Strategy for Agartha Early Age

[Endoperez]

PDF said:
The Seal Guards have big magic Glaives rated at 10 dam or so, and they have 19 Str, so sure they can punch through shield and armor of medium inf.
Their problem is Att10/Def8, without F4+/W4+ bless they've difficulty hitting anything and get hit often...

The magic weapons are good, of course. They cost lots of resources on a capital-only unit, but they are good. 11 dam, +1 att, -1 def, length 4 and ability to bypass etherealness. 30 damage total is enough to deal some damage even to any human that comes against them (46% chance of hitting Ambibate Noble Warrior for 3 points of damage).

Unfortunately, the recruitable-everywhere Ancient Ones have just spears or Boulders for armanent. Boulder-throwers don't have even spears, making them very hard to use. The Pale Ones also have just spears, except for Cavern Guards who have Glaives. Minus to attack? They would be better of with Great Clubs, with att 0 def 1...

[HoneyBadger]

A good Pretender strategy for Agartha (in my opinion) is an Imprisoned Forge Lord with turmoil3, productivity0, cold3, growth2, luck2, and drain 2. Forge Lord because if there's one thing Agartha does well, it's gems, lots and lots of earth gems. Might as well spend them wisely, and since your Oracles are going to be researching Conjuration and Evocation, you can use your Forge Lord just to crank out magic items for your sacred fighter captain, and you'll be doing alright, since you can practically make as many of those as you can your basic Seal Guard. Naturally, there are better uses for a Pretender, but it's a strategy to consider.
Turmoil3/Heat3 are taken purely for points, although Heat is more likely to help out your Magma Children than Cold, right? Productivity 0 hopefully lets you make Seal Guards faster, since they're by far the best unit you've got, and you can build up to 3 in a row (Dom3). Luck 2 lets Turmoil 3 be atleast a little advantageous, and I hate losing my Temple in round 3. Drain isn't as bad as it could be since you're making less Oracles, but they're individually more powerful, so the -1 isn't affecting 30 mages, it's only affecting 10.

Fire 8, Earth 9, Nature 4. Some Nature is pretty much a given, since supposedly it helps keep your units from getting afflicted, and those big, slow to produce Seal Guards become pretty useless if they're blind or lose an arm or something, and regeneration's always nice. The +4 to attack is also a given, and the Earth 9 helps keep those units from getting hit, and helps your Oracles stay in the fight.

[Micah]

Badger: I just played a game as EA Agartha, so I've got a pretty good feel for them. I went with the forge lord initially myself. Your general idea is good, although I'd tweak it a bit. I think the growth scale is a poor choice, as you lose out on one of Agartha's main advantages: no supply use for most troops. Taking triple death makes invading your dominion a pain in the rear for most nations, and redistributing the 200 design points from that scale to order (which then allows the points in luck to go to productivity, if you wish) will easily offset the income from the population death unless you're playing a pretty long game. Plus you get the money up front, which still might make it worth it. Drain is a solid choice for exactly the reason you mentioned, and a bless strat is essential for Agartha. You contradict yourself on cold/heat, but heat is the way to go, since your units are cold blooded and it helps out the magma children, as you said. Heat/cold also hits supplies, synergizing nicely with 3 death.

From my experience playing last time I'd probably try the following pretender for my next game:



Frost father, imprisoned, dominion 5.
Water 9, Fire 6, nature 4, astral and air 1.

If I'm right, quickness will provide a -2 defense penalty on the 2nd attack, making it easily better than the extra few points in fire. It will also vastly up your chances against tramplers because of the defense. Mammoths were my bane in my last game, the only way I could deal with them was massed flame oracles casting magma eruption. Flaming weapons don't stack up to the water bless because the seal guards can already provide magical weapons, and the high str of agarthans makes the extra few damage much weaker than an extra attack. Nature provides regeneration, cutting down on deaths and afflictions. Air comes with the chassis, and astral is a good choice since it's only 10 points, and not available nationally.

Order 3, Prod 3, Heat 3, Death 3, luck 0, Drain 2.

I already discussed the reason for the scales above. A tweak down to order or production to up dominion might be prudent in a shorter game because of holy troop limits, but in a longer game building temples with the extra income is probably a better choice.

As far as general strategy, I didn't play with the summons much, but magma eruption is a great spell, and all of your flame oracles can cast it, many at half fatigue. Crank out some earth boots for the losers with only a 3 earth skill and you shouldn't need the reinvigoration from earth bless, they'll get off a good 4-5 casts of it in a battle with the first 100 fatigue, which should put a nice dent in the opposition. You also have the advantage of half upkeep on all of your units save the trogs (which are great if you need troops right away, or for times when you can't get a blesser over to a province, or as a flanking force). All of your other non-sacred troops are useless. Your PD is good for absorbing damage, but that's about it, don't expect them to win battles on their own (ever). Anyhow, probably way too much info. Hope it helps.

-Kyle

[HoneyBadger]

I can see Death being a valid choice. Not really a contradiction on Heat/Cold, what I meant was I could have gone with Cold3 over Heat3, but Heat seemed the better of the two. Just confusing on my part. Let's see what I can manage with Death 3...Ok, I really want to keep the Forge Lord-even imprisoned, he's still really useful for Agartha. It'd be nice if their were more than one Pretender with forging bonus, by the way, even though I like the Forge Lord. With Death 3 I've also modified my Prod to Sloth 1, luck to 1 and Drain to 3. My new magic becomes: F6, W9, E9, and N4. Dom becomes 5. That gives me extremely tough Seal Guards who can also dish out loads of damage. Crap scales though, but not completely pathetic. By the way, it may be tough to mass Seal Guards, but it's nowhere near as tough as massing Atlantian Living Pillars. Every time you get an extra 50 gold, just put a Seal Guard in the quewe, sooner or later you'll have a decent force.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm not sure why they decided to put the Ancient Lords in charge-they are identical to Seal Guards except with worse equipment. I think I may mod Agartha just a bit.

[hako]

My brief opinion is bless strats suck - they should be much harder to implement. They are extremally powerfull, impossible to counter at the begining, very hard to play against, even in later game. Good option would be - until God dormant/imprisoned no bonuses for blessed units, that should balance that strategy little bit.

[HoneyBadger]

I like bless strategies just fine in concept, but I don't have too much of a problem about them not working until your god wakes up. I do feel very confined by the limited choice of 8 total blesses. I think it's a fair tradeoff that if we have to wait until our Pretender wakes up that their be quite a few new things-not unbalanced or more powerful, mind you-just new and different-our blessed troops can do. I'm currently working on some ideas and I'll be sending ideas for new magic paths plus blesses for those paths, into Illwinter, but I'll probably write up a thread for them first, so people can argue about them.

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by hako

My brief opinion is bless strats suck - they should be much harder to implement. They are extremally powerfull, impossible to counter at the begining, very hard to play against, even in later game. Good option would be - until God dormant/imprisoned no bonuses for blessed units, that should balance that strategy little bit.

Given that I am a bless freak, I am not sure if I agree

In all seriousness, I am working on my own mod and have done two things to address the early bless rush:

1. Make PDs much sturdier. Mainly I've doubled the number of troops and use better troops.

2. Improve the national units of nations with weaker sacreds--usually by making mid-level summonables recruitable.

All this is done on the principle that it's better to improve other alternatives than nerf something.

P.S. I realize that this is an old thread but I've been absent from the forum for a while so be forgiving

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

what I meant was I could have gone with Cold3 over Heat3, but Heat seemed the better of the two.

I don't think anyone's picked up on this, but...

Agarthan troops are cold-blooded IIRC. That would make a Cold 3 dominion basically a painful form of suicide. Heat 3 would give nice insulation against people like the Van, Niefels or Caelum if you were fighting them.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

I don't think anyone's picked up on this, but...

Agarthan troops are cold-blooded IIRC. That would make a Cold 3 dominion basically a painful form of suicide. Heat 3 would give nice insulation against people like the Van, Niefels or Caelum if you were fighting them.

My first SP try with Agartha, before I knew the game very well, I tried Cold3 for the points. My mages would cast 1 spell and then pass right out, it was hilarious.