Guide: EA Agartha - The Not Exactly a Guide [CBM]

[Boksi]

This is not exactly a guide. It's a brainstorming aid for me and it's definitely not complete. And it's intended for CBM 1.92 because the older guides were for vanilla or older versions of the CBM, and thus assumed dwarven hammers.



Early Age Agartha is a nation of supremely idiotic and overweight cave dwellers. They're sort of like a stereotypical America, except instead of a large and disciplined army they have a collection of imbeciles, and instead of rednecks they have troglodytes. Also, they live in caves. So they're not really that similar to America.

Their regular soldiers have skills comparable to militia; their elite infantry doesn't even reach the level of a normal human. And instead of using accurate weapons and large shields to compensate, they wield spears and other polearms along with freaking bucklers, which provides amazingly little synergy with their abilities. To see an attack skill in the double digits, you have to look to their sacred giants - more specifically, the Ancient Lord and the Seal Guards. The most skilled Agarthan unit isn't even an Agarthan: The Troglodyte Lord has a whopping 12 attack. So you can't depend on the pale ones to be competent when it comes to hitting things or avoiding being hit.

Furthermore, they're cold blooded. This is a big fat glaring weakness because a lot of nations have a cold dominion, and Wolven Winter is a very easy spell to cast. This is a significant factor in your strategizing, since you must plan around it.

Their non-cap mages, or rather mage, singular, is not very impressive for early age mages, being H1 priests with 2 picks of magic. They're not too bad for researching though - they're sacred, and in CBM they're also fortune tellers, so putting a bunch of them in a fortress and telling them to research until their brains leak out is a good idea. Agartha's true magic potential lies in its capital, and you'll want to recruit oracles there every turn.

So what advantages do they have? Well, they're tough and strong - plenty of HP, natural protection plus armor, even the militia has 14 strength. They just can't hit anything with those powerful blows. They have sacred giants - crappy sacred giants, but sacred giants nonetheless. Their boulder throwers are actually useful in CBM, since they do AoE damage now. Putting a couple of hurlers behind a line of infantry is a valid and effective tactic.

There's also the Umbrals, who are kick-*** summons. The Rhuax and Barathrus Pacts are useful and easily-accessed spells. Earth Communion is a remote-search spell costing 8 earth gems, and reveals the four types of sites your national mages need - useful and efficient. You have a half-price version of Gateway available from the start, but only an Oracle can cast it. It's nevertheless incredibly useful.

All your units have darkvision, and in CBM, your second PD commander is now a new unit: The Locus of the Seal, a statue that autocasts darkness. It's not an automatic 'I win' button, but it's a really big help since your troops will all have darkvision.

All pale ones are amphibious, need not eat and have siege boni. You can't compete with a true underwater nation, but you can go underwater and can even have underwater PD.

So let's go over the units we have:

Pale One Militia: Pale Ones are incompetent. Militia are incompetent. Put them together and what have you got? A unit you really don't want to recruit.

Wet One: Slightly more competent than your militia. Still not a unit you want to recruit, however.

Pale One: A Wet One with a buckler. If you need chaff, that makes these guys better than the previous ones, but they're still not very useful.

Pale One Warrior: Come in three varieties. One has a spear and buckler plus some armor, another has a spear and buckler plus more armor, and the third has a trident and net as well as decent armor. The third type is the most useful one, because nets will not only stop enemies but also set their defense to 0 until they get out of it.

Cavern Guard: Not really impressive for supposedly elite warriors. Glaives aren't really that great for these guys. Still, using a mix of these and net-wielding warriors makes for a more effective fighting force, since they have better morale.

Troglodyte: Tramplers with good morale. Useful in some situations, but they will die quickly so you have to consider them expendable.

Ancient Stone Hurler: Ever since boulders got an AoE effect, these guys have been useful. Put a bunch of them behind your blockers and watch them slaughter entire squares with each throw. There's two versions of these, with and without armor. You're probably not going to be limited by your resources when recruiting these, so try to recruit the ones with armor.

Ancient One: A sacred giant who's not really that impressive. His giant spear has length 5, but with his attack skill of 9 he's not going to repel a lot of attacks.

Seal Guard: Sacred giants with better skills and equipment than Ancient Ones. Their obsidian glaives are nice, and they've got better protection and more HP than their recruit-anywhere cousings. They only have 1 mapmove however.

Pale One Scout: Worse than your typical scout because it takes more resources, but why would you be recruiting scouts out of a fortress anyway?

Pale One Commander: Bog standard commander guy. Nothing interesting about him.

Troglodyte Lord: Actually makes for an interesting light thug: Just stick some armor on him and let him loose. Main weakness is terrible magic resistance. He has no head so he can't wear a horror helmet, sadly.

Ancient Lord: Another possible thug. He's sacred but can't self-bless. Give him an AoE weapon - the frost and fire brands are always popular, but a midget masher is another possibility.

Earth Reader: Your only recruit-anywhere mage. Not a bad research mage, really, since he's sacred and fairly cheap, plus he's a fortune-teller which means your research forts won't suffer many bad events. Their picks aren't too impressive, but you can make use of them all:
2E: Can cast summon earth power without boosting, which leads to a host of useful buffs as well as evocations like Blade Wind and Earth Ripple, the latter being a unique Agarthan spell combining flying shards with earth meld.
WE: This combination can't do much without some boosters. With a water bracelet, however, it can drop Winter Ward which can be a lifesaver when all your units are coldblooded, as well as many other useful spells.
FE: Magma bolts! And with earth boots and summon earthpower, magma eruption! This combination is probably the best one for battlefield evocations.
ED: Not very useful on the battlefield, these guys have one main use besides research: Summoning Umbrals. Umbrals kick ***, so that's a good use of them.

Oracle of Subterranean Waters: Water magic isn't the greatest of paths, but a couple of levels are very useful. Despite being oracles with great precognitive powers, they are not fortune-tellers. But then again, these are the guys who doomed their entire race by invading the surface, so it's no wonder they're crap at this fortune-telling stuff.

Oracle of Subterranean Fires: Lovely guys, recruit some of them but note that they suffer more from old age than other mages. They occupy the same niche as FE Earth Readers: Battlefield evocations.

Oracle of the Dead: These are the best kind of oracle. Less susceptible to old age, and can summon and lead the undead. Note that your oracles can all do some heavy duty thugging, or even becoming alright supercombatants, since they're sacred giants with powerful earth magic and high MR.

I'm considering the following pretender:

Dormant F4E9N4 Dom 6 Forge Lord
Order 3 Prod 2 Heat 3 Death 3 Misf 2 Magic 1

The forge lord can still forge items at a discount without a hammer, so capitalize on that. A minor fire bless helps your sacred giants actually hit stuff in melee, and the minor nature bless will help prevent afflictions. The major earth bless is costly but useful. Your giants will almost all benefit from it - sticking a pair of bracers of protection on a blessed E3 oracle is almost as good as giving them a plate cuirass, and they're not even encumbered by it!

Order and production are there for the money, which you will never have enough of. Sacred giants are expensive and 20 PD is expensive. Heat keeps the cold at bay, which is important for coldblooded beings. Death and misfortune are for points, because we have to make sacrifices somewhere. Order and fortune telling earth readers will hopefully mitigate any bad events a bit. Finally, magic is great for your earth readers.



I've still not come up with a complete and coherent strategy yet, though. I'd love to hear everybody's thoughts on this.

[HoleyDooley]

I believe the PD auto cast of darkness is going to be removed in the next release of CBM.

[Calahan]

Those (O3P2H3D3M2M1) are a really awful set of scales, and will likely lead to a poor game. They are mainly bad due to some fundamental problems...

1 - CBM 1.92's new Growth/Death scale pop settings make taking Death scales a lot more unpalatable than before. Death 3 costs your capital around 1k pop every 4 turns compared to 1k 6 turns under the old settings. This is a significant change and could make D3 close to unplayable in any regular game (ie. non-blitz)

2 - Saying that "Order and production are there for the money" while combining them with Death 3 is just bad logic, as you are paying a high cost for an income multiplier on a figure you are then choosing to decrease at the fastest rate. I just ran a quick test....

O3P2H3D3M2M1 (your scales). Starting cap population of 29550

turn 1 - Income 365
turn 9 - Income 337, population down to 27490 (all scales same, no events or seasonal changes that affected scales or pop)

O3S1H3G0M2M1 (same scales except -3P and +3G). Starting cap population of 29770

turn 1 - Income 346.

So by turn 9 your scales are already bringing in less capital income than you would get by just swapping 3 scales of Production for 3 scales of Growth, meaning your scales designed for income brought in only +~250g in those turns, after which you are just losing money, and fast. And I don't think the results from the rest of your empire will improve the income from your scales compared to just this one alternative I've given (there are other alternatives for scales)


I won't ocmment too much on the rest of your build, but I would add Agartha can expand fine with just Trogs. Yes they are expensive but they don't need a bless, so Indy commanders can lead them without compromising their effectiveness. They also cost 1 resource to build so allow Sloth 3. Mass Trogs can also open up, and discourage, rushes better than your Sacreds will (depending on the other nation involved).

Selecting scales for EA Agartha is a bit tricky is general, as their cap has low admin meaning you gain less resources from neighbours (and less gold from your cap). But then the only troop this really affects are the Seal Guards, and I wouldn't personally be recruitng too many of these (too slow/expensive/poor), plus you have Trogs that were made for Sloth 3. EA Agartha look a tempting nation to take Death with due to their Never Eat troops, and so you can go high Death to hurt attackers. But Agartha are a fairly money intensive nation due to all their mages needing a Lab and Temple to recruit (and not being that cheap or cost effective), and as I mentioned taking Death 3 in CBM 1.92 is a tough sell that likely won't end well. I won't even go into the events Death + Misfortune can open up (which you will struggle to negate in your cap with fortune tellers until well ino mid-game unless you recruit Earth Readers there at the expense of getting Oracles)

But all IMO.

[legowarrior]

Still, for the next game, it is something to keep in mind.
Independent of the chassis, what kind of bless would you prefer, or have you tried? I'm looking at the ages olm, with its Water/Earth combination, and trying to figure out how Quickness with reinvigoration would work with the agartha.

Also, I like the earth bless with the Agartha, but with such powerful earth mages to begin with, it almost seems a waste not to try for some non earth goodness on them instead, but after saying that, I just don't see very many interesting chassis that can help with that.

[Admiral_Aorta]

I can't imagine a bless would be worth it for agartha, your sacreds are outclassed by the normal troops of many other nations. A scales build using trogs for expansion would probably work better(or you could go for an awake SC I guess).

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

How important is astral access for EA Agartha? I'd be tempted to take it on my god for rings of sorc/wiz and amulets for thugs, but I also like the idea of an SC, and wouldn't want him to be magic-dueled.

Other than that, what other paths are wanted? I could see arguments for nature (more thug gear, summons), more death (rituals, boosters) and death/fire (fire boosters). But Im not sure any of that is essential.

I think an SC is a good choice because having more provinces boosts income even more than good scales, and I would want the money to crank out a steady stream of oracles. Also H3 priests synergize well with high dominion, which the SC will have. Im thinking a ghost king could be fun. Of course, H3 synergizes even better with a blessing, but I doubt it's worth it.

[llamabeast]

I believe the PD auto cast of darkness is going to be removed in the next release of CBM.

This is correct. They will get some alternative way of laying down Darkness in chosen provinces, but it won't be via PD any more. PD Darkness appears to be significantly overpowered.

[Bat/man]

A few comments.

1. Magic scale is very important. You have crap for mages. You need to spend a lot of mage time summoning umbrals at one mage action = 1 summon.

OR one mage action on your summons baracthus, children of rhuax.
OR doing your earth reading.

My point is: you need to max out your mage research on the ones remaining.

2. IIRC, your water oracles are less likely to incur old age, compared to your fire mages. So, I recruit a fair number of these, especially on maps with a fair amount of water.

3. Boulder throwers, Boulder throwers, boulder throwers. Unless you have reason to think you're competing in a cold domain in which case trogs.

4. Take heat 3 domain.
Sure - people can cast wolven winter. Make them cast it. It also helps if you "stunt". Its much better to concede a territory and make them blow WW expecting a battle than it is to lose your forces fighting in WW. You definitely have to pick your battles fighting any of the cold projecting races.

If you have a high dominions score in a province - it is only a few turns for temperature scales to return to normal.

You have H3 mages. The more you can make this races opponents divert resources away from military and into things like dominion - the better off you are.

5. While I agree with all of Calahan's comments about gold - I don't think it really applies to agartha.

Production lets you build out more of your armored boulder throwers.

Death might cause minor supply issues for your opponents.
Your armies don't eat and its a minor advantage but one your need to exploit.

But Calahans comments regarding earth readers vs oracles I completely agree with. I think you *have* to restrict yourself to only 1 or 2 oracles the first year, because the maintenance cost is too damn high.

And I agree with his comment about d3 combined with unluck. You do not want to go past -2/-2.

6. Blight. Earth meld.

There are a lot of approaches to take regarding your pretender.
Some believe that you need an awake pretender to expand, and to project dominion.

However, it is equally possible to start with an awake great sage. Earth meld will allow your troops to actually hit.

But more importantly, a lot of the nations that are inclined to rush you (EA-Niefle) have capitol only troops.

You have the ability to rapidly scale up gem income. Complement that by researching blight very very quickly.

If you start with an awake researcher, e4 n4 s4 are reasonable goals with a small synergy for your sacreds.

7. So what are Large Sized, High hitpoints useless troops good for?

The answer isn't quite nothing. Targeting mechanisms will tend to target your large useless blobs. So long as your effective fighters are smaller / fewer hp the can for the most part continue to mow down enemy troops while your blobs take the hits.

Of course, the only problem is agartha doesn't have any effective troops.

8. As I posted in the other thread - small troops, especially small effective troops are your friends. Two of them in the same square as your size 4 will drastically increase the survivability of your giants. Sure, you lose a few midgets. They're cheap.

[Finalgenesis]

Poor Cal

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Bat/man

Production lets you build out more of your armored boulder throwers.

There are two units with Boulder Throwing. One costs 1 resource, the other (armoured) costs 11 resources. Both are sacred and so recruitment of both is limited by the Holy level. So Production scales is not going to help you recruit more of these guys from a resource PoV, and even with Sloth 3 your cap will get 100+ resources from any normal start location. Which is plenty enough to get Boulder Throwers (and they are not cap only).

Production scales help from a gold PoV of course, but then everything is helped by extra gold, not just the purchase of Boulder Throwers.

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Originally Posted by Finalgenesis

Poor Cal

I had actually forgotten why I no longer bothered posting my advice here until recently, but now each post I make seems to cause all those reasons why to come flooding back to me. Strange that