Strategy for Agartha Early Age

[thejeff]

Not too familiar with Agartha, but 2 Death is enough. 2D+Staff lets you summon Mound Fiends, who can summon Liches, which gets you Hats for 6D. Not enough for Tartarians, but I don't think anyone can summon Tartarians without a pretender, the Astral Rings or artifacts.

It's expensive if you want them in bulk, but 3D is enough for basic battlefield and ritual casting.

[HoneyBadger]

By the way, Agartha EA, in my opinion, is one nation where the ability to wear double bracers ought to remain.

[Ewierl]

Originally Posted by Maltrease

I'm curious if it would even be worth taking a heat scale to make better use of these guys.

You should definitely take at least a moderate Heat scale as EA Agartha. All your units are cold-blooded, which means they take encumberance penalties in cold (and even neutral-temperature) provinces. I personally recommend Heat 2, though if you want extra points, 3 is manageable (you take "extreme heat" encumbrance penalties, but so does everyone else).

Generally speaking: go with a good bless; you want moderate F/E/N, but F/N can stay 4-6 since you don't need berserk or flame weapons (your Seal Guards have magic weapons already). Earth bless is partly for your mages, but E9 makes Ancient Ones quite tough. With even a small squad of those and a H3 mage to bless them, you can expand quite rapidly.

Later, have fun with Destruction and Blade Wind and Magma Eruption.

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by hako

My brief opinion is bless strats suck - they should be much harder to implement. They are extremally powerfull, impossible to counter at the begining, very hard to play against, even in later game. Good option would be - until God dormant/imprisoned no bonuses for blessed units, that should balance that strategy little bit.

Given that I am a bless freak, I am not sure if I agree

In all seriousness, I am working on my own mod and have done two things to address the early bless rush:

1. Make PDs much sturdier. Mainly I've doubled the number of troops and use better troops.

2. Improve the national units of nations with weaker sacreds--usually by making mid-level summonables recruitable.

All this is done on the principle that it's better to improve other alternatives than nerf something.

P.S. I realize that this is an old thread but I've been absent from the forum for a while so be forgiving

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

I like bless strategies just fine in concept, but I don't have too much of a problem about them not working until your god wakes up. I do feel very confined by the limited choice of 8 total blesses. I think it's a fair tradeoff that if we have to wait until our Pretender wakes up that their be quite a few new things-not unbalanced or more powerful, mind you-just new and different-our blessed troops can do. I'm currently working on some ideas and I'll be sending ideas for new magic paths plus blesses for those paths, into Illwinter, but I'll probably write up a thread for them first, so people can argue about them.

I am not sure if I agree with your suggestion, given that blesses will be far less effective (even obsolete with easy Research settings) by the time imprisoned pretenders wake up.

[HoneyBadger]

Well, you are right about that, but to me, that's more the fault of other mechanics and factors, than it is the fault of a thematic desire to see blesses only take effect when your Pretender is around to affect them. Kristoffer himself has stated occasionally that he doesn't really understand the "Late Game" all that well-and I know it took me a long time to get even something of a handle on it, too, so there's a lot that could probably be rebalanced there, and it's possible that Blesses could be made deeper, strategy-wise.

I personally just want more Bless types to play with That's what I'm hoping for. If we get more magical paths, to go along with them, I won't complain about that either.

[TheMenacer]

On the subject, I'd like to see every pretender #onebattlespell divine blessing and fanaticism. It'd be pretty thematic if all your sacred units strolling into battle alongside your pretender were immediately blessed, and everyone was given a huge morale boost by virtue of the fact that they were fighting alongside the horrible monster that they worship.

Also dominion should totally give a blessing just like the magic paths do, I'd love to see buying dominion 9 giving your sacred units something like awe or an hp boost or something.

[Trumanator]

Do bless strats really need another buff? It would be kinda cool, but still seems a little ridiculous.

[HoneyBadger]

I don't agree with the Dominion buff. I think Dominion does enough as it is, giving Pretenders extra HP etc. and spreading Dominion faster.

What I want are new types of Bless/more Bless strategies, for the sake of variety, and because "more and different" can be a good thing.

I wouldn't want new Blesses to be more powerful than what we've already got, just different-for the sake of different strategies and builds.

[Tifone]

I already become crazy after the existing ones