MA Argatha - go punch a mountain

[vfb]

Seeking Arrow is good against Agartha if you're not seeing Ancient Oracles in the field. It's pretty painful for Agartha to watch an army of his Mechanical Men evaporate because his mages got turned into pincushions. You can sacrifice a scout in Agarthan territory and attack the province with orders to Holdx5 at the back; that's enough time for all the Mech men to die.

[Baalz]

Ah, yes, you missed one twist I suggested which is giving your golem crafters lightning rods to keep them from being picked off as the only valid targets for lightning spells. 100% shock resistance for your whole army. I thought you might be thinking about mammoths as they're really the only thing MA Caelum has a prayer of fielding effectively, but there are also quite a few mammoth counters available to MA Argatha along the paths of research I'm suggesting. They're not completely shut down, to be sure, but it's still going to be a struggle for Caelum I think.

Crushers are size 6 and just a couple are a brick wall that mammoths will never break through by themselves. They'll have an in dominion hitpoints over 200 so anything less than massive lightning spam will take many rounds to blast them down from long range while the flying mammoths hold still for point blank magma blasts (or simply magma bolts if it's a small number buffed by gift of flight). Heck actually if you're trying to take the crushers down with lighting its a pretty tough combo to do flying mammoths at the same time because your mammoths are going to take significant friendly fire. Against large number of non-flying mammoths penetration boosted curse of stones is going to utterly dominate them - I'd bet 40 mammoths wouldn't make it through moderate PD against this spell to get to the mechanical men holding to get buffed from the back row - particularly if you hold a few bottles of living water (ice elementals!), summon a couple fire elementals, hit them with a couple prisons of fire, pelt them with massive magma blasts, and/or stack on rigormortis - which is what you're looking at by the time we're talking about mass flight. If you feel like getting your pretender involved horrors are another fabulous mammoth counter, both sending and calling. If you can line up some rings of tamed lightning (scarcely a tough trade proposition) stick a rat tail whip (+3 animal awe) along with a blood thorn (he's gaining life) on a marble oracle (don't forget a ring of frost to!) and you've got practically an all-in-one anti-caelum silver bullet (heheh, he's a holy avenger to, extra nice against the mammoths). Oh, that reminds me, simple smite spam from several oracle of the ancients will stop moderate mammoth action dead.

[Festin]

Thanks for another great guide. Althrough it's kind of disappointing that all recent guides are assuming the use of CBM, so those who play vanilla have to re-check every given strategy before trying the nation in MP.

[llamabeast]

Just play CBM! Why would you not want to?

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Just play CBM! Why would you not want to?

Vanilla is comfortable. You know how it works, you know when it doesn't. CBM is a weird beast. It's unknown. It's Here Be Dragons and Exploding Phoenixes. It's scary. I've tried and it is in fact pretty nice, but it's still not familiar.

That said, there's no reason not to use the SCALES portion, and the PRETENDERS portion is pretty awesome too. You don't have to change the spells if you don't want to, you can download the mod in separate parts.

[analytic_kernel]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

That said, there's no reason not to use the SCALES portion, and the PRETENDERS portion is pretty awesome too. You don't have to change the spells if you don't want to, you can download the mod in separate parts.

Right on. CB Gods is quite nice.
Also, some of the things that I've read about changes to gem costs or number of effects for summons might incline me to try the spells portion someday as well. But, that's a portion where it would be nice to have manual or spell reference guide in the spirit of the Dom 3 manual (assuming there isn't already one out there).

However, I am certainly not going to criticize Baalz for not doing a vanilla-oriented guide. It just leaves room for someone else to write one. Your guides make interesting (and, often, thought-provoking) reading, Baalz - even for some of us who prefer to explore and formulate our own strats from scratch.

[JimMorrison]

Well bear in mind 1 thing though - 80% of the difference in a Vanilla nation guide and a CBM nation guide, is just in your pretender build. Most spells aren't changed all that drastically, and can be used interchangeably, but when a particular pretender is 75 points cheaper, or starts with an extra magic path, that will have a profound impact on the build, and on the strategy you can develop from it.

[atul]

CBM is like LateX.

First you find it hard and difficult to understand. Then you take it up due to peer pressure. After a while, you're so addicted you think there's no alternative. In the end, you start pressuring others to use it too.

CBM is like smoking.

First you think it smells and makes you feel bit queasy. Then you take it up due to peer pressure. After a while, you're so addicted you think there's no alternative. In the end, you start pressuring others to use it too.

(disclaimer: I've played with and without CBM. Used LateX for years. Never smoked regularly)

[vfb]

Lamia queens are great! There's a 75% chance you'll get at least one of either W or B.

The W's can be used to make clams or cast Foul Vapors with your 100% PR army.

The B's can hunt of course, but also can cast Rain of Toads, Cross Breeding, etc.

[Baalz]

Llamia queens are indeed great, but require D as well as N. Yeah, as I said a reasonable person could make the sacrifice to get N, it does open up some nice things. It's all about opportunity cost though. You're scraping up 45 pearls to empower for a RoW (that's almost 4 RoWs), but make sure you consider the other sacrifices you already made to get to that point as well compared to my suggested build. You've given up a point of dominion (= hitpoints off of all your troops), given up a point of MR from all your sacred troops, given up a point of growth with both the direct hit to income and small increase in diseased mages. It's in the realm of reasonable opinion, but there's something to be said for focusing on your core strengths.