MA Agartha, or Yet another thread fishing for tips

[atul]

I must confess, I'm bit at loss regarding MA Agartha. And I would need to get on track in like, 24 hours or something.

So, please: Pimp my nation.

My problem, as I see it:
Everyone needs money, especially guys with expensive castles and 400-gold mages. So I need Order.
The troops are actually nice if a bit resource intensive. Therefore, I need Production.
The mages bar the least ones are old, so I dare no Death.
My base researchers have but 3 RP, so I'd like to have Magic.
The troops are heavy and lacking in bows, so I need my pretender to help me from the go.
In other words, where in the world I'm supposed to get the points I'm needing? Min/maxing is not my style, neither is playing an Ulmish nation, but I'd like to at least survive the initial fray. So, any imput is appreciated.

Also, research focus: any consensus whether it is the most urgent to focus on Buffs (Alt), direct Damage (Evo), Troops (Ench) or trying to outfit the recruitable one-eyes into Thugs (Const) first? Fortunately the MA Agartha mages can manage something in each, but the research time might be limited.

Thank you.

[Shovah32]

Dont have much time to type right now but take high dominion. MA Agartha has the same effect as dom2's golem cult meaning your constructs get a +10%(i think its 10) health bonus per level of your dominion they are fighting in. That dominion bonus along with your powerful sacred constructs is very nasty.

[Evilhomer]

well im guessing this is for the mega game that will start soon, so my advice is based on a very large game:
----
I would absolutly get order 3 (since you need the gold) and growth 3 (since growth pay off the larger/longer the game is).
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If you must have an awake pretender I would go with dom 6, awake cyclops (earth 5) production 2 (nice to have for your units), heat 3 (you lose 15% income but you need the points), misfortune 3(its not so bad since you have order 3 and growth 3, you can say goodbye to any heroes showing up tho, but you need the points) and magic 1 (yes you need some research bonus). The awake cyclops have enough armor + fear to beat most indies, but use him wisely (don't throw him at knights or anything dangerous). Later on you can get gear for him and turn him into a good SC, opponents might think twice about messing with him.

----
Another choice is to make the cyclops sleeping and get production 3, magic 3 and only misfortune 2 instead for the extra 150 points. You will have a nice SC showing up in just 10 turns and with the high production and gold you should do fine early anyhow. With magic 3 you can do 5 rp with your very cheap mages, something that can lead to a nice endgame.

[atul]

Thanks guys, and, um, I'll be seeing you in the aforementioned game. :>

Evilhomer, that's about the kind of push I was looking for, thanks. I would never take anything even resembling heat3 misfortune3 on my own. And gotta still think about it, guess I still like to feel lucky.

Too much to do, too little time. Had missed the sacredness of the constructs (but not the sweet high hp), I need new eyeglasses, preferably with a new head included.

EDIT: AND GO FINLAND GO! Lions to the hockey world championship finals, YEEAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

...krhom, sorry...

[Evilhomer]

With the build i suggested i would go for construction (2 or 4) first in order to equip the cyclops (or i guess you can try your diplomacy and hope to trade all items with someone) . then probably thaum 2 to get gnome lore. After that i guess it depends on the situation, but you probably going to go for evoc or enchantment. Your main problem later on is probably going to be magic diversity and gem income, so i would look for indie mages as well as trying to trade booster with other nations. well anyway, good luck to you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[atul]

Evilhomer said:well anyway, good luck to you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Likewise. :>

...and I'd like to see a nation that didn't have problem with magic diversity these days. When I was young you could see the specifics of the dominion by just looking at the map, use even scouts to find young girls and get high scores in any path you ever wanted.

[Shovah32]

EA Tien Chi dosnt really have problems with magical diversity http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[atul]

Shovah32 said:
EA Tien Chi dosnt really have problems with magical diversity http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

:P

And there's a reason why TC Spring and Autumn has been my personal favourite since I got Dominions2.

BTW, does the misfortune 3 hurt or does it HURT? Is it totally normal to get turn after turn unrest increasing events on your capital? Speaking with order 3. Of course, having unrest just makes it more probable for new brigangs appearing, so it might just be bad luck, but anyway.

[Evilhomer]

Missfortune is not that big deal with 3 order. The number of events you get is caped, so when your nation grows bigger you are not going to notice the missfortune really. The problem is early on if you have a stroke of bad luck i suppose, since it can hamper your growth if you get unrest at your capital. Im almost always using atleast mis 1-2, and im usually fine. You just have to cross your fingers i suppose http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Shovah32]

Well i have gotten a plague in my capitol on turn 2 before(with great scales but misfortune 2) which reduced it to 14k pop.

[Xietor]

With my 6th choice i ended up with ma ctis.

On a huge map, here is my initial game plan.

Took a sleeping master lich 5d 2f 2a 2e with 3 order, 3 heat,
3 growth, 9 dom. Basically i will use pretender to hunt for gems and summon undead. Being immortal, it will not matter much if he is killed.

typically when i play ctis i have an awake thug pretender.

Any thoughts?

[MaxWilson]

atul said:
Also, research focus: any consensus whether it is the most urgent to focus on Buffs (Alt), direct Damage (Evo), Troops (Ench) or trying to outfit the recruitable one-eyes into Thugs (Const) first? Fortunately the MA Agartha mages can manage something in each, but the research time might be limited.




With heavy earth mages, Const also becomes a pretty nice buff school. Weapons of Sharpness, Legions of Steel.

In SP I generally go for Const-4 to get skull mentors early, and Conj-3 for Dark Knowledge and Summon Earthpower. Still working out what to do from there.

-Max

[Shovah32]

I didnt think MA Agartha had death magic or much of it atleast.

[MaxWilson]

Sorry, I wasn't speaking specifically of MA Agartha about the skull mentors, more about any nation with access to Death. And... [checking game stats] it appears you're correct. Oracles of the Ancients can cast Dark Knowledge, and thus can bootstrap into the Death path eventually, but yeah, skull mentors are out as a research goal. My bad.

-Max

[Ironhawk]

Atul, Order 3, Misfortune 3 is a given in a game of the size you are considering. Its dangerous at the start but the number of events that can happen in a single turn is capped so once your nation gets to a large enough size you wont have to worry about bad events too much anymore.

As for Heat 3, I think its a TERRIBLE idea. Not only do you lose a huge chunk of income but you will be hobbling your spellcasters on the field of battle! Unless you are planning some strategy that works around battle magic I would not suggest Heat.

And if you want an early expander pretender, you should really re-consider the Cyclops, also. He needs equipment to really put the hammer down (ha ha!) and getting your cyclops equipped in a Very Hard Research environment is going to take you WAY LONGER then you expect. If you want a pretender to do your early expansion and are short on points you might consider an astral Wyrm. Or perhaps dom9-10 on one of the other Monster class pretender chasis (assuming that hp bonus Shovah speaks of exists).

[Ironhawk]

Oh, and isnt the strength of Agartha the Umbrals? Does MA get those?

[Evilhomer]

Ironhawk sure heat 3 will cost him in income this is true. However with growth 3, order 3 and production 2-3 as well as his starting pop bonus he will have an income that is good enough anyway. If he can avoid the heat 3 that would be good...but the points have to come from some somewhere, and heat is alot better choice than taking turmoil or drain (he will be kicking himself after turn 30 if he does this). And since the growth bonus is exponential, in a game this huge this IS a must if he wants a build that is competitive in the late game (sure if he want to go out in a blaze of glory he go with death i suppose ). With heat sure his mages will tire a bit faster on his territority, but so will his opponents you know. The cyclops is a top notch pretender as well and with dom <9 it is probably better at taking ind that the wurm (since the wurm has so low prot) - of course he still will have to be a bit carefull with it. And in the mid game it will definitivly be a better pick. Sure a dom 9-10 awake wurm would be kickass however, but where do you intend to get the points for that ? especially if you don't go with heat ?.

btw, the research seems to be hard not very hard.


edit: yes an awake dom 9 pretender with 0 heat, with order and growth 3 is possible, but the rest of the scales has to be like this:

1. prod 2, mis 3, drain 2. Works well early on but he will be left in the dark ages once magic starts to be used by everyone.

2. sloth 1, mis 3, magic 1. Could work i suppose, but the resource penalty will be pretty bad for a resource heavy nation like MA agartha.

[PvK]

I don't think Order is as important as Production for MA Agartha. Magic is good for research. You don't really need archers to expand if you learn how to use heavy infantry well (see, "playing an Ulmish nation"...), though you might recruit some indy shortbows. One good early research goal IMO is Legions of Steel, though again that means learning to use your heavy infantry well. Fire Brands and Frost Brands give you thugs but removing the need for high Attack skill from your giants.

Don't forget that if there are water provinces in reach, you should be able to take them easily with a few turns' recruitment of your armored amphibian troops.

[Evilhomer]

Im not sure if order or production is best for agartha, but im pretty sure he wants atleast 2+ of each. Recruiting indie archers are probably not a bad idea i agree, since he might just have some money stockpilling early. oh, btw ma agartha has summon umbrals, those are pretty decent, but it will be a while before you can get them (conj 7).

[Foodstamp]

MA Agartha gets Umbrals at conj7? That is pretty lame because EA Agartha gets them at conj5.

[Evilhomer]

oh sorry, you are right, conj 5 in base game. Was using cb version when i checked if they had them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[atul]

Wow, lots to chew on. Thanks people.

Ironhawk, I have a feeling that order3/misfortune3 meme comes into play when you play lots of MPs where you don't actually care if every now and then you have to bail out early because of bad luck as long as you've got a good shot for optimal end game. Might be wrong, though.

Gotta agree somewhat on cyclops, his magics won't actually help a lot a nation which has E3 mages and only ones at other paths. Also I never manage to keep him afflictionless for long without heavy kitting, and surprisingly pure Earth doesn't offer too many good alternatives to trinkets at const 2, at least. Slap the trinket armour on any scary guy and indies are as good as gone, but the people are of course totally different ballgame.

The golem cult is operational, I did wonder why many of the statues had about 100 hp or more, but it explains it. Should it work on all constructs? ...have to experiment some. Umbrals are nice but they 1) are of conjuration tree might not be a priority and 2) are summonable only by the 400 gold capitol-only mages. Gryah.

Anyone else having problems with lagging forum?

[mivayan]

atul said:
The mages bar the least ones are old, so I dare no Death.


Old age is a fairly small problem for the 400 gold mages, since their long max age and death magic lets them gain fewer age afflictions. But the 200 gold golem crafters, your main researchers at least untill you have several castles, have age trouble. Growth is very nice in a long game too...

You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

With dom9 it can beat many indies, and with care it'll never get permanently hurt (immortal). Enc0 to wear heavy armor... not sure if it's worth forging early on. Just be *really* carefull about staying in friendly dominion.

D4 to use the death gems your big mages can find with search spells, and +100% afflictions when blessed mages cast spells.

missfortune 3 sounds risky. Heat3 causes enc trouble, which heat2 usually doesn't do. Perhaps it's worth it for more production...

[atul]

Xietor said:
Took a sleeping master lich 5d 2f 2a 2e with 3 order, 3 heat,
3 growth, 9 dom. Basically i will use pretender to hunt for gems and summon undead. Being immortal, it will not matter much if he is killed.

Any thoughts?

I'm no expert, but are you dead set on master lich? The saurolich costs a bit more, but has 17 natural prot and some hp, in contrast to master lich's pitiful 5. Saurolich could be useful also in battle, but you probably won't be able to pay for all the scales and high dominion.

I feel immortality's no use if you're not going to put your pretender into the line of fire, but YMMV as always.

[atul]

mivayan said:You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

Actually this is quite close to what I was gravitating towards, um, yesterday. Immortality is for wimps, but in this game I'm already scared how well I'm doing so I might take a shot at it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif The risen oracle seems to be a good a deal compared to other immortals, having high hp, all slots and good starting dominion.

It's nice to have such an active group, especially since the megagame appears to have spawn requests for help like rain spawns mushrooms. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[alexti]

mivayan said:
You could try a Risen Oracle, Dom9, E2D4. Order 3, prod0, heat2, growth1, missfortune2, magic1.

With dom9 it can beat many indies, and with care it'll never get permanently hurt (immortal). Enc0 to wear heavy armor... not sure if it's worth forging early on. Just be *really* carefull about staying in friendly dominion.



I think Dom9 is too expensive. I would go with the following baseline:
Awaken Risen Oracle, Dom6, E1D2. Order 3, prod 0, heat 0, growth 0, misfortune 2, magic 1.

This leaves extra 120 points too spend. From here you can either add 3 scales or 1 scale and Dom7 E2D4.

Baseline by itself is enough to fill the main objectives - you can forge heavy plate armor and use Oracle to expand. Fear will be enough to route indies, and it will be tough enough to survive, it will probably get few afflictions, but being immortal it's not a big problem (especially considering that they won't affect its fighting capacities much :>) For more safety you can forge helmet as well. You can also benefit from the nearby oceans with this setup as Risen Oracle will be able to expand there right away and sea is harder to raid for most of nations.

Magic+1 should be enough to make research with earth
readers efficient, I'm afraid of misfortune 3, as it seems much more likely to lead to disaster than misfortune 2.

Later, Oracle's D2 will be enough to branch out into death magic. With F1W1E2 mages you should probably research Evo-1 for Geyser (while buying those mages), which should be enough to deter rushers - even for uber-blessed nations fighting you is likely to be too costly and risky. E2D4 Oracle would be even better for that due to affliction chances, so I'd probably go for production scale, D7 and E2D4, but some combination of Prod and Growth scales looks good too.

I think your main problem will be what to make your winning plan. At some stage you'll need to conquer your neighbours, and your best weapons are probably your national summons. With some of them being sacred it my be a good option to get some blesses on the oracle. You could get some 4-bless by sacrificing a scale. Or you can make Oracle dormant with 3 4-blesses, but it will cripple your expansion (though you would still probably be save from rushers due to Geyser). Though I'd probably opt for more conventional plan with awake Oracle, fast expansion (and following quick build of second fort) - your troops might not be that good in the future, but with extra gold and gems from expansion, extra number of troops, summons and mages you can field will probably overcome weaker blesses.

[Evilhomer]

Just my opinion but i would strongly advice against taking prod 0. Since the latest patch production was made alot better, and you are giving up a very nice +45% production bonus. With production 0 you will be expanding alot slower than with prod 3. I would also advice against taking growth at only 0. In a competitive build it seems like such a bad idea since you are giving up a ton of income due to the exponential way that growth works.

[atul]

Alexti, the guy who did beat me up in almost every dominions 2 MP game I played. *g* Thanks for the tips, especially the geyser. Or, thanks for making me more certain of the route I'm currently on, the design along with the plan has about formed.

I'd like to thank everyone who has been participating in this thread, you have been most helpful. Pretender sent, now off to actually learn to play...

[atul]

Evilhomer said: I would also advice against taking growth at only 0. In a competitive build it seems like such a bad idea since you are giving up a ton of income due to the exponential way that growth works.

Strange thing I noticed of growth. It's about the only scale that scales so that the move from 2 to 3 is about as beneficial as move from say 0 to 1. For instance, prod 0 to 1 yields 15% relative benefit, whereas prod 2 to 3 yields only 11,5% benefit. With growth the relative benefit stays relatively same.

OTOH, growth only helps if you live long...

[Evilhomer]

good luck atul http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[alexti]

Evilhomer said:
Just my opinion but i would strongly advice against taking prod 0. Since the latest patch production was made alot better, and you are giving up a very nice +45% production bonus. With production 0 you will be expanding alot slower than with prod 3. I would also advice against taking growth at only 0. In a competitive build it seems like such a bad idea since you are giving up a ton of income due to the exponential way that growth works.


With MA Agartha it's not clear how to convert production into a serious advantage. The problem is that you don't have any troops you'd really like to buy. Heavy infantry has nothing for it except shields and heavy armor - skill-wise it's very mediocre. In the beginning I would rather use light infantry (which is not that light, in fact and also have shields). It costs a bit more gold, but you'll be expanding faster than with HI (even with prod 3). Faster rate of expansion will make up for extra gold spent. Besides, HI has strategic move of 1 vs 2 of LI. This makes expansion with LI is even faster in comparison with HI, because you can avoid wasting time moving (it takes careful planning though to bring replenishments, but luckily there's some synergy in using Golem Crafters heading to search for troop ferrying).

With that Oracle pretender your early expansion will be primarily bound by logistic rather than by lack of troops.

Later on, I can't see planning the game around HI. The core of the army will likely be national summons, backed with Golem Crafters casting something from magma or acid family of spells. HI will likely be just a complementary force. Besides, with easy access to armor buffs for your troops, heavy armors becomes much less important. So production scale is of relatively small benefit to MA Agartha. What are you going to sacrifice to take production scales anyway?

Golem Crafters will be very important mages through the whole game, because of their good choice of battle spells and their high survivability (even in the late game they are quite difficult to destroy due to their ability to forge cold/fire resistence items and armor or cast those protection on the battlefield). The more of them you can have the better - so you don't want to sacrifice income (or to spent it on other things with maintenance). Because of the same mages, you want to have decent research speed, so you don't want to go below Magic 0 (but I think Magic 1 worth it +33% bonus on your primary researcher). For fast initial expansion you need a pretender capable of expansion and Risen Oracle is pretty cheap choice that doesn't require any research and besides gives you easy access to higher level death summons (which will be important for Agartha for several reasons: magic diversification, stealth leaders for umbrals, exploting darkvision, undead priests for fodder summoning).

Growth doesn't really work exponentially, because if you survive long enough to be competitive raiding will quickly negate extra income from growth and effects of the growth early on are rather small. Considering poor mobility of MA Agartha (magical or otherwise), it's crucial to expand (by conquest) rather early which means that you won't be able to benefit from growth at this stage anyway, so the setup should be optimised to make this conquest phase most efficient.

Keeping this in mind, it seems that Luck, Growth and Production are the scales you need least for MA Agartha. I dislike Misfortune 3 from my [bad] experiences with it - I'm not sure if it is statistically justified.

Out of my earlier suggestions for the spare 120 points I lean towards Dom7, E2D4 Oracle and Prod+1 as a better choice (slightly better fear effect, quicker access to death summons and better death searches, slight dominion advantage).

[alexti]

atul said:
Alexti, the guy who did beat me up in almost every dominions 2 MP game I played.


Sorry about that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Good luck in your game!

[Evilhomer]

I was never suggesting any HI. You get +45% LI with that production bonus as well. The benefit from growth is exponential in your original lands (as well as the lands you take over), by turn 100 (if you are still in the game by then) it almost doubles your income (1.006^100+0.06=1.88), in effect giving alot more mages/fortresses. Of course you have to survive more than 20 turns for the growth to start to kick in, but in the build you should plan ahead since you are not building with the intent of loosing the game usually. Growth will help with that old age problem as well.

I stated earlier that i would take the points from the heat scale. Yes it gives slightly more fatigue, but it hurts your opponents just as much, or if you are out of your dominion it doesn't matter...And with growth and order+production gold bonus together (they all actually work together with good synergy) you can take the gold loss without much problem. Magic atleast +1 is a given, and i agree with taking points from luck scale (mis 2, maybe 3 i think).

Of course there is many ways to play dominions, and we all have different ideas how to play.

[alexti]

Evilhomer said:
I was never suggesting any HI. You get +45% LI with that production bonus as well.


Even with Prod 1, you're already gold bound rather than resource bound if you're buying LI (assuming you're buying Golem crafters every turn and saving gold for your next fort). That LI isn't very good investment and you don't want to buy more of it than necessary for the expansion.


Evilhomer said:
The benefit from growth is exponential in your original lands (as well as the lands you take over), by turn 100 (if you are still in the game by then) it almost doubles your income (1.006^100+0.06=1.88)


Heavy raiding usually starts much earlier than that and all those useful spells depopulate the land rather quickly too, and as Agartha you don't have too many defenses against raiding, so this is not very reliable plan. On another side, conquest usually increases your income by 50%+ in 10-15 turns. You should count on strong players conquering at least 3-4 nations by turn 100, so you need to match that pace if you want to have a chance.


Evilhomer said:
I stated earlier that i would take the points from the heat scale. Yes it gives slightly more fatigue, but it hurts your opponents just as much, or if you are out of your dominion it doesn't matter...And with growth and order+production gold bonus together (they all actually work together with good synergy) you can take the gold loss without much problem.


I am not aware of any synergy between order and production gold bonuses. They give 7% and 2% completely independently. Heat is also independent and gives you -5%. So each heat + production scale decreases your income by 3%. Besides, with the good battle mages, extra fatigue is likely a drawback too.

[Evilhomer]

the synergy im refering to is the gold % bonus (order +production) together with growth (constant % bonus +population increasing every turn). Im not sure if the battle mages of ma agartha is so powerful compared to the other nations, not if you factor in the price. They are not bad either i guess, but i would not rate them in the top 20 (among the 62 available).

There are ways for agartha to deal with raiding even if they are few, one way is to use earth attacks to just kill off the commanders (just get 1 earth bonus on your e3 mages).

[Micah]

Don't forget that your heat scale gets pulled by the seasons. If you have a heat 0 pulling hotter or colder both hurt your income by 5%, if you take heat-1 summer will hurt your income by 5%, which isn't any more than normal, but winter actually helps it by 5% by pulling it to neutral, so you lose less than the theoretical value by taking heat/cold scales.

[alexti]

Evilhomer said:
Im not sure if the battle mages of ma agartha is so powerful compared to the other nations, not if you factor in the price. They are not bad either i guess, but i would not rate them in the top 20 (among the 62 available).



Not sure how to rate (what criteria?) them, but you certainly need them on the battlefield casting offensive spells. Part of their strength is a nice power curve. They're getting better and better spells along Evo and by Evo-6 they have very good spells. So they can be efficient pretty early, long before you need to seriously worry about opponents anti-mage spells. Another strength is versatility - they can deal with thugs, SCs, heavy or lightly armoured troops. So at that phase of the game they're pretty high in the mage rankings.


Evilhomer said:
There are ways for agartha to deal with raiding even if they are few, one way is to use earth attacks to just kill off the commanders (just get 1 earth bonus on your e3 mages).


Nothing efficient I can think of - Earth attack is a reactionary measure (and it doesn't work versus many kind of raiders) that doesn't prevent income loss. I haven't tried played MA Agartha in MP, but I would think that the late play would have to be based on raiding using disposable regular troops and stealthy umbral squads of various strength while moving randomly some small Golem Crafter backed squads randomly in your territory. Lack of mobility still hurts though. But even if you defend successfully you still lose income due to unrest. And with raiding, poisoning and destructive province spells, it is in general easier to hurt opponent's income than preserve your own. So I'm generally pessimistic about prospects of preserving the income. On a good side, Agartha is in a decent position as far as being destructive is concerned, and it's also can alchemise if needed.

[alexti]

Micah said:
Don't forget that your heat scale gets pulled by the seasons. If you have a heat 0 pulling hotter or colder both hurt your income by 5%, if you take heat-1 summer will hurt your income by 5%


Wouldn't it pull the scale further by making you lose 10%?

[Micah]

Yes, it would be a total of 10%, but my point was that losing 10% a quarter of the time, 5% half the time and 0% the last quarter of the time is an average of a 5% loss, while a neutral scale will either be hot or cold about half the time, giving you an average of 5% half the time, or 2.5%. So the first point of heat/cold is only really a 2.5% loss, not the full 5 it seems to be. I'm not sure on the exact percentages on the season pulls, so that figure isn't exact by any means, but a 50% chance of a pull seems like a reasonable ballpark estimate. It's a significant amount, although it isn't a HUGE change. Taking a triple scale also kicks in another 'free' percent or two since seasons obviously can't pull you to a 4-point scale, so the only seasonal effect you can get is a beneficial move toward neutral.

[alexti]

Micah said:
Yes, it would be a total of 10%, but my point was that losing 10% a quarter of the time, 5% half the time and 0% the last quarter of the time is an average of a 5% loss, while a neutral scale will either be hot or cold about half the time, giving you an average of 5% half the time, or 2.5%.


Good point. I have tried few experiments and it seems that seasonal effects are rather random. I got average of about 6 out of 36 months when the scale was offset by 1 (Dom 7). Interestingly, that with Dom1, the average was about 9. Is season influence countered by high dominion? Number of experiments weren't large enough to make this observation statistically reliable. It still seems that seasons are not as bad as they initially look - costed only about 1% on average across all my experiments.

This seem to agree with my experiences - wrong scales don't work well if your preferred scale is neutral. Taking heat 2 when your preference is heat 1 is another story. It almost always result in a better income than taking heat 1. The drawback is that Heat 2 loses to Heat 1 in the first few months due to a large proportion of income coming from the capital.

[Micah]

Well, if the seasonal effect is checked before the dominion then the dominion will have a 5% per candle + 10% per scale tip difference to bring it right back, so yes, dom strength could have an effect. I don't know the order they're checked in though. I may have overstated the importance of seasonal effects from the looks of the low number of season pulls you got, but it is something to consider when taking heat scale.

And back to Agartha for a moment: A heat scale is also more attractive than normal because they're cold-blooded, which I don't think has been mentioned yet in the discussion.

[alexti]

What I've often seen in the test is the heat scale appearing in the summer (ot cold scale in the winter) and then disappearing the next month (still in the summer). And I think (can't recall for sure) that in low dominion test, the scale stayed for longer period more often. Perhaps the scale is getting pulled off the balance with a certain probability and in the next round it's getting pulled back by dominion?

Only pale ones are cold blooded, and I'm not sure that anything but Oracles of Ancient are worth recruiting (unless you're waging underwater war, but in the water temperature scales don't affect fatigue AFAIK). I don't like pale one's poor att/def skills (they are even worse than their human troops).

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I'm prepping for a mp game, I'm trying to choose between Agartha and Shinuyama. I was curious how the never healing affect combines with a regeneration bless. Any idea? I suppose I must test this...

And how does a reinvigoration bless combine with all your sacred mages?

Edit: In hindsight, sentinels are lifeless, contrary to the manual, so no regen...

[MaxWilson]

As one would expect, a reinvigoration bless is significant in long battles (reinvigoration 4 almost doubles your fatigue recovery) and less decisive than more mages in short battles. It's a bit of a bother to get everybody blessed, though, especially if you spread your mages out.

-Max

[atul]

Agarthan mages have earth and summon earth power gives reinvigoration 4 as an extra bonus, so I'd think reinvigoration bless isn't that important. Does it stack, on the other hand? 50 turns of Magma Bolts!

Bless on MA Agartha overall isn't probably that big a deal since their recruitable sacred troops are capital-only and actually going up the Enchantment route (sacred statues) isn't that fast a strategy. By the time you're ench4 thau2 (for gems and decent statues) you could nearly have researched conj3 for earth power and gone either alt2 for earth meld or evocation tree, thus making the earth readers a power to be reckoned with. Taking mages to battle or putting them into summoning spree both prevent them from researching, anyway.

Edit: Max, on the other hand, MA Agartha has holy3 mages, so one casting of battlefield-wide blessing isn't that big a hassle. But, what I wrote previously still applies, somewhat.

[Shovah32]

Reinvigoration from bless and summon earthpower does stack. A single divine blessing priest with your other mages set to summon earthpower and cast spells will give all your sacred mages 8 reinvigoration, extra earthmagic and upgraded armour if they are using any.

Mages are about the only thing an E9 bless will really help agartha with however as the statues have no equipped armour or encumberance to benefit from it.

[HoneyBadger]

I agree with the Wyrm, although I would suggest maybe Death 6 and 2 points of air magic to go along with the Dom 10.
It'll give him both fear 1 (quickly improveable with horror helmet) and awe 2, and allow you to get a jump on death magic.

You can cast air shield immediately-which will help a lot when it comes to avoiding afflictions, which-aside from curses-should be your major concern in the beginning turns of the game.

Eventually, you'll be able to cast other spells, such as Mistform, Fly, and Mirror Image, which will help your Wyrm continue to be a presence on the battlefield.

I personally wouldn't bother with Astral for your Pretender, just because it leaves him vulnerable to certain attacks, and you can eventually forge a Wraith Crown to cover etherialness, for his other head.

Unless you feel you absolutely *need* high astral magic or the MR bonus, then my opinion is to skip it, or at worst go for 10 astral so you can do unto others without them doing unto you, and eventually Wish, but it's just an opinion.

Make sure you get your Wyrm an amulet of antimagic as soon as possible, though.

[Shovah32]

Did you just suggest a death 6, air 2, dominion 10 wyrm? Well theres -172 points awake, -22 points sleeping and 78 spare points when imprisoned all before any scales so either you get stuck with very poor scales or lose your early game edge. It makes a very nice midgame pretender for crushing armies and stuff and can do ok later on too but with his low protection i dont honestly see him lasting too long against, say, a group of charging knights.
Usually i dont think nationals do much to combat pretenders but after seeing a group of my longbowmen kill a 200 health ethereal pretender with 80% airshield(and 6 protection) im even more concerned about protection than before(although his 2 head slots can give him great protection up there).

[HoneyBadger]

Well, really, I'd bump death back to 5 and Dom back to 8 (I think that gives Awe 0) if I wanted good scales, but it isn't very efficient. I almost always take horrible scales, though, and a quick rush+good strategy can cure scale-woes for a lot of nations.

Protection-wise, that's why the Death, it lets you forge that Wraith-crown. Once you've got one of those, your Wyrm isn't going to have a lot of problems against 80% of all nations, until the mid-game. Wyrm isn't what you want, if you want high Prot anyway. If you need it, though, empower 3 levels in Earth-how hard could it be with Agartha? That'll eventually let your Wyrm cast invulnerability.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I'd been experimenting with a death-5, water-4, fire-4 crone, bless expansion (plan for magic boosting). Was too slow, but wasn't bad for merely testing the waters. That attack and def bonus makes for a huge diff versus the typical 10at/def indie. I also noted the regular infantry were very great at catching arrows, and was having trouble deciding whether to put my ancients in front, behind, or mixed in.

Interestingly enough, this is the only game I've played where my early goals include killing off my pretender as soon as possible. And the fruits of my suicide run were worth the effort, too.

Oh, and all this was a trial run, so I went with zero scales- barring a bit of luck, maybe. I've still got that game up, but at 4:00 A.M. I'm not opening up Dom3 again for my own good.

Edit:
Does anybody have a detailed guide to say the first 12 turns regarding expanding relatively quickly, barring use of a supercombatant? Or, if not a guide, a example.

Or, do I just need a super?

Edit Combined two posts...
My latest test game I took a ghost king, sloth 1, turmoil 1, luck 1, magic 1. Around 4 death, 4 water, 4 fire, six dominion, give or take a point or two of death/dominion.

Now, with this -1/-1, no active pretender, I managed to take about 8 provinces by the end of the first year. Better than my first game, which left me with that amount by year three. So... not exceptional expansion, but promising.

I didn't use my sacred troops, despite my run towaards the blesses. Only unit that got blessed was one well-equipped ancient lord who never got into battle before all my troops ran by.

Of course, it helped that I was in a resource rich area... I'm not certain how it would have turned out surrounded by plains. Probably be bidding double on mercs. As it was, I was definetly dependent on mercs. But it's not like I had many ways to spend my money, esp since I wasn't really researching yet. So... next, I have to try it without mercs... What's a good target province goal for the end of the first year w/ MA Agartha? In context of a 'new to mp' mp game, standard settings, largish map.

Edit Post three in to avoid tripleposting...
Now using your mages in combat, they have crummy precision, but your regular infantry is great at catching arrows... How would you suggest deployement, and spell focus w/regards to combat? Any situation in which you'd use Earth Readers or Attendants?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well, one last post and then I'll restrain myself from bumping it again.

Is it possible to succeed as Agartha without a decent bless?

[atul]

I don't think MA Agartha has troops worth blessing much.

As to mages and their uses, wait one week and I can discuss the strategy I came up with the nation design this thread was initialized for. Now is really not the time. But I hope someone else can contribute there. Or if you're in a hurry PM me.

[Shovah32]

Dominion 9, not 8, gives awe +0.

Yes it is possible to play MA agartha without a bless. They have nice national summons and decent battlemagic and, while probably the weakest of its 3 ages, they can hold their own fairly well.

[Evilhomer]

... I seriously think they might be one of the weaker/weakest MA nations around actually.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I'm certainly not convinced they're the strongest.

And I'm no expert either... But in the spirit of the thing, I'll try writing a little guide. Usually doing something like that helps me get better too. So, I'm open to criticism and revisions, and contributions.

I'll be blatantly stealing the format used by RamsHead- though I'm unfortunately unable to steal his talent.

A Guide to MA Agartha, Golem Cult

Agartha is a nation of cave dwellers, a declining civilization. Think Avernum, Ultima Underworld, Arx Fatalis. Agartha is a rather straightforward and simple to use race, without the complexities of many other factions. However, despite this simplicity, they can be challenging to use effectively. With a starting income of 5 earth gems, but few summons until enchantment 3 and some research issues they can start equipping commanders (thugs) immediately. All your units have some darkvision, and you have access to amphibious troops.

Troops of the Golem Cult

[blatant plagiarism]
While national troops by and large become obsolete by the late game, having a solid understanding of a nation’s forces is necessary for a strong early game. A powerful early game position will often translate into a powerful late game position.
[/blatant plagiarism]

The strength of the Golem Cult lies in its national summons and mages. None of your mundane troops scream - I'll win the game. Unfortunately, you need 200 research points before you access your first national summon. If you recruited only golem crafters, you would be pushing up against the end of your first year before they were available. Earth Drakes are available earlier, but they have even worse odds at landing a blow than your Ancient Ones.

Your options are rather limited, unexceptional, but quite solid. Your gold costs aren't that high (thanks to low skill), but your resource costs are very high. At least you're thoroughly equipped. No naked warriors or helmless headwounds here. And everybody has a shield.

Your human infantry are pretty much the definition of average. Attack, defense, morale- everything about them is standard. No advantage to be gained by these troops, but no glaring vulnerabilities, either. Though, they all have 50% darkvision. Which, unfortunately, will only matter if you have access to Death 4 or another empire, such as Ermor, tries to cast Utter Darkness. Fortunately, it is possible to get the battlefield spell Darkness with a good dose of luck or a little planning. Oh.. and they all wield short swords.

Your non-human troops are less skilled than the humans, but they have a little more strength and magic resistance, a lot more hitpoints, and less encumbrance than many medium infantry. On top of that, they have 100% dark vision, are amphibious, have a siege bonus, and unfortunately cold-blooded. Did I forget to mention they don't need to eat? And, they don't wield short swords, thank god (You're welcome).

Units

Light Infantry (10/10)
Entirely unexceptional, it will be the foundation of your expansion forces. Unlike most light infantry, they don't come with javelins. They are equipped with short swords, giving them a damage of 15/5 (zero prot/10 prot), practically no repel, and making them quite impotent against Heavy Infantry. If you're facing high prot troops, leave them behind. They aren't cheap enough to be chaff. They can be used effectively elsewhere. They do have a parry value of 4, though. If I'm filling in the formulas properly, they typically have only a 18% chance of being hit by arrows at the start of a battle. Not bad. You can probably use them against light infantry and archer independents without any worry.

Medium Infantry (10/22)
Twice as expensive and what do you get? Well, certainly not higher attack values. But they cost no more upkeep, either. They don't get a better weapon, and they lose some speed, too. But on top of the obvious protection bonus, they get a Kite Shield with a parry value of six, and a protection value of 18. Shield hits can be as much as 16% more likely or as little as 2%. But that's not too important. Where the shield really shines is in protection from missiles. Remember, parry values count double. So,in most situations hits depend on DRN + 6 versus DRN + 14. According to the probabilities chart on page 5, these guys have only a 6% chance of taking damage from missiles. These are excellent missile catchers.

Heavy Infantry (10/27)
Heavy Infantry aren't that much better than medium, but than they don't cost much more, either. They don't gain any additional damage, lose a little speed, are a little easier to hit and tire a little earlier. What they do gain is 3 protection. They are an excellent choice for close combat.. but... with only ten hitpoints, do not bring them to bear against large strong units like giants. Light and regular are better choices. But against your typical size two humanoids and skelly spam, they have a lot more staying power. Given the high resource cost/low numbers, it's not hard to imagine an AoE 1 spell such as Iron Warriors making a difference at earth 2. With an ancient oracle, you can throw in Marble Warriors and Legions of Steel to bring them up to 22 protection, even without boosters or gems.

Tips for your human infantry:
Forced to fight high protection troops with your dinky weapons? Equip an oracle with earth boots and a spare gem and cast Weapons of Sharpness (Const 7). Follow with a Strength of Giants (Ench 3).
Keep in mind that you're using short swords, with a range of 1. This means almost everyone can repel your attacks.
Fighting large units? Go light or regular infantry, not heavy.

Pale One Soldier (10/20)
Size three, 80% more hitpoints, 20% more strength. Unfortunately for you, their two extra points of strength are negated by the fact they're wielding spears, which only do three points of damage, compared to a short sword's 5. The spear comes in handy occasionally, but with an attack skill of only 8, consider yourself lucky if you stop a third of all melee attacks. You won't. Despite all this, and the lower attack score, you might find Pale One Soldiers hitting more often than your human infantry. How is this possible? (and I haven't done all the necessary math to prove this)

Simple. Pit high attack enemies with a weapon range of two against human infantry with a weapon range of 1. The enemy will have a chance to repel virtually every attack, barring morale check. So, thats one attack roll to hit, another to avoid being hit, and a morale check to see if you carry through. Three rolls for one blow.
Pit those same high attack enemies against a Pale One, and while the Pale One won't dodge much, he'll be able to attack requiring only one roll, a single attack roll, instead of those three before.

Despite this, there are good reasons not to use Pale One Soldiers. And thats' the buckler with a parry of two.. The standard missile hit roll is DRN +6 versus 2 + DRN +4. In other words, instead of 18% or 6%, they'll be be hit 46% of the time. In addition, only two fit into a square, instead of three regular humans. Meaning that your pale ones are even more likely to end up as pincushions. If you must bring your pale one soldiers to an archery battle, they'll survive much longer stuck behind some infantry.

However, if you aren't worrying about archers, these guys aren't a bad choice at all. Even in less than optimal circumstances they are worth considering for three additional reasons. Dark Vision. No need to eat. Siege bonus (2).Unfortunately, they aren't better at defending. But these guys are an excellent choice when you wish to besiege a castle. One of these guys is as effective as 3 medium infantry (30,66), and as effective as 3 light infantry (30,30). Not to mention they won't starve when bringing down a swampy fortress.

Ancient One (40, 19)
Now we're getting expensive. But we're also getting sacred.
Let's take sieging first. Say five of these guys, at 18 strength. That's 3 siege damage done before you take into account siege bonus (5). Just five of these does 40 points of fortification damage. Five of these? 200 Gold. 40 light infantry? 400 gold. If you've been buying five a turn for eight turns, you can bring 40 to a siege. Bit of an investment? Yes. Scarce? Yes. But 320 points of reduction strength are hard to argue with.

They're better in just about every way compared to Pale Soldiers, even if you don't factor in bless potential. While unfortunately, you can only fit one to a square, and all the missile fire landing there will target one figure, it does give a small advantage in dodging the missile (Size in square = 4 instead of 6. Leading to a 30% chance of being hit, but a 100% of being targeted, instead of a Pale One's 46 and 50 respective chances.

On the plus side, they're a decent counter to tramplers. They're too large to be bothered by size four tramplers, which are unfortunately rare in the middle age, excepting Pangaea, R'lyeh, Vanheim, and elemental summons. On the plus side, with forty hitpoints, they have little trouble surviving a trample and have a decent chance of hitting and panicking an elephant.

Commanders:

It's worth noting that all but two commanders can be built outside of the capital. It's also worth noting that every mage requires a lab and temple to recruit. Add on the cost of a fort, and this gets pricy. Keep an eye out for rare magical indies that require only a lab. If you happen to find a library, even better.

All your mages are sacred, and priests, and at risk of old age. And since they're sacred, they're fairly cost efficent, too. And not a single one has precision over 8.

Military leaders:

Agarthan Scout (20/3) - Nothing special, they do come with darkvision.

Cave Captain (30/22) - A slightly better form of medium Infantry, they come with a surprising 80 leadership. For 30 gold. Too bad you'll have trouble massing that many. But at least it lets you recruit twice as many units without having to spend a turn not recruiting a mage. If you're going to equip him- most likely because you have more earth gems than you know what to do with- I highly recommend a Sword of Sharpness. Better attack, defense, damage, aromor piercing, and a reasonable length to avoid repels. Boots of Strength. Theres a couple other helpful items, but I'd rather kit out an Ancient Lord.

Pale One Captain (30,20) - A slightly better form of Pale One Soldiers. With less leadership, you'll only recruit him to lead amphibious assaults. Which may be more often than you'd imagine. If you can't sneak past enemy lines, than go around. Force them to defend at more than one point. There are a variety of ways these guys can be improved, but most important would be a real shield (Black Steel for 8/9 parry - remember, counts double in missile combat). For some meaningless fun, recruit a bunch and fit them all with Midget Mashers and Boots of the Behemoth. Watch and laugh as, no longer carrying shields, they die instantly to a barrage of arrows. No arrows, then you have a bunch of size three tramplers dealing double damage in melee.

Ancient Lord (90, 21)
This guy is Sacred, Capital only, and size 4. Wouldn't make a bad prophet (attack and defense bonus? Sign me up)or Death Match champion. There are some important equipment changes here. First, the Battleaxe instead of the spear is a length three weapon. It also appears to be two handed. This means you have no shield, and are amazingly vulnerable to arrows. How you deal with this is up to you. Protect with armor, shield, or just get yourself a Midget Masher and take your chances. A two-handed sword of sharpness doesn't help against arrows, but offers some rather nice attack and defense + AP bonuses right off the bat.

Mage-Priests

[atul]

Lazy_Perfectionist, very nice, you gave me some food for thought. However, several remarks if I may.

As you note, the regular troops won't cut it mid to late game. Therefore I think you shouldn't advice on using Weapons of Sharpness when there are (almost) viable alternatives on research levels way lower. Namely, Rust Mist and Destruction against high-prot troops and Earth Meld against high-def troops, and Magma Bolts for a good trashing after that. All low research and castable by Earth Readers who are recruitable from any castle unlike the Oracles. I feel that Agarthan troops absolutely scream for battle mages accompanying them, unlike many other nations who can manage with mundane means. Note the Earth Readers' average leadership (45) which is quite uncommon to mages usable in a fight. But that's more matter of a magic section, not troops.

Also, I think you've ignored the Pale Ones' size 3 in the melee part, it means they get only 2 attacks against a block full of human-sized opponents who attack thrice. With their poor att and def, I think that equals a world of hurt.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll try to integrate it once I manage to bull my way through and finish up. You've given me food for thought. I haven't had a clue yet w/regards to battle-spells except that I can afford to spam earth elementals and that all my mages are nearsighted.

A preview of things to come...

As a result of my experiment with suiciding my Pretender (Twiceborn Crone), I've experimented with Wight Mages a bit.

First, you can cast Twice Born with 2 death. Either you empower an oracle, get lucky (.10x.25 = 2.5%) with a random death pick (happened with my second Oracle), get lucky with independent or random necromancers (it happens with death 3, luck 3) or mercenaries. The simplest solution is to have a pretender with two points of death magic, and forge a Skull Staff.

Give the staff to an oracle, cast twice born, and pass it along. If your Oracle dies in combat or starts feeling the ill effects of old age (and you suicide him) you get yourself a wight mage. It's not entirely a trade for the better- you do get certain vulnerabilities, lose your ability to go underwater, lose half your hitpoints, some leadership, generally get a wound, and lose some MR. Most importantly, your former oracle is no longer sacred.

Now that I've gotten the bad out of the way, you get a second life, of course, cold immunity, poison immunity, certain undead immunities, chill(3). You lose old age, and your precision jumps from 7 (or worse) to 10. Throw in an eye of aiming, and you have a mage who can cast spells without deviation to a range of 26 squares. Two out of three times I've done this (and taken note) I've gained one free level of death magic. You go from 6 encumbrance to zero. You lose that pesky cold-blooded, you keep your magic (including holy three - though you don't get any undead holy spells), and your mage goes from moving only 1 province a strategic turn to three. And last, you get to haul around around 100 undead, 70 up from the default 30. It is a real pity I can't do this with my crafters.

[atul]

Near-sightedness just means mages need to be put up front. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Earth Meld has a precision bonus, so that helps a bit.

BTW, now that I noticed those updates you made to your previous posts, some comments. (It might be better to have new sections in new posts if you want people to read and comment them, as every contribution appears as an unread message...)

Two of the commanders are capital-only, not one: Ancient Lord and Oracle. The big fat guys are too comfy at home...

Boots of Behemoth + Midget Masher = Bad. If you trample, you don't attack. If you don't trample, you're up against enemies your size or larger and MM does no good. And as I noted earlier, Earth Readers have leadership comparable to indy leaders, so if you're not in danger of Seeking Arrows they are viable troop leaders.

The thing with twiceborn is wicked, by the way. Got to try it. Strategic move of 3 is real benefit to Agartha with such lazy mages.

[Evilhomer]

You should give your guide an own thread, having it appear at the end (or later on middle) of this thread does it no justice.

[atul]

Indeed, a separate thread would be best. Would get people to read it, too...

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well... EvilHomer... I might as well finish it first.

Atul: Fixed. On moving mages up: I guess, thanks to infantry being such a great arrow catcher, I really don't get as much a benefit from moving them to the back. I'm just to used to playing as Ctis, and their shieldless Elite Warriors, and giving my Sauromancers time to skelly spam.

Other peeps... I added to my post above. My Pretender title is
[booming voice]
HE WHO ALWAYS EDITS
[/booming voice]

Like the thing with Twiceborn, Atul? Check out this thread and my 'Suicide Crone'. I thought it up because I love having an early pretender to get a jumpstart on research, but I often have to spend to much time asleep due to my inability to resist a shiny new chassis like a Ghost King or Draikana. The more complicated they are, the more they interest me. Which means I tend to avoid affordable leaders like Wyrms or whatnot. This allowed me to complicate my Pretender without spending more points.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=d3maars&Number=526085&page =0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=3

Shovah, with regards to Earth 9 only helping the mages, what about the +4 protection? With all the other spells on hand, my protection could get rather obscene. Chew on that, Ulm!

THE GREAT REVISIONIST STRIKES AGAIN!
So... I'll keep in mind that point about Midget and Trample not playing nicely together.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Another question here.

What actually counts as golem, in terms of the golem cult. Is it any inanimate magical being. Are mechanical men,and clay men included?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Good question, Sir Dr D. I'm going to see if I can find that out in the next hour. I have to settle on a commander first, though. But I have to sacrifice... Just can't have everything, no matter how hard I try.

What I want is an awake (out of 350 points then) Ghost King (120), five death (80), 4 astral (92), dominion 8 (147), Turmoil 1, Sloth 1, Heat 1, Growth zero, Luck 1, Magic 3 (sum -40). What do I sacrifice? What do I keep?

My goal, crazy and risky and mismatched as it is, is a stealthy Pretender able to cast Darkness (must), Utterdark would be nice (greedy), hence the 5 d. Is it possible to go as low as 3? I hope to be able to get the Rings of Sorcery, and thus Wizardry (Greedy). I also want to be able to cast luck on my entire army of shades and ghosts and spectres (must- but can I do it w/o communion and w/o a high astral reducing fatigue? Does me no good to have an unconscious pretender. But with invig- wait, don't have that, no earth.)

So yeah, I stuck my hand in the cookie jar, grabbed to many, and can't get out of the design screen again. What do I do? Give me some tough love please?

I've been working on my mage-priest section in my downtime at work. Unfortunately, I left the text file there. Otherwise I'd be finishing and then posting it now.

I will drop this tidbit. Don't underestimate Earth Readers. They may seem underwhelming at E, but with barely any work they can be casting E4. Sure, they may fall unconscious, but they'll live. (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=494256&Forum=f 187,f194,f195&Words=%2Bfatigue%20%2Bcasting%20%2Bu nconscious&Searchpage=0&Limit=25&Main=494071&Searc h=true&where=bodysub&Name=&daterange=1&newerval=5& newertype=y&olderval=&oldertype=&bodyprev=#Post494 256) Or, depending on who won that debate, they'll die. But they're expendable. Just have, say, four Earth Boots in your lab, and four earth readers in every fortress. Then, when a fortress comes under siege, equip those Earth Readers with those boots, script earth power spell, and just enough gems to enable casting, but not enough to eliminate fatigue. Broke your siege? Then send those boots back. Or forge four more. You probably could afford it.

ERR.. I wish I hadn't left my notes and manual. But what happens happens.

Edit: Oh well, I settled for Astral 3, Death 4, Dominion 7, Sloth 1, Turmoil 1, Heat 1, Death 1, Luck 1, Magic 3. I'll probably come up with something better soon, but none of my penalties are too severe. I'll see which affects me most and least.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

While death 3 starts afflicting my Golem Crafters by the end of the first year, death 1 means most or all of them live to see the start of the third year, and only 3 out 6 get diseased. 1 out of six is blind and diseased. So... not perfect, by any means, but a lot more workable than death 3. I'd never recommend taking more than one death scale, and only when you have to. But then, Death has never been about long-term staying power.

I can afford the dead mages because I have a magic scale to make all my young indies and earth readers more useful. I may be adjusting my start strat to not include more than a couple Golem Crafters- Death 2 may be plausible, but I doubt it.

Heat one scale will cost you, but again, affordably. I'd take it before death, since it benefits your Cold Blooded troops and bothers your infantry none.

Sloth and Turmoil? You can work around it with Agartha. Its doable. Whether you want to is up to you.

Luck, really isn't worth it. You really only NEED earth gems, since your Crafters won't do much in other spheres, barring some specific pre-game plans. There are a few particular artifacts of interest, but generally, you'll have to work to find a use for any gems that come in, and by the time you need them, you'll be able to search the sites via independents or a spare Golem Crafter. Now because I'm biased towards luck because I enjoy it more and hope to get a hero, I recommend getting luck one. Rationalizing it away, it helps deal with the turmoil, and keep things from going to hell. I don't see much use in going higher though, as I believe there are no heroes available for MA Agartha unless you get Worthy Hero mod. I recommend that in general, but here for Great Olm multiheroes (with stealth! and rather strong magic, earth and water). I'm going to try out the Epic heroes mod next.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I know Claymen get the bonus, so I suspect others do to. Undead in general don't get it either, but I swear I saw some cult bonus on my Ghost King and twiceborn crone-wight mage. I mean, it might be dominion... but even at Dominion Seven, I can't see how my Ghost King goes from 35 hitpoints to 84 (49 dominion bonus) unless I'm getting 140% extra hitpoints, not 70%. There have to be more exceptions, but I'm not certain what the pattern is. Skeletons don't get it.

[Shovah32]

The reason E9 wont help your sacred summons is that they are wearing no armour(so wont get protection) and have no encumberance(dont need reinvigoration)

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

So you're saying the earth bless acts more like that armor boosting spell, and less like a stoneskin spell?

[atul]

Earth bless is an armor boost, and does little to things with only natural armor.

BTW, when you say that Earth Readers can easily be upped to E4 you seem to be forgetting the really important WF magics. I mean, the world of Magma at your fingertips, no need to exhaust the Readers with Earth-only spells like Blade Wind.

[Shovah32]

Magma eruption is a very nice spell. Use it now.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Magma at your fingertips? Don't the Earth Readers have only EH??? Feel free to exhaust the Readers, and let your Golem Crafters use the WF magics.

Curse of Stones can help your troops hit the enemy, help your troops dodge blows, and occasionally give you a critical. Only 10 fatigue is necessary to start reducing defense. Throw in some Dispossessed Spirits (D1 Conj5 4 gems for 15) or Skeleton Spam, and you might even be able to make them fall asleep themselves.

And don't forget Magma Bolts aren't AP. Rust Mist is limited in that their armor isn't broken until blows are struck. And only at 50%. Destruction kicks in immediately, and only costs 10 fatigue more

(since the manual doesn't list gem costs for battlefield spells, is there a place I can check that information away from the game?)

Even if you don't spend additional gems, this can be used in a pinch to reduce the cost of spells such as Earth Meld, and Iron Warriors. And casting Earth Meld instead of Earth Grip? Nice. Even if you can only cast it twice - though with magic scales and all the methods of reducing fatigue you can probably go higher.

So, how do you decide between Destruction and Iron Bane? What's the difference? Constructs don't have armor, right, and won't be affected by Iron Bane? But they would be affected by Destruction, since they are a high prot unit? Why is it that Iron Bane is two research levels higher, despite having only a "When struck [...] 50% chance of becoming broken" and affecting friendlies?

Legions of Steel is only Construction 3, Strength of Giants Enchantment 3. Not overwhelming in themselves, but available early enough to help you put all that infantry to use after the early expansion stage, or possibly even during, since Enchant 3 is available in around eight turns even w/o a researching commander, magic scale, mercenary Sage, or random heroes/sites/etc. I did the math somewhere else, so that number isn't accurate, but close. My favorite game had two Libraries churning out sages withing a couple provinces of my capital. I had research out the wazoo. Blathering aside, I'll need to make my guide a little more condensed, and trim some of the fat. But as I was saying, +3 prot and +4 strength will help all your infantry overcome mundane forces, and the armor of other human infantry.

Honestly, Blade Wind was the last spell on my mind. Given my low precision and national summons, I often neglect Evocation much more than I should.

[Shovah32]

Legions of steel and strength of giants are great, even more-so when combined with other buffs like weapons of sharpness(with strength of giants and weapons of sharpness you will rip through enemies)

[mivayan]

Lazy_Perfectionist -
A battlefield spell costs 1 gem(or slave) per full 100 fatigue. So 1 gem for a 199 fatigue spell, two for a 200 fatigue spell. (it's at the start of the battlefield spells part in the manual).

Only units actually wearing armor are affected by armor destroying spells, strong skin or rock bodies aren't affected.

Destruction, alt4, 40 fatigue, affects 6 squares at range 25. Both friends and foes are affected, but the mage will try to aim it at large enemy groups. Destroys armor.

Iron bane, alt6, 100 fatigue and one earth gem, affects *everyone* in the battle. Makes armor break after a good hit. Sounds pretty good used with statues. Unless the statues kills anything with one hit. Only need one mage per battle for this one... not so with destruction.

Evocations - might be needed against super high def enemies.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Mivayan- does that go down when you are over pathed?

I mean, if a spell normally costs 150 fatigue, and you have magic scale 3, and have one level in excess, do you still need gems?

Anyways.. onto my delayed and somewhat scattered mage-priest section- a final draft will be better organized.

I'll probably start a guide thread sometime next week.

Mage-Priests

Attendant of the Oracle (50,1) (L 10-0-0)
When you read the description of these guys, they come off as bootlickers, attending to every need of the Ancients, even going as far to wipe their asses for them. So, in the rare cases I do recruit these guys, that's what for. Leading 10 Ancient Ones into battle with a bless. But they're in no way superior to your standard independent priest. In fact, does anyone use them? I think they are there just in case your lab burns down.

Earth Reader (90, 1) (L 40-0-5) (EH no randoms)
They may seem rather boring with just one earth, but they are mage priests. As long as you are expecting company, you needn't fear the undead- or at least their skelly spam. Being sacred, they cost only 3 upkeep. I'd keep at least four researching in every fortress. Why every fortress, and not all in one spot? Simple. These guys transform into Earth 3 mages very quickly. Keep four boots of Earth in your laboratory. When you are going to break a siege, transfer them to your Earth Readers, script in earth power, and load in some earth gems. You can happily let them cast away at earth 3, give them a butload of gems and cast e4, or give them just enough gems to cast one e4 spell and fall unconscious/dead. They are your bottom-line mage. On top of this these guys don't start with old age. Their exact age is [insert number here] so while you need not worry about death by natural causes anytime soon, decay is [is not] a threat.

It's tough to choose between these guys and Golem Crafters early on. Golem Crafters ofter twice the research, but their advanced old age means they won't last more than a couple years, especially if you take any death scale. You'll have to keep on reinvesting. And besides, if your Earth Readers live long enough, they can get research bonuses. Your Golem Crafters never will. I'll probably settle with a few Golem Crafters to start me off quick followed by Earth Readers. Pulling some numbers out of my arse, say, a 3:1 ratio of ER to GC? I'll do the math later.

Golem Crafter (200,2) (L 40-0-20) (FWEEH no randoms)
This guy starts old. Get enough death scales, and he'll die young.
I don't have any idea why, but this guy starts out with a maul. Perhaps to beat the statues when they get out of line? Whatever. While you will be limited by your gem income, you can bootstrap yourself up to water/fire 3 much the same way, if you design your pretender with that in mind. But a lot less frequently. More on that later. These characters are useful both early and late in the game. They scale all the way into battle magic of earth 5 easy. Three if you want to save gems and not have your mage collapse in an unconscious heap. These guys are necessary for the majority of your National Summons. They have access to particular spells such as Magma Bolts that others are more familiar with. I'll revise\add my spell commentary as I get some more experience. Point is, this guy has more variety.
With Earth Boots, they can produce the Dwarven Hammer (15 earth gems) But so can the oracle. And you're likely to have 20 earth gems and Construction 3 before you have Oracles of the Ancients to spare on forging. [NOTE= Look into details of Forge Bonus. Bonus is cumulative. Is path construction bonus. Reduction straightforward? I've seen a discussion on this but can't remember. Is 50% half-cost? Linear savings?]. It's not impossible to give your Golem Crafter two Dwarven Hammers and get a 50% forge bonus. Take a Forge Lord for pretender, and you can get a 75% bonus before your first year is out.
The most likely thing you're going to forge with fire gems is the Burning Pearl. This gives a hefty +4 attack boost, and as an afterthought, 50% FR. Considering all the tempting Earth Weapons with an attack penalty, I always have a few on hand. Much later, the Lightless Lantern is available for a +6 research boost. Around the same time, though, the Shield of Gleaming Gold becomes available, and that Awe property is rather tempting.

On the water front, I haven't found much of interest in my play, yet. But I've also had bad luck on the water gem front. But the Rime Hauberk may be something to give to any Ancient Lords you have visiting cold lands. Anything you think is a water Must Forge? Ideally at 5 water gems, before Forge Bonus? Later on I'll probably have enough gems to not penny pinch, but I'm focusing most of my efforts on improving my early game.

Oracle of the Ancients (400,1) (80,30,15) (DEEEHHH w/random +10% earth,fire,water,death)

Starts sacred, with old age. Though because max age is high, isn't affected as much as the Golem Crafter.

At 400 gold, the random pick is quite weak. Though not meaningless.

+1 death will open up some important options, primarily Twiceborn (sometimes gives +1 upon death), Skull Staff, Create Revenant, Summon Spectre, Summon Mound Fiend, etc. At two death, he can bring all your other oracles up to his level and take Agartha in some interesting directions. Oh, and between a death random, Skull Staff, and spare death gems, you have D4, enough for Darkness.
An earth pick will open up Forge of the Ancients, Mechanical Militia, Riches From Beneath with Earth boots, no empowerment needed. You'll also be able to cast King of Elemental Earth, a powerful caster/potential thug. And you'll now be able to Earth Attack for a mere 5 Gems. Assassination from a distance is nice.
A fire pick will get you (new) Corpse Candles, (already have) Magma Eruptions at more of a discount. Also, Skull of Fire (+ fire)
A water pick will get you no particular spells.

All of these picks will open up some new options, especially with the Dwarven Hammers. Again, does two Dwarven Hammers count as +2 path for construction? Except water. I haven't found any reason to be happy about a random water pick. Anybody able to give me a reason?

On top of all this, you've got a level three priest. Four if you prophetize. Anybody know where I look for a listing of L4/L3 holy sites (dom3?) And how relevant the Dom2 list is? For instance, is the Temple of Time still here as H4? Any new holy sites? Any I should consider looking for/will see signs of?

Barring randoms, what do you use teh Oracle of the Ancients for?
Level 3 priest.
Summoning Umbrals and Awakening Cavern Wights and Enliven Marble Oracle
With boosts, Summoning Revenants and forging Skull Staffs, and casting Twice Born. (Gets you a handy move 3 unit).
They'll cast Blight, Dark Knowledge, Wizard's Tower (boost)
All these details and no summary? I'll need that in my final version. I'll need a basic version with footnotes at this rate. First post basic, second advanced?

[mivayan]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Mivayan- does that go down when you are over pathed?

I mean, if a spell normally costs 150 fatigue, and you have magic scale 3, and have one level in excess, do you still need gems?


The gem cost is fixed, nothing can change it. (except modding of course).

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Thanks. Any idea where there's a comprehensive list of magic sites? I've found a full list of the names, I've found a list of their powers by number code, but nothing my brain can quite parse.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Oh, and for later reference... Earth Readers Age 35.

[atul]

Whoops, my bad, I confused Readers with Crafters. I've mostly meant to say Crafters (the EEWFH variety).

Hm, anyway, I think I disagree with you regarding the relative strengths between Readers and Crafters. And I believe much of that stems from your pretender design giving Agartha poor scales. I'm thinking, what good does the Ghost King do during the first year, bar researching? You can't actually field him that early, especially with the astral and death magic only. With dormant you'd get 150 points or nearly 4 positive scale steps up. With neutral growth the Crafters aren't dying that soon, and they're superior battlefield support. Especially since they don't require anything forged.

Hm, regarding pretender design for Agartha I'm still undecided. The one Alex gave earlier, awakened immortal Oracle is about the only one I'd dare to field really early if any points are put to magic paths. The Oracle is a find, since not many immortals have all the slots and near hundred base HP. On the other hand, you could benefit to have a sitesearcher/booster forget in paths that are weak, namely fire/water/death. With single picks it's hard to get good gem income in fire or water, the death sitesearching spell requires luckily only one pick of death.

On the forging front, dont forget Fire and Frost Brands which are great given your commander thugs' low attack scores. Also Crafters forge Charcoal Shields easily.

And, two similar items with bonuses don't stack. So you can't wield two Dwarven Hammers to any extra effect.

Hm. lots of things I agree with, only sticking to some I don't because of the lack of time and the impressive amount of stuff you've put down.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I'm rather interested to hear what you have to say about Readers and Crafters. I started writing this guide to figure out the strengths and weaknesses, not because I was any good. I hadn't tried Agartha until a week ago, and if I make a whole new thread on the subject, I have no objections to borrowing someone else's expertise, if freely given.

Yeah... I knew the Ghost King was a poor choice. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to try. (I want to avoid obvious choices such as Risen Oracle, just because I'm contrary)

I was about to go into the pretender choice i picked... but before I go into any great detail about my master plans (Master as in Southparks' Underpants Gnomes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underpants_Gnomes)
I've got step one (steal underpants) figured out, and step 3 (profit). But between there....

So... if you're in the Jaguar game, promise not to read any further, m'kay? Honor system here.

So my pretender for this game (already sent in to keep Sunday from disappearing into the abyss of pretender design and nothing else, so no chance of tweaking) is an awake Drakaina named Scylla, Patron of the Rich, Symbol of Unchallenged Victory. Scylla, is of course, a reference to Greek myth, the monster with six heads, and the dogs sprouting from her. I might have tried other things, too, but I would have been experimenting forever. So, while she's not going to change for now, I am interested in what you would have done differently with her, or suggest I do with what I've got.

She has two fire, three water, three death, and five dominion. Her scales are one order, one sloth, one turmoil, and three magic. Using some math I'll leave out for now, I can get all the way to construction four by fall. I've even done it in one practice game. So this is a research strong empire. The question of balance I'm trying to skew by sending Scylla along with my armies. She's not quite tough enough to take on the independents by herself, but once I hit const. four, she could take a water province by herself.

So while I can hit construction four by my first fall/early winter, I'm not sure that's the best way to spend my research. While I need to expand (and sloth hurts when I can only get resources from two provinces), hopefully my high research allows me to try something out. Do I let some of my mages do other things? I can pinch pennies by hiring earth readers instead of golem crafters, but given my order and sloth, I usually have enough money even to buy mercenaries. Up until I want to buy a fortress. I'm going to have to take some care in budgeting. But not as much with my previous turmoil-1, sloth-1, heat-1, death-1 pick. Rather than a significant penalty, I've got a 5% money bonus.

In the long run (dwarven hammer, construction 6), Scylla is capable of directly or indirectly getting me Demilichs, King of Banefire, King of Deeper Earth, Kokythiads, and the Water Queen. Still doesn't do much for my magic diversity, but does give me quite a bit more range in my chosen fields. That's certainly end-game though, since I'd need the gems for all that junk.

If I make it that far, I've got access to Darkness - though I'm not aiming for utterdark, as my pretender is neither blind, undead or able to see in the dark. Burden of Time would be suicidal with my mages, so thats out.

So while I have ideas about my endgame, I need to work on something a bit earlier than that or just unspecific expand, grow, conquer. Any five-point plans? I'll be thinking on what I'll be aiming for most of today, but I'm open to suggestions.

And I finally found that list of sites. In edi's sig. Which search engine doesn't include. Now, I just have to figure out the 20 sheets. But anyways, ignore my earlier question about sites. I found a rather nice one my last game, that gave me +1 gems all Except Death, Astral. And I found it with an Earth Reader, of all things.

I've done a custom sort on the sites list, tweaked the layout a bit. And its an interesting read, for sure. For instance, Water has only the one Level Four site, but its not unique, but rare, so I can get more than one, and it offers five water gems. And it can only be found on land!

Also, there's no reason to search under water with a priest of level two or above. The only underwater holy site requires H1.All the more intensive sites are above ground.

As for holying a l3 priest, to get a l4 prophet... There are two L4 holy sites. The Temple of Time and The Ward. No need to search for the Ward- it'll announce itself by smiting the undead. With its unrest reduction though, it'd make a nice place to hunt for blood or overtax. The Temple of Time... I'm uncertain about that one right now. But considering I don't need more priests, its safe not to waste a prophet searching for it. Unless it has some benefit I'm overlooking. The level three sites are nice enough , but not enough to go looking for. If I happen to have a way-to-expensive oracle searching for high-level earth sites, though...

If the unrest reduction is active all the time, you can find most of the sites by a little judicious taxation. If not... Also, earth death and fire all offer level one const bonus sites.

Theres all sorts of tidbits here... but I'd lose track of my purpose if I went on about it.

[atul]

Hm, I don't think anyone is claiming to be too expert to be wrong here, I at least err more than enough. If I come blunt it's just that English is not my native language (the usual disclaimer), so apologies for that.

Anyway, I think you've noticed too that about the only problem with using your pretender as a lone combatant is her low protection - no body slot nor earth magic. Should you manage to up her protection somehow (and get some regeneration) she's a melee monster, with fire shield, breath of winter and personal quickness. Barring that, site search, research, forging and summons then, with an assisting role in battles in a pinch. Note that if you go Evocation tree, she gets all the acid spells which are AP and armour-destructing. Very yummy.

As I said, Agartha gets nice battlefield spells early with a variation necessary for changing opponents. Human troops get stuck with Earth Meld (Alt2), high protection can be negated with Rust Mist (Evo2 if you get it to work) and Magma Bolts kill even giants (Evo3). I'd hope those would get you through early-game rush should you start near some stupid bless-nation. Note that aforementioned things rely on you bringing Golem Crafters into fray. Earth Power and Stoneskin may help with their survivability. Also, don't forget the sitesearching spells from Thau2 and Conj2.

I'm not an expert with construction magic, but I'd think if you can get a good gem income Const4 could be handy with your Ancient Lords (Frost Brand, Charcoal Shield, Elemental armor give 100% prot against two elements and fire and cold elemental damage irrespective of attack skill, just add reinvigoration). ...damn, I really need to switch to Construction in my MP game...

I think much depends on where you're heading and who is against you. Earth Meld is bound to be totally useless against Jotuns but a lifesaver against a Vanir rush. I can't tell what's the truth, just my version of it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

And what comes to holy sites, and sitesearching in general, I wouldn't stress too much of finding everything. Just use your pretender to search initially, then forge a couple of fire/water boosters to your Crafters and have them cast sitesearching spells on all your provinces.

[atul]

And, in case you didn't notice, I started this whole thread because I had no clue how to play MA Agartha and had been assigned them in Perpetuality. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Regarding the differences between Earth Readers and Golem Crafters, I think ERs come handy when you're in mid-game when the law of averages comes into play (you're more dependant on cost of upkeep and RP per gold than abilities of a single mage). That in mind, I've at least first recruited solely GCs as they're superior at least during the first year of their recruitment. Maybe when there are three castles up or so and all your battlemage/sitesearch/forger/summoner functions are filled ERs become cost effective. And, of course, during the turns when you haven't got enough money for 200 gold mage (going to be rare).

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

You're not coming off as blunt. Rather, I'm looking for more criticism. Sensible experience. And even wild, unfounded speculation. Anything that makes me look at my assumptions, or sparks some stupid-wild germ of an idea for me to look into. Anything, really, even an Agarthan cookie recipe. I'm fumbling in the dark, here (Pun intended).

A bit of advice- don't eat Agarthan cookies if they're called "Rocky Road". The Golem bits have a nasty tendency to attack the eater.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well... recruiting solely Golem Crafters with Scylla allows me to reach 4th level research by fall first year.

But, recruiting earth readers early on does allow for two advantages. That 110 gold you're saving can help you hire mercenaries, and get a second fortress up quite a bit earlier.

On that matter, I heard somewhere that Cave City and Forts are under the effect of Darkness? Is this true?

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

Also worth noting is that with a pair of boots, your Oracles of the Ancients can cast Wizard's Tower for 50 gems- but only at Alt 8.

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 always be difficult to mass Ancient Ones. Unless you're surrounded by a lot of forests/mountains.

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.

As to Mountain provinces the Cave Fort is there.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.

Your Swamp Fort is abysmal- but cheap at 800 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 (sacred mages, magic scale 3), 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.

Is there anything special about the Wizard's Tower, or is it simply a magically created fort? Regardless, it does have nice admin.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

National Summons. General Summons will come later.

While its not heavily advertised, your golems get +10% hitpoints per level of dominion. I don't know if the opposite is true in hostile dominion.

Agartha's national summons are an important part of your strategy. With a base income of 5 earth gems, and plenty of mages capable of remote site searching with Gnome Lore, you can easily form the core of your army around your golems.

If you've taken sloth and high magic, then aim to include these in your armies by the start of the second year, or earlier. If you've taken productivity, you can go a bit further with your mundane national troops.

Most of your national golems are sacred. With every mage being a priest, its easy to bless the 5 or 20 you can send out with your Earth Readers and Golem Crafters, respectively. For larger numbers, your Oracle of the Ancients is a level three priest for area blesses. Earth bless, ironically, is useless (for these, but not the mages), and don't be tempted by the nature bless either. Since they're lifeless, 50 morale, regen and beserk is useless. Since they have no armor, all natural protection, they have no encumberance and no armor to get +4.

Also worth noting is patrol bonuses handy for paying for even more Golem Crafters. They need to be repaired in labs, and squash undead statistically and also because there's little point in lifedraining or fear. Lifeless offers several nice benefits. The manual isn't entirely up to date with regards to these, you'll have to take a peek to see all the details. They're also magical beings. Gotta keep your mages alive. Finally, many have map moves of three, but your mages 1. Keep a sharp eye out for any independent mages with decent magic leadership and high map moves, and consider twiceborn-ing an Oracle when the opportunity presents itself. If the Marble Oracle has leadership thats nice- but I don't know yet.

Are they affected by Darkness?
Acronyms
SAR - Standard Aggregate Research
EAR# - Estimated Available Research #
EAR operates under the assumption that each turn your recruit a mage of research ability # and dedicate them to research. Plenty of things can affect this, including early secondary forts, indies... It will be followed by a time.

Standard Golem Crafter RP 6. Magic Scale 3- 8.
Standard Earth Reader RP 3. Magic Scale 3 - 5.

Basic Formula SARx2/RP = t^2 + t
Estimate is sqrt(SARx2/RP). Since it's an estimate, I'm not to worried about rounding up or down. Or whether it starts on turn 1 or two. This is just to give an idea of how quickly one might get to a dedicated research goal.

Attentive Statues - Enchant 3 E2, 8 Gems, SAR 200
EAR3 ~ 11. EAR5 ~ 9 EAR6 ~ 8. EAR8 ~ 7

Compared to your later summons, they don't seem to impressive. However, they are well worth summoning. Consider the typical early expansion army- 10 infantry flanked by two squads of light infantry, ten each. This is sufficent to take down a few indies without many casulties. Now, consider replacing the core of ten infantry with ten Attentive Statues. They lack shields, but at 22 protection, they needn't worry about typical arrows. Even crossbows have to deal with 11 protection minimum, and they're 10 damage strength NOT added. These units are by no means immune to missile fire, but they do nicely. On top of that, all their stats are enough to squash your typical human heavy infantry, and at 50 morale, they'll never break- unless your mage gets squashed. They don't repair outside of a lab though, you'll have to keep an eye on that. Especially worth mentioning is their defense of 14- particularly higher than your later summons. And no encumbrance.

And in funding pinch, they have a patrol bonus, just send them to a farmland, and overtax those stupid abovegrounders.

Enliven Sentinels - Enchant 4 E2, 4 Gems, SAR 360
EAR3 ~ 15 EAR5 ~ 12 EAR6 ~ 11 EAR8 ~ 9.

Sentinels seem more attractive than Attentive Staues. On a one on one basis, they certainly have more hitpoints and strength for the gems, not to mention sacred. On the downside, they have five less defense. Sometimes that means they'll need more repairs at your neighborhood lab. On top of the greater strength, the Granite Sword has been replaced with a Granite Glaive capable of 7 damage, instead of 4, and length 4 causing some possible repels.

In all, they are better than Attentive Statues, but I wouldn't wait for them unless expansion was going very well. If my expansion was going swimmingly, then I'd save my gems for these. In other words, if I went with a high productivity bonus I'd save oup for Sentinels.

Enliven Granite Guard - Enchant 5 E3, 12 Gems, SAR 520
EAR3 ~ 19 EAR5 ~ 15 EAR6 ~ 13 EAR8 ~ 12.

Triple the gem cost, triple the hitpoints, and 22 strength. Throw in a 100% health bonus from a dom10 golem cult and you get 150 astonishing hitpoints. They're mean on the offense, capable of giving Giants a good show (though their 22 prot is matched by 20 strength+weapons). In friendly territory, they'll easily give those giants a good spanking and send them running home to their mommies. If you can afford them.

Enliven Marble Oracle
Haven't tried it yet. Can it lead troops? Any equipment slots? Prophet capable? Anybody have the juicy gossip on el Oracle?

Awaken Cavern Wight - No experience using it yet. What have you got to say?
Chill 3, undead. Available the same time as a a regular Wight, but costs 3 gems instead of five. Loses the bane blade in place of a more mundane glaive. Probably a little inferior, but at 60% cost, who am I to complain.

Summon Umbral - No experience using it yet. What can you say about it?

Stealth, Life Drain, Ethereal, undead. Give a Black Servant a Rod of the Leper King and you've got a raiding force. A lot meaner than shades.

Any juicy gossip on these units?

While your golems are formidable, they don't have any special crowd control properties. Thats why I suggest using them as the core of your force, flanked by mundanes. After all, your mages have much more mundane leadership than magical.

[Shovah32]

Umbra;s are great and extremely powerful, if you have death gems you should summon some.
Tomb oracles are mindless, lifeless magic beings. They are level 2 priests and have full slots. They have 85 health, 22 protection(thats before you put armour on them so you can give them things like robes of shadows), 22 strength, 12 attack and 10 defence. The fact that they are mindless along with their 15 MR makes them pretty magic resistant but being magic beings leaves them slightly vunerable.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Thank you Shovah. Now, bold in the manual means they are a commander, but not all commanders (scouts, for instance) can lead. Do the Marble Oracles get any mundane, undead, or magic leadership?

[Shovah32]

0 leadership all-round.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Poo. Thanks for answering, though. I've looked through the equipment lists, and theirs no serious magical leadership boosters, unfortunately. It would be nice to have a 160 hitpoint leader with 22 protection, but I'll have to settle for an Oracle of the Ancients for meaty magery.

[vfb]

A Const 4 S2 (10 pearls) Crown of Command gives magical leadership+25 (and mundane leadership +50 as a bonus).

[atul]

But does the crown give those bonuses to originally zero leadership unit? I once gave the rod of the leper king to that death summon scout in order for him to lead shade beasts, but his undead leadership didn't rise from zero...

[vfb]

Yes, leadership items work even if the original leadership is zero. I'm not sure what happened with your rod of the leper king, but here's a screenshot of a Black Servant leading some Shade Beasts into battle.

http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w148/vfb_dominions/leper.jpg

Leadership displays as zero because that's the mundane leadership; undead leadership is 50.

[atul]

Huh, good to know. Now my Agartha can have its stealthy raiders without N4 mage. Thanks for the info.

Hm, maybe it wasn't working in Dom2 when I tried it and I just assumed it still won't work. Or maybe I just mess up and don't get things to work.

[Evilhomer]

Not that i distrust you in any way, but I fail to see what the screenshot is proving. It shows no leadership and no shade beast.

[vfb]

Sorry! Shades, not shade beasts. They're hard to see, look under the frame at the right. They're also not mine, which is why I don't have a simple shot of the black servant leading the troops in the setup screen. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well... I second Black Servants leading with Rod of the Leper King. I've done it. Just click on the leadership number to get the full details. CTIS! CTIS! CTIS! I started with EA Ctis, and no national scouts, so I was desperate to try tings. With a high death income, its doable. It only requires level 2 research. And I think one of the summons I haven't used is stealthy.

With Agartha, its a bit more difficult, involving Oracles, Dwarven Hammers, Skull Staffs (C4), then finally Rod of the Leper King and summoning. But you're going that direction anyway, usually.

That screenshot, it doesn't look like that black servant is wielding a rod of the leper king. But magic sceptre... Huh...

Crown of command? Awesome. Only problem is theres now another school of magic I need to work into my pretender. But that's for the future. With it, i can get myself a 100+ hitpoint leader for 25 national golems. That's better then my mages. And all with a strategic move of three.

[vfb]

The screenshot shows the focus actually on the Rod. I suppose it didn't really help much to post it, but it was such a coincidence to be attacked by an army-leading zero-leadership unit at the same time I read your post.

The descriptions in the equipment lines (Weapons, Armor) on the unit examination window often show something unexpected.

Just for example, a Horror Helm shows as a "Full Helmet", and a Dragon Helmet shows as an "Iron Cap".

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Huh... I suppose that's just for enemy units. Have you ever had that happen on a friendly unit? This interests me, and I'll examine a lot more units in combat now.

[vfb]

The weapon/armor lines that are wrong are always wrong, independent of whether the unit is friendly or not. But since the equipment is always displayed even for enemy units, I think it's not really that significant that the weapon/armor lines are wrong for some items.

I think it's a good idea to always have a look at the equipment of all enemy commanders if you get the opportunity. But that also helps get turns into the 2 or 3 hour range when there's a lot of battles happening http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.

[BigDisAwesome]

I started using Fraps to keep screenshots of many things like that in the games I play vfb. I keep ss's of gods, sc's, thugs, a nations bless if I don't know what their god has...
It's rather invaluable.

[vfb]

Sounds like a great plan! I won't go through so many scraps of paper, that I eventually lose anyway.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

GOOD GRIEF! Agartha was the first MA nation I tried. In preparation for my upcoming game, I took looks at the other nations... And I've got to reevaluate things...

Hopefully most of what I've posted elsewhere still holds true, but I'll see.

[atul]

Heh, surprised much? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif The point of liking Agartha is not looking too closely at its A) different era brothers or B) same era competitors.

:p

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Oh boy, I've been mistaken with the dwarven hammer for a while. Forget anything I've said with regards to that.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I know its only the AI, but only one Golem Crafter and 12 Attentive Statues faced off against seventy units AND WON.

[llamabeast]

I think perhaps (from my very little experience) the golems are MA Agartha's real strength. Seems to me they are pretty good.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Yeah. But watch what happens when the pop your mage. All your golems turn into a fine mist of blood the next turn. Ouch.

On the plus side, it seems like you can take your high dominion bonus into enemy territory.

[llamabeast]

Make sure you have at least two mages with them then, I guess.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Can one take over? Is it tied to the presence of a mage, or the presence of just their squad leader?

[llamabeast]

Any mage will do, the fact that it's their squad leader doesn't matter. Basically as I understand it magic units die if your magic leadership on the battlefield drops to zero. So long as you have a mage left with non-zero magic unit leadership (even if there are more magic units than he could lead), you're fine. That's how I think it works anyway.

You could do a test, perhaps - take two mages into battle, with as many golems as they can lead. Have one of them stand at the front and get killed. I think the golems will all still be fine.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Good idea for my practice game, thank you. Probably easiest to do with Earth Readers.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

It also seems that they can carry a high dominion bonus with them into a low dominion area.

[tibbs]

Here's my build for MA argatha I pieced together from the advice in this thread.

Oracle Dominion 9
death4, earth 2
order 3, misfortune 2, magic 1, heat 1

I tested the oracle and with the awe and fear effect I can take even the toughest provinces like knights. On first turn I build the black plate armor and next turn I equip him and send him by himself into enemy provinces. I then build him a helm and shield before sending him into the really tough provinces. He doesn't kill much but they always seem to route before he dies.

I research enchantment first to get the statues unless I think I am by an aggressive or blessed nation. If I am, I then go evocation and use the spells other people have mentioned.

The dom 9 also provides more HP for the golems.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sounds decent.

I've confirmed Llamabeasts opinion on Golems not dissolving when a spare mage is available. This'll be quite important for my guide. Thanks for mentioning it.

[llamabeast]

No probs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Here's a question for you.

If a Golem Crafter leading 15 golems is accompanied by an Ancient Lord carrying a Bottle of Living Water (+1 magic leadership) and the Golem Crafter dies, do the golems dissolve as usual?

I believe the answer is no. It's pretty easy to lab, but I lack the time to get my available games up to that research and gem level.

[HoneyBadger]

I set up a game so that I could follow along with this thread, and in the process, I equipped several ancient lords with a bunch of low-level protection enhancing gear-basically to get the maximum prot possible with Const 2.

I also gave them an Earth bless of 9 and I noticed, when I equipped them with a lead shield, black steel helmet, black steel armor (the suit, not the breastplate), a star of heroes, bracers of protection, boots of giant strength, and a luck amulet, they had a Prot of 27, but when I *blessed* them, Prot went up to 33, instead of 31-is there any accounting for this?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I've no idea. What happens if you take off the bracers?

Anyways, I hadn't thought of that, but it sounds very interesting- That's cyclops level protection. Tell us how it turned out, please. Why'd you take the Star of Heroes, by the way? I've always passed that artifact by without trying it out. Because, you know, I really need to hit a tiny human with forty points of damage.

Good grief, I experimented with the Forge Lord, but I simply have to go back and give it a second go, with that setup you outlined.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, it's tasty stuff, but ultimately, I didn't find it worth the trouble. Yes, you can churn out items cheaply, but not much more cheaply than simply equipping dwarven hammers on your other mages, and it's a lot faster that way. Also, boots of strength weren't worth bothering with, ideally, I'd replace them with marble boots, for ultimate protective qualities.

Right now I'm trying out Fountain of Blood-5 blood slaves equals Att+5 and a morale boost. Not bad.

I took Star of Heroes because it gives Att +4-that's huge, especially tied to a 12 point damage weapon that destroys armor.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Well, if you're trying a blood path, let me know if the Boots of Youth help your Golem Crafters. With the blood stone, I expect you'll turn into a regular mass manufacturing plant.

If you don't have access to the luck pendant, consider the burning pearl, for another +4 attack. It's a big help when your weapon only strikes one unit a turn.

Though if I were dedicated to a thug strategy, I might need to check out EA Agartha instead. I think they can recruit Ancient Lords everywhere, leaving my capital free to do other things, though I'm far from certain. And the Troglodyte captain may offer some opportunities.

[Burnsaber]

HoneyBadger said:
Prot went up to 33, instead of 31-is there any accounting for this?



IMHO, the earth bless boosts protection of every piece of armor the unit wears. So Helmet gives +4 prot, armor gives +4 prot, and braces of protection give +4 prot.

[thejeff]

But the helmet and armor are correctly averaged together, so you get a +4 to total protection from them. The bracers are added in separately though.

I think that qualifies as a bug. Or at least an unintended side effect.

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, and here's the thing-I empowered my Ancient Lord prophet (33 prot, like the rest) with a point of Earth, and he gained the Earth, and the Prot +1 is listed, but no increase to Prot!

Definitely something buggy going on.

Currently, I'm equipping my Ancient Lords with 2 star of heroes (I have 5 in the HOF, 2 with quickness and one with heroic stupidity (increases attack, should probably, in my opinion, grant berserk instead), so they have reasons) or 1 star and a black steel tower shield, plus black steel suit plate, a black steel helmet, the bracers in question, and a ring of the warrior. With the 2 stars, I'm managing 2 attacks at atleast AT 20. Not bad for Agartha!

They are absolutely devastating on the battlefield, especially with support chaff-I have an independent necromancer along for the ride. I'm fighting against Eriu, which normally should be giving me tons of trouble, and I'm winning consistently against them, unless I allow myself to become badly overextended.

[HoneyBadger]

Note: Only use these guys as skirmishers, on their own, or to support relatively high PD. They fail miserably against larger armies, unless you support them. The idea is to use them to guard your expansion while you get golems going, and to hit the enemy in his weakspots. Once you've got the golems, use them as your main force, and the equipped Ancient Lords to attack the rear-your results should be very good.

[llamabeast]

At least some of the "bugginess" with protection comes from the fact that it isn't added up linearly.

The real formula is weird. How you have to imagine it is that protections are fractions, with perfect protection being prot 40.

Then having basic protection ("tough skin" protection) of 20 can be imagined as protection one half.

Armour with prot 20 similarly is "one half". If a unit with basic protection 20 wears armour of prot 20, they combine to give a total protection of three quarters (the armour covers half of the vulnerability in the basic protection). Three quarters equates to protection 30.

I'm not sure how much sense that made, but I'm pretty sure it's right if you can work out what I'm saying. Try it: Put prot 20 armour on a prot 20 unit (ironskin), and you will get prot 30.

A side effect of this non-linear addition of protections is that if you get Prot+1 from earth magic, for instance, the actual increase in protection will be less than one, and after rounding it's possible that the effect on protection is actually zero. I think this is what you're seeing HB.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Agree or disagree-

Agartha in general requires much less income than many nations, and is restricted by slow troops. Therefore, consider, in MP, going for the generally less desirable wastelands and other rough terrains to boost your gem income with the usually more frequent sites. It'll give you some diplomatic flexibility, and help fuel your summoned army.

[atul]

Disagree.

Agartha requires mages to do its heavy lifting, whether it be summoning using all those national "summon only one unit per casting" summons or battlefield blammage dutes. This in addition that if you want to get most out of your mages you need to research about six circles. So, lots of forts and mages required.

The other side of the coin is that due to summons, Agartha can't exclusively concentrate on high-income provinces. A good mix of income and gems would be best.

But yes, given your early-game weakness, being really diplomatically flexible might be necessary in order to survive.

[Valandil]

Half Agree for DIffeent Reasons.

Nationl summons are all need not eat, hence they need fewer supplies.

Gems are important to maintain summoning rate.
Else, as above poster.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Atul, perhaps I'm unduly influenced by unusually high magic scales, but you don't need so many forts, thanks to indie researchers. Quite a few are just as good as ER at research, though deploying my Oracles brings much pain.

On the other hand, barring a few troops, all your infantry costs 10 gold, and is rather low on upkeep given the resource limitations. Your commanders/mages tend to be sacred, hence your income doesn't decline as fast, and you needn't buy priests.

And while wastelands aren't as good at anything, really, and you need some farmlands, they still bring in income. So far, it seems manageable in my game, with +5% total income, though I am pinching pennies. With a few more negative scales, though...

Hmmm... I suppose it depends in part on the map. I'm almost forced to go for the wastelands in "Jaguar". That may be unduly influencing my perspective.

Atul, Valandil:
What kind of scales do you find yourself using, a month and a half after this thread was born? Especially with regards to total financial bonus?

[atul]

I might be a bit paranoid, but long-term, you should have _no_ unfortified laboratories in your lands, especially deep in your territory. Why? Attacking armies, that's why. An unfortified lab for them means easy gem replenishment, item changing and, this is the worst, instant Gateway. In that sense, if you build a lab, build a fort. And if you have a fort, you'll want a temple there anyway.

Any bless rush nation can get +5% total income (1.21 * (.94^2) * 0.98 = 1.048) or near it and indy researchers, Agartha doesn't have good troops therefore it needs to get an edge somewhere else. And unless you get really lucky, only surefire way to get it is research. And that means mages. As you said, Agartha has good research mages that are sacred, which is a considerable bonus on the long run, but of course recruiting indies makes that bonus go away. Only for magic diversity, only for diversity.

Of course everyone's views are biased by the track they first took. Mine is by my initial nation design I took in Perpetuality and by the fact I ended up fighting giants (statues are no good against those guys), yours by your initial setup that's high magic and poor scales.

I haven't done any redesign after Perpetuality was started (never look back!), but I'm quite satisfied by my +20% income (or so) and magic+1. Even misfortune hasn't bitten me back. Currently within best 15 in almost every category (it's 62 player all eras game, after all).

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Take any pretender, 10 dominion. Take any unit, prophetize it.

They benefit from Golem Cult and regular bonus, leading to triple hitpoints.

A Wyrm with 450 hitpoints, and regeneration? Doable. 120 hitpoint Ancient Lord or Oracle of the Ancients? Also ready to go. Just don't raid hostile dominions.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I was wondering what advice people had for a war against R'lyeh (much of which will relate to other astral nations), since I won a couple significant battles recently, but then made a series of bad choices and lost some also, esp. thanks to Mind Hunt remote assassinations.

Lead shields are an unfortunate necessity, given the low, low cost of Mind Hunt, but function nicely in keeping your Oracles alive. That encumbrance of 3 (6 for spellcasting) is problematic, but less so than dead mages.

Blade Wind has proven rather effective against the swarms of troops, and in quantity has affected their unarmored commanders as well, but naturally targets their troops first, commanders are sort of an afterthought or result of poor accuracy. Four Oracles casting Blade Wind reach a sort of critical mass. I've lost my opportunity to cast Earthquake, but I suspect it would do well against an army backed up by sixty unarmored star children assassins. I'll be using it during my last stand, you can be certain. It may even enable some level of victory for me, but I'm certain R'lyeh isn't doing nothing right now.

Next time I go against R'lyeh, I'm going to focus on additional forts, labs, and lots of Earth Readers, indie priests to reduce important casulties from Mind Hunts.

[Kristoffer O]

Can you get some domes up? Might help vs mind hunt.

Or if you have researched that far, answer in kind with earth attack.

Alchemize gems into astral and empower a mage. With a bit of luck you can zap several enemy hunts in one turn. Makes it less fun to continue hunting in that province.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

If you can't put up domes, but can block chokepoints, keep out spies (with statues patrol bonus, not impossible), then disperse. Keep mages out of your capital, since that's the first place they'd guess. Hunt out any scouts, and then they're firing blind, except when you're on the offensive.

Spare priests are good, too.

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, protection is weird. I think you're right, LP.

By the way, concerning protection, as a martial arts afficionado of some 25 years (god I'm old), the region, aside from the face, groin, and neck, that I most loathe getting struck by a blunt instrument in, is the knuckles/hands. Even knees aren't as bad, because my knees can take a lot more punishment than my fingers/toes before serious damage is done, even though major damage to knees would be more severe and debilitating over the long term.

Feet are bad too, if bare, but we have boots covered.

Kristoffer, is there any chance of seeing gauntlets in the game? besides the few weapon types ofcourse. Maybe some official protection varieties? Or add a "limbs" protection attribute to the protection formula? just to complicate things? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Then you could have boots and gloves that added up to a little end-result boost to your overall Prot and helped protect a bit against limb-loss. I wouldn't necessarily go so far as to suggest an extra slot-although it's an idea, just maybe something there to represent hands/feet in the formula so that it's more comprehensive.

[Kristoffer O]

There are limbs in the armors, but they are disabled, not to complicate things http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

After having made all armors having body, arm, and leg protection values, we decided that it would confuse and complicate more than neccessary. We kept the head hit location as there already were item slots for head, and it is fun to feeblemind someone with a headshot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Most armors had lower prot in limbs, but limb hits would never give you more than 50% of max hits in a single blow. Something like that.

Code wise the differentiated prots are still there, but the armor value is a function of them all.

It might look like this: Plate cuirass 18 chest, 6 arm, 6 leg, perhaps. Plate haub 18,12,12. Full plate 18,18,18.


And , no, gauntlets are not likely http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[HoneyBadger]

Ah...too bad, but a fun thought to think about-thanks for the answer http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I was also thinking that, in Dominions 4, it would be nice to be able to individually assign slots to units, like one would make a new unit. You could, for instance, create a new slot "right wing" or "wings" for a mod, assign it to a unit, and then create a forged item that would go on that slot.

Protection could then be a function of the number of total slots, divided or reduced somehow in comparison to the total size of the unit, in relation to how much of the total unit was protected, with "no slots" defaulting to natural protection.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

When waging war against R'lyeh, should Pale One Soldiers have priority over human infantry? Even when on land? Points in favor-

Size three - no worrying about Shambler Thrall's trample.
MR 12 versus 10. - How significant, if at all, is that?
R'lyeh has few units with good attack/defense scores- most of which require resources- so they won't be completely overwhelmed.

Points against
Low damage- outclassed by Meteorite Guard, maybe Slave Guardian armor.
Lower protection, defense, crappy buckler - though R'lyeh doesn't have archers.
Cold blooded
20 resources means you give up two LI for every one you recruit.

[sum1lost]

Mix it up, but retain a core of human infantry. They are simply superior in combat, by far.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Clockwork Horrors =/= (not equal)Golem. No hitpoint bonus? At least not on turn of summoning. Lifeless, mindless, magical beings, not inanimate.

My cyclops does, however, and ...