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

[Bat/man]

Originally Posted by Torgon

As others have pointed out Death 3 misfortune 2 is asking for trouble even with Earth readers (they're only fortune teller 5 after all)

And death in CBM 1.92 is a suicide pact.

I'll reiterate what Calahan said, why are you taking P2 and D3? What do you need P2 for? The income advantage is eaten away by D3 in about 5 turns, and all of you troop are gold intensive or holy limited and not resources limited.

Even if your recruiting stone hurlers rather than trogs you'll never be resource limited. Heck you start out with 80 with neutal p scales. You can recruit 7 plus an oracle and still have a few left over without even taking an adjacent province. You've taken a dom of 5. Thus you will NEVER be limited by resources unless you have a burning desire for seal guards.

You are, in fact, resource limited for most of the first year.
The boulder throwers are 11, but the net throwers are 20 (from memory).

The netthrows have something like 22 hp and 14 armor. The combination of the two lets them be good screeners. They can take a hit. Whether calvary or your own boulder throwers.

Best of all - they actually turn around and hit with their nets. Let me repeat that. They are an agartha unit that actually hits. Not occassionally. Usually. Nets incapacite your opponent for a turn, and the defense is lowered. (so they can hit with trident).

Turning the question of misfortune around: Oracles are too expensive 350/7 = 50 gp/ rp. You simply *have* to buy earth readers. And since you are buying earth readers you might as well take advantage of their fortune telling.

In the 4 test games I ran, I never had a misfortune event after turn 8, in the capitol. With this build, money is *not* an issue. You have more money than you need.

You have the money to build a castle a turn and still fund expansion parties.

Look, can you replace the net throwers with other units, and lower the Prod value?

Yes. However, when you do that, if you use the standard light infantry, your losses will go from 0-3 units a turn (normally about 1 with the net throwers) to 10-12 units per turn, per expansion party. Which means more losses (gold) more chances to fail to capture the territory, and more frequent pauses to refresh your screeners.

My fundamental criticism of this build has nothing to do with short term. You have earth, death access for long term, and reasonable to great thugging with the earth bless / double bracers, and umbrals.

With the earth communion you will be swimming in gems. I'd like to see death access on the pretender to speed up the ramp up in death, and for afflictions on battlefield and remote spells.

I'd like to see astral access.

[Kungfoo]

Yeah, that's all true, but - you're only resource-limiting yourself by buying net throwers (and armored hurlers), which... you just don't need. it's great that they have nets, and that those nets allow them to hit things with their tridents, but their trident damage is entirely superfluous - boulder hurlers have more than enough damage output on their own to clear indies, and only need blockers to hold for a couple of rounds. your starting army can fill this role fine for a number of rounds; ancient ones can do it better longer, especially on a per-resource basis. it's also worth noting that net throwers are mm1. can you expand quickly with prod-2/death 1? yeah, of course you can. you can also expand quickly with sloth 3/growth 3/one extra scale, only you're in a heck of a lot better position in year 3 when your high-resource national troops are near-worthless anyway.

I view sloth-3 as free points for ea-agartha, and I don't feel you've made a compelling case otherwise. I'd also note that while earth readers are wonderful, and *somewhat* synergistic with mf (yeah, you'll be massing them, but only in as many provinces as you're able to build castles in), I'd really rather take points from prod first.

[Bat/man]

Originally Posted by Kungfoo

Yeah, that's all true, but - you're only resource-limiting yourself by buying net throwers (and armored hurlers)...
I view sloth-3 as free points for ea-agartha, and I don't feel you've made a compelling case otherwise. I'd also note that while earth readers are wonderful, and *somewhat* synergistic with mf (yeah, you'll be massing them, but only in as many provinces as you're able to build castles in), I'd really rather take points from prod first.

This whole eruption came about because while I generally agree that death under CBM should be avoided, I believe that EA Agartha is a possible exception to that general rule.

I made that assertion based on the following points:

1. The extra resources from a Prod setting can be profitably used to allow for rapid expansion.
2. No one is arguing that you will not have a long term extinguishing of income.

The argument however is that the net effect of a production / death scale is positive for the following reasons:

a). that the extra income in the beginning more than offsets the loss of income at the end.

Clearly, you can only extrapolate against indies so long before the usefulness of the analysis is suspect. However, I was reliably able to get income from 1300-1700 at the end of the first year, and averaged 3500 by the summer of the second year.

b). that the lower maintenance on your units offsets the loss due to death dominion.

c). that the lower attrition on your units 0-3 per turn against indies vs more offsets the costs.

d). that the ability to more reliably expand vs indies, and the ability to not have to shuffle troops matters.

3. Your death dominion will act as a small deterrent to invaders (supply issues).

4. Your oracles and seal guards are not build everywhere. Your earth readers, net throwers, and boulder throwers are.

You *need* a lot of castles to remain competitive in the research race. The fortune-teller ability of the earth readers will then prevent bad events on locations they are massed. Thus they mitigate the effects of bad luck.

5. CBM has made high hitpoints troops relevent longer. Regenerating, MR 13 Sacred boulder throwers are a better unit to have in the endgame than shortlived, MR8 trogs.


I've not said this is the definitive build for agartha. But I think its reasonable.

[Kungfoo]

I guess I don't understand why using net throwers as blockers with armored hurlers for initial expansion is 200 design points better than using ancient lords as blockers for a mix of armored/unarmored boulder hurlers.

[Torgon]

Agree. I'm not on the trogs are the best way to expand side. Trogs are an expensive trap along the same lines as elephants. They can be used successfully but there are also a lot of counters to them. And you'll eventually be left will all those low MR guys sitting around eating gold.

I'm on the expand with a mix of Ancient ones and unarmored/armored bolder throwers. Now I haven't tested it extensively, but are the nets + bolder throwers really that much better than this mix that its worth taking death 3 and production for?

[Fantomen]

Originally Posted by Torgon

Agree. I'm not on the trogs are the best way to expand side. Trogs are an expensive trap along the same lines as elephants. They can be used successfully but there are also a lot of counters to them. And you'll eventually be left will all those low MR guys sitting around eating gold.

I'm on the expand with a mix of Ancient ones and unarmored/armored bolder throwers. Now I haven't tested it extensively, but are the nets + bolder throwers really that much better than this mix that its worth taking death 3 and production for?

You seem to be confused about what "expansion" means. Expansion is ONLY the short phase where you fight indies to score a minimum of 10 - 15 provinces within the first year. Thats all it is. But it is still very important.

The MR is irrelevant since you only fight indies. You will not be "sitting around" with the trogs because they will die while doing their job. Counters? You are not fighting human players yet so who is going to do "counters"?

For the purpose of pure expansion against indies, troglodytes clearly give the best output in terms of provinces per turn. But why tackle the task so single mindedly? Against heavy cavalry boulder throwers are much better for example, and also some other poptypes. So I usually go for two or three trog mobs and one stack of boulders behind indy infantry.

Both trogs and boulders require a good understanding of battlefield mechanics, both require screens and a setup to lure the enemy to a favorable position. So if you haven't learned to do that then you probably should before discussing their effectiveness.

Death scale in current CBM is not a relevant choice for Agartha. A minor bless might be, but your sacreds get irrelevant soon so tailor it for the mages. Minor earth, nature and fire is fine. You can still take a little production, just not at the cost of a death scale.

Agartha has awesome heroes, so luck is not a bad choice either.

Strategy wise one of my most successful starts is to go underwater and surprise rush a nation with a coastal capital, using a crapload of sacreds to bring the wall down in 1 turn. Pulling that off offsets your general crappiness so you have a chance to step up to summons quickly.

My guide to the nation, link in my sig, is outdated. But many of the tricks are still relevant.

[PavlovianCat]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

Agartha has awesome heroes, so luck is not a bad choice either.

Really? I was under the impression that EA Aga had kind of underwhelming heroes. I know they have that one E5 guy, who would definitely be great if they didn't already have so much access to E4, but I don't remember anyone else who really stands out. Am I just ignorant to some of them?

[Bat/man]

Originally Posted by Kungfoo

I guess I don't understand why using net throwers as blockers with armored hurlers for initial expansion is 200 design points better than using ancient lords as blockers for a mix of armored/unarmored boulder hurlers.

First, because ancient lords and boulder throwers are both sacred and so if you go with +3 -3 +3 +3 -2 +1 Dom 5 awake md you will be building a total of 5 units. Increase your Dom at the cost of either magic path, scales or awake. And to tell the truth, the next build I post up uses a dormant pretender.

But Second, people forget that Sloth *also* has events that are crippling too. They may not be as hugely negative - but a quick brigand on your capitol hoses you. Things like brigands, barbarian attacks. And some of the sloth events are unlocked at the beginning, wherease the plague events unlock at what is it, 3, 5, and 10?

[Torin]

Expanding with trogs



I dont think your stone throwers could pull this battle.
7 trogs survived
And they cant trample elephants

[Admiral_Aorta]

Originally Posted by Bat/man

But Second, people forget that Sloth *also* has events that are crippling too.

This is completely false, there are no events tied to sloth listed in the event database.