Strategy for Agartha Early Age

[HoneyBadger]

When I want to add blood to a nation that doesn't have it already (like early Ermor) I'll go with a fountain of blood at blood level 6 or more, but I'll also use blood bless death curse with any nations who have weak, fast sacreds, especially if they fly. Ofcourse, the best one I've come across for this particular strategy is Mictlan, so it's kindof a given anyway.

[Agema]

Note...

Drain has been advocated as a design option for EA Agartha here. I think it's actually a really bad idea. Your capital only mages (Oracles) should have 5-6 paths so 7-8 research. That seems pretty good for a drain strategy. The problem is what is what happens outside your capital - your Earth Reader mages have only E1?1, for 4 research. Once you're outside the early game and setting up secondary forts, drain is ruinous as your non-capital mages are such poor bookworms.

Added to this, your capital mages are in high demand, so you'll have fewer than you think to research. Firstly, those Earth Readers have minimal to low usefulness: you'll need capital mages for useful spellcraft, unless you can find good indy mages (not guaranteed). Secondly, EA Agartha is a prime bless nation, so every army you have in addition to your prophet's needs an Oracle for divine bless. Finally, due to the enormous cost of Oracles, you simply might not be able to afford one every turn, especially early on.

Agarthan Giants are certainly pretty weak compared to other giants (e.g. Niefleheim). However, it's worth dropping those Fire & Water blesses a little. By and large, your giants don't die, so they gain experience, and each XP gets you Att & Def. Take them around a few battles, as you've got (or should have) Nature bless and so regeneration they should pick up 2XP mostly without afflictions (unlike your average mortal), making Agarthan giants much more useful than they initially look. Maybe take +1, even +2, Fire/Water bless, but your research is probably worth more than big +3/+4 blesses in the long run.

[Juzza]

Easy strategy, big bless, strong but bad dominion, (preferably some magic) cast utterdark and gift of natures bounty as fast as you can, preferably close to the same time, and you're set.

[Szumo]

Well, i've just won an EA MP game with Agartha, so i'll share my thoughts.

Scales i used were turmoil 3, sloth 3, heat 3, luck 3, magic 3. You might want to use less extreme ones.
(but stick to sloth 3 and magic 3).
Pretender was awake dom 10 4E6D Risen Oracle (a good chassis choice even if you take lower dom strength).
At the beginning, expand using your pretender (forge him any armor you can), for safety you can do that in provinces with your dominion (he's immortal), independentent archers and troglodytes (groups of 6+). Do not buy any of your other national troops until mid game (25+ provinces usually). If going against astral nations, skip troglodytes too (MR lowered a lot in recent patches).

Buy an earth reader each round and research conjuration until you get to rhuax pact at least (or all the way to umbrals), then thau 2 for site searching spells, then go for blade wind and earthquake. Summon magma children/earth elementals/umbrals as neeed and your gem income allows (umbrals are always needed .

When you get a little more gold income, get a 2nd castle and buy earth readers there, then switch to buying an oracle at capital each turn.

Recruit wet ones/pale ones/stone hurlers only if you need to go underwater or siege castles. Your main research goal is army of gold/lead, use it on groups of massed umbrals and magma children.

Your heat3 dominion will hurt all other nations a lot more than it hurts you - except for Abyssia, so beware of them.

Be on lookout for air/nature/astral indies and mercs. You will need those to diversify your magic.

Later on, you can try using Ancient Lords as army supporting thugs (with cheap equipment), but only do that if you can't get either Gift of Healts or Chalice - because if you can, Tartarians will clearly be superior.

Try to secure Earth and Fire elementaly royalty, your head start in conjuration and sacred low upkeep researchers should help. If you go for const 6 relatively early, use excess fire gems to forge Lightless Lanterns. If occassion presents itself to cast Forge of the Ancients, go for it and forge like mad for the time you manage to keep it up.

Pitfalls to avoid:
- do not go for a bless strategy. Minor earth bless is nice to give all your mages some reinvigoration, but don't depend on your sacred troops to be useful offensively even with fire bless.
- don't use all your oracles as battle mage (exception is Fire ones, which can and should be casting Magma Eruption). Each army needs just one or two (one casts divine blessing first turn, 2nd army of gold/lead). Use 2E earth readers for blade winding (with boots of earth and or summon earthpower). Better to have 4 2E earth readers than one oracle in the army. Fire readers can cast magma bolts. Water readers can cast frozen heart. Death readers should be busy casting dark knowledge and summon umbral, not being in armies

[Poopsi]

I like EA Agartha with a fountain of blood with earth, and maybe nature magic. It´s sort of thematic. Ancient beings from times beyond reckoning, keeping a strange blood cult that helps their realm to stay alive...

[HoneyBadger]

Too bad there's no weird sex cults to go along with the weird death cults.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

Too bad there's no weird sex cults to go along with the weird death cults.

I am guessing you've never played Pangaea with 3 Turmoil.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

what I meant was I could have gone with Cold3 over Heat3, but Heat seemed the better of the two.

I don't think anyone's picked up on this, but...

Agarthan troops are cold-blooded IIRC. That would make a Cold 3 dominion basically a painful form of suicide. Heat 3 would give nice insulation against people like the Van, Niefels or Caelum if you were fighting them.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

I don't think anyone's picked up on this, but...

Agarthan troops are cold-blooded IIRC. That would make a Cold 3 dominion basically a painful form of suicide. Heat 3 would give nice insulation against people like the Van, Niefels or Caelum if you were fighting them.

My first SP try with Agartha, before I knew the game very well, I tried Cold3 for the points. My mages would cast 1 spell and then pass right out, it was hilarious.

[Tyrant]

Death and Earth are two of my favorite paths, and i like trolls too, so Argatha is one of my very favorite nations. I've been meaning to write a guide for a long time but instead i'll just add my 2 cents here.

1) Micah is of course right about the supply issue. No unit in your entire force pool except Trogs eats, so a crappy dominion will dissuade attacks by experienced players without nature magic.

2) Trogs are a usefull early game matchup unit, kinda like chariots. Against indies and some player nations they are an efficient way of killing things, but they will quickly become obsolete against a decent player, and won't work at all against any of the growing list of giant nations, anyone with elephants, etc. If you do use them you will find that they work best in fairly large groups - they are pretty vulnerable so they have to kill the enemy quickly or they will suffer too many casualties. Also they are expensive to field in mass and you will likely have poor candles, so IMO Trogs have a limited role to play. Other excellent players have extolled the virtue of Trog leaders with modest equipment (Black Shield, Amulet of Luck ,etc) as cheap trampling thugs, but when i have tried it they have gotten dead way too quickly to justify the expense.

3) A few Cavern guards may be useful to add bulk, but other than that the non-sacred are garbage and shouldn't be built at all. All the sacreds except the Seal Guards are build everywhere. Seal Gaurds have their charms, especially the magic weapon, but unlike the entire rest of your force they are move one. This annoys me so much that I do not build them till later in the game when i am rich.

Despite the fact that boulders hurt trolls and their precision sucks, i think a modest contingent of hurlers adds much needed killing power. Put them right behind the line and they will fire their limited ammo and then move to the flanks to help against the overlap that you will almost certainly be suffering.

4) Some of the other suggestions for blesses look perfectly viable to me, but my preference is 9E 4-8N. The reinvig stacks nicely with the reinvig from Earth Power for your Oracles. The armor plus the regen makes the Ancients Ones into a very serious living wall.

5)Ancient Ones are the rock upon which your empire should be built. AO's have two and a half serious problems- they cannot hit anyone, they are size four so they have horrible frontage, and since it takes forever for them to kill anything because of the first two and they have pretty high encumbrance, they tucker out before you win. The purpose of Ancient Ones is not to destroy your enemy, it is to form an extremely durable front line that can hold off and wear down the enemy army while you destroy them some other way.

6) I don't really see a point to the earth elementals, but Umbrals and Magma Children are spiffy. Put the Magma Children together in the same unit with the Ancient Ones (~50-50) and you get what i call the Flaming Phalanx, and it is an awesome killing machine. The AO's attract the enemy attacks 'cause they are bigger, but they mostly don't care and the Magma Kids do the killing with their AE attack. Yea, some of the AO's catch on fire, but they have plenty of HP and regen if go with my bless plan. Does not work against fire proof enemies of course, but it is otherwise a full six-pack of whup-arse.

7)Other's have mentioned the Blade Wind, and Blade Wind is great, but Earthquake is Argatha's national motif. Does not mix well with the Magma Children, but other than them no one in your army really cares and with E4 plus Summon Earth Power plus Boots a single Oracle can fire off several quakes, and there's no real reason to bring just one. Caster armies, hordes of scum and most regular human forces will simply disappear into the earth. It's beautiful.

8) A few random notes about Argathan weakness-

You need lots of forts 'cause your troops are resource intensive.

Though you have both fire and death you do not have them on the same guys and they are only level 2 so you are kinda hosed for power up items - no Fire Skulls, no Death Hats, no Flaming Helms. The death is more of a bummer than the fire - 2+ 1 for a Skull Staff is not enough to self boot death all the way up the ladder.

Though your land built armies can kick some butt underwater, the Wet Ones and PD are near useless.

Earth Readers are not much, so, like so many other EA nations, you are very dependent on the cap-only Oracles. Unlike many of the others EA nations however,you a are hard pressed to come up with any kind of dome and thus very vulnerable to province smites on your capitol later in the game.

Your PD is terrible, stealth raiders will eat you alive.