La Arcocephale (CBM guide)
The specialist’s nightmare.
- First off I should mention my playing style: I am a generalist, I prefer flexibility and adaptability over powered specialization. I tend to stay away from nations like LA Ermor which are very good at one thing at the cost of every other area, it makes a player predictable and brittle.
- Second I assume that you are not completely new to the game and thus I will be skimming over minor details like slingers.
- Third, I will be writing for CBM 1.94 as the majority of games today seem to be using it.
- And forth I don't like sharing tips, it makes me lose more often. But I do love advising and thank yous.
Troops:
Slingers, Peltast: :P
Cardaces:
This is what you build before your first expansion, cheap, numerous, and about average.
Hoplite and Phalangite
Heavy, and medium variants respectively. Good morale of 12, high resource cost, long weapons but the hoplite is restricted to mapmove 1. So unless you are in a narrow path or really strapped for cash there’s no reason to pick a gain of 3 prot. From the hoplite inexchange for mapmove 1.
Hypaspist
Heavy-medium prot of 15, cheap, length 4 weapon, mapmove 2, and a great morale of 14: what national sacreds get. This is your best most rounded unit that is superior even as chaff in the late game, it is your bread and butter.
Heart Companion: weak by sacred standards, cap only, no need to even consider a bless.
Agema Champion:
Med-heavy calvary, if you need them but otherwise the money could be better spent.
Armored elephants:
Did someone say indie steamroller? Armored and trampling this baby will be the most cost-effective early expansion unit. Just watch the morale of 8.
Cerulean Warrior:
Medium prot, cap only relatively gold intensive compared to the others, size 3 , 20 HP, and 15 strength. Your giant killers, they will deal the damage past the protection that your weak hoplite spears can’t penetrate.
Sirrush:
National summon of Arcocephale, they are tough and sacred, have an excellent MR, and are one of the very rare creatures you can summon with astral pearls. But at conj 5 and 10 astral it would be a second choice for gems and research and not worth considering a bless.
Commanders:
Scout, Hypaspist ,Hoplite , Phalangite, and Agema commanders: :P
Strategos:
Commander with standard, 120 command, great only if you didn’t need a mage recruit.
Priestess:
110gold, sacred, Holy 2, nature 1, and 100 % healer. The most efficient researcher besides the cap only Sibyl, always have some around. They can build labs and temples; they can heal afflictions (a free gift of health), they can cast sermon of courage on your elephants, they could keep all your old mages alive forever.
Sibyl:
Cap only, 240gold, magic of 2S1N with 100%W,S,D,N and 10%W,S,D,N, expect in emergencies you will always be recruiting this mage in your capital. I will expand on them later.
Mystic:
150Gold, magic of 1S with 100%F,W,E,S , 50% F, 50% W , and 50% E . You will get rare (1/16) mystics with 2 levels in an elemental, you will be spamming these to get access to F,W, and E.
National attributes:
National site:
Sibylline Caves: an astral mage can enter to scry: beautiful site, not only is your mage immune from the feeblemindedness of normal scrying, it is available from turn one, and if you’re playing with fixed starting positions you would get a snapshot of your opponent’s (s) domain/pretender if you’re lucky.
Domain:
Auto scry within domain. Wondrous, great intel on your neighbors and invaders, much harder to sneak in stealth units.
The national site and domain features almost guarantees one’s superior intelligence, something paramount to planning and diplomacy.
Strategy:
Generally speaking an army of 2-4 elephants and 5 Hypaspist/Phalangite in an unit behind another unit of 10-20 chaff is enough to roll over most indies. These are cheap, do not suffer much causality so no reinforcements are needed, should be led by indie leaders and you can roll them out every 2-3 turns giving you a respectable expansion.
Research-wise you should be aiming for evocation 2 first, as it is the only site-searching magic branch that you have both the native capital gem income for and reliable mages to cast them.
After that you should go for conjuration 2 and thaumaturgy 2, unfortunately you do not have a native income in death, fire, water, and earth nor a reliable method to get 2 N mages (your cap only sibyls are) so if you think you are going to be rushed then feel free to put these on the backburner as they require some luck/manual site-searching to get started.
Aim to have your second castle up fast; this is no different from most starters. By now you should have a good idea on your neighbors, why? Since your domain scrys, you capital is scrying nearby farmlands every turn (players love farmland expansions), and you made educated guesses as starting pts are located roughly apart from each other and given at least 4 neighboring provinces. Message them first, you may not gain much but you will be setting the tone of the relationship with your first comment and you may be able to mislead/extract treaties from them without them knowing much about you.
So what now? Well with Alteration 3 you can get ethereal elephants, add a priest for sermons and maybe a berserker. And why oh look, you have a bunch of elephants from your expansions already.
Alternatively you can get Conjuration 3, Alteration 1, and Evocation 3 (240research pts total, cut out alternation 1 if you like) for an powerful early communion with your FWES mystics are throwing the most diverse variety of magic that only the extinct Kung-Fo masters of MA T’ien Ch’I could resist.
Feel free to add in archers but they don’t really add much to the fray (unless your opponent doesn’t wear armor), you are also quite far from flaming arrows.
Giants bearing down on you? No problem break out the magic and the Cerulean Warrior, at size 3 they will outnumber giants by 2 to 1 per square, they have 20 HP and 14 prot so they could hold against giants , a morale of 14 so they won’t rout easily and a base attack of 19damage, enough to get past even the heaviest armor. All of this while your mages are blasting every type of magical damage down on their troops. And guess what? If they have a SC then it’s gonna get horror marked by your mystics and cursed by your sibyls, how long does a SC last after that?
Undead bearing down on you? Your elephants would be trampling their slow creaky bones while your communion boosted mages spamming solar rays/mind burn. With a single turn’s warning that mage communion can be reconfigured into a 5 man anti-zombie crusade .
Hydra rush? Just mass slingers, 9 heads doesn’t mean much against 35 slingers firing every turn, after which 19 base damage Cerulean Warriors will go in for the kill. (250g vs 245g and 70r for the slingers)
Are these strategies unique to Acro? No. Are they super effective? Pickachu says no. But they cover every possible eventuality that few other nations can claim, no other nation can turn on the dime and change strategies as fast as Acro, nor for that matter continuously.
Imagine your opponents marching out mages to fight your ethereal elephant rush, of which you probably saw coming due to scrying and spies only to run into a 5 mystic communion raining elemental death upon your troops at which point you have to counter trampling elephants with magic while trying to get past those elephants to get at their mages.
Meanwhile any SC pretenders you have will have to contend with a harrowing marking and cursing communion.
But it doesn’t stop there, add another level to Acro’s site searching Thaumaturgy level of 2 and now they have access to Iron will, that is magic resistant ethereal elephants. Also if you’re lucky Acro would’ve scored a 3S Sybil by now and it could teleport in to give the communion eagle eyes and communion boosted sleep and panic for your opponent’s elephants.
For another 100RP in evocation Acro’s mystics gets access to magma bolts, magic duel, fireball, and acid bolt: all the combat magic they need for small middle game communions.
While all of this is keeping them busy you are hard at work researching construction to forge boosters and lanterns.
At cons (4) you can forge thistle maces and start casting winged monkeys at conjuration lvl 5 (a diversion to conjuration, at one’s discretion), that is a commander killing spell that can’t be stopped with astral like mind hunt, a only needs a 2N mage to forge a 10N gem item as opposed to the various boosters and penetrators mind hunt needs, and costs only an initial 10 N gems +4 gems per use-nature gems that every 5th province produces without site-searching.
If one decides to detour to conj 5 (260RP) not only does the opponent have to guard his commanders and have a few armies rendered immobile he now has to deal with Acro’s Conj5 spell monster boar (lvl 3N, 10 N gems), capable of locking down fortresses and can only be eliminated with patrollers.
And oh my, what if we cast monster boar on an obscure farm land and then we cast flying monkeys on that same place 3-5 turns later? At best case he just lost 2 turns worth of income from not catching your boar having to get another commander (1 turn) and set him to patrol (1 turn), at worst case he assumed his patrollers would kill the unrest and overtaxed his province.
So now the opponent has to deal with magically resistant ethereal elephants, multi-path communions capable of shredding SCs and undead. All while his mages and commanders are being picked off, his armies not guaranteed to move due to flying monkeys, monster boars that require patrollers to root out, patrollers that make be picked off by monkeys.
But wait there’s more. Mid-game strategy
At lvl 4 cons Acro has access to ethereal crossbows and piercers for stealthy anti-SC scouts that do just as fine of a job killing elephants and supporting the troops, crystal matrixs for instant communions, bags of wine for mobility over starving enemy armies.
If the pretender has 2D all that death gems that Acro hasn’t been able to use until now will become skull staffs and researching boosting skull mentors.
If the pretender has 2E 2S you now have crystal coins for early mind hunts with your S3 sibyls (though I wouldn’t recommend going to evo 6 when conj 5 gives the same effect while getting you closer to unique summons and breaking into air).
And if you had a few odd air sites your A2 pretender can forge a barrel of air, now you step into the sea in force to pick off indies others couldn’t(won’t work against a sea-nation).
Add another level to Acro’s communion path boosting lvl 3 Conjuration path for 160RP and they have access to voice of Tiamat, which means that if a water player isn’t present they would have a pretender-less method of breaking into air. (assuming a W3 pretender forges a cons lvl 4 robe of the sea, not worth spending the pts on specially for this purpose when all one has to do is wait for the water bracelet at cons 6)
BY now you should have the following: 3-5Conj, 3 Alt, 3 Evo, 4Cons,3 Thaum for the cost of 1320RP-1620RP. Quite doable by Mid-game, especially with skull mentors. You should have income in Earth, fire, astral, nature, death, water, and possibly breaking into air.
Well what next?
At conj6 you have access to lightless lanterns, boosters for every path (especially with a cheap 2F,3A,2W,2E,2S,3D,3N pretender) I consider the middle game cost of a ring of magic/sorcery mild compared with the design cost of a pretender natively capable of forging boosters. Note that your pretender isn’t supposed to be forging your boosters, just the initial one that so that your mystics/sibyls can start forging them.
You now have access to mind hunts in addition to flying monkeys, and astral mages won’t help them much since your priestesses will just fix your feeble-minded Sibyls right up.
Your anti-SC scouts can now be equipped with bottles of water from all the water gems you haven’t been able to use to add water elementals to the fray and booster their firepower to the pt of being able to take on mild PD.
Oh and what if you combined them with monster boars and flying monkeys? Then your opponent has to have decent patrollers, sink money into his PD, and still risk his patrollers getting killed all the while getting lower income.
And if your Sybil forges a water bracelet to give to a 2F 1W mystic you can now forge rune smashers. Now you can add mind hunts that can’t be deterred by having astral mages mixed in with the occasion flying monkey to keep them guessing.
And from here your options multiply for the late game, with lanterns and skull mentors you will be among the best in research. You can either take another 2 lvls up the construction branch to gain unique items, conjuration for unique summons and SCs, another 2 lvls up Thaumaturgy for gateway and vengeance of the dead to reinforce your anti-Sc abilities (both on and off the battlefield with soul slay/vengeance of the dead)and mobility (gateway), or boost your enchantment path for the globals and domes.
And oh yeah, pretender design. Notice how throughout the guide I have been making minimal mentions of a pretender? That’s because LA Arcocephale is already quite deadly on its own, a pretender reinforces that through earlier access to paths ,early research, and good scales.
I choose an 3F3A2W3E3S3D3N awake great sage with dom 6, order 3, sloth 1, heat/cold 2 (depends on who you’re playing with), misfortune 2, and magic 1 for a research of 41 and enough lvls to site search in every path for gem income Acro doesn’t start out with. Your mystics are not sacred and you will be needed a lot of gold for upkeep and to keep up with research while your communions are in the field. Also do not take death, you already have misfortune (LA Acro doesn’t get much in terms of heros) and it limits your long-term options as you cannot turtle.
So what is LA Acro?
- LA acro has an early magically resistant ethereal elephant rusher
- LA acro has an early multi-path battle communion/undead slayer
- LA acro has an early mid-game commander assassinator
- LA acro has an early mid-game income killer
- LA acro has an early SC/giant rush killer
- LA acro has an constantly upgraded battle communion
- LA acro has an constantly upgraded commander assassinator available at every point of the map which requires both astral and guards to defend against.
- LA acro has an constantly upgraded SC killer
- LA acro has an constantly upgraded stealth anti-sc party turned part-time raider
- LA acro has double the magical power with easy access to 6 magic paths & tentative access to air, that’s almost double the gem income of any normal nation and they have uses for all of them.
- LA acro has all of these perks and they use their own type of gems not conflicting with each other.
And there you go, a versatile nation that gives you something new to counter/attack with all throughout the game. That, is a specialist’s nightmare.
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