MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well... EvilHomer... I might as well finish it first.

Atul: Fixed. On moving mages up: I guess, thanks to infantry being such a great arrow catcher, I really don't get as much a benefit from moving them to the back. I'm just to used to playing as Ctis, and their shieldless Elite Warriors, and giving my Sauromancers time to skelly spam.

Other peeps... I added to my post above. My Pretender title is
[booming voice]
HE WHO ALWAYS EDITS
[/booming voice]

Like the thing with Twiceborn, Atul? Check out this thread and my 'Suicide Crone'. I thought it up because I love having an early pretender to get a jumpstart on research, but I often have to spend to much time asleep due to my inability to resist a shiny new chassis like a Ghost King or Draikana. The more complicated they are, the more they interest me. Which means I tend to avoid affordable leaders like Wyrms or whatnot. This allowed me to complicate my Pretender without spending more points.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=3

Shovah, with regards to Earth 9 only helping the mages, what about the +4 protection? With all the other spells on hand, my protection could get rather obscene. Chew on that, Ulm!

THE GREAT REVISIONIST STRIKES AGAIN!
So... I'll keep in mind that point about Midget and Trample not playing nicely together.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Another question here.

What actually counts as golem, in terms of the golem cult. Is it any inanimate magical being. Are mechanical men,and clay men included?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Good question, Sir Dr D. I'm going to see if I can find that out in the next hour. I have to settle on a commander first, though. But I have to sacrifice... Just can't have everything, no matter how hard I try.

What I want is an awake (out of 350 points then) Ghost King (120), five death (80), 4 astral (92), dominion 8 (147), Turmoil 1, Sloth 1, Heat 1, Growth zero, Luck 1, Magic 3 (sum -40). What do I sacrifice? What do I keep?

My goal, crazy and risky and mismatched as it is, is a stealthy Pretender able to cast Darkness (must), Utterdark would be nice (greedy), hence the 5 d. Is it possible to go as low as 3? I hope to be able to get the Rings of Sorcery, and thus Wizardry (Greedy). I also want to be able to cast luck on my entire army of shades and ghosts and spectres (must- but can I do it w/o communion and w/o a high astral reducing fatigue? Does me no good to have an unconscious pretender. But with invig- wait, don't have that, no earth.)

So yeah, I stuck my hand in the cookie jar, grabbed to many, and can't get out of the design screen again. What do I do? Give me some tough love please?

I've been working on my mage-priest section in my downtime at work. Unfortunately, I left the text file there. Otherwise I'd be finishing and then posting it now.

I will drop this tidbit. Don't underestimate Earth Readers. They may seem underwhelming at E, but with barely any work they can be casting E4. Sure, they may fall unconscious, but they'll live. Or, depending on who won that debate, they'll die. But they're expendable. Just have, say, four Earth Boots in your lab, and four earth readers in every fortress. Then, when a fortress comes under siege, equip those Earth Readers with those boots, script earth power spell, and just enough gems to enable casting, but not enough to eliminate fatigue. Broke your siege? Then send those boots back. Or forge four more. You probably could afford it.

ERR.. I wish I hadn't left my notes and manual. But what happens happens.

Edit: Oh well, I settled for Astral 3, Death 4, Dominion 7, Sloth 1, Turmoil 1, Heat 1, Death 1, Luck 1, Magic 3. I'll probably come up with something better soon, but none of my penalties are too severe. I'll see which affects me most and least.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

While death 3 starts afflicting my Golem Crafters by the end of the first year, death 1 means most or all of them live to see the start of the third year, and only 3 out 6 get diseased. 1 out of six is blind and diseased. So... not perfect, by any means, but a lot more workable than death 3. I'd never recommend taking more than one death scale, and only when you have to. But then, Death has never been about long-term staying power.

I can afford the dead mages because I have a magic scale to make all my young indies and earth readers more useful. I may be adjusting my start strat to not include more than a couple Golem Crafters- Death 2 may be plausible, but I doubt it.

Heat one scale will cost you, but again, affordably. I'd take it before death, since it benefits your Cold Blooded troops and bothers your infantry none.

Sloth and Turmoil? You can work around it with Agartha. Its doable. Whether you want to is up to you.

Luck, really isn't worth it. You really only NEED earth gems, since your Crafters won't do much in other spheres, barring some specific pre-game plans. There are a few particular artifacts of interest, but generally, you'll have to work to find a use for any gems that come in, and by the time you need them, you'll be able to search the sites via independents or a spare Golem Crafter. Now because I'm biased towards luck because I enjoy it more and hope to get a hero, I recommend getting luck one. Rationalizing it away, it helps deal with the turmoil, and keep things from going to hell. I don't see much use in going higher though, as I believe there are no heroes available for MA Agartha unless you get Worthy Hero mod. I recommend that in general, but here for Great Olm multiheroes (with stealth! and rather strong magic, earth and water). I'm going to try out the Epic heroes mod next.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I know Claymen get the bonus, so I suspect others do to. Undead in general don't get it either, but I swear I saw some cult bonus on my Ghost King and twiceborn crone-wight mage. I mean, it might be dominion... but even at Dominion Seven, I can't see how my Ghost King goes from 35 hitpoints to 84 (49 dominion bonus) unless I'm getting 140% extra hitpoints, not 70%. There have to be more exceptions, but I'm not certain what the pattern is. Skeletons don't get it.

[Shovah32]

The reason E9 wont help your sacred summons is that they are wearing no armour(so wont get protection) and have no encumberance(dont need reinvigoration)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

So you're saying the earth bless acts more like that armor boosting spell, and less like a stoneskin spell?

[atul]

Earth bless is an armor boost, and does little to things with only natural armor.

BTW, when you say that Earth Readers can easily be upped to E4 you seem to be forgetting the really important WF magics. I mean, the world of Magma at your fingertips, no need to exhaust the Readers with Earth-only spells like Blade Wind.

[Shovah32]

Magma eruption is a very nice spell. Use it now.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Magma at your fingertips? Don't the Earth Readers have only EH??? Feel free to exhaust the Readers, and let your Golem Crafters use the WF magics.

Curse of Stones can help your troops hit the enemy, help your troops dodge blows, and occasionally give you a critical. Only 10 fatigue is necessary to start reducing defense. Throw in some Dispossessed Spirits (D1 Conj5 4 gems for 15) or Skeleton Spam, and you might even be able to make them fall asleep themselves.

And don't forget Magma Bolts aren't AP. Rust Mist is limited in that their armor isn't broken until blows are struck. And only at 50%. Destruction kicks in immediately, and only costs 10 fatigue more

(since the manual doesn't list gem costs for battlefield spells, is there a place I can check that information away from the game?)

Even if you don't spend additional gems, this can be used in a pinch to reduce the cost of spells such as Earth Meld, and Iron Warriors. And casting Earth Meld instead of Earth Grip? Nice. Even if you can only cast it twice - though with magic scales and all the methods of reducing fatigue you can probably go higher.

So, how do you decide between Destruction and Iron Bane? What's the difference? Constructs don't have armor, right, and won't be affected by Iron Bane? But they would be affected by Destruction, since they are a high prot unit? Why is it that Iron Bane is two research levels higher, despite having only a "When struck [...] 50% chance of becoming broken" and affecting friendlies?

Legions of Steel is only Construction 3, Strength of Giants Enchantment 3. Not overwhelming in themselves, but available early enough to help you put all that infantry to use after the early expansion stage, or possibly even during, since Enchant 3 is available in around eight turns even w/o a researching commander, magic scale, mercenary Sage, or random heroes/sites/etc. I did the math somewhere else, so that number isn't accurate, but close. My favorite game had two Libraries churning out sages withing a couple provinces of my capital. I had research out the wazoo. Blathering aside, I'll need to make my guide a little more condensed, and trim some of the fat. But as I was saying, +3 prot and +4 strength will help all your infantry overcome mundane forces, and the armor of other human infantry.

Honestly, Blade Wind was the last spell on my mind. Given my low precision and national summons, I often neglect Evocation much more than I should.