Bogarus Quick Guide

[DrPraetorious]

Those troops are *not* a waste of space. I would've given the Peshti kite shields (no need to change the artwork, those are kite shields they're holding,) and I think the Malai Druzhina is paying too many RP for his barding, but the army is useable as is.

Firstly, they suck, and you're never going to conquer another player with them, however many you recruit, because other players are geared to fight indies who also have hosts of crud. But hosts of crud are NOT useless...

Against most enemies, I'd rather have 5 Pre 8 shortbowmen than 4 pre 10 shortbowmen, and the combination of fire and air magic practically cries out for wind guide + flaming arrows, which you get relatively quickly for your research bonus, making you much better at this than Shinuyama.

The suck infantry are better than most militia, and they cost 8 gp. Against many enemies, it doesn't matter *what* you have because all your troops are chaff, so cheaper chaff is better.

The heavy infantry really wish they had javelins and a better shield, but:
* With spears, they are relatively low resource cost and have a repel attack, making them useful meat shields for your mages.
* The axemen and swordsmen do quite well against equivalent resource worth of hvy inf from other nations. Their armor isn't great but it isn't hugely resource intensive either.
* The voi infantry are cheap and expendable, and do fairly well as far as blood hunt patrollers go.

The big weakness of their military is the strategic move of 1. No human opponent is going to let you get away with that.

So their military is pretty weak, but you still use it, especially the elite components, and it's balanced against the strength of their magic.

[archaeolept]

the one strat move makes their troops nearly useless except in marginal ways. i'd end up buying 2 stat indy shortbows and a whatever for a little meat shield.

the cavalry are useful, though, as is usual, rather costly in gold and materiel.

the khylist are close to useless... not worth getting any real bless, and complete crap w/out one. They do, however, have strat move of 2

[Lingchih]

I'm having a hard time beating the AI with your build, DrPraetorius. POD gets afflicted easily, I can't seem to buy a decent number of troops, so the AI keeps attacking me, and, although the research is great, I just can't seem to keep ahead of the curve of the AI building massive numbers of troops to attack me before I can utilize the research.

I have to think that a build with no sloth, so I can build my national Knights, and maybe some drain, since it doesn't really hurt research too much, would be better. At least in SP. In MP, who knows? It would depend on your diplomacy skills.

[DrPraetorious]

Are you playing with standard settings?

Because I did several starts with this build, one of the four I had major affliction problems, otherwise no. If it remains a huge issue for you, have him avoid any significant foes until you have equipment for him.

Are you sure that your God isn't casting spells? If you let him cast (which is what he'll do by default), he'll get mauled.

You can certainly do drain instead of sloth. I dislike the gem evaporation events.

EDIT: Also, in single player, there's no reason to attack blind on the first turn. That's the sortof hyper agressive thing I do in MP, but obviously you're going to get killed outright some of the time if you do that.

[Cerlin]

I tried your built for fun, and after the second forts troops arent such an issue. Besides, until you have several forts you shouldnt be building the knights anyhow.

Also my POD had lots of afflictions but it didnt affect his efficiency because its all about making them run, as long as he can fly and smack some you are good.

[Taqwus]

The heroes are interesting.

Baba Yaga's a flying hag with A3W1D4N2; Alexej's a D1B2H4 human who's old enough to be a Twiceborn candidate and who attracts Khlysts; and Koschei the Deathless, well... is unusually old Not something to build a MP strategy on, but fun.

Bogatyr multiheroes are a nice bonus. H1 cavalry commanders / standards.

[Wyatt Hebert]

Also, on the heroes, Alexej, I believe, reduces unrest where he is. You can typically get him up to ~8 Khlysts before they start generating unrest.

[Dedas]

The ground troops
As I wrote before I believe that the ground troops are mostly good for defense with their map move of 1. One of them even has castle defense bonus for exactly this purpose.

The Khlysts
One exception to this is the Khlyst with map move 2 and stealth, meaning that they are suited for partisan activity. The unrest causing ability also hints at this. The commander for Khlyst groups should be the Five Fold Angel for the same reason. He can also stealth preach and bless the group in battle. The blood magic he possess can be used to for buffs and offensive spells.

Cavalry
The cavalry is, as I see it, the real army for offense. Forget the slow infantry when attacking as they will only bog you down. Let them slow down your attacker instead so you can mount a successful counter charge with horses.

The summons
As most of them are flying they can be used in conjunction with cavalry to strike selected weak spots in your enemies defense. You find out which these are by infiltrating with your Five folds.

The seducers
Use them to further stall and hamper the enemies attack upon you so that your lowborn ground troops can stand a chance in battle.

The general strategy, roughly
Early game
Spend all your money on research, meaning more castles and gold producing provinces. Do not bother to buy more troops than needed to expand. Preferably: use your awake pretender to do the expanding without hampering your research and castle building budget. The choice of pretender is up to you, but why not a blue dragon or the like. At least choose someone that can expand on himself.
If someone is attacking you defend with your fast and hopefully very mobile (flying) pretender and some chaff.

Mid game
Now you should have done lots of research, mostly in the conjuration school. This enables you to have a broad base of specialized summons, with seducing and stealth preaching abilities and whatnot.
Your blood economy should also be up and running using Five Fold Angels as blood hunters (with a few Khlysts to accompany them). They should blood hunt in provinces bordering the enemy you soon believe to be attacking you, making the first provinces he conquers poor and unrestful. When the enemy really is attacking, do NOT pull back your Five Fold Angels, as they will now be used as partisans and spies, liberating temporarily provinces behind the attacking enemy army.
The blood slaves they have hunted should be used to achieve this goal. Use the excellent spell "pain transfer" for example. It should enable the FFA to take and deal damage against enemy PD, and in conjunction with some blessed Khlysts it should not prove too difficult to overcome it.

The defense
Let us look at your assets at this moment. You should have:
Many researchers.
Five Fold Angels + Khlysts (cheap in upkeep and overall)
A lot of castles.
Not much else.

Now for one of Bogaru's strengths.
Quickly shift focus from research to war summoning and military.
Use your former researchers to:
*Summon specialized elite fliers to terrorize the attacking army.
* Summon a chock army of fliers. Like the three headed wyverns.
* Forge items to kit your commanders out.

Use the castles nearest your front to:
* Build ground troops.
* Build some nice PD to be used in combination with your ground troops when defending. Do not waste much money on it when no ground troops are available to strengthen it.

The other castles should build heavy cavalry and offensive spellcasters and "buffers".

You should have all the money needed as you haven't built or paid for any military (upkeep and such) until now. But if more gold is needed fast you have your alchemists to transmute for it.

The attack.
Led by your flying pretender, the flying shock army, with a core of elites, should strike the enemy rear. A rear area in disarray to the enemy, much thanks to the FFA and Khlysts. The area is also well scouted and can be defended quickly by the same. Let your fast cavalry do the mopping up of the hostile attacking armies, thinned by seductions, starvation, cold and valiant sacrifice by your ground troops.
Obviously you should no longer build ground troops in your outer castles. Instead switch to cavalry and offensive spellcasters to strengthen your oncoming forces.

The enemy, having fought a long and costly war should now be weakened. Not only in military organization but also in research. The momentum is in your favor. Now it is time for you to relieve the ruler of this heavy burden...

The conclusion
I believe that the trick with Bogarus is to quickly and accurately switch from heavy research to heavy defense to heavy offense. This is something Bogarus is more than capable of. The hard part is to know when, as timing is critical to success. Also, knowing often means spying, so that is critical as well.

[Kuritza]

Actually, I agree that city guards should get some combat training, above regular indies. +1 attack and defense or something like that.
Lack of a decent foot archer also surprises me greatly as many sources (both Byzanthian, German and Russian) state that slavs always fielded many skilled archers with composite M-shaped bows. Archeological discoveries back that claim.
Just as I'm surprised to see a Grid with a bow, but without a shield.

And back to strategies, khlysts... they are useless in combat, I think any strategy revolving around them as partisans will fail badly. Forget about partisans, its not the time for them as Napoleon is not born yet.
Khlysts may be used for raising unrest in the enemy territories, without actually attacking them. Think of them as of non-commander spies.

[Lingchih]

DrPraetorious said:
Are you playing with standard settings?

Because I did several starts with this build, one of the four I had major affliction problems, otherwise no. If it remains a huge issue for you, have him avoid any significant foes until you have equipment for him.

Are you sure that your God isn't casting spells? If you let him cast (which is what he'll do by default), he'll get mauled.

You can certainly do drain instead of sloth. I dislike the gem evaporation events.

EDIT: Also, in single player, there's no reason to attack blind on the first turn. That's the sortof hyper agressive thing I do in MP, but obviously you're going to get killed outright some of the time if you do that.

Yes, standard settings. And no, he does not cast, at least not until he can self-buff himself.

I took another stab at it, playing a little less aggressively. I would take a handful of troops (or just his skellies) with him when I attacked. I put the POD on hold, hold, attack, and let whatever troops I had take the first blows. Then he would come in and mop up. It worked pretty well... he still got afflictions, but not as often, and as someone else said, as long as he can fly in and terrify them away, that's all that is needed. The only one I really feared was the feeble-mind, but I stuck a helmet on him as soon as I could and never got one.

I found it pretty useless to make the initial Scout a prophet though. That may just be part of your hyper aggressive MP plan though. I found it much more useful to have a prophet that could lead a second army. It's a very fun nation to play, with a host of cool summons.