Guide: EA Agartha: The Ancient Lord SC.

[HoneyBadger]

Poopsi--

The reason not to use Oracles as SCs-atleast not in any comparable way to Ancient Lords-is because you'll never, ever, have the numbers to do so. Oracles are fantastic units, and I'd love to be able to SC them out on a regular basis, but that won't happen, because A: they're elderly, so a lot of them aren't fit for SC duty, B: they're Capital only, so you won't get very many, C: they cost 400 gold a pop. I *think* Ancient Lords cost 90 gold each... D: The ones you *do* get, that are still youthful, you need to put Boots of Youth on, to keep them around. Agartha is *literally* like squeezing blood from a stone.

Occasionally, you will get an Oracle that's youthful, and eventually, you should be able to produce Boots of Youth. They have other considerations than Ancient Lords, though, because of all their magical power. Oracles are probably oing to want a Staff of Elemental Mastery and Elemental Armour.

[Rytek]

Unfortunately, Sombre was not sticking up for you in his post. Reread it.

But, he does have a point. Drain with this nation is not an option. The research mages are subpar at best. There are also other glaring weaknesses with your guide which you fail to mention nor give a solution to. Low income. Heat 3, death 3 and Sloth 3 you are totally depending on luck to get you money. Even your plan to thug out Ancient Lords has a HUGE flaw which you fail to note. Fight in your dominion and a heat 3 province and they gain 2 extra fatigue from extreme heat. Along with your gear, your 4 reinvigoration can't keep up. Your "SC" fatigues out and dies. Fight in enemy dominion and god forbid it has just one tick of cold scale to it. Your encumberance goes through the roof due to cold blood. Even a ring of cold resistance will not save you from that penalty. Thus, you are forced to fighting in your own dominion if your opponent has a cold dominion. No offense is a recipe for lose. And you totally neglect the best part about Argatha which is their summons. What strategies for those cool Umbruls or magma childeren? OOPS, you have none because you are using all of your gems making equipment!

[Poopsi]

Actually I´m getting many youthful oracles in a row right now. Not dramatically youthful, but youthful enough to avoid old age for a decent number of turns.

Now, dont get me wrong, I´m not saying that the Ancient Lords shouldn´t be used as SCs. What I´m saying is that despite you´ll be able to have higher numbers of them, it´s not that likely that you´ll have the gem numbers to eçuip those numbers into SC range. So I was commenting that perhaps using more ALs with more limited eçuipment (say, spend around...20 gems on each one) and then using handpicked youthful Oracles with very expensive stuff as actual self-boosting SCs might work better.

More things: I have a mind to recommend a Forge Lord Pretender instead of a risen oracle, as he will help you economize the number of gems you spend in items. On this same line: breaking into blood is very interesting for that same reason: blood items are cheap, and thus you will be able to eçuip more thugs with decent eçuipment. It will also help your earth gem economy through the creation of blood stones.

As for the ancient lords fatigue issues: I´m still testing things, but I´m torn between cramming into them a heart of life, or using multiple reinvirgorating items. I think that a E9-El0 blessing is a must to provide them with a decent level of natural reinvirgoration.

[HoneyBadger]

Rytek, the reason I rewrote this was because people-including you, obviously-aren't getting that you have to actually use your brain to deal with things you encounter in the course of the game. Sombre figured that out right away, without having his nose rubbed in it, which I thanked him for.

If you can't use your brain, then no, you're not going to do well with this guide. Or any other guide. Agartha has *plenty* of ways to deal with cold nations though. If your Ancient Lords are having trouble with fatigue, certainly reinvigoration is going to help-and if you can beat cold Nations with just a ring of cold resistance, then you just go and do that. The bless I suggest will still help you there, and without Air, it's not an overly expensive Bless, anyway.

Not every single Ancient Lord has to be built identically, because-guess what?-every game is different!

Against cold:

you can Dominion Push, which means you don't have to fight them in the cold. No cold Nation has your priests, so this is a real option--and you're more likely to be fighting them in weather that Agarthans find comfortable, with Heat 3.

you can use your summons, because you won't be blindly throwing every single gem into equipment, if it's not working for you. Umbrals and Magma Children both are great against cold enemies.

you can use Ancient Lords with only a little bit of equipment (ring of cold resistance), while you use better equipped Ancient Lords in other places, against other enemies. That's one reason I favor a strong bless, because your sacreds are still very good without extra equipment. Their bless will certainly help them deal with cold fatigue.

You also are allowed-I give you permission-to forge cold weather gear, if that's what you need.

The point isn't that you have to follow this guide exactly to win the game with Agartha. The point is that EA Agartha has tons of gems, and easy access to all the right Forges to make cheap, excellent SCs-and compared to other SCs, yes they are cheap-extremely cheap compared to Late Game SCs, and yes they are excellent.

They're not the best SCs the game has to offer ofcourse, and you're going to want to use your Oracles, and maybe GoR some Umbrals, but Ancient Lords are extremely good for the price. They also aren't going to be SCs forever-eventually, you'll have to organize them into units, with Oracle support, to get very far.

Agartha's probably the best EA forging Nation outside of Ulm, considering that they have site searching right out of the gate, and access to all the right paths. They have ridiculous amounts of gems, and they get them sooner than other Nations, because they can find them faster. And Ulm lacks any good recruitable chassis, so Agartha actually has better synergy with forging than Ulm does.

And the builds I've suggested go perfectly well with Agartha's summons. Burning Pearl is probably the best thing you can do for an Ancient Lord, because it improves his lousy attack, and gives 50% Fire Resistance-which, combined with Magma Children, gives you a mixed force that's hard to beat.

You just have to be able to think for yourself when you're playing the game, this guide-like any other guide-is just there to help you, and offer advice, not to play the game for you. If you were expecting that, then I'm sorry, but I'm offering some tips, and a basic strategy, not offering to hold your hand, or to come up with a solution to every single problem you might encounter in any given game. That's something you need to be able to do for yourself, anyway, if you're going to have any success in MP.

Poopsi-if you get lucky with Oracles, that's great, go with that!-I'd still suggest you consider building some Ancient Lords for melee purposes, though, to keep your numbers up, since once you've got more fortresses going, you can build them alongside Oracles, and that way, you can get the most out of your bless.

And you're right-you're not meant to equip every last Ancient Lord to the hilt. That's something else that people are missing. These guys aren't Sidhe Lords, where every last bit of stuff has to be put on the unit to make them fully effective. You can send Ancient Lords out with no gear, some gear, or a complete suit of gear, and they'll still be a decent unit. They're generic melee giants, and as such, they're very flexible.

Some, you can equip with Gate Cleaver (yet another cheap item for Agartha), to destroy castles and to dismantle SCs. Some-as mentioned-you'll want to put cold weather gear on. Some will be heroes-meaning that you can allow their heroic abilities to define them-I've used 2 weapons and a horned helmet on ambidextrous Ancient Lords. Obese Ancient Lords, you may want to switch Bracers for a Ring of Regeneration. Heroic Leaders, you might want to equip with Herald's Lance and Shield of Gleaming Gold.

Fit the gear to the situation, and you'll do much better with this guide.

You can make them well-nigh-invulnerable with the *right* gear-all of which you'll have access to at low levels and low cost, but it's not necessary, or even a goal, to fill every slot on every last Ancient Lord.

Having a dozen that *are* almost invulnerable-and have several stars of experience-for every 1 Tartarian or Seraph or whatever, that another Nation has finally managed to summon up, has to have it's benefits, though.

And relying on Luck is a viable solution, Rytek, because Agartha has the ability to negate bad events. Luck 3 + Turmoil 3 - Bad events = a decent income, when you're not relying on huge armies.

[Poopsi]

One observation, HB:

At any given moment, the number of Ancient Lords you can outfit for battle will be limited by (assuming an unlimited disposable ammount of gems) the number of mages you have. This basically means oracles. This limits escalation of the operations, because even if you can build, say, ten Ancient Lords a turn, you wont be able to outfit ten ancient lords a turn.

This being so, why use ancient lords at all (except maybe as a thug), and not go for Oracles as SCs? (with boots of youth, I agree about their importance) Their self-buffing provides extra advantages, imho

[fungalreason]

This thread is amusing in so many ways.

[HoneyBadger]

You don't need Oracles to build the items, Poopsi, you can use either your apprentice earth-readers, for forging earth items (which are the majority of what you'll use), or your regular earth-readers and their random paths, for forging other items (death items are easier, since you can also summon low level death mages).

Oracles are great on the battlefield, with the spells they can cast, and that's where they should be--but I think it's reckless to risk them in melee. Let the Ancient Lords do the actual fighting, and even let stone-hurlers and independent archers handle the softening up of the enemy, while you use your Oracles to do heavy damage spells at the back of the battlefield, surrounded by bodyguards.