Guide to MA Agartha (In prog) - Pretenders

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

They've discussed this quite a bit in other threads, but heres some numbers to assign to the situation.

Your Pale Ones are coldblooded. What precisely does this mean?
They get an encumbrance penalty of one in a perfectly neutral 0 heat/0 cold environment.
They get an encumbrance penalty of four in a one cold province. So yeah, you do want to take at least one heat scale, even with a high dominion, else winter will mess with all your strats and best mages.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

As MA Agartha, research is very tempting, thanks to your earth income. But I must say, resist, at least for a short while.

The very first thing I'm going to do in my next few games is recruit lowly scouts- at least two, depending on geography.

This will do two things for you - save some gold for projects like additional castles or dealing with events, and let you make an informed research decision.

If you're only three provinces from Jotunheim, for instance, Evocation 3 is crucial (for Magma Bolts), while lesser earth elementals, or Attentive Statues will be next to useless. Research into enchantment or conjuration or alteration will be next to useless, unless you've got some particular short-term strategy around that.

On the other hand, if you expect to be rushed by a smaller race, Lesser Earth Elementals can come in handy thanks to trampling. And for 10 earth gems, you can spawn five off of a single lowly earth reader, saving you further gold compared to a golem crafter or Oracle of the Ancients.

And if you've got a decent buffer of indies, you can just decide what chokepoints you need to seize first while you diligently toil away towards your strategic research goal- most likely Enlivened Sentinels or Attentive Statues.

If you go straight for Attentive Statues, you'll regret it if you start hazardously close to a race with a natural counter. Trampling, perhaps? Jotunheim with ~22 strength certainly doesn't have to worry much about 22 protection opponents.

Knowledge is power - you must know your opponent before you can know yourself - blah blah blah. Diplomacy is your best bet, but sometimes locations just don't allow for that, and it won't work at all in singleplayer.

[atul]

Heh, sorry LP, but I just must disagree with you on details, again.

Namely, as someone in the IRC channel noted (lch IIRC), Destruction hurts giants BAD. All that armour stripped, you can on average trade one infantry to one Jotun. Of course, Magma Bolts and assorted stuff are also viable, but now I must contradict my earlier claims. Alteration is quite good against anyone in heavy armour. Agree on enchantment though, in conjuration you get Earth Power which is pure manna from the skies.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Actually, I'm glad to hear you disagree with me.

Does Conjuration 3 do you any good, though, if you haven't opened up any other paths, and are facing troops to large to trample?

Of course, if you're facing water blessed giants, destruction doesn't hurt as much since you're capped at 10 attack with your standard troops. Then a ranged attack starts looking a bit better. Standard giants, though, destruction looks like it could be quite useful, armor of achilles... Since Jotun focuses more on quality than numbers, individual target spells are more effective than they would be against, say, Ctis.

[atul]

Conjuration? Black Servants in trinket armour!

Seriously, conjuration may be only secondary target, but never forget to go to Earth Power - else you'll be wasting a hell of a lot of earth gems for bigger spells like Earth Grip or Destruction. Magma Bolts can be done unaugmented, though.

And, water-blessed giants? I'd wager you're more probably seeing earth/nature bless, but in any case, anything that can be swarmed by size 2 units isn't probably going to rely on defence for too long.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Black Servants? Sorry, you haven't found any death gems.

But definetly, I agree conjuration is a necessary target. If nothing else, it allows your earth readers to spend one gem and cast Earth Meld, or spam Earth Grip.

I'm really going to have to try the armor of achilles against Jotunheim. I hadn't even thought of that possibility, and i'm up against a low-level quad-bless right now, with Jotunheim sitting on my capital.

[mathusalem]

just one more thing : iron dragon benefits of Golem Cult too