Fun with Arco Astrologers

[Boron]

Originally posted by Kel:
[Mystics can be produced anywhere, as well. Astrologers are capitol only.
[/QB]

meant the astrologers , the one with astral 3

Originally posted by Kel:

pythium has a superior gem income to arco
[/qb]

Only in the very early game. Don't forget that the 3 random elemental picks on the mystics will give you the ability to site search extensively.

[/QB][/quote]

thats true but sometimes time wasting
depends on the magic frequenzy / research settings but if they are not too low / high :

you can get conjuration 5 with pythium quite quick . most probably you have amassed the initial astral gems and when you have researched accashic can cast 2-3 at one time with all your astral gems and hopefully find some astral gem producing sites again so that you can make 1 accashic every 2-3 turns .
and hopefully you got lucky and have meanwhile 1 arch theurg too who is able to clamforge

edit :
so if you are lucky with searching through mystics you find some nice sites early on but if you aren't and they are elemental 2 or nonelemental like the quite frequent death sites you perhaps find none while when you cast an accashic you find 2 , one lowlevel death and a lvl 2/3 elemental one e.g.

but you will find most astral gem sites so you get very good astral income earlier
on a rough estimation you find about 1/3 of the magic sites this way .
but the high level ones you never find with this and though they are rare on the other hand most of them are worth as much as ~5 lvl 1 sites

edit 2 :
but arcos national troops are more flexible like the pythium ones i think because pythiums troops are very expensive in resources
so because arcos troops are easier to massproduce it has quite an advantage because it can take far more sloth / worse admin rating castles like pythium and so gets more points .
and the 350 recruit costs for the arch theurg are heavy too

[ July 02, 2004, 16:41: Message edited by: Boron ]

[Kel]

and when you have researched accashic can cast 2-3 at one time with all your astral gems

If you are rushing your research to conj 5 and you aren't searching territories, you aren't likely to have 75+ gems to acashic 3 territories. Eventually you will, of course, but by that time, you could already have a good gem ecnomy going.

Now, if you had could figure out a viable, specific conjuration rush strategy with Pythium, I could see this being more useful.

so if you are lucky with searching through mystics you find some nice sites early on but if you aren't and they are elemental 2

Eh ? Not sure what you mean, mystics are commonly elemental 2 in one element. And, in any case, I wasn't necessarily saying they should go out and physically site search, site searching spells all find up to lvl 9.

or nonelemental like the quite frequent death sites

You search those sites with astrologers who get a random pick in death. Death is slower to develop but then again, so is acashic.

and hopefully you got lucky and have meanwhile 1 arch theurg too who is able to clamforge

It will take a lot of clam forging to not only pay for the cost of the clams but the 75 astral you have spent on acashic. Also note that mystics can both clamforge *and* fetish forge.

I don't think I could wait until I could afford acashic to start gem searching, even if I knew I had no enemies, didn't need to forge anything, etc. Getting gems early just leads to more gems (from site searching spells) and that leads to more gems. Plus, you can search for the gems you need faster and you can search the sites that are more likely to have them.

However, I will say that I am intrigued enough to go play some test games and see for sure. I have played with varying how long I wait until I start searching but never really developed a conjuration rush strategy, incorporating acashic.

In any case, even if you consider rushing to acashic(which is, admittedly, in a great research branch) more efficient than individual site-searching, in the early game, the difference in starting gems is pretty insignificant, which was my point.

- Kel

[ July 02, 2004, 18:38: Message edited by: Kel ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Kel:
It will take a lot of clam forging to not only pay for the cost of the clams but the 75 astral you have spent on acashic. Also note that mystics can both clamforge *and* fetish forge.

Not unless you empower them in Nature, they can't. Fetishes are FN, and mystic randoms are elemental only, so they cannot roll a N. Mystics can only clamforge if they roll one or more Ws, but this isn't really uncommon.

[Kel]

Not unless you empower them in Nature, they can't. Fetishes are FN, and mystic randoms are elemental only, so they cannot roll a N.

Oops, good point, knew there was a reason i don't actually do it...ok, I retract that sentence of the post, then

- Kel

[ July 02, 2004, 19:25: Message edited by: Kel ]

[Boron]

Originally posted by Kel:
[

Eh ? Not sure what you mean, mystics are commonly elemental 2 in one element. And, in any case, I wasn't necessarily saying they should go out and physically site search, site searching spells all find up to lvl 9.

- Kel

you have some good points but i have still some questions /wonderings: all based at research difficulty not higher than normal :
ihmo best accashic Users are pythium , arco/ryhleh

arco has 4 astral , 1 nature gem base income .
pyhtium 5 astral , 2 air , 1 water .
ryhleh i think 3 astral , 2 water .

expect the dark knowlegde spell all the one kind of magic finding rituals are traumaturgy lvl 2 .
so you have to go traumaturgy 2 instead but this are only 60 rp so not very long .
but now my real problems :
according to the manual you need lvl 2 in the ritual + 2 gems of this path .

ok some of the lvl 2's you get on your mystics .
but how do you get the 2 gems of that colour ?
so as arco e.g. you could only search nature sites with your regular gem income . but since priestresses have only nature 1 and mystics can't get it you have to have it on your pretender in order to search it .

if you search by such a spell you find about ~1/8 of the possible sites in the province .
(holy/unholy sites you do not find at all , according to the excel graph they are about 20/4xx so ~5% , additional ~5% since you never will use the blood search ritual )

but with your nice 4/5 astral pearl income as pythium at turn 5 you can cast 1 accashic , turn 10 2 and so on.
if you find a sage province early you boost your research and can cast your first accashic at ~turn 12-20 . at this time you get 2-4 once

every ritual like dark knowlegde used and later accaishing is quite a waste .

but you only find about 1/8 of the sides so normally at setting 50% in a province are 2 sites . roughly estimated i think you have about 25% success in finding one site with one of the "find all sites of one colour" spells .
but since many sites are sites like gold mines , the sage recruting side and so on which you discover immediately and with luck you discover a lvl 1 site even without a mage the chance of success with this spells is even down to 10-15%.


the "best" method of site searching i have in mind at the moment is the following :
either :
make a rainbowish mage 2 in every colour ( expect blood ) .
search your first provinces with him until accaish record is researched . then first search the provinces which weren't searched by your rainbow . first moutains , swamps , forests .
or : search every province manually with a good astral mage ---> your astral income will become quite high .
then accaish everything .

but for pythium / ryhleh / arco the most valuable spell seems to be accaish record ihmo and the 8 find one element spells are total crap .

for almost every other nation this is a different story though

[Kel]

but how do you get the 2 gems of that colour ?

Either through regular site searching or alchemy. Once you have the ball rolling, you can site search with spells. For death, I usually alchemize for the first couple of site searches. Site search for death in provinces that have a high death scale already for an improved chance of finding death sites, specifically.

so as arco e.g. you could only search nature sites with your regular gem income. but since priestresses have only nature 1 and mystics can't get it you have to have it on your pretender in order to search it.

I usually put some nature on my pretender, as Arcos, but not for site searching. I make one thistle mace and then let a priestess haruspex for them. This is a bit slower than I would like, admittedly...but one nice thing is that you already have nature income to make up, somewhat, for having to wait for a thistle mace.

I hate to assume that I will ever find certain indies, especially in the early game. However, that said, another point is that N2 indie mages are *quite* easy to come by. I don't know the whole list but druids, for example, seem quite common. Again, I wouldn't plan on this but if it happens early enough, it's an added bonus.

but with your nice 4/5 astral pearl income as pythium at turn 5 you can cast 1 accashic , turn 10 2 and so on.

If Pythium started with acashic, that might have some nasty potential.

every ritual like dark knowlegde used and later accaishing is quite a waste .

I agree. I don't tend to acashic a lot, especially in the early game, but when I do, I usually do it only on territories I haven't searched, either newly conquered ones, or ones that had low income and I didn't bother with them in the early part of the game when I needed gold income more.

but you only find about 1/8 of the sides

This is the case at first glance. However, there are some factors that modify those odds in your favor:
1) All sites are not created equal. For example, glancing at the site chart shows that blood sites can give me ~20 gems total where astral is in the 90-100 range. The numbers are probably off but it's still something to consider.
2) You can concentrate on finding the gems you need.
3) You often aren't searching blindly so it's not a straight random chance. Scales can tip you off to the existence of sites, particularly death. Certain terrain is also more likely to contain certain sites, further improving your odds.

All this said, the biggest point for acashic, as opposed to physical/individual spell searching is the loss of research from individual site searchers. That's why I am intrigued to try out a rush strategy in conj. with Pythium.

make a rainbowish mage 2 in every colour ( expect blood ).
search your first provinces with him until accaish record is researched

I would generally rather have the provinces from an SC geared towards early expansion, than a rainbow who can search the few provinces I have.

Also, this seems to assume that you don't need gold from farmland/plains, that you don't need specific gems at certain times, that you have no aggressive neighbors and you need no spells outside of acashic in the early game. Which could be true, with unusual settings and/or SP games.

but for pythium / ryhleh / arco the most valuable spell seems to be accaish record ihmo and the 8 find one element spells are total crap .

That's pretty strong sentiments

Arcos has a lot of flexibility in their mages and, in some ways, can individually site search better than most nations.
Rlyeh isn't particularly good at individual site searches in the early game but they can astral search early and a bit later use Voice Of Tiamat(conj-4, 8 water gems), which is quite nice.
If acashic is good for any of those 3 nations, I would say it would be pythium, since their provinces are likely to be mostly land and they don't have the elemental flexibility of mystics.

- Kel

[ July 02, 2004, 21:30: Message edited by: Kel ]

[Boron]

Originally posted by Kel:
3) You often aren't searching blindly so it's not a straight random chance. Scales can tip you off to the existence of sites, particularly death. Certain terrain is also more likely to contain certain sites, further improving your odds.

All this said, the biggest point for acashic, as opposed to physical/individual spell searching is the loss of research from individual site searchers. That's why I am intrigued to try out a rush strategy in conj. with Pythium.


- Kel [/QB]

all in all you are right i think .

in theory pythium is really good and with normal research you can get quite quick ( turn 12-15 ) at conjuration 5 but the problem is that you need time to benefit from this potential.

my main problems are : either i have a very bad economy ( by turn 10-15 you should have 1 better 2 grand theurgs + some theurgs to quick research ) . if you take a weak pretender you can get nice dominion scales but then you can accashic but there are no good summons even for the arch theurgs in the beginning and so on .

but on the other way if you make a good pretender i have such incomeproblems and since the principles / legionaires cost both 19 resources i can't take sloth and productivity would be a good idea .

so at the moment i am either a quite good accaish caster but very fragile in early game or i have such a weak economy that i can't research fast enough and so on


arco is really much more flexible i think since e.g. elephants are nice for early expansion ihmo but are not very expensive and thaumaturgy with the one kind of site find spells is a good path anyway with mind burn and soul slay as early / midpath battle spells .

so perhaps a good use of accashic is for ryhleh then but only for some of his land provinces since underwater probably voice of tiamat is more cost effective ( almost 50% of all sites for the cost of 9 water gems right ) ?