MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips

[Evilhomer]

oh sorry, you are right, conj 5 in base game. Was using cb version when i checked if they had them

[atul]

Wow, lots to chew on. Thanks people.

Ironhawk, I have a feeling that order3/misfortune3 meme comes into play when you play lots of MPs where you don't actually care if every now and then you have to bail out early because of bad luck as long as you've got a good shot for optimal end game. Might be wrong, though.

Gotta agree somewhat on cyclops, his magics won't actually help a lot a nation which has E3 mages and only ones at other paths. Also I never manage to keep him afflictionless for long without heavy kitting, and surprisingly pure Earth doesn't offer too many good alternatives to trinkets at const 2, at least. Slap the trinket armour on any scary guy and indies are as good as gone, but the people are of course totally different ballgame.

The golem cult is operational, I did wonder why many of the statues had about 100 hp or more, but it explains it. Should it work on all constructs? ...have to experiment some. Umbrals are nice but they 1) are of conjuration tree might not be a priority and 2) are summonable only by the 400 gold capitol-only mages. Gryah.

Anyone else having problems with lagging forum?

[mivayan]

atul said:
The mages bar the least ones are old, so I dare no Death.

Old age is a fairly small problem for the 400 gold mages, since their long max age and death magic lets them gain fewer age afflictions. But the 200 gold golem crafters, your main researchers at least untill you have several castles, have age trouble. Growth is very nice in a long game too...

You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

With dom9 it can beat many indies, and with care it'll never get permanently hurt (immortal). Enc0 to wear heavy armor... not sure if it's worth forging early on. Just be *really* carefull about staying in friendly dominion.

D4 to use the death gems your big mages can find with search spells, and +100% afflictions when blessed mages cast spells.

missfortune 3 sounds risky. Heat3 causes enc trouble, which heat2 usually doesn't do. Perhaps it's worth it for more production...

[atul]

Xietor said:
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.

Any thoughts?

I'm no expert, but are you dead set on master lich? The saurolich costs a bit more, but has 17 natural prot and some hp, in contrast to master lich's pitiful 5. Saurolich could be useful also in battle, but you probably won't be able to pay for all the scales and high dominion.

I feel immortality's no use if you're not going to put your pretender into the line of fire, but YMMV as always.

[atul]

mivayan said:You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

Actually this is quite close to what I was gravitating towards, um, yesterday. Immortality is for wimps, but in this game I'm already scared how well I'm doing so I might take a shot at it. The risen oracle seems to be a good a deal compared to other immortals, having high hp, all slots and good starting dominion.

It's nice to have such an active group, especially since the megagame appears to have spawn requests for help like rain spawns mushrooms.

[alexti]

mivayan said:
You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

With dom9 it can beat many indies, and with care it'll never get permanently hurt (immortal). Enc0 to wear heavy armor... not sure if it's worth forging early on. Just be *really* carefull about staying in friendly dominion.

I think Dom9 is too expensive. I would go with the following baseline:
Awaken Risen Oracle, Dom6, E1D2. Order 3, prod 0, heat 0, growth 0, misfortune 2, magic 1.

This leaves extra 120 points too spend. From here you can either add 3 scales or 1 scale and Dom7 E2D4.

Baseline by itself is enough to fill the main objectives - you can forge heavy plate armor and use Oracle to expand. Fear will be enough to route indies, and it will be tough enough to survive, it will probably get few afflictions, but being immortal it's not a big problem (especially considering that they won't affect its fighting capacities much :>) For more safety you can forge helmet as well. You can also benefit from the nearby oceans with this setup as Risen Oracle will be able to expand there right away and sea is harder to raid for most of nations.

Magic+1 should be enough to make research with earth
readers efficient, I'm afraid of misfortune 3, as it seems much more likely to lead to disaster than misfortune 2.

Later, Oracle's D2 will be enough to branch out into death magic. With F1W1E2 mages you should probably research Evo-1 for Geyser (while buying those mages), which should be enough to deter rushers - even for uber-blessed nations fighting you is likely to be too costly and risky. E2D4 Oracle would be even better for that due to affliction chances, so I'd probably go for production scale, D7 and E2D4, but some combination of Prod and Growth scales looks good too.

I think your main problem will be what to make your winning plan. At some stage you'll need to conquer your neighbours, and your best weapons are probably your national summons. With some of them being sacred it my be a good option to get some blesses on the oracle. You could get some 4-bless by sacrificing a scale. Or you can make Oracle dormant with 3 4-blesses, but it will cripple your expansion (though you would still probably be save from rushers due to Geyser). Though I'd probably opt for more conventional plan with awake Oracle, fast expansion (and following quick build of second fort) - your troops might not be that good in the future, but with extra gold and gems from expansion, extra number of troops, summons and mages you can field will probably overcome weaker blesses.

[Evilhomer]

Just my opinion but i would strongly advice against taking prod 0. Since the latest patch production was made alot better, and you are giving up a very nice +45% production bonus. With production 0 you will be expanding alot slower than with prod 3. I would also advice against taking growth at only 0. In a competitive build it seems like such a bad idea since you are giving up a ton of income due to the exponential way that growth works.

[atul]

Alexti, the guy who did beat me up in almost every dominions 2 MP game I played. *g* Thanks for the tips, especially the geyser. Or, thanks for making me more certain of the route I'm currently on, the design along with the plan has about formed.

I'd like to thank everyone who has been participating in this thread, you have been most helpful. Pretender sent, now off to actually learn to play...

[atul]

Evilhomer said: I would also advice against taking growth at only 0. In a competitive build it seems like such a bad idea since you are giving up a ton of income due to the exponential way that growth works.

Strange thing I noticed of growth. It's about the only scale that scales so that the move from 2 to 3 is about as beneficial as move from say 0 to 1. For instance, prod 0 to 1 yields 15% relative benefit, whereas prod 2 to 3 yields only 11,5% benefit. With growth the relative benefit stays relatively same.

OTOH, growth only helps if you live long...

[Evilhomer]

good luck atul