Guide: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]

[Torgon]

As others have pointed out Death 3 misfortune 2 is asking for trouble even with Earth readers (they're only fortune teller 5 after all)

And death in CBM 1.92 is a suicide pact.

I'll reiterate what Calahan said, why are you taking P2 and D3? What do you need P2 for? The income advantage is eaten away by D3 in about 5 turns, and all of you troop are gold intensive or holy limited and not resources limited.

Even if your recruiting stone hurlers rather than trogs you'll never be resource limited. Heck you start out with 80 with neutal p scales. You can recruit 7 plus an oracle and still have a few left over without even taking an adjacent province. You've taken a dom of 5. Thus you will NEVER be limited by resources unless you have a burning desire for seal guards.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Hey, so does anyone want to answer my question about astral? I feel like crystal shields and rings/amulets would be good, but im not sure if it's worth taking on your god. Thoughts?

[Bat/man]

Originally Posted by Torgon

As others have pointed out Death 3 misfortune 2 is asking for trouble even with Earth readers (they're only fortune teller 5 after all)

And death in CBM 1.92 is a suicide pact.

I'll reiterate what Calahan said, why are you taking P2 and D3? What do you need P2 for? The income advantage is eaten away by D3 in about 5 turns, and all of you troop are gold intensive or holy limited and not resources limited.

Even if your recruiting stone hurlers rather than trogs you'll never be resource limited. Heck you start out with 80 with neutal p scales. You can recruit 7 plus an oracle and still have a few left over without even taking an adjacent province. You've taken a dom of 5. Thus you will NEVER be limited by resources unless you have a burning desire for seal guards.

You are, in fact, resource limited for most of the first year.
The boulder throwers are 11, but the net throwers are 20 (from memory).

The netthrows have something like 22 hp and 14 armor. The combination of the two lets them be good screeners. They can take a hit. Whether calvary or your own boulder throwers.

Best of all - they actually turn around and hit with their nets. Let me repeat that. They are an agartha unit that actually hits. Not occassionally. Usually. Nets incapacite your opponent for a turn, and the defense is lowered. (so they can hit with trident).

Turning the question of misfortune around: Oracles are too expensive 350/7 = 50 gp/ rp. You simply *have* to buy earth readers. And since you are buying earth readers you might as well take advantage of their fortune telling.

In the 4 test games I ran, I never had a misfortune event after turn 8, in the capitol. With this build, money is *not* an issue. You have more money than you need.

You have the money to build a castle a turn and still fund expansion parties.

Look, can you replace the net throwers with other units, and lower the Prod value?

Yes. However, when you do that, if you use the standard light infantry, your losses will go from 0-3 units a turn (normally about 1 with the net throwers) to 10-12 units per turn, per expansion party. Which means more losses (gold) more chances to fail to capture the territory, and more frequent pauses to refresh your screeners.

My fundamental criticism of this build has nothing to do with short term. You have earth, death access for long term, and reasonable to great thugging with the earth bless / double bracers, and umbrals.

With the earth communion you will be swimming in gems. I'd like to see death access on the pretender to speed up the ramp up in death, and for afflictions on battlefield and remote spells.

I'd like to see astral access.

[Kungfoo]

Yeah, that's all true, but - you're only resource-limiting yourself by buying net throwers (and armored hurlers), which... you just don't need. it's great that they have nets, and that those nets allow them to hit things with their tridents, but their trident damage is entirely superfluous - boulder hurlers have more than enough damage output on their own to clear indies, and only need blockers to hold for a couple of rounds. your starting army can fill this role fine for a number of rounds; ancient ones can do it better longer, especially on a per-resource basis. it's also worth noting that net throwers are mm1. can you expand quickly with prod-2/death 1? yeah, of course you can. you can also expand quickly with sloth 3/growth 3/one extra scale, only you're in a heck of a lot better position in year 3 when your high-resource national troops are near-worthless anyway.

I view sloth-3 as free points for ea-agartha, and I don't feel you've made a compelling case otherwise. I'd also note that while earth readers are wonderful, and *somewhat* synergistic with mf (yeah, you'll be massing them, but only in as many provinces as you're able to build castles in), I'd really rather take points from prod first.

[Soyweiser]

Astral/earth is always a good pathcombo to have. Problem with low astral on your god is the horror that is magic duel.

[llamabeast]

As for which Oracles are most prone to old age:

Fire Oracles have the shortest life spans, since Fire magic reduces the maximum age for a unit. So Fire Oracles will die fastest.

Water Oracles are middling.

Death Oracles will survive the best, since Death magic protects against getting afflictions from old age.

[Kungfoo]

...or, you could take an awake wyrm with dom10 o3/s3/h3/g1/l3/m1 (or adjust the order/growth/luck sliders to fit personal preference/game length - mf1 g3 m3 would be another option), be taking 3 provinces/turn by turn 4, and actually have the dominion to spread those great scales of yours... without giving up much in the way of magic diversity over your e9/n4 druid.

5x ancient ones and 5x 1 resource hurlers = 100 resources, which is remarkably easy to get at your capital even under sloth 3... and also more than capable of clearing weak indies after only 1 turn of recruitment. double it up, and even barbs/heavy cav go down pretty easily. (you'll eventually want to swap to hurlers with armor for the synergy with legions of steel, but really, even those are only 11 res... this isn't ulm.) Add in the fact that you need a lot of castles to be competitive on research, and... I just don't see it, ESPECIALLY if you're taking death to pay for production. there's just no way for agartha to keep up the rate of expansion needed to make that economically viable once the indies are gone, and no benefit to the gain in resources*.

*ok, if you have some crazy seal guard rush strat, go ahead and take production. I mean, who doesn't love 55g/37r giants with middling prot, no shield, no attack skill, no defense skill, and map move 1?

[Torin]

I made a practice game but ironically you cannot take sloth anymore without taking a big income hit
Order 3 + 18%
Sloth 3 -12%

I think CBM 1.92 makes extreme changes, now production has become very important even to nations who doesnt use resources.
Why was order nerfed. Its only important for the gold and now it has become dwarfed

[llamabeast]

Where did the +18% come from?

[Soyweiser]

Three order ticks at +6% each I think.