Guide: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]

[llamabeast]

I believe the PD auto cast of darkness is going to be removed in the next release of CBM.

This is correct. They will get some alternative way of laying down Darkness in chosen provinces, but it won't be via PD any more. PD Darkness appears to be significantly overpowered.

[Bat/man]

A few comments.

1. Magic scale is very important. You have crap for mages. You need to spend a lot of mage time summoning umbrals at one mage action = 1 summon.

OR one mage action on your summons baracthus, children of rhuax.
OR doing your earth reading.

My point is: you need to max out your mage research on the ones remaining.

2. IIRC, your water oracles are less likely to incur old age, compared to your fire mages. So, I recruit a fair number of these, especially on maps with a fair amount of water.

3. Boulder throwers, Boulder throwers, boulder throwers. Unless you have reason to think you're competing in a cold domain in which case trogs.

4. Take heat 3 domain.
Sure - people can cast wolven winter. Make them cast it. It also helps if you "stunt". Its much better to concede a territory and make them blow WW expecting a battle than it is to lose your forces fighting in WW. You definitely have to pick your battles fighting any of the cold projecting races.

If you have a high dominions score in a province - it is only a few turns for temperature scales to return to normal.

You have H3 mages. The more you can make this races opponents divert resources away from military and into things like dominion - the better off you are.

5. While I agree with all of Calahan's comments about gold - I don't think it really applies to agartha.

Production lets you build out more of your armored boulder throwers.

Death might cause minor supply issues for your opponents.
Your armies don't eat and its a minor advantage but one your need to exploit.

But Calahans comments regarding earth readers vs oracles I completely agree with. I think you *have* to restrict yourself to only 1 or 2 oracles the first year, because the maintenance cost is too damn high.

And I agree with his comment about d3 combined with unluck. You do not want to go past -2/-2.

6. Blight. Earth meld.

There are a lot of approaches to take regarding your pretender.
Some believe that you need an awake pretender to expand, and to project dominion.

However, it is equally possible to start with an awake great sage. Earth meld will allow your troops to actually hit.

But more importantly, a lot of the nations that are inclined to rush you (EA-Niefle) have capitol only troops.

You have the ability to rapidly scale up gem income. Complement that by researching blight very very quickly.

If you start with an awake researcher, e4 n4 s4 are reasonable goals with a small synergy for your sacreds.

7. So what are Large Sized, High hitpoints useless troops good for?

The answer isn't quite nothing. Targeting mechanisms will tend to target your large useless blobs. So long as your effective fighters are smaller / fewer hp the can for the most part continue to mow down enemy troops while your blobs take the hits.

Of course, the only problem is agartha doesn't have any effective troops.

8. As I posted in the other thread - small troops, especially small effective troops are your friends. Two of them in the same square as your size 4 will drastically increase the survivability of your giants. Sure, you lose a few midgets. They're cheap.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Bat/man

Production lets you build out more of your armored boulder throwers.

There are two units with Boulder Throwing. One costs 1 resource, the other (armoured) costs 11 resources. Both are sacred and so recruitment of both is limited by the Holy level. So Production scales is not going to help you recruit more of these guys from a resource PoV, and even with Sloth 3 your cap will get 100+ resources from any normal start location. Which is plenty enough to get Boulder Throwers (and they are not cap only).

Production scales help from a gold PoV of course, but then everything is helped by extra gold, not just the purchase of Boulder Throwers.

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Originally Posted by Finalgenesis

Poor Cal

I had actually forgotten why I no longer bothered posting my advice here until recently, but now each post I make seems to cause all those reasons why to come flooding back to me. Strange that

[Bat/man]

I'll post out a build when I get home from work.

but essentially you want to build out the net warriors and the armored bolder throwers.

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I had actually forgotten why I no longer bothered posting my advice here until recently, but now each post I make seems to cause all those reasons why to flood back to me. Strange that

Agartha is a nation that is *often* rushed. (although the situaion is muddled now due to darkness). It has difficulty expanding and consistently ranks at or near the bottom in the hall of fame.

So all the theoretical effects of the longterm problems of a death scale is problem I'd be happy to have as Agartha.

The numbers you posted say the same thing: If a production / death build help me pick up two more territories the first year then a "growth" build - the trade-off is more than worth it.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Bat/man

I'll post out a build when I get home from work.

but essentially you want to build out the net warriors and the armored bolder throwers.

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Agartha is a nation that is *often* rushed. (although the situaion is muddled now due to darkness). It has difficulty expanding and consistently ranks at or near the bottom in the hall of fame.

So all the theoretical effects of the longterm problems of a death scale is problem I'd be happy to have as Agartha.

The numbers you posted say the same thing: If a production / death build help me pick up two more territories the first year then a "growth" build - the trade-off is more than worth it.

As you've already shown before, numbers are not your strong point are they. The income figures I gave were just for the cap income, but when you expand those to cover a ~15 province empire, or ~17 provinces with the *two* extra provinces you are implying you are able to take with Production scales and resource hungry troops over Trogs, then with Death 3 you are likely losing around 30-40 gold (guesstimate) per turn depending on your scales spread. And to keep up with that volume of gold loss you need to be gaining roughly an extra province every other turn, which is a tall order as EA Agartha. And the moment you can no longer gain new provinces you are likely to be in trouble due to the inevitable consequence of falling behind in infrastructure and mage recruitment due to lack of gold and falling income (amongst other problems). So taking two extra provinces in the first year just isn't going to make up for the Death 3 scales unless you can keep that level of province gain going every few turns. (oh and don't forget you need to find points for Luck 0 as well, as playing heavy Death without that is asking for all sorts of problems)

And Agartha does not have any difficulty expanding with Trogs in my experience (or if someone can't expand well with Trogs then they need more basic Dom lessons at expanding), and the HoF rankings for nation victories is meaningless. (and those who think they have meaning need to re-examine their view). But I do agree that EA Agartha are one of the weaker nations in EA, but taking Production and heavy Death scales, as your comments seem to imply, only makes that matter worse IMO. Although I accept Production/Death would likely help you survive an early rush better than Sloth and no Death would. But then I have trouble playing and planning from a PoV of "I'll design my Pretender to ensure I don't get rushed, but will sacrifice any realistic chance of winning the game to do so".

But I guess all will be revealed later with your Pretender design as to just how well you know the game, and the realities of playing in actual mid-high level MP games, as opposed to just playing theory-Dominions in fantasy land. (and even if your build is no good for playing it should still be good for a laugh, judging from some of your previous comments on this thread and others))



Oh and if anyone wants me for the long foreseeable future, such as if they want to know correct answers to their questions about the game rather than having to sift through the rubbish that regularly appears here, then they can find me, and others with similar reliable knowledge, on the Dom3mods forum. As this incident was the straw that did it for me, and I now won't be posting on this main forum or the mods forum here for quite some time (I'll still likely post on MP forum when I see admin issues come up when I'm passing).

As I can't deal with the stupid people here anymore, since I have no idea why some players think they know so much about the game, yet have no verified experience of playing in mid-high level games to back their views up, or any creditable history being shown that they know what they are talking about regarding their claimed knowledge and expertise at the game. As most of the people I see talking rubbish are also happily playing in newb dominated games, and I can't figure out why such players think they know so much if they still consider themselves eligible for newb games. These players can't have it both ways, and can't claim to be expert or newb depending on their mood.

It seems to me that in recent times some newbs think they can buy the game, play it for a week or two until they can beat the AI every time. Then play their first MP game, win their first fight in a MP newb game, and suddenly decide they are now an expert on every playing strategy in the game, a master of all the mechanics, and are an absolute authority on any and all complex game-balancing issues. I love seeing new players around, and like other vets I regularly help them out in several ways when I can, and am usually only too happy to help them. But arrogant newbs are doing my fecking head in, because their arrogance is based on nothing but the piss and wind generated by their own mistaken view that they have mastered the entire game completely within three months of playing. Some newbs need to get a good dose of reality.

And with that rant over I bid you all good night and God bless. (not as philosophical as Norfleet's exit, but then I'll likely be back should the flow of arrogant newbs and the rubbish they spout be stemmed. If that never happens then I guess this will be my last contribution here, as it's just untenable for me to share my knowledge and experience on these forums by having to put up with people talking rubbish in return)


ps. @ IRC folks - If there's a poll going on IRC regarding who's playing under Bat/Man's alias then put me down for Chris Pedersen. As he's the only other person I've ever seen dumb enough to even suggest using Domes of Corruption to boost magic scales. As everyone who plays the game outside of Dominions fantasy land knows how ludicrous that idea is. Coincidence?! Maybe, maybe not, but who else would possibly even suggest that as an idea???

[Bat/man]

In your obviously *vast* knowledge of Agartha, I wonder if you've actually tried a few games multiplayer with them.

Since you claim so much experience - please do list for me the multiplayer games you've played with Agartha - in your infinite wisdom. And I'd love to hear the ones you've won.

Because I, for one, would love to hear how you deal with the extremely high attrition rate that expansion with trogs requires.

I'd love to hear how you handle trog shuffling.

And you're right - I'm lousy with numbers. I forget does a trog have an 8 MR or a 9? I'd love to hear how you compensate for spending thousands of gold on units so that, when you are finished with the indie phase of the game fall prey to virtually any magic counter.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Bat/man

2. IIRC, your water oracles are less likely to incur old age, compared to your fire mages. So, I recruit a fair number of these, especially on maps with a fair amount of water.

I fail to see how you turn the water mages into a bigger advantage on maps with a lot of water. Care to explain?

[Bat/man]

Water Oracles:

Generally oracles are expensive. But if you need to hit a research target by a certain turn, the research boost can be situationally useful.

If you start near water, and have no nearby water powers, being fully amphibious allows agartha access to uncontested indies.

If you plan to go the water route, the water path on these oracles is more useful than it would be on land. Likewise water forging.

Finally, I'm going from memory. But my memory says that water oracles have one higher defense than death (due to magic path). And again, from memory, are at least occassionally not old age.

[Boksi]

Thanks for all these replies! I'm really grateful for them, especially the ones that say 'This is stupid, don't do this'

I'll definitely take all this under consideration.

Originally Posted by llamabeast

This is correct. They will get some alternative way of laying down Darkness in chosen provinces, but it won't be via PD any more. PD Darkness appears to be significantly overpowered.

That's interesting. I guess I won't be emphasizing 20 PD in my strategy, then. How will it work, though? A normal summon that's immobile seems too limited, since you'd need labs everywhere for them. A normal summon that's mobile is too powerful to be anything but a late-game summon. A remote summon, whether or not it's mobile, might be hilarious but I'm not so sure it's a good idea.

Personally, I'd suggest a roundabout method - A normal summon that's mobile and can change shape into a second unit that isn't mobile and has #firstshape. The #firstshape turns it into an immobile unit that autocasts darkness. Possibly give that last unit a gold cost so you can't just slap it down wherever.