MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips

[MaxWilson]

Sorry, I wasn't speaking specifically of MA Agartha about the skull mentors, more about any nation with access to Death. And... [checking game stats] it appears you're correct. Oracles of the Ancients can cast Dark Knowledge, and thus can bootstrap into the Death path eventually, but yeah, skull mentors are out as a research goal. My bad.

-Max

[Ironhawk]

Atul, Order 3, Misfortune 3 is a given in a game of the size you are considering. Its dangerous at the start but the number of events that can happen in a single turn is capped so once your nation gets to a large enough size you wont have to worry about bad events too much anymore.

As for Heat 3, I think its a TERRIBLE idea. Not only do you lose a huge chunk of income but you will be hobbling your spellcasters on the field of battle! Unless you are planning some strategy that works around battle magic I would not suggest Heat.

And if you want an early expander pretender, you should really re-consider the Cyclops, also. He needs equipment to really put the hammer down (ha ha!) and getting your cyclops equipped in a Very Hard Research environment is going to take you WAY LONGER then you expect. If you want a pretender to do your early expansion and are short on points you might consider an astral Wyrm. Or perhaps dom9-10 on one of the other Monster class pretender chasis (assuming that hp bonus Shovah speaks of exists).

[Ironhawk]

Oh, and isnt the strength of Agartha the Umbrals? Does MA get those?

[Evilhomer]

Ironhawk sure heat 3 will cost him in income this is true. However with growth 3, order 3 and production 2-3 as well as his starting pop bonus he will have an income that is good enough anyway. If he can avoid the heat 3 that would be good...but the points have to come from some somewhere, and heat is alot better choice than taking turmoil or drain (he will be kicking himself after turn 30 if he does this). And since the growth bonus is exponential, in a game this huge this IS a must if he wants a build that is competitive in the late game (sure if he want to go out in a blaze of glory he go with death i suppose ). With heat sure his mages will tire a bit faster on his territority, but so will his opponents you know. The cyclops is a top notch pretender as well and with dom <9 it is probably better at taking ind that the wurm (since the wurm has so low prot) - of course he still will have to be a bit carefull with it. And in the mid game it will definitivly be a better pick. Sure a dom 9-10 awake wurm would be kickass however, but where do you intend to get the points for that ? especially if you don't go with heat ?.

btw, the research seems to be hard not very hard.


edit: yes an awake dom 9 pretender with 0 heat, with order and growth 3 is possible, but the rest of the scales has to be like this:

1. prod 2, mis 3, drain 2. Works well early on but he will be left in the dark ages once magic starts to be used by everyone.

2. sloth 1, mis 3, magic 1. Could work i suppose, but the resource penalty will be pretty bad for a resource heavy nation like MA agartha.

[HoneyBadger]

I agree with the Wyrm, although I would suggest maybe Death 6 and 2 points of air magic to go along with the Dom 10.
It'll give him both fear 1 (quickly improveable with horror helmet) and awe 2, and allow you to get a jump on death magic.

You can cast air shield immediately-which will help a lot when it comes to avoiding afflictions, which-aside from curses-should be your major concern in the beginning turns of the game.

Eventually, you'll be able to cast other spells, such as Mistform, Fly, and Mirror Image, which will help your Wyrm continue to be a presence on the battlefield.

I personally wouldn't bother with Astral for your Pretender, just because it leaves him vulnerable to certain attacks, and you can eventually forge a Wraith Crown to cover etherialness, for his other head.

Unless you feel you absolutely *need* high astral magic or the MR bonus, then my opinion is to skip it, or at worst go for 10 astral so you can do unto others without them doing unto you, and eventually Wish, but it's just an opinion.

Make sure you get your Wyrm an amulet of antimagic as soon as possible, though.

[Shovah32]

Did you just suggest a death 6, air 2, dominion 10 wyrm? Well theres -172 points awake, -22 points sleeping and 78 spare points when imprisoned all before any scales so either you get stuck with very poor scales or lose your early game edge. It makes a very nice midgame pretender for crushing armies and stuff and can do ok later on too but with his low protection i dont honestly see him lasting too long against, say, a group of charging knights.
Usually i dont think nationals do much to combat pretenders but after seeing a group of my longbowmen kill a 200 health ethereal pretender with 80% airshield(and 6 protection) im even more concerned about protection than before(although his 2 head slots can give him great protection up there).

[HoneyBadger]

Well, really, I'd bump death back to 5 and Dom back to 8 (I think that gives Awe 0) if I wanted good scales, but it isn't very efficient. I almost always take horrible scales, though, and a quick rush+good strategy can cure scale-woes for a lot of nations.

Protection-wise, that's why the Death, it lets you forge that Wraith-crown. Once you've got one of those, your Wyrm isn't going to have a lot of problems against 80% of all nations, until the mid-game. Wyrm isn't what you want, if you want high Prot anyway. If you need it, though, empower 3 levels in Earth-how hard could it be with Agartha? That'll eventually let your Wyrm cast invulnerability.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I'd been experimenting with a death-5, water-4, fire-4 crone, bless expansion (plan for magic boosting). Was too slow, but wasn't bad for merely testing the waters. That attack and def bonus makes for a huge diff versus the typical 10at/def indie. I also noted the regular infantry were very great at catching arrows, and was having trouble deciding whether to put my ancients in front, behind, or mixed in.

Interestingly enough, this is the only game I've played where my early goals include killing off my pretender as soon as possible. And the fruits of my suicide run were worth the effort, too.

Oh, and all this was a trial run, so I went with zero scales- barring a bit of luck, maybe. I've still got that game up, but at 4:00 A.M. I'm not opening up Dom3 again for my own good.

Edit:
Does anybody have a detailed guide to say the first 12 turns regarding expanding relatively quickly, barring use of a supercombatant? Or, if not a guide, a example.

Or, do I just need a super?

Edit Combined two posts...
My latest test game I took a ghost king, sloth 1, turmoil 1, luck 1, magic 1. Around 4 death, 4 water, 4 fire, six dominion, give or take a point or two of death/dominion.

Now, with this -1/-1, no active pretender, I managed to take about 8 provinces by the end of the first year. Better than my first game, which left me with that amount by year three. So... not exceptional expansion, but promising.

I didn't use my sacred troops, despite my run towaards the blesses. Only unit that got blessed was one well-equipped ancient lord who never got into battle before all my troops ran by.

Of course, it helped that I was in a resource rich area... I'm not certain how it would have turned out surrounded by plains. Probably be bidding double on mercs. As it was, I was definetly dependent on mercs. But it's not like I had many ways to spend my money, esp since I wasn't really researching yet. So... next, I have to try it without mercs... What's a good target province goal for the end of the first year w/ MA Agartha? In context of a 'new to mp' mp game, standard settings, largish map.

Edit Post three in to avoid tripleposting...
Now using your mages in combat, they have crummy precision, but your regular infantry is great at catching arrows... How would you suggest deployement, and spell focus w/regards to combat? Any situation in which you'd use Earth Readers or Attendants?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well, one last post and then I'll restrain myself from bumping it again.

Is it possible to succeed as Agartha without a decent bless?

[Shovah32]

Dominion 9, not 8, gives awe +0.

Yes it is possible to play MA agartha without a bless. They have nice national summons and decent battlemagic and, while probably the weakest of its 3 ages, they can hold their own fairly well.