MA Argatha - go punch a mountain

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Jazzepi

I guess great minds think alike?

If you're going to turn your forgelord into something other than just a blood stone ***** (BSB), I would consider dropping the silliness of all those high level paths. Give him S3, F1, E2, B3. Forge boots, a hammer,a crystal coin, a starshine skullcap, then you can push out the next two levels of rings from there. Personally, I don't know where you're going to get all this astral from. With no natural mages, you better hope you find some lizard shamans. Not that you can afford to dump a temple + lab into an empty province with such bad scales

To me, Argatha is a lot like Ulm, but with national mages who don't happen to have a forge bonus. I wouldn't even bother trying to get secondary bloodstone mages up, I would focus exclusively on making the forge lord your sole source of bloodstone forging.

But I think I'll get in on a CBM MA game with Argatha, and see how I do.

Jazzepi

Again, I don't think you should underestimate the benefit of the minor blessings to your holy statues. +2 attack means that awesome damage gets delivered *much* more often. +1 MR helps against the biggest threats you'll have to face through most of the game. +2 strength really adds a significant amount against ultra-heavy opposition, and the 2 reinvig not only helps your mages (significantly) it makes quite a difference in fielding your non-cold immune troops under grip of winter, etc. Those points you're paying for the blessing, not for the forging.

[Radio_Star]

When I was trying (and failing) to hammer out a guide for Agartha, probably the most fun I had was with golem crafters on the field behind the golems. You've got the earth/water/fire for all the rust/acid spells which don't faze your armorless summons in the case of friendly fire and even the 16ish AP of acid rain isn't really that detrimental to your mid to high 20 prot. On top of this, I've found it brutally effective to hold the line with attentive statues, break down the armor with rust/acid spells and then finish up with that old chestnut blade wind. Your high prot statues will laugh it off but whatever they're holding in place(who've recently had their armor nuked) won't be laughing long.

[Dragar]

I think the strategy is fairly sound in terms of building a solid army of golems with earth support, but I'm concerned that the gems and research needed for any diversity will be very difficult to achieve..

It is difficult to build up a decent fire or water income and extremely difficult to gather much astral. Mechanical men are very useful in giving some elemental resistance but they are way down the research tree.

What does agartha do in the mid game against elemental evocations? Especially when on the attack without your dominion giving extra HP, I can imagine sitting in high dominion they might survive, but dom 7 will mean very little if any push past your boundaries, and you are definitely a target for dominion push, without the gold to fight back effectively. An enemy doesn't have to domkill you, just drop it enough for the golems to be weakened, then hit with area effect evocs.

How can it counter flying/stealth raiders?

It really does seem to be a one-trick pony without the path diversity to really change that. Yes having the forge lord makes things a lot cheaper, but when you start talking about equipping a heap of mages.. and to get an earth reader forging bloodstones how much blood do you have to gather using either your pretender or scouts?

I do like the destruction/iron bane with blade storm combo, that is very viable, as is earthquake. Magma eruptions yes. Anything requiring heavy fire/water/astral I don't think is highly feasible until very late game, if you survive that long.

[Baalz]

Nah, I think you're thinking about the dominion bonus the wrong way. A bonus is exactly what it is, your units are straight up good without it and only get better from there. Mechanical men are *merely* as good as what other people can summon when out of your dominion for a length of time - hardly worthless. They certainly don't stop being useful. Your "do not heal" constructs such as your national summons carry that hitpoint bonus until they take the damage, so unless your opponent is piling their own bodies up to wear you down you're really only counting "real" battles, not turns out of dominion. I also think it's a mistake to confuse not being immune with being vulnerable to elemental evocations. Yeah, as I mention lighting is a problem early on as it is with any small concentrated group of units - heck, that's exactly what lighting is best at. Outside of that though....how many falling frosts is it going to take to drop the 22 protection 50 hitpoints guys? How exactly is the fact that they can be brought down by powerful enemy mages with access to the right spells any different than every other unit in the game? I also think you overestimate the hurdle you're facing here. If, as I suggest, you focus tightly on construction research after a brief time in ench, how long is it until you get to constr-7? Varies of course, but outside of rough luck should be by midgame when you're facing any real concentration of enemy evocations. I also don't think its that difficult at all (with this setup) to get the fire and water mages. You're site searching early with 1f 1w h1 mages, so you'll almost certainly line up a couple sites (holy -> astral income) while you're playing with luck-3 in a positive magic scale so gem income events are extremely common. With that in mind, how high is the bar to clear 5f (flame helm), 2S + 2E (crystal shield) for a total of 9 gems to get to F4 with phoenix power? You scarcely need to outfit all your mages like this, just outfitting a couple per year from your pretender will give you all the big fire you want. Water is a bit more expensive, but hardly prohibitive. For one, with your luck 3 scales it's quite likely you'll get a couple of the Great Olm national heroes who will commonly net you W3-4 with no further effort, and also likely you'll net some of those big water gem income events. Outside of that, you just B-lined to const-6, so water braclets are a no branier, a ring of wizardry for 12 pearls is a deal even if you have to alchemize 24 other gems for it, and with another crystal shield you're up to W4 for under 20 gems (assuming you didn't have to alchemize). Again, that's hardly a high bar when you're talking about scraping those gems together over half a year.

True, you're not going to have amazing fire, water or astral incomes, but neither do you have amazing output requirements. Everything you're doing is uber efficient and you scarcely need tons of big fire/water mages, just one for each major army is plenty.

[Trumanator]

Actually your searching for H3, at least initially, since you're overlapping with an Ancient Oracle. Also, I posted in the other thread, but Cave forts/cities have autocast Darkness when they're stormed, so that Agarthan LI can be pretty vicious in defending them, not to mention your statues, Umbrals, or whatever else you have in there.

[Sombre]

Do cave forts actually do that now? I thought it was still broken.

[Agema]

Unless the indies you're looking for are usually plentiful N1, I don't think any major tactic which requires you finding indies (especially without the appropriate path to start with) is really optimal. That said, a trickle of gems will be enough to get forging going with the costs so low.

Agartha has got expensive secondary options accessing astral magic via death summons (Spectres often seem to crop up with S random) or empowerment (alchemising plentiful E gems if necessary) if indies are unavailable.

[Fantomen]

Your initial expansion is going to be using your human infantry, and I’ll tell you right now it’s gonna be slow – probably the slowest in the game if everyone’s at the same skill level. This is the weakest part of Agartha’s game and I didn’t help it by gearing my design choices towards mid/late game power. Still, in sufficient numbers your infantry isn’t *that* bad, and without having sloth scales you can build up critical mass. It works a lot better if you resign yourself to a slow initial expansion and don’t try to send out expansion parties with less than critical mass. Those Agarthan light infantry actually do a pretty decent job against indies so long as they outnumber them.

I agree mostly, but here are some more tricks to make it less painful early on.

Under CBM Legions of steel is construction 1. If you go for that right away and try to send an oracle with some of your expansion parties you can cut your losses a great deal. Divine blessing also gives all your troops +2 morale. You also have strength of giants coming up next to add into the mix before you´re done expanding

Your medium and heavy infantry has kite shields with parry 6 (compared to 4 for LI) Just buying a few of them as arrow catchers isn´t a bad use for leftover resources. They are also slow, your light infantry will run past them into melee and keep them alive longer.

Your sacreds might not be that good but they are dirt cheap(for 40hp sacreds), just 40 gold. They average 15 prot with legions of steel and hit for 27 damage with bless+strength of giants. Mixed with size 2 light infantry they can add some punch and meat against tougher indies. Mixed with Attentive statues they can expand under water.

If you´re attacked really early don´t forget Armor of achilles spammable by your earth readers behind a few attentive statues. Add in some indie archers and you can deal with many elites. There are other low level spells worth looking at as well. Dessication, earth meld, slime, geyser...

Massed archers behind statues and destruction spam is a great and cheap option as well.

Your pretender is capable of the following trick in certain situations: Teleport on top of something, place in the rear, cast Horror mark(or astral geyser)/call horror/call horror/returning. Requires only blood 1, thau 3, 3 slaves and 5 pearls. Only do it if you are out of options and sure what you´re fighting, there are many counters. Still a useful surprise. Can also be used to pick of that odd leftover indie out of range of your troops (take it with a scout).

When you can´t afford oracles, which is quite often, and have some other forts to buy golem crafters, why not turn your capital into a battlefield thug factory? Ancient lords are just 60 gold for 44hp and full slots. Just a golden shield and a frost brand and he´s ready to join the statue front lines. With hammers thats just 9 gems, and you should have lots of hammers. The can also be adapted easily to your enemy. What about 10 of these with fire plates and bells of cleansing sprinkled along your front line against abysia for example?

I wish there was a way to add a n4 bless into this build, that would give us:
*Stronger nature access (like gift of health stacking with dombonus for statues)
*Old diseased mages would heal in battle or use shrouds.
*Dirt cheap nature items.
*Ancient lords more thuggable, less afflictions on oracles and Ancient ones a lot more worthwhile(especially under water against all those poisoned spears)

I´d Consider dom6 turmoil3 cold3 growth2 luck3 magic1 and f4 e4 s2 n4 b4.

[Baalz]

[quote=Fantomen;684194]

I´d Consider dom6 turmoil3 cold3 growth2 luck3 magic1 and f4 e4 s2 n4 b4.

You make a lot of very good points Fantomen, but though I agree a nature component would be very nice (and I tried to figure out how to squeeze one in myself) realize you're giving up rings of wizardry for 13 pearls with this build. That one item opens up so much versatility. I also find that adding more paths to the forge lord doesn't really scale as much as it initially seems like it would. Dirt cheap nature items seem nice until you realize that to forge one you're giving up a ring of wizardry or a crystal shield or a fire helm or a blood stone or a golem or...well, the point is you always have several very good potential uses for the forge lord every single turn which dilutes the advantage of more options. Not worthless to be sure, but each extra path has a diminishing return with an increasing relative cost. Still, a reasonable person could certainly go with your suggested build.

[Fantomen]

[quote=Baalz;684311]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

You make a lot of very good points Fantomen, but though I agree a nature component would be very nice (and I tried to figure out how to squeeze one in myself) realize you're giving up rings of wizardry for 13 pearls with this build. That one item opens up so much versatility. I also find that adding more paths to the forge lord doesn't really scale as much as it initially seems like it would. Dirt cheap nature items seem nice until you realize that to forge one you're giving up a ring of wizardry or a crystal shield or a fire helm or a blood stone or a golem or...well, the point is you always have several very good potential uses for the forge lord every single turn which dilutes the advantage of more options. Not worthless to be sure, but each extra path has a diminishing return with an increasing relative cost. Still, a reasonable person could certainly go with your suggested build.

ROW are s6. s2 + cap + coin + ROS = dang! 1 level short. But surely this can be overcome? Either scrape together the points for s3 (ditch a scale? or blood bless? or dominion?) or scape up the 45 pearls for an empowerment (alchemy worth it?) or get first to the artifacts and one of the unique s boosters.(hmm seems like there is just the dimensional rod without air = bad option)

Another cool thing about nature and agartha is the Treelord. Normally not a good use of nature gems but in CBM they are 35 gems and you will do the research anyway (ench 6 for oracle and 7 for deep well) All three of them are useful in some way (vine ogre factories, big n rituals etc.) but one of them has blood and is therefore extra useful to supply your bloodstone factory without having to hunt around for empowerment. It´s also super cool to have an ancient grove of treelords in your kingdom.

Then there is Lamia queens... Fairy queens... The first thistle mace to fire up haruspex via indies... moonvine bracelets... armor of twisting thorns...

+ all the great benefits mentioned before. (especially the bless)

I can´t really comprehend how all that isn´t worth the investment of... 45 pearls?

I see your point of opportunity cost for the extra path but you don´t need many turns to get *a lot* out of your investment. The bless pays of in itself and then 1 turn for a thistle mace early on, later 1 for any of the n globals, 1 for a fairy queen or treelord most probably and thats all you need to do to make a huge difference.(ok 1 extra for the s empowerment) Then any nature items or spells you cast because the time is right at some point, well thats just extra fluff.