The Bogarus Problem

[K]

Ming said:
K,

I am a little confused by your comments.

If you think Bogarus's troops and PD have a good chance of defending itself, then the addition of an awake god must improve that chance substantially. Please bear in mind that the awake god need not fight alone.

On the other hand, if you think Bogarus is not even a speed bump with an awake god, than it would be even less without one.

I am not necessary saying that you are wrong, but you might wish to clarify your seemingly contradictory statements.

Sure. I'm saying that fighting off a dual Bless attacker is going to come from your troops, PD, overall unit placement and strategy, and whatever magic you can muster. An SC pretender is remarkably weak early in the game without the proper equipment, so spending points on one for a hypothetical Turn 6 attack is a fine way of killing your late game for almost nothing in return. For a laugh, send in a Dom10 PoD without equipment against a small Bless Army backed by some archers and see how badly he gets hurt.

Sure, it will help (assuming it doesn't get killed or Feebleminded against a lucky indie). But, having good scales will also help by letting you get more gold and resources for troops.

The "Awake SC Pretender" strategy is about equipping them decently to take care of trouble provinces or to kill moderately sized enemy armies on Turns 10-20. If you are worried about Turn 6, then an Awake SC Pretender is not worth the little help it offers.

[chrispedersen]

Father of Winters
-3 -3 -3 (cold) x +3 luck, +2 Magic.
Dominion 9. W-10.

So look - we already know the Bogarus troops are well - bogus. Looking at the nation, you see the slimmest ray of hope.

All the troops are cold resistent (50). They have a cheap sacred. (10/3 thats sacred chaff).

And the Father of Winders has Cold Power. So going into a 4-5 dominion cold 3 province.. he has 150+ hp, chill 25, defense 27.

So the premise here is: To take a clue from the name - the Age of Heros. And indeed 3/5 times I tried this I got a national hero in the first 6 turns.

Expand cautiously. Preach prodigiously. You have cheap H3 priests. Use them as smiters. Use the sacred as chaff allowing the chill to kill.

You're going to take a lot of chaff casualties. But oddly, it allows you to do relatively better in hcav provinces.

But avoid undead with your pretender - and be very very careful. He's very fragile.

You might also try a death -3, and screw your army completely.

[Jazzepi]

Death 3 is the worst idea for Bogarus. Their good mages are old.

Jazzepi

[Ming]

K,

Thank you for your clarification.

I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective:

1. An awake pretender would give you more gold than strong scales by virtue of a faster expansion as long as you have O3 and G3. Please bear in mind that Bogarus has a weak starting army and would prefer C3 anyway because of its cold resistance troops. So your extra design points would only go to production, luck and magic scales, none of which is critical, or to magic ability. So an awake pretender is likely to be trading more gold and stronger start for less magic, not for less gold.

2. You would not be using your awake pretender to attack a dual blessed army without equipment. You would be using it to defend behind a 20 (minimum) PD and whatever troops you can scrape together.

I haven't tested this, but I would expect that at turn5 or 6 your awake pretender + PD + troops would have a very good chance of successfully defending against a (by definition smallish at such an early stage) dual blessed invading army without any equipment.

[K]

Ming said:
2. You would not be using your awake pretender to attack a dual blessed army without equipment. You would be using it to defend behind a 20 (minimum) PD and whatever troops you can scrape together.

I haven't tested this, but I would expect that at turn5 or 6 your awake pretender + PD + troops would have a very good chance of successfully defending against a (by definition smallish at such an early stage) dual blessed invading army without any equipment.

I'd invite you to run a few tests using 30 PD + starting army + 20 archers and some Standard units + two H3 Eparchs scripted with Smite. They do a perfectly fine job killing 20 dual-Blessed + Prophet + starting army attackers (no losses in my tests).

A god on the front line in this scenario is more likely to get killed than to contribute meaningfully. Heck, Bogarus's ability to recruit H3 priests make them equally able to beat an SC god in the early game.

[chrispedersen]

K said:

I'd invite you to run a few tests using 30 PD + starting army + 20 archers and some Standard units + two H3 Eparchs scripted with Smite. They do a perfectly fine job killing 20 dual-Blessed + Prophet + starting army attackers (no losses in my tests).

the problem is starting armies with rare exceptions are not at all what you will usually be facing.


As I recall.. voi archers are significantly worse than standard archers.. Resource 5, morale 8?

[Kuritza]

I've won a VP MP game with Bogarus, in Russian community though. With an awake Wyrm. I dont think Bogarus is any good without an SC God.
Sloth is, in my opinion, completely out of question, your strength is in numbers. But Bogarus can afford drain 2 relatively easily (without CB mod).
Voi archers are indeed worse that standart archers. But their morale is mostly irrelevant, their precision and damage can be buffed, so in the end sheer numbers can outweigh everything (if you can solve starvation issues...)
Bogarus spearman are quite good as arrow fodder.
I am not sure if Malaya Druzhina is fixed in the last version of CB. I remember they lost lances some time ago, getting composite bow instead (and becoming quite crappy).
Bogarus can summon Arch Devils, but Ice Devils make more sense with cold 2 scale (and probably strong dominion). If you can think of some way to summon or recruit a water mage, or if your pretender has some water, empower him with blood and summon Ice Devils.

Renojustin said:I absolutely annihilated Bogarus by turn 10 where the opposing player didn't make any mistakes, and I used no devastating or cheap strategy. No bless. No awake pretender. Their army just ISN'T good enough to prevent it against an average military, and they even used their mages in their defense.

Well, you were LA Rlyeh, and that DOES count...
And Bogarus had some weird pretender, like Vampire queen with just blood and death if my memory serves me right. In other words, not a SC pretender.

[Renojustin]

Kuritza said:

Well, you were LA Rlyeh, and that DOES count...
And Bogarus had some weird pretender, like Vampire queen with just blood and death if my memory serves me right. In other words, not a SC pretender.

R'lyeh doesn't have a great army either, and that's what I used. I did not see Bogarus's pretender. The point being that an average army (if that) was able to dominate Bogarus without an awake pretender extremely easily going into turn 10, before R'lyeh Dominion effects even came into play.

[Ming]

K,

Thank you for your invitation of considering Bogarus’ smiters. It is something that is easy to overlook.

However, I did consider the possibility of using eparch for Bogarus extensively. After all, I advocated the use of bishop fish’s smiting ability in the early game for MA Oceania. So using smiters is something that I would definitely take into account. There are two major differences between the two cases:

First, everybody is map move one underwater, so bishop fish’s map move of one is not a handicap. Eparch’s map move of one is.

Second (and more important), battlemagic is much less important underwater (i.e. for MA Oceania) while one of Bogarus’ biggest advantage over other nations is its fast research and therefore earlier access to battlemagic. Without its speed, its research is only average – bear in mind starets are not particularly cost effective since it is old and not sacred. Using eparch would be giving up on Bogarus’ one major advantage over others. That is not to say that eparchs shouldn’t be used in an emergency - just that it should be avoided if possible.

The fact that eparch cost 175 gold while bishop fish cost only 120 also matters on the margin.

IMHO, an awake pretender pays for itself by enabling Bogarus to expand much faster, the additional combat value in defense of a rush is just icing on the cake. An awake pretender solves Bogarus' problem of weak starting troops, and poor national troops in general, in one stroke. Please bear in mind that part of the cost of an effective awake pretender is high dominion – something that Bogarus need anyway to take advantage of its cold scale and cold resistant troops. Also bear in mind that for Bogarus the pretender will get some equipment by turn 6 or 7 by researching construction 2 first – unlike the use of eparch, researching construction 2 first provides air quills, and so does not slow research in the long run.

Finally, against invaders an awake pretender would be scripting air shield, hold, hold, (hold) attack rear instead of fighting in the front on turn one.

Let me know if you still disagree.

[K]

Ming said:
K,

Thank you for your invitation of considering Bogarus’ smiters. It is something that is easy to overlook.

However, I did consider the possibility of using eparch for Bogarus extensively. After all, I advocated the use of bishop fish’s smiting ability in the early game for MA Oceania. So using smiters is something that I would definitely take into account. There are two major differences between the two cases:

First, everybody is map move one underwater, so bishop fish’s map move of one is not a handicap. Eparch’s map move of one is.

Second (and more important), battlemagic is much less important underwater (i.e. for MA Oceania) while one of Bogarus’ biggest advantage over other nations is its fast research and therefore earlier access to battlemagic. Without its speed, its research is only average – bear in mind starets are not particularly cost effective since it is old and not sacred. Using eparch would be giving up on Bogarus’ one major advantage over others. That is not to say that eparchs shouldn’t be used in an emergency - just that it should be avoided if possible.

The fact that eparch cost 175 gold while bishop fish cost only 120 also matters on the margin.

IMHO, an awake pretender pays for itself by enabling Bogarus to expand much faster, the additional combat value in defense of a rush is just icing on the cake. An awake pretender solves Bogarus' problem of weak starting troops, and poor national troops in general, in one stroke. Please bear in mind that part of the cost of an effective awake pretender is high dominion – something that Bogarus need anyway to take advantage of its cold scale and cold resistant troops. Also bear in mind that for Bogarus the pretender will get some equipment by turn 6 or 7 by researching construction 2 first – unlike the use of eparch, researching construction 2 first provides air quills, and so does not slow research in the long run.

Finally, against invaders an awake pretender would be scripting air shield, hold, hold, (hold) attack rear instead of fighting in the front on turn one.

Let me know if you still disagree.

I do.

First, the Eparch can get you the early expansion. Map move 1 is perfect for taking a province a turn.

Then you move over to your Starets. Even if you wasted the first six turns making Eparchs, the next six turns of Starets will more than recover any lost ground on research.

Then you send your Eparchs into position for your first war. By then you have a second castle pumping out Masters of Names for great research, and when you meet your enemies around turn 17 or 19 you teleport in with powerful magic backing you up and if you were smart you now have those Eparch on Carpets of Flying with something interesting as guard.

And if a war happens before that, Eparchs on Smite duty are going to serve you better than a poorly equipped SC god and bad scales.

Here's another free lesson from a semi-competent player: you need more than one strategy. You need several that you cycle in and out as your circumstances change. Be flexible, and don't sacrifice anything you don't have to.