EA Arco - uncle moneybags

[Baalz]

....and back onto EA Arco. I fully concede that the white bull is not as versatile late game as some other chasises, but for this build you want three things:

1) An awake expansion pretender
2) Very good scales
3) A minor E/N blessing

Good luck affording all that with a pretender who is also top shelf for late game. If you've got a suggestion for one that would work better I'm listening. I also think you discount his combat utility a bit too much, having that invincible battering ram zooming about like superman set to attack rearmost not only makes me happy to think about, it certainly is the sort of thing that will wreck an opponents day in many situations. You won't be using him to singlehandedly take down armies, but used as part of your overall strategy you shouldn't have too hard a time putting him to good use.

@Aezeal - he's got over 200 hitpoints with just one candle, so pushing a strong dominion is certainly not required. You don't want to send him into strong enemy dominion of course, but mildly friendly should be fine along with all those buffs. I didn't mention it, but you'll want to put up enough temples in those forts to make sure your nice dominion covers all your land. He's only got two misc slots, so I'd outfit him generally as I said with an amulet of MR and a ring of whatever resistance seemed best at the time (lighting by default as it's the biggest danger).

@Redeyes - yeah, swarm will give all kinds of different SCs problems, Oreiads included. Haven't tested it, but size 4 wyvern bodyguards should be a fairly effective screen against swarm I'd think.

@analytic_kernel - yeah, I agree. Maybe I didn't make it super clear, but I do mention chariots are your goto guys outside of your capital. There are lots of situations where chariots are next to useless though, anybody who sticks a couple crushers at the front of their army will pretty much ruin your day if all you've got is chariots. Myrmidons certainly have a niche in your army.

@Dragar - The earth is an very important component of the blessing. It doubles the effective time your wind riders can fight which is important for units used in smaller numbers. It's also a non negligible benefit to your Oreiads, and as central as they are to your strategy it seems like a good idea to invest in them.

[Ironhawk]

Originally Posted by Baalz

....and back onto EA Arco...

@Aezeal -

@Redeyes -

@analytic_kernel -

@Dragar -

How come I didnt get an @? I'm going to pout in the corner now.

[Illuminated One]

What I've been wondering is if you could make good use of the sceptics.

You have a lot of castles, probably more then you can build a lab in, your dom isn't to strong and you don't need to much temples.

So in theory you could take drain, get better scales otherwise, and put your research centers at the front, where your masses of bloodhunting sceptics are keeping both your and the enemies dominion out. And if you just see your enemies dom being vulnerable sneaking 20 sceptics into his lands is a nice surprise.
The biggest problem is that once you have drain in a province, you can't do much about it, so you must conquer a good bunch of territory without your god.

[aaminoff]

The swing from magic-1 to drain-2 does get you a significant stack of design points, I like your idea of using skeptics to create a magic scales neutral research center, and in the first year those philosophers are not hurt too badly by it at research 8-1=7.

So I have been wanting for months to try this using the Virtue. My question is, how important is the minor N bless? In my experience with Helheim's Vanjarls, the regen just does not kick in all that often - if you are taking damage, you take enough damage that fairly quickly the mistform gets popped and then a couple large hits and thats it. Whereas most of the time awe + defense + protection keeps the hits off entirely. The exception would be poison, where regen is a great way to be poison-immune, but we can get there by using nature magic instead.

I want to skip the N bless because with the Virtue's new path cost of 70 or so, I can afford only one new path: E4, which also bumps up her naked protection into the range where stray hits that get through from typical indies are fairly minor.

[edit: Im contemplating this under CBM, where the Virtue starts with A and S and is a bit cheaper]

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by aaminoff

So I have been wanting for months to try this using the Virtue. My question is, how important is the minor N bless? In my experience with Helheim's Vanjarls, the regen just does not kick in all that often - if you are taking damage, you take enough damage that fairly quickly the mistform gets popped and then a couple large hits and thats it. Whereas most of the time awe + defense + protection keeps the hits off entirely. The exception would be poison, where regen is a great way to be poison-immune, but we can get there by using nature magic instead.

I want to skip the N bless because with the Virtue's new path cost of 70 or so, I can afford only one new path: E4, which also bumps up her naked protection into the range where stray hits that get through from typical indies are fairly minor.

[edit: Im contemplating this under CBM, where the Virtue starts with A and S and is a bit cheaper]

I don't think a N bless is critical for EA Arco, more nice to have. It is critical for nations like Eriu with a whole lot of lighter thugs, but the oriads can cast regen themselves if they want to and are likley tough enough to make do without in lots of situations. Plus, you're not fielding that many (compared to ie Eriu) so you can stick better equipment on them.

[Alpine Joe]

First off....Great guide Baalz it is really good. Ea Arco is a fun nation to play.

Having just come off my first dom3 win ever (nonforum game), as EA Arco, let me explain my build in case anyone wants to try out something a little different.

I humbly submit this as my preferred Arco build:

Awake Forgelord F2A3E4S3
Dom 10 O3S3M2D2

Awake, this pretender can expand as well as Baalz' bull but offers a lot for the mid-end game.
With Dom 10 he has enough awe against line troops, Cast Air shield to protect from arrows.
Forge yourself a midget masher on turn 1, start expanding from turn two. This guy can take on normal indy concentrations just fine. Your philosophers research alteration which give the FL the buffs he needs to take on tougher indies while you also expand with slingers/chariots.

Once expansion is done the FL really shines. He can forge some really useful stuff for arco. Cheap rings and really cheap staffs of elemental mastery mean you can get oriads and mystics up to casting any elemental spell. I particularly liked mobile orieds with SoEM and RoW dropping first round Fog Warriors/Wrathful Skies/Rain of Stones/Army of Lead/Gold depending on what I was facing. Crystal Shields instead of SoEM if you want a staff of storms along. All this can be done really cheaply with the forgelord. If they bring lightning immunity it is not hard at all to reach firestorm, heat from hell, grip of winter, or other big elemental battlefield enchantments. Even with Drain you have great research, particularly if you use skeptics to create a neutral research province, so I think you have a good chance to get to artifacts first, and your forgelord can forge almost all of them dirt cheap (I did this in the game I won). I really like to build up icarids in my forts, they are weak, but can fly. Once you are dropping Fog Warriors and Army of Gold in every fight what really starts to matter is their mobility.

Of course, a lot of this can be done with communions, but they are really unwieldy, so having cheap rings and staffs to boost levels makes you a lot more flexible. It is particularly handy to have an independent oriad along with the communion to first-round fog warriors or army of lead/gold incase they try to kill a big communion with rain of stones or firestorm.

No death makes thugging hard. I took away a Necromancer site from an enemy in my game which made it not too hard to get into death with rings already forged, but before that I made do with sleepers, golems and oriads. In retrospect with all my savings from forging I probably could have gotten some of the elemental royalty but I always assume they are already gone.....

With elemental boosters you are in reach to cast all of the big gem-gen globals. I found EBDW with my pretender particularly useful.

Of course, this win was against some pretty noobish players, so probably doesn't mean much, but I think it is fun to at least think about a pretender who can both expand and be an awesome forging machine mid-game in contrast to Baalz' bull (which has its own advantages).

[Illuminated One]

Yeah, the forge lord is really my fav.

An interesting twist would be to take him with death 4. Does get you into death, and you're forging skull helmets for 6 gems.
But I have no death mages for the boosters...
Yeah, but you have recruit anywhere flying/stealth commanders which will only cast the item spell raise skeletons. You can easily get quickness which lets you cast the spell twice. One of these guys can take strong PD on his own, combine them for a massive army out of nowhere.
Oh, and when you exchange the skull helmets for life drain standards on some of them good riddance enemy sc.