear and buckler plus some armor, another has a spear and buckler plus more armor, and the third has a trident and net as well as decent armor. The third type is the most useful one, because nets will not only stop enemies but also set their defense to 0 until they get out of it.
Cavern Guard: Not really impressive for supposedly elite warriors. Glaives aren't really that great for these guys. Still, using a mix of these and net-wielding warriors makes for a more effective fighting force, since they have better morale.
Troglodyte: Tramplers with good morale. Useful in some situations, but they will die quickly so you have to consider them expendable.
Ancient Stone Hurler: Ever since boulders got an AoE effect, these guys have been useful. Put a bunch of them behind your blockers and watch them slaughter entire squares with each throw. There's two versions of these, with and without armor. You're probably not going to be limited by your resources when recruiting these, so try to recruit the ones with armor.
Ancient One: A sacred giant who's not really that impressive. His giant spear has length 5, but with his attack skill of 9 he's not going to repel a lot of attacks.
Seal Guard: Sacred giants with better skills and equipment than Ancient Ones. Their obsidian glaives are nice, and they've got better protection and more HP than their recruit-anywhere cousings. They only have 1 mapmove however.
Pale One Scout: Worse than your typical scout because it takes more resources, but why would you be recruiting scouts out of a fortress anyway?
Pale One Commander: Bog standard commander guy. Nothing interesting about him.
Troglodyte Lord: Actually makes for an interesting light thug: Just stick some armor on him and let him loose. Main weakness is terrible magic resistance. He has no head so he can't wear a horror helmet, sadly.
Ancient Lord: Another possible thug. He's sacred but can't self-bless. Give him an AoE weapon - the frost and fire brands are always popular, but a midget masher is another possibility.
Earth Reader: Your only recruit-anywhere mage. Not a bad research mage, really, since he's sacred and fairly cheap, plus he's a fortune-teller which means your research forts won't suffer many bad events. Their picks aren't too impressive, but you can make use of them all:
2E: Can cast summon earth power without boosting, which leads to a host of useful buffs as well as evocations like Blade Wind and Earth Ripple, the latter being a unique Agarthan spell combining flying shards with earth meld.
WE: This combination can't do much without some boosters. With a water bracelet, however, it can drop Winter Ward which can be a lifesaver when all your units are coldblooded, as well as many other useful spells.
FE: Magma bolts! And with earth boots and summon earthpower, magma eruption! This combination is probably the best one for battlefield evocations.
ED: Not very useful on the battlefield, these guys have one main use besides research: Summoning Umbrals. Umbrals kick ***, so that's a good use of them.
Oracle of Subterranean Waters: Water magic isn't the greatest of paths, but a couple of levels are very useful. Despite being oracles with great precognitive powers, they are not fortune-tellers. But then again, these are the guys who doomed their entire race by invading the surface, so it's no wonder they're crap at this fortune-telling stuff.
Oracle of Subterranean Fires: Lovely guys, recruit some of them but note that they suffer more from old age than other mages. They occupy the same niche as FE Earth Readers: Battlefield evocations.
Oracle of the Dead: These are the best kind of oracle. Less susceptible to old age, and can summon and lead the undead. Note that your oracles can all do some heavy duty thugging, or even becoming alright supercombatants, since they're sacred giants with powerful earth magic and high MR.
I'm considering the following pretender:
Dormant F4E9N4 Dom 6 Forge Lord
Order 3 Prod 2 Heat 3 Death 3 Misf 2 Magic 1
The forge lord can still forge items at a discount without a hammer, so capitalize on that. A minor fire bless helps your sacred giants actually hit stuff in melee, and the minor nature bless will help prevent afflictions. The major earth bless is costly but useful. Your giants will almost all benefit from it - sticking a pair of bracers of protection on a blessed E3 oracle is almost as good as giving them a plate cuirass, and they're not even encumbered by it!
Order and production are there for the money, which you will never have enough of. Sacred giants are expensive and 20 PD is expensive. Heat keeps the cold at bay, which is important for coldblooded beings. Death and misfortune are for points, because we have to make sacrifices somewhere. Order and fortune telling earth readers will hopefully mitigate any bad events a bit. Finally, magic is great for your earth readers.
I've still not come up with a complete and coherent strategy yet, though. I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts on this.
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