MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips

[Xietor]

With my 6th choice i ended up with ma ctis.

On a huge map, here is my initial game plan.

Took a sleeping master lich 5d 2f 2a 2e with 3 order, 3 heat,
3 growth, 9 dom. Basically i will use pretender to hunt for gems and summon undead. Being immortal, it will not matter much if he is killed.

typically when i play ctis i have an awake thug pretender.

Any thoughts?

[MaxWilson]

atul said:
Also, research focus: any consensus whether it is the most urgent to focus on Buffs (Alt), direct Damage (Evo), Troops (Ench) or trying to outfit the recruitable one-eyes into Thugs (Const) first? Fortunately the MA Agartha mages can manage something in each, but the research time might be limited.

With heavy earth mages, Const also becomes a pretty nice buff school. Weapons of Sharpness, Legions of Steel.

In SP I generally go for Const-4 to get skull mentors early, and Conj-3 for Dark Knowledge and Summon Earthpower. Still working out what to do from there.

-Max

[Shovah32]

I didnt think MA Agartha had death magic or much of it atleast.

[MaxWilson]

Sorry, I wasn't speaking specifically of MA Agartha about the skull mentors, more about any nation with access to Death. And... [checking game stats] it appears you're correct. Oracles of the Ancients can cast Dark Knowledge, and thus can bootstrap into the Death path eventually, but yeah, skull mentors are out as a research goal. My bad.

-Max

[Ironhawk]

Atul, Order 3, Misfortune 3 is a given in a game of the size you are considering. Its dangerous at the start but the number of events that can happen in a single turn is capped so once your nation gets to a large enough size you wont have to worry about bad events too much anymore.

As for Heat 3, I think its a TERRIBLE idea. Not only do you lose a huge chunk of income but you will be hobbling your spellcasters on the field of battle! Unless you are planning some strategy that works around battle magic I would not suggest Heat.

And if you want an early expander pretender, you should really re-consider the Cyclops, also. He needs equipment to really put the hammer down (ha ha!) and getting your cyclops equipped in a Very Hard Research environment is going to take you WAY LONGER then you expect. If you want a pretender to do your early expansion and are short on points you might consider an astral Wyrm. Or perhaps dom9-10 on one of the other Monster class pretender chasis (assuming that hp bonus Shovah speaks of exists).

[Ironhawk]

Oh, and isnt the strength of Agartha the Umbrals? Does MA get those?

[Evilhomer]

Ironhawk sure heat 3 will cost him in income this is true. However with growth 3, order 3 and production 2-3 as well as his starting pop bonus he will have an income that is good enough anyway. If he can avoid the heat 3 that would be good...but the points have to come from some somewhere, and heat is alot better choice than taking turmoil or drain (he will be kicking himself after turn 30 if he does this). And since the growth bonus is exponential, in a game this huge this IS a must if he wants a build that is competitive in the late game (sure if he want to go out in a blaze of glory he go with death i suppose ). With heat sure his mages will tire a bit faster on his territority, but so will his opponents you know. The cyclops is a top notch pretender as well and with dom <9 it is probably better at taking ind that the wurm (since the wurm has so low prot) - of course he still will have to be a bit carefull with it. And in the mid game it will definitivly be a better pick. Sure a dom 9-10 awake wurm would be kickass however, but where do you intend to get the points for that ? especially if you don't go with heat ?.

btw, the research seems to be hard not very hard.


edit: yes an awake dom 9 pretender with 0 heat, with order and growth 3 is possible, but the rest of the scales has to be like this:

1. prod 2, mis 3, drain 2. Works well early on but he will be left in the dark ages once magic starts to be used by everyone.

2. sloth 1, mis 3, magic 1. Could work i suppose, but the resource penalty will be pretty bad for a resource heavy nation like MA agartha.

[PvK]

I don't think Order is as important as Production for MA Agartha. Magic is good for research. You don't really need archers to expand if you learn how to use heavy infantry well (see, "playing an Ulmish nation"...), though you might recruit some indy shortbows. One good early research goal IMO is Legions of Steel, though again that means learning to use your heavy infantry well. Fire Brands and Frost Brands give you thugs but removing the need for high Attack skill from your giants.

Don't forget that if there are water provinces in reach, you should be able to take them easily with a few turns' recruitment of your armored amphibian troops.

[Evilhomer]

Im not sure if order or production is best for agartha, but im pretty sure he wants atleast 2+ of each. Recruiting indie archers are probably not a bad idea i agree, since he might just have some money stockpilling early. oh, btw ma agartha has summon umbrals, those are pretty decent, but it will be a while before you can get them (conj 7).

[Foodstamp]

MA Agartha gets Umbrals at conj7? That is pretty lame because EA Agartha gets them at conj5.