Guide to MA Agartha (In prog) - Pretenders

[ologm]

Gift of health works on juggernouts and it is multiplicative with the golem cult dominion, meaning you get 4 times the health.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Actually, even with Scylla, my 12 R not-yet super combatant, I tend to research with her right off the bat. I don't need gem income in other areas right away, and it gives me some flexibility in getting up my research machine. I only have to recruit/dedicate four golem crafters to research to get to my goal of Attentive Statues by the end of year one. I'll make note of exactly when I reach that, but she, and my recruitment queue are free by late summer.

Oh, and some significant spell-threats are located in astral magic.

Summons that are golems, but not national: This list will be updated occasionally, and mentioned in the first post. I will, however, only add golems seen, in action, recieving the golem cult boost. I'm tempted to just guess from the manual, but feel its best to actual hear eyewitness reports/ experience it myself in case its wrong. The manual's been wrong before- case in point, Watcher is under enchantment, not construction. Contributions are welcome via PM.

Confirmed by personal experience of myself or others:
Claymen. Juggernaut.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I've heard that both Cave City and Cave Fort battles are fought under the effect of darkness. I've also seen it in the short list of bugs.

Capital: Cave City
Default: Fortified City
Mountain: Cave Fort
Swamp: Swamp Fort
Forest: Forest Fortress
Tower weapons: 6x sling

Your capital is pretty well defended, but rather low on supplies. If you expect a siege, Pale One Soldiers are not a bad choice, as they don't consume supplies. Your admin is a measly 30, which means that it will usually be difficult to mass Ancient Ones.

Your Default Fortress of a Fortified City is exceptional. It's defense isn't ideal, but it is well supplied in case of sieges, and most importantly, it has 50% admin. Which means, build one of these in a strategic position to pump out the majority of your national troops. On second thought, your nationals aren't that special- a good independent selection works as well. When you build one of these, consider leaving out a temple and lab to save money.

In Mountain (NOT Border mountains) provinces the Cave Fort is available .It's admin and supply are measly, but its high defense means Pale One Soldiers can hold it for quite a long time against a larger force. Unfortunately, on random maps you will only see border provinces, at least at v. 3.08. It's on the expensive side though. I would NOT recommend making this your first fort. However... there are certain circumstances where its value jumps dramatically. A iron Mine, for instance. Or the Vaults Beneath (150 resources). Or some indies, or special site recruits. When that bug with auto darkness is fixed, if it isn't already, these will be extremely hard to take from you, barring a few nations.

Your Swamp Fort is abysmal- but cheap at 800 gold and 3 turns. It has absolutely 0 admin value. However, its not a bad place to put a library and temple, pumping out mages. If you want to double up your research early this is an option, albeit one that hamstrings troop production and vulnerable to attack. On the plus side, you could put one up next to a better fort, such as your capital, and it will hardly affect production.

Your Forest Fortress is not a bad choice. It's hardly ideal, but considering forests are high in resources and it goes up in four turns and 1000 gold, this is a decent production choice. If you haven't grabbed all the provinces in the area, its superior to a fortified city, but only by a small margin. I'd rank it above the Cave Fort, since it's somewhat less expensive, and goes up a turn earlier.

Next up, Strategy, Pretender Design, etc. Last, a discussion of artifacts and spells, advanced strategy, maybe?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Scale ratings:
Order: It helps, but less than other civilizations. You don't have much chaff, your standard infantry all costs 10 gold and your mages sacred, so you won't be spending much on upkeep. You'll be relying on summons who don't need chaff, anyways. There aren't many situations where you'd want turmoil.

Productivity: It's a heck of a lot more meaningful than order, but needn't be in every build. If you're going with a dormant pretender, or need to expand quickly in your strategy, this is a good choice. If you're not planning much expansion, and have a supercombatant, there's no problem taking a little sloth. I wouldn't take more than one, though.

Heat: Heat's good for your coldblooded units, but bad for your cavern wights and mages. I'd take heat one, or neutral. Some people may take more. Cold is just bad.

Growth: Never take more than death one. Higher death scales kill your Golem Crafters ridiculously fast. I'd only take Death if I had magic 3, since I could use indeps and Earth Readers for research. Growth, on the other hand, is nice. It does the obvious, but also makes it a little harder for your Golem Crafters to die off. However, I've never needed the extra supplies. It sometimes seems like a waste.

Luck: You're going to take misfortune, often. In the vanilla game, MA Agartha has no heroes that I'm aware of. You have to download a mod to get any. And you've got all the gems you really _need_, if not want. So there's little benefit to luck. Even with misfortune one, you can get good events frequently. Though when you lose two provinces to earthquakes/troglodytes, you'll hate it. Misfortune three is dangerous.

Magic: You can benefit from tilting this scale in both directions. Taking a high magic scale will allow you to cast lots of spells, research better (or younger), and make the enemy more vulnerable to spells from most paths of magic.

Drain scale can be used to your advantage. First, only two earth spells target magic resistance, therefore, your spells remain effective while spells like Opposition fail more often. Second, earthpower grants +4 reinvig, and earth blesses anywhere from 2 to 5 on all your sacred mages. With A1N1 (random possible), you can forge Rainbow Armor (enc1, invig3), and n1- available anywhere- you can forge Birch Boots(invig2), Boots of the Messenger (invig4). There's also the Girdle of Might (+3)x2.

Unfortunately, you don't have great researchers, so drain will cost you. You'll have to plan around that somehow.

Dominion strength- higher is better, of course, but don't strain yourself too hard. You Golems start out tough.

Blesses:

Fire is again, one of the better all around blesses, helping everybody but your mages. Fire 4 is a big help.

Air is of use only to mages and Ancient Ones, but considering how vulnerable they are to arrows, is another good choice. Shock resistance is irrelevant.

Water benefits your your ancient ones, and your golems. While your golems have enough protection to not need defense, fewer open-ended die rolls are always a good thing. And quickness doesn't hurt, either.

Earth is troublesome. Reinvigoration helps your mages and Sacred ones, but the problem with the high level protection bonus is that it is applied to armor, not natural protection. Golems receive no benefit whatsover from this bless.

An astral bless is wonderful. Magic resistance is always handy, and Twist Fate won't win you battles, but will cut mage casulties. You know, that one lucky arrow that hits your stoneskinned mage in a clump of soldiers and does ten damage, gibbing all your golems if he was the last one?

Death bless isn't really worht talking about, but can make enemies very cautious about attacking with their pretender. Your strong dominion + Ancient Lord w/Gate Cleaver + 100 bless equals wounds. That said, it seems the affliction rate affects spells too, not just melee. There are ways to take advantage of this.

Believe it or not, I'm under the opinion that your pretender design and scales aren't that important to Agartha's early game. Though they will, of course have a long-term and short-term affect. And you can do very different things early on - a Wyrm Astral-3 is a SC.

But for simplicity's sake the basic strategy I'll outline assumes you'll have a pretender like this - And I've deliberately left the cost low, so you can tweak, play around and experiment in a easy SP game. Not because this is a viable MP build, just a puny baseline to compare against.

Dummy, my Baseline Pretender
An Awake Crone (350/350),
with 2 points Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Astral. Default 1 point death. Total RP 14 (costs 130, 220/350)
Dominion 5 (costs 70, 150/350)
Magic Scale 1 (costs 40, 110/350)
Standard game settings, random events -> Rare

gold is unpredicatable, as result of random event.

turn 1, spring
dummy, 14 -> research -> enchantment
recruit golem crafter, 7 LI

turn 2, 14 completed late spring
recruit golem crafter, 7 LI (179 gold left)
21->enchantment

turn 3, 35 completed, early summer, start with 456 gold
recruit golem crafter, 7LI, (186 gold left)
28-> enchantment

turn 4, 63 completed (ench1), summer, start with 483 gold, 54 upkeep
recruit golem crafter, 7LI (213 gold left)
35-> enchantment

Turn 5, 98 completed (ench1), late summer, start with 476 gold, 65 upkeep
42-> enchantment with crone, 28 without, only 102 rp until Attentive Statues

Here, you can start searching with your crone, recruiting other commanders, and get attentive statues by Earl Winter
early fall (74), fall (46), late fall(18), early winter (-10), winter (-38), late winter (-66), and still get 28 RP/a turn. This is what I'd do, recruiting two earth readers, and sending them & my current pretender out to research.

Or, if you recruit another golem crafter, and keep with the research, you'll get attentive statues by Late Fall.

early fall -42 (60), fall -49 (11), late fall -56 (-38), early winter -63 (-101), winter -70 (-171), and late winter, enchantment four. You'll start year two with up to 84 rp/turn (if crone's still researching).

In this sample game, I didn't expand any, or overtax, but I regularly recruited troops, to show you what you can achieve. If this was a more chaff oriented, non-sacred nation, then you probably couldn't afford all this.

In a real game, you'll have a totally different pretender, and likely, better scales.

With a dormant pretender and 5 rp a turn (mag3, earth readers, drain1, golem crafters), you can achieve about
(0+55)/2*11 = 302 by the end of the first year. That's enchant 3, 58 points away from enchant 4.

In most games, your strategy will actually depend on a) your pretender, and b) your terrain. On a random map, you may be stuck with three crappy, low resource connecting provinces. It may be worth your while to pinch pennies and hire mercenaries, to compensate for a complete lack of recruitable troops. In other situations, you'll have independent or mercenary researchers to pitch in.

With a high magic scale, seriously consider setting up a sacred-research indie as an early research station instead of throwing up another fort.

Pretender Commentary- practical advice

Risen Oracle: the most common choice, and for good reason. Unfortunately limited in magic paths, he comes with fear, so each point of death goes straight into a boost. Remember fear also gets stronger every +5, whether its natural or boosted. Doesn't add much to your golems, though will open up a poison golem. Opens up Skull Mentor, Skull Staff, and other nice artifacts that will help with darkness and drain strategies.

Generally better than lichs, unless you find yourself needing very high death.

Sacred Statue: Great potential lies in the astral path, but the difficulty of finding astral gems will hamper you. Alchemy can be used to help, and get rid of those unusable gems. For your very first Astral Pretender, you'd be better off with an Great Enchantress.

Oracle: Four accessory slots, but 20 hitpoints. You won't be teleporting it around, but you probably won't have the gems to do so, anyways. Better choice than the Sacred Statue. Try this once you've practiced with a Great Enchantress.

Wyrm: A classic. Everything to be said, already has. Combines well with nearly every path of magic. Has two heads - something to keep in mind. Want an easy supercombatant?

Titan: Opens up watchers, bless is great for your mages and Ancient ones, not so hot for golems, though the golems don't need them nearly as much. Worth a second look, despite the poor thematic match. Also opens up those Owl Quills you'll need if you take any drain.

Sample pretenders - perhaps not the best, but fun enough for single player or a relaxed multiplayer game.

Forge Lord (dormant)
Fire 5, Earth 5, Dominion 6, Productivity 3, Magic 1.
Basic goal is to reach construction 2 and enchant 3 (total 300 RP) around the the time your Pretender awakens. Meanwhile, you'll be depending on infantry or heavy infantry to expand.

First have have him forge a Dwarven Hammer, then start churning out artifacts, and kitting your Ancient Lords. Dedicate your mages to researching and casting battle magic. Eventually, you'll have access to Earth Attack, King of Elemental Earth, King of Elemental Fire, Melancholia, Volcanic Eruption, Raging Hearts, Purgatory (With a flame helmet), Forge of the Ancients, Mechanical Militia, Riches from Beneath, Earth Blood Deep Well (earth boots).

If you're not interested in globals, you can take a point of heat (good for your Ancient Lords anyway), drop a point of productivity, take 7 dom, and take 4 earth, 4 fire, and either air or water. You now can forge the staff of Elemental Mastery, and boost your Golem Crafters even further. With staff, Helmet, Boots, and Robe of the Sea/Water Bracelet, you've got a FFFWWWEEEE mage. Not bad- still, quite expensive. Though way too many options for just one mage, who'll die of old age. Earth boots is all they need for Magma Eruption. And you can STILL get forge of the ancients and Hammer of the Forge Lord. This will get you Acid Rain, Acid Storm (with water gems, and golems have no armor to be destroyed), get Curse of the Desert, Grip of Winter, Curse of Stones, Heat from Hell, Prison of Fire. Is short, all sorts of ways of ways to mess with your opponents. On a mage one arrow will kill. Base costs: Dwarven Hammer (15), Earth Boots (10), Robe of the Sea (15), Flame Helmet (25), Staff of Elemental Mastery(25,25), Hammer of the Forge Lord (25, 15), Forge of the Ancients (80).

However, if you get the Forge of Ancients up, the Hammer of the Forge Lord, The Staff of Elemental Mastery can be forged for only 3,3. If you find one of the forging sites... The mechanics of forge bonuses are discussed elsewhere in these forums, but there's a limit of 10%. With only a 50% bonus, and Forge of the Ancients, a Ember blade would cost 2,2. With the 75 bonus reachable by a Forge Lord and Forge of the Ancients, that comes down to 1,1. Your Golem Crafters with Dwarven Hammers and Forge of the Ancient comes to 3,3. So... Overkill? It's certainly a little easier to get up and running with the forge lord. And you can waste time forging 5 gem items for free. The problem is, this is all practically endgame. At least the bless isn't useless.

Good diplo build, though arming your eventual enemies is always a questionable tactic. You'll come out on top of any item exchange. Though people will consider you stingy if you keep your best (Dwarven Hammer?) items to yourself, its worth considering in a MP game. It is possible to pull off by year four, though I didn't do a great job of orchestrating my test game, and went about it all wrong.

Other people, please mention a build for people to try. And state whether its competitive or fun. I'm trying to put together a blood strat, myself, but it requires a bit of work and experimentation.

[Alneyan]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Unfortunately, you don't have great researchers, so drain will cost you. You'll have to plan around that somehow.

What about a few Stone Idols? Idols should bring down the Dominion to O in one particular province, thereby cancelling the Drain effects. Astral + Earth may be tricky to get, though it's a very nice combination that you probably want anyway.

You might even want to use the enemy Dominion to override your own Drain in research provinces (you don't get the research bonus of their Magic scale, though). That requires putting the research base on your borders, though, but hey, it's cheap and it works with all negative scales.

[Sandman]

Don't forget the Gargoyle, another lifeless construct. Flying, mindless and very tough. Do they work with Golem Cult?

[atul]

I think astral+earth on the pretender has a nice synergy, with items such as communion matrixes, stone idols etc. The downside is the magic duel, and even there is an easy solution: immortal pretender. With Risen Oracle you can get quite cheaply earth+astral+death caster for all your specialized needs.

And gargoyles are very nice, since thay are flying and thus help with poor mobility of Agartha and reside in the Enchantment which is the statue route also. Unfortunately they require one point of air... once again, on pretender only...

[Meglobob]

How about this pretender for MA Agartha?

A imprisioned fountain with S4 N9, which gives a blessing of regeneration+15%, berserk+2, +1 magic resistance, +2 morale.

Dominion 9 with scales of Order-3, Prod-2, Heat-3, Growth-2, Misfortune-3 and Magic-1.

Your ancient ones are pretty tough with reg+15% and berserk+2. The main thing about the berserk is it raises the attack of ancient ones to 11 and gives them a little extra protection. All your summoned sacreds should enjoy this bless too.

Initially make your cave captain your prophet so he can divine bless and expand with him. Soon after you can make another army up of ancient ones with a earth reader leading them. Place upto 20 ancient ones on hold attack, script earth reader with blessx3, flying shardsx2, cast spells. This is capable of conquering most indies. Aim to produce 9 Ancient ones a turn ASAP, any left over resources build your heaviest infantry.

Long term you should aim towards your unique national summons plus anything else that benefit from your 9 dominion golem cult. Lightless lanterns + skull mentors to speed your research up. Umbrals for raiding/assaulting other nations. Globals Earth Deep Blood Well, Forge of ancients and Gift of Health, Gift of Bounty (your pretender can cast). Gift of Health, gift of bounty, golem cult, a bless strategy on your ancient ones all go together so well with dominion 9. You even get awe on your fountain.

Your magic paths are fairly diverse with Earth, Nature, Astral, Water, Fire, Death all accessable from your mages or pretender. You can use mercenaries or summons to fill in the rest if you wish.

This would be fun to play in SP and may be competitive in MP if you are left alone long enough to get rolling. Your blessed ancients would be good enough early on to deter attack.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Revised Scales Opinions

Growth 0:
While some people in the advice thread provide solid reasons for picking growth 3, I have to strongly disagree. I feel its a total waste of points, and any reduction of aging problems is unreliable at best. My first year, 2/4 mages ended up with at least one affliction. I might as well have taken death.

No reason to go above standard. Your mages start with old age (by 4 years), and afflictions will happen anyways. There's little benefit to the supply and growth boni. I can't recommend it yet, but I'm going to take another look at 1-2 death scales. It's a thematic fit, and it seems they're going to die anyways.

Magic 3: Allows you to cast till the cows come home, but is it really essential? Expensive, take if you have a lot of spare points, or if you plan to aggressively use indie/earth readers for research, which is, btw, a viable strategy. 1700-2100 gold to start a secondary national research/recruit site, while it takes 500-900 for independent setup.
Magic 2: No good. The MR reduction helps, more than it hurts, thanks to earth's physical nature.
Magic 1: Very good. As others have said, it renders Earth Readers a viable research choice. I almost always take this.
Magic 0: Don't.
Drain 1: Don't. If you're going drain, take two. Research is the same, but the MR bonus is handy to have.

Drain 2: Challenging, but doable. Golem Crafters still provide a solid 5 RP. Use the extra points to take an awake pretender who can help with research - even 10 will help a lot in getting to Attentive Statues. Lightless Lanterns WILL be available to help with research, but you need to get to C6 first. On the plus side, they're only 5 fire gems, before various forge bonuses, and Forge of the Ancients is around the corner. If you take the appropriate magic paths, and find the right gems, you can forge Owl Quills and Skull Mentors to help at earlier stages (C2, C4).

While you're at it, an earth bless helps deal with the extra fatigue, Summon Earthpower does the same (Conj3), reinvig artifacts abound, and you've got plenty of earth gems for when you really need to cast. Long magical duels will be nonexistent, but you'll have a little more staying power, and wake up earlier after falling unconscious.

Drain 3 - No. It makes a bad situation worse, and offers nothing in exchange.

Sloth - Even with a super combatant, I don't recommend it.

Additional Pretender Commentary

Humanoid, low cost rainbow pretenders such as sages, enchantresses, etc. The Golem Cult can work with 5 dominion. However, you want to give your all into researching Attentive Statues as soon as possible, and push that advantage as far and fast as possible.

Master Druid - an odd choice, but with some death can lead your Umbrals as part of a very mean raiding force. The stray arrow will murder you easily, however. Take air magic also, for weightless shields/armor, owl quills, and amulets of missile protection. There's plenty of counters available, so you have to hit your enemy hard. In a large mp game, this is less likely to succeed, since they're likely to be on guard against some other stealthy nation. But still, it is unexpected, and a druid can bring some powerful battle magic to bear. Definite gamble, but fun. You can prevent magic loss by casting twiceborn, though failure will cost you stealth and that opportunity. On the plus side, the wight mage isn't a bad deal.

Great Enchantress - Great pick if you're interested in the astral path and a rainbow pretender. Can't beat a free astral gem. If you're not into a rainbow pretender, pass her by.

Great Sage - Wonderful. Can take a drain realm, and still get Attentive Statues out faster than anyone would expect. Certainly, drain may hinder in a long game, but in the short term, you'd have to recruit 11 researchers before drain cancelled out your base 11 RP before magic. And throw in all the research items (or only just the Lightless Lanterns GCs can forge), dwarven hammers, and a little Forge of the Ancients, and you have one of the strongest late-game research-drain empires, though Ermor probably occupies the top slot. Make construction a priority after enchant 3. It'll open up the research items, Forge of the Ancients and Iron Dragons. While you may have trouble getting the gems for the research artifacts in the early game, your sage compensates. And in the late game, you'll want to grab the alchemist's stone if you're missing the gems for whatever research item you're mass producing at a large discount.

Crone - the pretender for true skinflints. Cast Twiceborn for a true improvement, and a 'get-out of assassination, do pass go' card that monopoly would be proud of. In general, brings nothing special to the table, but will have enough magic to help with research.

Freak Lord, Arch Mage- Two of only a few pretenders with move three, they'll generally have enough magic leadership to lead an army of golems around your empire very rapidly, terrain/magic permitting.

The dragons are tougher, but lack the magic variety. They each have their advantages, but the green one can access Faery Trod in times of need. The Red One can help provide fire gems for Lightless lanterns via augury, site searching, or Eternal Pyre. The blue one offers Curse of the Desert (thau4), the enchantment spells Grip of Winter, Warriors of Nefielheim, and Quagmire, which can together with Curse of Stones to dramatically fatigue an enemy army, though that's the best I can come up with.

The Phoenix is special, putting aside the obvious immortality. Even with just one air and one fire, it has a whopping ninety magic leadership, and three move. Though, if its the only leader and dies, you'll kill me for suggesting it. Winged Boots will allow you to bring a Marble Oracle along for any blessing needs. Though Oracles can forge Stymphalian Wings.

It also has relatively easy access to the Flying Ship, which will allow for a ridiculously mobile army of golems, even at size four.

However, none of this is uniquely suited to Agartha, but it still is nice, even though nearly anyone can have one.

General advice: don't neglect to recruit indep. nature mages. Healing can keep those Ancients up and running, I've mentioned the invig boots, and the Raw Hide Shield will protect a few mages from arrows, without any encumberance. It's generally not hard to scrape together five (base), three (Dwarven Hammer) nature gems to keep your Golem leaders intact.

[Salamander8]

Growth 0:
While some people in the advice thread provide solid reasons for picking growth 3, I have to strongly disagree. I feel its a total waste of points, and any reduction of aging problems is unreliable at best. My first year, 2/4 mages ended up with at least one affliction. I might as well have taken death.

No reason to go above standard. Your mages start with old age (by 4 years), and afflictions will happen anyways. There's little benefit to the supply and growth boni. I can't recommend it yet, but I'm going to take another look at 1-2 death scales. It's a thematic fit, and it seems they're going to die anyways.

In the SP game as MA Agartha I previosuly mentioned, I took Growth 2. I have to concur with your assessment of growth vs the Golem Crafters old age problems (and to a lesser extent, the Oracle of the Ancients). It's mid year 4 for my game, and I've lost 6 of these guys to disease brought on by old age, I have 2 that recently became diseased on top of this, and have at least another 6 that have less major afflictions. Two of my Ancient Oracles have minor afflictions from aging as well.