Strategy for Agartha Early Age

[Trumanator]

Yeah, more variety in blesses could be very cool. The usual tired old W9, F9, or E9 blesses start to get a bit repetitive.

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Yeah, more variety in blesses could be very cool. The usual tired old W9, F9, or E9 blesses start to get a bit repetitive.

That calls for boosting the other blesses, rather than introducing yet more blesses. Variety is not always good if the choices gathered from greater variety represent trash.

[HoneyBadger]

The old blesses are fine, there's no reason or need to boost them.

Making things that already work more powerful, just to make them more powerful, is just inflation.

It's just after using the same ones for 100 times in a row (or more), they do start feeling a little constrictive-especially since we tend to use the same ones, and the same combinations, over and over again.

[Trumanator]

Well, I don't think there's any reason you can't both strengthen the lesser used blesses and maybe add some new ones. This is ignoring the amount of work involved of course, but thats not really something you can measure.

[HoneyBadger]

The "lesser" blesses-air, death, blood, sometimes astral (arguably the weakest, but also one of the most commonly used)-are offset by the power of those respective paths, and the advantage of having a high level caster in those paths.

[Trumanator]

That argument is probably true for all of those paths except air in my opinion. As far as I know there really aren't very many good spells for high level air, and the bless is pretty useless except for some niche strats like the one involving Kailasa.

[HoneyBadger]

Air's a great path-it's got similar artillery spells to Fire, plus Cloud Trapeze, fantastic boosters, less units immune to shock damage than fire or cold, precision spells, and good Air + Other Path spells. It may not have the best high-end spells, but it more than makes up for them mid-game. And it has the easiest access to a Research-booster, which is not insignificant.

Added to which, it's Bless isn't bad at all, just more niche than some of the others, so it isn't taken quite as often.

[Trumanator]

I agree that those spells you mentioned are great, but you probably won't be using your pretender as a thunderstrike spammer. If you have a lot of lower level air mages you it might be worth putting air 4 on your pretender so you can make boosters, but most of your suggestions are things that only really work if you have national air mages.

[thejeff]

Access to Storm, Mass flight, Fog Warriors can all turn major late game battles.
Arrow Fend is also nice and Wind Guide early on for some nations.

Not to mention summoning Air Queens

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

[...]high level air, and the bless is pretty useless except for some niche strats like the one involving Kailasa.

I very much agree here. Surely that's me that am short-sighted, but I can't see the point of a 75%SR for your sacreds.
I'd rather see it add +5 Precision, it would be thematic and at least it would have a use for nations with sacred mages and sacred archers (good synergy with the air shield too as archers and mages usually don't bring tower shields around ). Still somewhat niche but more useful I think.