MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, and here's the thing-I empowered my Ancient Lord prophet (33 prot, like the rest) with a point of Earth, and he gained the Earth, and the Prot +1 is listed, but no increase to Prot!

Definitely something buggy going on.

Currently, I'm equipping my Ancient Lords with 2 star of heroes (I have 5 in the HOF, 2 with quickness and one with heroic stupidity (increases attack, should probably, in my opinion, grant berserk instead), so they have reasons) or 1 star and a black steel tower shield, plus black steel suit plate, a black steel helmet, the bracers in question, and a ring of the warrior. With the 2 stars, I'm managing 2 attacks at atleast AT 20. Not bad for Agartha!

They are absolutely devastating on the battlefield, especially with support chaff-I have an independent necromancer along for the ride. I'm fighting against Eriu, which normally should be giving me tons of trouble, and I'm winning consistently against them, unless I allow myself to become badly overextended.

[HoneyBadger]

Note: Only use these guys as skirmishers, on their own, or to support relatively high PD. They fail miserably against larger armies, unless you support them. The idea is to use them to guard your expansion while you get golems going, and to hit the enemy in his weakspots. Once you've got the golems, use them as your main force, and the equipped Ancient Lords to attack the rear-your results should be very good.

[llamabeast]

At least some of the "bugginess" with protection comes from the fact that it isn't added up linearly.

The real formula is weird. How you have to imagine it is that protections are fractions, with perfect protection being prot 40.

Then having basic protection ("tough skin" protection) of 20 can be imagined as protection one half.

Armour with prot 20 similarly is "one half". If a unit with basic protection 20 wears armour of prot 20, they combine to give a total protection of three quarters (the armour covers half of the vulnerability in the basic protection). Three quarters equates to protection 30.

I'm not sure how much sense that made, but I'm pretty sure it's right if you can work out what I'm saying. Try it: Put prot 20 armour on a prot 20 unit (ironskin), and you will get prot 30.

A side effect of this non-linear addition of protections is that if you get Prot+1 from earth magic, for instance, the actual increase in protection will be less than one, and after rounding it's possible that the effect on protection is actually zero. I think this is what you're seeing HB.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Agree or disagree-

Agartha in general requires much less income than many nations, and is restricted by slow troops. Therefore, consider, in MP, going for the generally less desirable wastelands and other rough terrains to boost your gem income with the usually more frequent sites. It'll give you some diplomatic flexibility, and help fuel your summoned army.

[atul]

Disagree.

Agartha requires mages to do its heavy lifting, whether it be summoning using all those national "summon only one unit per casting" summons or battlefield blammage dutes. This in addition that if you want to get most out of your mages you need to research about six circles. So, lots of forts and mages required.

The other side of the coin is that due to summons, Agartha can't exclusively concentrate on high-income provinces. A good mix of income and gems would be best.

But yes, given your early-game weakness, being really diplomatically flexible might be necessary in order to survive.

[Valandil]

Half Agree for DIffeent Reasons.

Nationl summons are all need not eat, hence they need fewer supplies.

Gems are important to maintain summoning rate.
Else, as above poster.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Atul, perhaps I'm unduly influenced by unusually high magic scales, but you don't need so many forts, thanks to indie researchers. Quite a few are just as good as ER at research, though deploying my Oracles brings much pain.

On the other hand, barring a few troops, all your infantry costs 10 gold, and is rather low on upkeep given the resource limitations. Your commanders/mages tend to be sacred, hence your income doesn't decline as fast, and you needn't buy priests.

And while wastelands aren't as good at anything, really, and you need some farmlands, they still bring in income. So far, it seems manageable in my game, with +5% total income, though I am pinching pennies. With a few more negative scales, though...

Hmmm... I suppose it depends in part on the map. I'm almost forced to go for the wastelands in "Jaguar". That may be unduly influencing my perspective.

Atul, Valandil:
What kind of scales do you find yourself using, a month and a half after this thread was born? Especially with regards to total financial bonus?

[atul]

I might be a bit paranoid, but long-term, you should have _no_ unfortified laboratories in your lands, especially deep in your territory. Why? Attacking armies, that's why. An unfortified lab for them means easy gem replenishment, item changing and, this is the worst, instant Gateway. In that sense, if you build a lab, build a fort. And if you have a fort, you'll want a temple there anyway.

Any bless rush nation can get +5% total income (1.21 * (.94^2) * 0.98 = 1.048) or near it and indy researchers, Agartha doesn't have good troops therefore it needs to get an edge somewhere else. And unless you get really lucky, only surefire way to get it is research. And that means mages. As you said, Agartha has good research mages that are sacred, which is a considerable bonus on the long run, but of course recruiting indies makes that bonus go away. Only for magic diversity, only for diversity.

Of course everyone's views are biased by the track they first took. Mine is by my initial nation design I took in Perpetuality and by the fact I ended up fighting giants (statues are no good against those guys), yours by your initial setup that's high magic and poor scales.

I haven't done any redesign after Perpetuality was started (never look back!), but I'm quite satisfied by my +20% income (or so) and magic+1. Even misfortune hasn't bitten me back. Currently within best 15 in almost every category (it's 62 player all eras game, after all).

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Take any pretender, 10 dominion. Take any unit, prophetize it.

They benefit from Golem Cult and regular bonus, leading to triple hitpoints.

A Wyrm with 450 hitpoints, and regeneration? Doable. 120 hitpoint Ancient Lord or Oracle of the Ancients? Also ready to go. Just don't raid hostile dominions.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I was wondering what advice people had for a war against R'lyeh (much of which will relate to other astral nations), since I won a couple significant battles recently, but then made a series of bad choices and lost some also, esp. thanks to Mind Hunt remote assassinations.

Lead shields are an unfortunate necessity, given the low, low cost of Mind Hunt, but function nicely in keeping your Oracles alive. That encumbrance of 3 (6 for spellcasting) is problematic, but less so than dead mages.

Blade Wind has proven rather effective against the swarms of troops, and in quantity has affected their unarmored commanders as well, but naturally targets their troops first, commanders are sort of an afterthought or result of poor accuracy. Four Oracles casting Blade Wind reach a sort of critical mass. I've lost my opportunity to cast Earthquake, but I suspect it would do well against an army backed up by sixty unarmored star children assassins. I'll be using it during my last stand, you can be certain. It may even enable some level of victory for me, but I'm certain R'lyeh isn't doing nothing right now.

Next time I go against R'lyeh, I'm going to focus on additional forts, labs, and lots of Earth Readers, indie priests to reduce important casulties from Mind Hunts.