EA Agartha - the game's red-headed stepchild (CBM)

[Kuritza]

I've seen Niefel Jarls and Rakshasa Whatevers miss themselves with bless, so its probably not because of free spawn. You were probably lucky (or less unlucky) with self-blessing Vans, but I'm sure they can miss themselves as well.

[vfb]

Was anything else on the field with them, or were they solo? I ran the Van bless 10 times. It didn't miss once, it always targeted the Van's square, and the first blastsqr always hit the targeted square.

I just tried 10 times with a solo Nief Jarl, and it never missed (always targeted the square it was in; 1st blastsqr hit the targetted square).

[thejeff]

I'll try with a Jotun Jarl when I get the chance. I know I've seen them miss themselves.

If the Dai Oni is targeting his wolf, that's a bug in itself.

[Sombre]

It definitely misses sometimes. I believe someone made a self bless spell at H1 in a mod because of exactly this problem.

[TheDemon]

I've seen Sidhe Lords miss themselves with blessing. They were the only unit on the field. I've also seen Harbingers miss themselves, and Dis, and Yaksha. Again, the only friendly unit on the field. It definitely happens.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Sombre

It definitely misses sometimes. I believe someone made a self bless spell at H1 in a mod because of exactly this problem.

Ironically, I believe the "someone" in question was vfb himself, who made it because of Dai Onis.

I know I have seen self-buffers miss, but it's pretty infrequent without other troops on the board, certainly less than 10% of the time and probably closer to 1%, so I'm not surprised it didn't show up in your 10 tests, vfb. Always remember that the easiest way to re-randomize a battle replay to to Shift + 'U' and then instantly Shift + 'K' it again.

-Max

[vfb]

Sorry to have contributed to taking this Agartha guide so OT!

If anyone wants to continue talking about 100-precision area-effect spell targeting, please do it here, thanks.

[Squirrelloid]

So, most of a year later, having tried Agartha in some MP games...

(1) Oracles are only good thugs/SCs against indies or the AI.
-subpoint 1: No matter how awesome you make them, they're still cold blooded
-subpoint 2: Wolven Winter only costs 5w
-subpoint 3: 2x Wolven Winter -> dead Oracle, even against PD. There isn't much you can do about this - you simply cannot (reasonably) get enough reinvigoration to stop cold blooded from being the death of you.
(2) You can't really afford the bless anyway. Seriously. You need better scales than a bless allows you.
(3) Once you accept your troops are just expendable chaffe, the fact you'll kill more of them than you're going to hit your own troops with magma eruption should stop disturbing you. So your best use of Oracles is probably heavy evocations.
(4) I can't overstate how bad their basic troops are. They're really bad. Like, lose to deer tribe in an even fight (by *numbers*) bad. Bad attack/defense + bucklers + spears means they can't block arrows, they get hit far more often than they hit (meaning those extra hp don't really help at all), and they do basically no damage when they do hit. There's a reason I was trying to avoid them in the first place.

Now, I've also tried an awake forge lord with F2E4S3D2. It had a better mid game, although the expansion was kind of sad.

I've tried an awake Wyrm with A2, who had great expansion (as you'd expect). I had to do some ridiculous things to have a mid/end game though.

The play strategy that seems to work the best is just to rush conjuration to skull mentors, manual search for death gems while you're doing that, and then rush whatever else you want. I had tarts in the middle of year 3 in one game. Your expansion may be poor, but castle up quickly so you can get more researchers. And if someone kills you early before you can research anything useful, well, at least it was short and not especially painful. You have to cripple yourself far too much to have a defensible early game, so going for a high risk/high reward strategy seems to be the only logical option. Dying early is better than surviving and being totally impotent later. And should you not die early, you'll actually be able to do something.

Edit: Ok, even planning for endgame you'll probably be still mostly impotent. But it'll be better than if you didn't.

[AdmiralZhao]

I recently won a large game with EA Argatha, so I thought I would chip in a few more pieces of advice.

- A bless of E9N6 is very solid. You can expand quickly and cheaply against independents, and while you will not ever hit enemy national troops, it will at least take a long, long time for them to kill you. While being defeated slowly usually isn't a winning move, it does open up a lot of possibilities for your mages. For instance, have a few Oracles cast Curse of Stones x 2, while your troops are in the rear and set to hold and attack. Opponents who fail their save will reach 50+ fatigue by the time they hit your lines, and will quickly reach 80-90 fatigue, at which point your troops can actually hit them. This also gives you a good chance to catch exhausted enemy mages at the end of the battle. Or, you can throw in a Grip of Winter, which paradoxically will hurt enemy troops without reinvig far more than it will hurt your troops with re-invig. Darkness is always great, as is earth quake with your regenerating troops. For best results, combine several of the above. I haven't tried it, but Plague should work in the same fashion as Earthquake. Your regenerating troops should be effectively immune to it, and can sit there shrugging off blows and disease while your opponent's army falls to rotted pieces in front of them. This bless will also let you ignore missile fire, which is useful when attacking castles or when taking friendly fire from your own independent archers.

- You are surprisingly strong against the Heims. It takes forever for the Heimish troops to break through a block of Ancients, and while they work you can have independent archers rain fire on them. The boulder throwers are another great option, as they completely ignore glamour, defense, and most armor. 2000 gold worth of glamour-calvary with a heavy bless and 3 stars of experience can be quickly crushed beneath an avalanche of giant boulders.

- If you ever have any chance for air magic, take it. Even Deer Tribe Shamans with a 10% chance for A1 are worth pumping out. If you can trade for boosters, empower, or communion one of your guys to A2, you can get Wind Guide, which will turn your Boulder Throwers into pure murder. Additionally, forged air items can give you some much needed strategic speed, so that you can complement your plodding armies with flying raider-thugs.

- go for a relatively high dominion. Cold scales are the kiss of death for your armies, and there are a lot of nations in EA who take cold scales. You want to at least keep the cold out of your territory so that you are not tempting them.

- you are well situated for a mid-late game attack into the water. You can take your W1 earth readers that you were using for research, give them a cheap water bracelet, and then use water power to boost them to W3. This gives you all the vital UW spells like quickness, Shark Attack, Friendly Currents, etc. You can also use them to do Warriors of Nieflheim + Grip of Winter, which has great synergy with the above strategy of simply exhausting your opponents. Another neat trick is to take your fire elementals underwater with you. A simple Sea Kings Goblet lets you bring a group of 50 underwater, and since their heat effect doesn't work underwater, you can drop mages in the middle of them to cast quickness + Marble Warriors (or Army of Gold/Lead). This invincible, deadly, and untiring group will then proceed to annihilate anything in front of them without fire resistance. This is great for launching a surprise attack, since who expects fire elementals on land to come charging underwater, and who builds UW thugs with fire resistance? Very few people, that is who.

Don't bother making PD or national troops underwater though, they are if possible even worse than your basic land troops. I've seen 25 underwater PD get completely rolled by a small group of independent tritons. They are just absurdly bad.

[Squirrelloid]

See, I found that I wasn't using national troops after ~year 2. Were your opponents not casting Wolven Winter on you regularly just before an engagement? Its hard to win an endurance war when you're cold-blooded and your opponent has water magic.