A glance at Bogarus

[TheDemon]

Originally Posted by Shadrach

TheDemon has a nice Bogarus guide that's worth checking out. Astrapelagist communions seem like a much better way to lay down thunderstrikes than using Starets with gems.

I take a cheap SC in my guide because sometimes you simply have 3 or 4 provinces around your cap that your starting army cannot touch. It's a 1-province SC, problem being you really really need that one province.

But if you want to put up with that uncertainty, I definitely agree with everything else Executor has said. Bogarus's big strength is gold and from that, more communion battlemages than any other nation can make. And their heavy cavalry is incredibly good.

[ExHeretic]

Do you want to tell us how to get more communion battlemages whit bogarus than for example acro?

About half of the late age nations can buy usefull communion battlemages from every castle. So i dont see the point in that comment

[thejeff]

To quote: Bogarus's big strength is gold and from that, more communion battlemages

More gold -> more castles -> more mages.

[Executor]

WL - I have no idea how M goes with L. It would be nice if it gave more gems certainly.
I find no use for any troops but cavalry. The starting army is just dreadful, it can pretty much be compared to militia. I think even some light indie infantry would kick their ***. And their use as archers is unexisting, doe you could use them with WG and FA but, you can get far better indie archers, well unless you're a cheap bastard and would rather trade 2 gold per unit for a -2 precision per unit.

Anyway, the starting army can usually take the first province on turn 2. Make 5 of those archer cavalry, they are very good, and a smiter of course.
In some cases, like Demon stated you might get blown away by indies, cause the Voi troops moral is horrific.

As for early spells, I find sulphur haze can rout just about anything due to it's poisonous effect, it really synergies well with undead chaff but you need some small communion for that.
In any case, you have A/F 2/3 path accessibility with Starets. The ones with 2F can cast phoenix power and spam living fire with additional gems.
The A3 ones can cast it the same way. Or again you can use a communion, doe I think that would kill the slaves pretty fast.

One mage should be able to cast at least 2 Living somethings during the battle and that's a fair amount. Gems shouldn't be a problem and the living something spells go well with sulphur haze since the elementals are poison immune of course, and mindless, meaning they won't rout, and can inflict elemental damage that can save you even from bless nations and regenerative giants.
Also, the elementals pretty much eliminate a threat from any early SC pretender, thug or whatever as one can seldom make a F/A resistant high MR unit (communion paralyze of course) so early on which still has good defensive capabilities and wont get killed.

thejeff - given Bogarus magic diversity I'm not sure it would be a very good decision to waste points on taking nature and even more by taking a dormant pretender so he can site search nature. That's a whole lot of trouble for a path that has quite common indie mages. If worst come to worst you can empower to level 2 or use a ring for forging boosters.
Empowering to blood is always cheap so you can even forge that blood/nature armor for a +1BN.

I think we have pretty much any issue covered, the only risk here is getting stuck with some tougher indies in the start which might slow down your expansion a bit more, other than that Bogarus is set for just about anything.

Oh, and Shadrach, I believe Startsy is plural.

[ExHeretic]

Somehow i totally missed that more gold = more mages point

Anyway good guide I always like the good scales approach. But i must say that i like it even more with nations that have good troops.

[Colonial]

Bump.

Could someone file this wee guide for posterity somewhere? I think it is a vital progression in Bogarus strategic theory

[Soyweiser]

you could ask Executor if it is ok to put on the wiki.

[Valerius]

I also just added it to the strategy index along with Fantomen's recent LA Caelum guide.

[Colonial]

The stratagy index should go nicely. thanks Valerius.

Not totally Wiki-literate yet at this point. I may do later.

[janthony]

I don't have enough done to make a full strategy guide for Bogarus, but they are by far my favourite nation. The sheer amount of summons they have is what attracted me first, and being a bit of a Rusophile. Then I realized what a powerful Blood nation they were. Also a great Death nation if you can get the national heroes. Of course, I play vanilla so a lot of these things might not be valid for CBM. I take a dormant Great Mother with W2E4N4 - the minor bless is perfect for tossing a sacred shroud on old and decrepit battle mages. The water is for site searching and access to the Beregina (W3E1N2). And with N4 you have GoR and the Mountain Villa (healer, seducer, A2N31S). And the Startsi, with a crystal coin from the alchemist gets you the RoS and RoW, leading you to practically every single magic booster in the game. The cavalry does well as a starting army, especially if you can kit out a Grand Prince (Velikii Knyaz) as a thug. And by year 2 you should have access to all magic paths with every new Fortified City mass producing Masters of Names. Eventually you can send out five of them with the Banner of the Norther Star and they can spam Astral Fires, Paralyze, or Celestial Chastisement. (Maybe Astral Magic is a bit overpowered in vanilla.)