LA Agartha Advice Wanted

[Shovah32]

Thanks alot for the Max, those are very good tips.
The blindfighters i find arent too useful because even with a good bless they arent particularly good. They have very good protection, a decent shield and are blind but thats about all the have going for them. On the other hand they are slow, easy to hit, very fast to tire human troops with little damage potential and a high resource cost. I can see them being used as meat-shields with some sort of earth/nature bless but i dont feel that a bless on them is worth the point cost.
The tomb oracles(as thugs/SCs) and the sepulchralss could make for strong bless units but the sepulchrals arent hard to deal with for most people(with undead being fairly easy to counter) and take a long time to mass where-as the tomb oracles can function nearly aswell without a bless.
I can see an earth bless working well with this nation(sepulchrals are armoured, correct?) as it would help blindfighters, sacred mages, SC oracles and sepulchrals but not sure if its the way to go.

[MaxWilson]

Blindfighters do have a pretty decent MR and more hit points than the average human. In many ways they're about equivalent to Helheim's Hirdmen except for the much higher resource cost and the encumbrance problem--higher protection but lower defense and no glamour. An E9 bless suits them pretty well.

I like to take a high death bless if I'm playing a nation with sacred mages. I'm not sure if it actually helps me all that much since many spells either kill units or leave them untouched, but it does at least give you the potential to be tricky. Try the above-mentioned earthquake trick when you're operating under a death bless; enemy mages will probably die and a fair number of the enemies that get damaged will be afflicted. I'm not sure afflictions are all that crippling to regular troops so who knows if it's worth it objectively, but death is the only bless that enhances a mage's destructiveness and I love battlemages, so there you go. (Plus I like being able to throw D9 Clouds of Death around on my pretender.)

Yes, sepulchrals are armored.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Okay, here's another datapoint. As I said, I'm still learning Agartha, and in my last 2 games (8 Impossible AIs on Glory of the Gods, 7 random and 1 set to my own T'lan Imass mod) I've stalled about 30 turns in. This is curious to me because I thought I had that part of the game figured out, so I went back to my last race (EA C'tis) to compare. I figured LA Agartha would be easier if anything, because the troops have heavier armor and the mages have higher research. However, C'tis really does have low resource costs even for Heavy Infantry (10 gold/15 resource), as well as cheaper forts (LA Agartha's cheapest fort is 1000 gold, and it takes something like 5 months to construct). I think now that I probably wasn't expanding fast enough as Agartha; I should go back and check, but I doubt I had 15 provinces at the end of the first year. Awesome battle magic and national summons are all well and good but it takes a while to get it rolling.

Next time I think I will probably take better scales (I've never taken Death scales before and I think it hurt a lot) and focus more on the early game. Perhaps Prod-3, Order-3, Misfortune-3, Drain-2, Growth-1.

-Maximilian

[Shovah32]

Thanks again max. Anyone got any advice on pretender set-up or how to build agarthan SCs with their fairly limited magic(i have some ideas but want to hear others)?

[MaxWilson]

Here's another update from my learning experiences with Agartha. I usually want to focus on a good lategame, and so in Agartha's case that means taking Astral and Nature on my pretender (which also gives access to Air through Faerie Queens and/or Gift-of-Reason'ed Tartarians). The part I've been having trouble with is my early game expansion, and the most successful early game I've had so far (playing ten turns or so of a game and then quitting) was when I forgot about trying to play them as a bless nation and focused on conventional troops. IIRC my pretender was:

D9S6N4 imprisoned master lich
Order-3
Growth-2
Misfortune-3
Drain-2

Drain-2 doesn't hurt research much because Ktonian necromancers are sacred and high-research. I had plenty of cash in the early game, and since I'm using conventional troops I can use cave captains instead of Ktonian Necromancers (required for large numbers of Blindfighters). Once I'd taken the territory around my capitol I had about 200 resources, which is pretty average. Expansion worked well with 25-30 crossbowmen and 5-6 cave drakes and 1-3 entrance guards as blockers; on indies 9 they were taking out most provinces with 1 or 2 losses each time. This let me build necromancers most turns and research toward (in this case) Conjuration-5 for Umbrals. (There was an ichthyid province nearby, so I knew I could get an underwater leader, and I wanted to expand into the water ASAP. This was Glory of the Gods. Edit: okay, this was dumb of me. I forgot that ichthyids don't have any undead leadership, so I'm about to blow an extra 30 gems for a Tomb Oracle. [Nope, Mound King was cheaper.])

Basically I had to forego an E9 bless and take Drain-2, and got Growth-2 and Heat-0 in exchange relative to my earlier tries. In play this forced me to forego blindfighters for my expansion, which turned out to be not much of a loss. I expect to be in a much stronger position by the time I finally run into the AI nations, and I just may play this game through to completion. My necromancers are slightly weaker than in previous games because of 1.) no E9 bless and 2.) Drain scale, but as long as I make battles short this shouldn't be much of a problem. I was able to afford my favorite D9 bless on my necromancers, which makes me happy.

Hope that's useful to somebody.

-Max

[Shovah32]

Thanks again. Im assuming that the magic gives a nice bless for oracles and sepulchrals(+2 MR, minor regen to avoid afflictions and D9 to handle other tough units/SC's) aswell as the necromancers(MR is always good, sacred shrouds keep diseased necromancers alive and D9 makes them cripple enemies with afflictions). The D9 is probably also used for death globals and kick starting tartarians.


edit: Can anyone give me any advice on what to use for thugs/SCs at various points in the game and how to equip each type?

[MaxWilson]

My astral and nature picks were motivated less by blesses than by the desire to have access to Dispel, Wish, Gift of Reason, Faerie Queen, Gift of Health, Ring of Sorcery/Wizardry forging (which I find very useful in jump-starting any number of booster paths), and yes, Tartarians. All late-game stuff, with my scales and battlemages intended to carry me through the mid-game. I might have settled for N3 instead of N4 except for the fact that, yes, regen is a nice bonus on sepulchrals and mages, but N4 also means that I can forge a thistle mace to forge a treelord staff to summon Tarrasques if I want to.

Access to Dispel has become more important to me since LA Ermor dropped Burden of Time on me in one game and it became clear that none of the AIs had any interest in dispelling it. It wasn't crippling given that I had skull mentors, but it just wasn't any fun and I wanted it to go away. LA Agartha has a tiny bit of astral on mages but I'm more comfortable with S5 or S6. (On a master lich Mind Duel vulnerability doesn't matter.)

I'll reiterate that I'm no kind of pro, especially at LA Agartha, but so far this is working for me. I'm leading in income and second in provinces and research and steadily consuming MA Ulm and a neglected corner of indies. I have more money than I know what to do with so I'm just building temples and forts; this is far superior to my previous strategy (D9E9S4N4 master lich, Dom 4, Order-3 Misfortune-3 Death-3 Cold-3 I think on the theory that gems matter more than cash in the late game) which almost got me dominion killed and had me constantly strapped for cash. Not a really huge change in the way I spent pretender points, but now it's not a temptation to buy blindfighters. Cave Knights and crossbowmen are my friends, and Cave Drakes are upkeep-free.

Doesn't hurt that I've gotten lucky in my site-searching, either. +18 death gems per turn, summer of year 3.

-Max

P.S. I haven't used any thugs or I'd speak up; I think I mentioned that I did try a Tomb Oracle with the marble breastplate thing + Charcoal Shield + Fire Brand + Soul Vortex towards the end of one game that I was losing, but it wasn't enough to turn the game around. It's hard to go wrong with Wraith Lords, though, even if it's hard to forge Winged Boots for them.