Guide to MA Agartha (In prog) - Pretenders

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Meglobob, thats good to hear. Now, that growth you've taken, has that helped with units starting with old age, or are you a fan because of the other benefits?

[Shovah32]

Growth is great. The supply bonus is helpful, the income is nice, the reduced old age afflictions are also helpful and the population growth(particularly if you take growth 3) is a very big bonus in long games.

[Meglobob]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Meglobob, thats good to hear. Now, that growth you've taken, has that helped with units starting with old age, or are you a fan because of the other benefits?

Growth does help with old age but its really the income boost. I play in alot of games that last 50 - 100+ turns, growth has a considerable effect over this time period.

I suppose I would not take growth in a blitz.

A good way of reducing old age afflictions is to recruit your old age mages after the late winter month. So you get a full 9-12 turns out of them before they get afflictions.

[HoneyBadger]

On the subject of growth-I'd suggest never taking growth scales in combination with misfortune-over the long term, the misfortune generally cancels out any benefit from the growth.

[Salamander8]

Growth is absolutely one of my favorite scales, but I have not seen any help to my old age Golem Crafters as MA Agartha at all. I know it's supposed to, but I have not seen any appreciable difference as far as the old age problems between growth 0 and any positive growth scales (I'm using Growth 2 in my current SP game). I take growth mostly for the expanding economy and certain nations needing more supplies and was hoping the old age reduction would be icing on the cake, but that has not been the case in my trials so far. Now it is hard to do raw comparisons due to the vagary of starting ages on the units (from barely old age to ancient), but so far it hasn't helped the old age issue for me. I still am a growth fan.

[Meglobob]

Salamander8 said:
Growth is absolutely one of my favorite scales, but I have not seen any help to my old age Golem Crafters as MA Agartha at all. I know it's supposed to, but I have not seen any appreciable difference as far as the old age problems between growth 0 and any positive growth scales (I'm using Growth 2 in my current SP game).

Trust me there is a difference.

Around 5 months ago, a player ran tests on old age effects for various nations mages with growth-3 to death-3. Growth-3 resulted in alot less deaths from afflictions.

Here is the link to the thread:-

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...=&fpart=1&vc=1

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Thank you, that is very interesting. Now I just have to decide how to value my GCs versus 40 points.

[Salamander8]

Then my results are not typical, because G2 or G0 I get the same rough affliction occurrence with my Golem Crafters. It's a very small sample size in my case (only 4 starts and no complete games as of yet, 2 with G0, 1 with G1, and 1 with G2), but I would expect an obvious, if not huge difference in the results. I have never tried Death with them, but I avoid Death barring nations like LA Ermor.

[Salamander8]

One thing that is affecting my current MA Agartha SP game is that I found an Earth site that let's me recruit trolls! These guys regen+decent hitting power on top of my Infantry and my Statues let me crush Man into the dirt, and I'm now stomping Tien Chi. Both of these AIs have been using archers heavily, and the combination of good protection with shields and regen are keeping my missile casualties very light.

[moderation]

HoneyBadger said:
On the subject of growth-I'd suggest never taking growth scales in combination with misfortune-over the long term, the misfortune generally cancels out any benefit from the growth.

How does misfortune cancel the benefits of growth? Do the two scales synergize in nasty ways?