EA Arco - uncle moneybags

[Baalz]

[This guide is based on CBM]

EA Arco, the golden era. This isn’t your Arco of later eras with regimented phalanxes and rows of communion mages, this is the time of Hercules. Think heroes and legendary monsters and mage-engineers forging wings that should not fly too close to the sun, the gods taking personal interest in the affairs of men - now you’re getting into the right mindset for this nation.

Now, this wasn’t just a flavorful introduction, it’s very important that you get into a different mindset for EA Arco than you would for it’s later two eras as it plays strikingly different. EA Arco is a land of making mutually exclusive choices, you’re going to have to decide which Arco you’re going to play at the point you’re making your pretender. This guide explores one particular angle, but there are few nations with so clearly marked different paths, you certainly could be effective going a different angle.

That said, I’ll go ahead and tell you that I’m going to mostly ignore 3 reasonably effective units because they don’t fit this angle. The Myrmidon, chariot, and Icarid can all be pretty good units if you treat them right, the problem being that they’re fairly resource intensive. The philosopher unit has a unique attribute that it gets +1 research point for each level of sloth. That’s great, research bonus for gaining design points! The catch is that the real cost of taking sloth scales is effectively deciding not to use these three units in a serious way. I’ll be talking about them in more detail in a bit, realize how much more you could get out of them if you took production scales. I, however, am choosing the philosopher – he’s just too tempting when packaged with the 240 design points for swinging from production-3 to sloth-3.

With a magic-1, sloth-3 scale those 50 gold philosophers are spitting out a jaw dropping 9 research points. Now, the beginner might look at that and think the 9 was the important number. It’s not, the important number is 50. That 50 means we can have extremely competitive research while spending almost no gold. Let’s take this idea and run with it. Since we’re taking sloth-3 scales lets see what we can accomplish recruiting almost nothing in the first year.

The first leg of this plan is to have a pretender who can come out of the gate fearsomely on turn 1. This means with no research or items, somebody who can keep on clearing indies at a steady pace. Additionally, as we’re going to be running light on troops we really want somebody whose power will scale up as the game goes on so he doesn’t loose all usefulness once real armies start showing up. Now, there’s a couple different pretender chassis that fit this bill, but most of them also require having a dominion score high enough to give them awe. Rather than trying to sacrifice my scales for a dominion score I don’t really otherwise want, I’m gonna pick the great white bull.

Now, the bull doesn’t need awe, but he does really need some earth magic. Taking the great white bull I can afford 4E 4N, a dominion of 5 and Order-3, Sloth-3, cold-1, death-1, luck-3, and magic-1. The earth component is critical for a couple of reasons. Right off the bat it gives him +4 protection, bringing his berserk protection up to 16. Against spear wielding humans the difference between a 12 protection and 16 is *huge* it’s going to reduce the amount of damage you take by an order of magnitude. A 12 protection is kind of iffy for initial expansion, 16 you’ve got no problem against most of the stuff you’ll see in inides. Stay away from barbarians, lizards, wolf tribe & heavy cavalry and you’ve really got nothing to worry about with all those hitpoints.

Now, the initial troops you start out with are not great, but they’re actually not completely worthless once you lay a sermon of courage on them. Turn one recruit as many slingers as your resources allow and prophetize your initial champion and between your javelins and slings you should be able to take out a couple of the low protection, shieldless indies. You’ll take some casualties each fight, but that’s ok you only need to take 2 provinces, if you can take 3 with these troops consider it a solid success. If your luck bums out and you lose to your first indie that’s not great, but not the end of the world either because your raging bull is unstoppably stomping around (unstoppable referring only to light/medium indies at this point!).

While these two squads spend the first few turn expanding you’re making (practically free) philosophers and (not so free) Wind Riders. Wind Riders are pretty expensive, but you won’t have any problem affording as many as your resources allow as this will only be 5-8 or so in the first 3 turns. That’s ok, that’s all you want. Whenever your initial (non-pretender) expansion party grinds down to a useless nub bring your prophet back to collect the wind riders. If you got unlucky and your prophet bought the farm, recruit a Wind Lord instead. This handful of wind riders with the modest blessing you’ve got is *bad **** for clearing indies, other than exceptionally strong indies they can clear everything. Meanwhile those philosophers have made it to alt-2 and your bull god is now throwing down a stoneskin (and shortly ironskin) which bumps him up to the level that he can also take out almost any indies. B-line both these expansion squads over to the nearest farmlands, there’s a very good chance you can grab the closest ones before your neighbors.

After you’ve sent out those wind riders you’re going to only be recruiting philosophers. At 50 gold a pop, you’re essentially not spending any money while your research blazes on at the head of the pack. Your 2 expansion parties are both plenty strong enough to snatch the high population indies, and your scales are retarded good – and being spread to everything you conquer by either your god or your prophet. You should have enough money to start construction on your second castle by turn 6 or so, and roughly enough to put a new one up every turn after that. Your income, in fact should be so good that very shortly you’re able to continue putting a castle up per turn while you start doing other things.

Now, I wanted to talk for a minute about castle site selection. Most of the time in dominions you want to take the cheapest castles you can so that you can get as many of them as possible so you can get as many mages as possible. True, that’s an important part of why we’re doing this, but it’s not the only goal. These forts are an investment. Many people overlook the income bonus from forts, which can be quite significant over the long term. A fort increases the income of a province by the percentage of it’s administration value divided by two. Let’s say you put up a forest ramparts with an administration value of 10 in some woods with a population of 5000 and an income of 50. That fort would then generate 2.5 gold per turn. Lets say you put a fortified city with an administration of 50 on a nice farmland with a 20000 population and an income of 200, that fort would generate 50 gold per turn. So, not counting the time value of having a fort up sooner the fortified city (which cost 400 gold more) pays for itself in 8 turns at which point it’s generating a profit for the rest of the game. This sort of investment can make a significant difference if you’re putting a fort up early in year one, it’s not unlikely that gold gain will be thousands per fort over the course of the game on the nice provinces. This gain is even greater with good scales. Most of the time you can’t afford that extra 400 gold in year one, but the philosophers allow us to do it while maintaining our research pace. We’ve got gold and no super urgent need to grow our research, so lets make some investments.

Targeting the highest population provinces first (and gold/gem mines, arenas, etc!) your forts start sprouting like mushrooms. Since you’re not recruiting troops and the upkeep for your philosophers is negligible you’re going to fairly quickly get to the point that you can put up a castle per turn and still pile up the gold. At this point (should be inside of year one) you’re done recruiting philosophers. Whenever you begin to lament the waste of not using your philosophers look at all those castles you have and the money you can’t figure out how to spend fast enough and remember it’s not a waste, that investment is paying fat dividends the rest of the game.

Why do we start ignoring the philosophers who have treated us so well? Because the centerpiece of EA Arco is also cap only, you’re going to only recruit Oreiads from now on. It’s really a shame, EA Arco has several very nice units which are cap only, but they never see the light of day because they’re totally eclipsed by the Oreiad. Your first couple Oreids are going to head out site searching. Oh, and did you notice yet that Arco’s labs only cost 250 gold? Put labs in all those castles sprouting up and start cranking out the mystics. You will have a *lot* of mystics (this is where the majority of that fat income you generated is going to go all game), so you’ll have plenty which are 2e, 2w, or 2f, and of course they’re all at least 1S so you’ve got a powerful battery of site searchers you’ll be leveraging. Meanwhile, your Oreaids are doing solid job manually searching N and A with a trickle of W & E thrown in. You should have a very strong gem income to match your strong research and strong gold income.

Those philosophers are going to make short work of the early research. Your Bull God was most of the way towards being invincible with just iron skin, but once you add in earthpower and personal regeneration he’s going to have no problem splattering anything short of a real army or a SC counter. Your philosophers will have no trouble clearing this bar inside of year one and well ahead of any fighting with other players. For big fights you’ll want to add in some support mages to buff him. I know what some of you were thinking “The Great Bull? Come on, he’s useless after clearing the indies, he can’t be effectively used against a real army like I would with a kitted out titan!”. Well, to that I say bull. Summon earthpower gives him all the reinvig he needs, fatigue from trampling varies a lot but you’ll be perpetually low fatigue. Throwing invulnerability down will bring him to a nice round 30 protection while berserking. In a solid dominon he’ll have over 300 hitpoints, and having laid down personal regeneration will be essentially unkillable by the method of poking him with sharp things. Having self-buffed iron will and hanging an amulet of antimagic off one horn he’s got an in-dominion MR close to 30. With support mages laying down luck, body ethereal, quickness, haste, gift of flight he turns into something I guarantee will cause nightmares in your enemies (note, you’ve just quadrupled his movement which gives him a devastating attack but also causes him to get ahead of his reinvigoration. Skip that part for huge armies where you expect a long fight. Trust me though, not much will last long enough for it to matter). You’ve still got a free misc slot so stick a ring of tamed lighting or whatever seems appropriate given your opposition on his tail and tell me again how he can’t be effective against real armies.

I also wanted to point out that a variation of this same trick is quite effective using chariots. Given your sloth scale chariots are your goto unit when you need to recruit something outside of your capital, and as long as you’re using them make sure to double their effectiveness by dropping haste. As the game progresses tossing in mass flight and quickening is devastatingly effective as a side strategy (as in where your opponent is not dropping storm or fielding chariot counters like anything size 4 or higher). Because they’re fairly easily countered you’re not going to want to lean on them too heavily, but trotted out every now and then they can be a devastating surprise.

As long as we’re on the subject of flying troops lets look at the Icarids. These guys have the potential to be everything Caelum wishes its infantry was. They’re size 2 along with a reasonable weapon and strength. The strength of flying units (aside from strategic movement flexibility) is the ability to swarm which is greatly improved by being size 2 vs size 3. Toss on a strength of giants (and later weapons of sharpness & quickening) along with mass protection and these guys start looking a lot like something your opponent would rather not have jumping into his flank. You’ll probably be disappointed with them if you try and use them without mage support or against very stout opposition, but that’s ok, this is another side strategy you’ll just use when it seems like a good idea.

Rounding out your air force are the wind riders. As your castle building frenzy levels off you’ll want to steadily recruit these guys. You’ll never have enough of them to be central to your strategy, but they are awesome heavy raiders and will contribute greatly to the threat vector your opponent has to worry about. Your first inclination is probably to recruit wind lords to lead them. That would be a good idea if it didn’t mean you had to do without an Oreiad that turn. Instead, send them out in groups of 10 with a priestess with flying boots and a thistle mace. Not only can she bless them, she also can lay down wooden warriors then spam panic. Best of all, she makes sure you get an Oreiad every single turn.

So, I keep going on and on about the Oreiad, I guess it’s time for me to illustrate why she inspires me to poetry. She may be my favorite cap only mage. Why? Because she’s great at *everything*, an amazingly good thug with no equipment and a full fledged SC with equipment you can probably find wedged in the crease of your couch.

She’s got awe, and a powerful one. Powerful enough that even high morale troops will shy off more often than not. She’s stoneskin, which with any armor you stick on her, anything which does hit her will bounce off more often than not. She’s got mistform so those few hits which do cause damage will only cause one point, and she’s got powerful nature magic so her regeneration is about half her hitpoints. Add this all up and it means she needs to get hit more than 5 times per round over many rounds to bring her down. Not many units can do that. Now, if you get rushed into very early fighting (that for some reason your Bull God can’t handle) you can use a priest to bless them to gain the regen and reinvig you need. In most circumstances though I’d suggest just forging her a shroud of the battlesaint, your protection is plenty enough with your buffs and you get the regen without casting the very fatigue expensive personal regeneration. You’ve got all those mystics arcane probing, you shouldn’t have any trouble at all popping out a sacred shroud every turn to match the one Oreiad you get.

But I haven’t told you the best part yet – no need to forge a shield or weapon. Try this script on for size – mistform, stoneskin, resist lightning, cast spells. What spell is she going to cast? Shockwave of course. Now you’ll do plenty enough damage to blast PD around with just this, but with a little more reinvig you become truly unstoppable. Fortunately, 25% of your Orieads can cast summon earthpower, and the rest just need an earth gem, or for just 3 gems you can forge boots of the messenger with a hammer. Oh, also no worries if she runs into somebody lighting immune, the spellcasting AI will automatically switch to something like freezing touch or fists of iron.

But wait, there’s more! Add “resist elements” there and it gives you 50% resistance to everything. This means 100% resistance is as easy as slapping on a dragon helm & frost brand (you’re already scripting resist lighting). You can toss in resist poison if it seems like it’ll help.

So, once you’ve forged 4 hammers, every turn you’re using 3w 3f 3s 3n and have a chick who’s immune to everything, and blasts a huge chunk out of the enemy front lines every other turn while never running up fatigue. You know what’s even better than that? Using three of them together. Watching the enemy try to swarm around this one block of three invincible chicks to have 3 shockwaves blasting out is just an awesome site to behold. For not many more gems you can stick amulets of MR & luck on your lovely ladies so they’re good for all weather. If you’re facing tough astral spam, slap on rainbow armor and rotate in iron will to the buff mix (you’ll also need some extra reinvig and to cast person regen), you’ve no worries from that angle. They also get you into the water very early for the price of a ring of water breathing.

That was just the opening act, my friend. All those Oreiads are stealthy and can cloud trapeze. That in and of itself is a strategy (check out my Eriu guide for details), but lets examine how this looks in light of the other things we’ve got set up and in light of another of the Oreiad’s abilities. Seduction. So, you’ve got forts packed shoulder to shoulder in most of your provinces. You’ve got dozens of cloud trapeze capable SCs. You can seduce from inside a sieged fort. Tell me again how you plan on ever losing a fort? Think about it, those Oreiads are army clearers, how many bodyguards does it take to stop them? They’re immune to everything, so how many mages survive the assassination? Then again there’s the successful seductions. It’s got a low success rate, but it’ll happen often enough to make you gleeful as you round our your national magic with death, blood, or whatever else seems tasty. Plus, you know, that near 100% success rate of killing the guys who don’t join you, that’s a plus to. Now, of course you’ll need to use your head and adjust the equipment/scripting you use based on what your opponent is using, but from spamming endless false horrors to orb lighting to frozen heart to swarm there’s not many opponents who don’t have something deadly to fear. It’s too bad there’s no way you can get Mage Engineers, they would fit fabulously with this strategy.

Now, the obvious counter to this sort of thing is anti-SCs equipped with magic items to pop the mistform. So, why not have some of your lovely ladies equipped with a rune smasher and void eye spamming charm at the same time? Who wants to run their thugs into that? As you start getting into the part of the game where anti-thugs are likely to be used you’ll not want to use Oreiads unsupported except in hit and run operations using their stealth and mobility. Their hitpoints are low enough that there’s not really any way to reliably target them when they’ve got wyvern bodyguards - who make nice anti-anti-thugs with their paralyzing poison while ignoring the shockwaves. Not invincible, but darn hard to get to.

These lovely ladies aren’t done yet by a long stretch. Whenever I see an A/E combo I immediately think stone rain. Every single one of your Oreiads can cast it - 1 gem for summon earthpower, two for casting it. Even better, stick earth boots on an earth random Oreiad and drop it first turn (give her plenty of protection). You also, of course, can drop all those big nature spells from mass regeneration to mass protection and relief. Those Myrmidons start looking pretty darn vicious, particularly when you stack on all those earth buffs as well. Crystal shields are your friend, with one wrathful skies opens up, and any of your water random ones can drop foul vapors. Too bad we don’t have any lighting and poison immune troops.

Dragon master and you’re summoning wyverns for 1 gem apiece. Unlike other drakes, wyverns have a fairly decent MR (12). True, they’re not as physically tough as the better known drakes, but they’re decent enough meat shields for the price, they fly, oh, and they’re lighting and poison immune. They’ll provide some nice bulk to your sloth-stunted armies and compare very favorably to the vine ogres you might otherwise be inclined to build up (who have a MR of 5, don’t fly, and aren’t lighting immune). The wyverns also lay down a paralyzing poison which is very useful against super giants common in EA as it attacks their fatigue rather than their strongly regenerating hitpoints (make sure you drop strength of giants to help that stinger punch through giant strength armor). All in all, EA Arco should be a pretty significant flying nation.

A couple other summons bear special consideration. Sleepers make decent thugs when kitted out. Gargoyles make a solid addition to your air force. Sirrush benefit from your nature blessing and can be pretty impressive when buffed similarly to what I suggested for your pretender. They’re also poison immune so work well with that angle. Kithaironic Lions are not only incredibly thematic, they’re also work very well with some buffing from your ubiquitous astral mages (sense a pattern here?). Remember, you’re going light on the troops so you’ll need to have some summons to make up the difference and buffing them is often a great job for those mystics who were unfortunate in the randoms they got.

Now, you don’t have the same astral strength that the later Arcos do, but you’d be leaving money on the table to ignore what you do have. Part of your strong gem income should be put to forging a steady stream of starshine caps and crystal coins, along with rune smashers and void eyes. Over time you should be able to build up quite a stash of these items (all forgable with mystics) which you’ll stick on double astral mystics which you’ll collect in one big stack in one of your forts. You’ll also build up (over time) 20 or so priestesses in the same block. What’s magic about that? You can now mind hunt with no fear of going feebleminded, that stack of priestesses will heal the feeblemind the same turn it happens. Heck, feel free to shoot at armies with S1-2 mages – you’re only out a couple pearls for failed attempts. You’ll have plenty of seeking arrow casters to, which is a nasty one-two punch taking out the astral mage cover while laying down a devastating barrage.

Finally, all those castles spitting out all those mystics leads to truly really the best communion potential in the game. Read my guide to communions for suggestions, it really is a whole discussion unto itself.

[Incabulos]

nice guide. I love Oreiads ever since gettign a couple as heroes playing MA arcos.This left me tinkering with strats for EA so I can play with a bunch of them. My problem was sticking to a rainbow pretender. Hadn't really given a SC pretender much thought but that really helps the early game where I was having the issue.

[Trumanator]

Good like all the others. I just discovered Oreiad thugs myself, but I was trying to take a rainbow mage with a bigger bless. I was noticing in SP tests how much it impacted my expansion in comparison to the S4 Wyrm I'm using in my MP game as Arco.

Edit: Actually, I was able to take off the death scale while still keeping everything else. Very cool, since Philosophers and Skeptics have disease issues.

[chrispedersen]

As a note, Philosophers get +4rp in ChrisCBM1.44 and following just to make this kind of strategy viable.

[WraithLord]

Baalz. I can hardly keep pace with all your guides. Don't you ever sleep? :)

But you know what they say, you can't have too much of a good thing, and your guides (this one included) are top level material.

Your guides have that magical effect on me that makes me want run and play with said nations.
Thank you!

[KissBlade]

I think this is one of your better guides but why the Great White Bull? Everything else seemed to make sense but I can't wrap my head around why that pretender over many other (IMO) tastier choices.

[Trumanator]

What other choices are you talking about? AFAICT the bull is the cheapest way to get the bless you want and still be a capable expander from turn one w/out dom9. The green dragon is the only other possibility that I can see.

[chrispedersen]

A few things:

I think having a *pile* of priestesses is a bit of a waste- 1-2 has always been sufficient for me.

Additionally, under all flavors of CBM, seduction got a hefty boost; to the tune that it now *often* works.

Under CBM cat charm is con-4; under vanilla and ChrisCBM its Con-2. Well worth the investment.

Scout as fast as you can: Finding a blood druid site is gold for Arco - it comes with 5 fairly easily seducible blood druids.

Don't neglect charm, as a weapon. Sooner or later one of your mystics will allow you to runesmash.

Eye of aiming,shield of valor - minimal investment then considering storm/lightning spam.

On the subject of the flying troops; flyers get fatigue from flying as well as combat.
And their base encumbrance is like 10! So you will take appreciable fatigue just by flying up and whacking the opponents.

So, while I like the units, you will have appreciable attrition, especially in the early game if you use them unbuffed. Strongly consider reinvigoration - just to cut down on the number of hits bypassing armor.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Pretender I'm doing this from memory, but I think you will find that Gaiea is available and makes a fine choice (thematic too).

[Aezeal]

dominion of 5 and In a solid dominon he’ll have over 300 hitpoints --> means probably not usuable for expansion against any opponent.

but to be honest even though you say he's still usable late in teh game you don't base your strat around him anymore so it's not really a problem.. he's just not THAT good as you make it sound there IMHO :D

I don't know his slots but how would you kit him out?

[Ironhawk]

Yeah the White Bull is ok for expansion but later on his trample is fairly meaningless and worse he has no good slots!! Any proper SC would make mincemeat out of him.

One other thing I was going to ask: how are you coping with fatigue in your initial expansion? You've got all this trample fatigue, but then you've also got more from beserk. Not to mention from your buffs. Do your expansion tests presume a certain level of indy strength? Cause at like 8-9 for example I would get really concerned.

[Trumanator]

Well he's said before that all/most of his guides are presuming normal settings (indies 5).

[Redeyes]

Now, the obvious counter to this sort of thing is anti-SCs equipped with magic items to pop the mistform. So, why not have some of your lovely ladies Swarm Dragonflies mess Oreiads up if they can get in close, cutting through protection, awe & mistform, all the three common defenses of the Oreiad.

Vine shields is essentially a perfect defense against dragonflies but is too expensive to include in the Oreiads' kit.

[analytic_kernel]

Another interesting guide, Baalz.

In my experience playing with EA Arco, I've also become a big fan of the Oreiad and developed a strat quite similar to what you recommend. Hadn't thought of matching Wyverns with Oreiades though - thanks for the idea.

I do wonder about your suggestion to use buffed Myrmidons though. Myrmidons are slooow, slower than other heavy infantry that I'm aware of. And, with a rcost of 28 (in vanilla) and Sloth 3 scales, its hard to get many of them. For the same rcost (in vanilla), you can get Chariots which are also prot 17, but are much quicker and can trample.

[Dragar]

I recently tried a similar starting strat with arco, but I had the bull with high dominion and no earth. I think Dom 9 and nature 5 from memory. For an awake pretender SC I think you really need to have the dominion push from high dominion, and the extra hit poitns stacked very well with the personal regen I went for first up. Protection is lower but you have awe, so need it less, and with regen and recuperation you can take a few hits.

It possibly has less utility later without the earth, but is dominant early, meaning you have strong dominion all game (promote your good scales and keep bad ones out) and if you happen to die you are only dropping 1 path rather than 2.

[Tichy]

Hey there -- I did up the white bull. With those scales dom 5 and E4N4 you seem to have 65 points left over.

Am I missing something?

If not, it seems you could either take dom 6 and N5 with 3 points left, or keep dom 5 and get rid of either the cold or death.

[VedalkenBear]

Tichy: Are you under CBM? I made Baalz's Bull, and had only 6 points left over. (I chose Heat over Death, though.)

[Dectilon]

I haven't played Arco to any reasonable extent, but I've played around with the bull a bit.I bought him some fire and some earth to make him a burning stone statue of death that plants itself in the middle of an enemy army and just sits there. It's not viable to use him on his own later on, sure, but he seemed like a solid chaos-causer to move along with one of your larger armies.

Since he goes for trample he rarely gets into scraps with enemy thugs or SCs. My equipment was usually a ring of regen and a resilience amulet.

[Tichy]

@Vedalken: I am -- but I think I know what happened. I'm running an older version of CBM (1.3). Gotta update that.

Thanks.

[DonCorazon]

Under CBM cat charm is con-4; under vanilla and ChrisCBM its Con-2. Well worth the investment.


Sorry, I cannot resist comment on this, though its off topic. I think having more than one CBM / having CBMs named after players is unwise. I just imagine a new player reading this guide and going wtf - not only do I have to think about all this stuff including the classic dilemna of CB/plain vanilla, but now there is ChrisCBM, and then who knows what is next, DonCorazonCBM where Cat Charm's are Artifacts? Its like the CBM Tower of Babel. And really, how many MP games are using "ChrisCBM"? Is it really worth the added confusion to post things like this? Also, I don't know the whole history of the CB mod but it seems like QM has spent a lot of time on the mod, and he doesn't even use his name in it. To take it and make some changes and name the whole mod after yourself seems a little over the top IM Very Humble O.

[Fantomen]

Yeah, I agree totally with DC. Much better to compile your own changes in a mod, name it something specific (not including the word CBM) and then state that is is meant to be used with CBM. From that point take part in the discussion in the CBM thread and argue for your changes.

Also stop flaunting it all over the place! I think you are trying to buy in on the solid reputation of CBM and the massive work behind it in a very bad way.

Great guide BTW.

[cleveland]

DC, clearly you've never tried clevelandCBMver00000007revCy2008m02d13t1432GMT.dm, else you'd understand the true potential of moded mods, and how easy they are to keep track of. :D

[DonCorazon]

Cleve, what is your ETA on getting the Forging Reference updated for ChrisCBM? :)

[lch]

I wish the discussion starting from this:
Sorry, I cannot resist comment on this, though its off topic.
would have been in the respective CBM / ChrisCBM threads instead.

[chrispedersen]

Rather than continuee to hijaak the thread, I've moved my responses here:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42435&page=2

[Baalz]

....and back onto EA Arco. I fully concede that the white bull is not as versatile late game as some other chasises, but for this build you want three things:

1) An awake expansion pretender
2) Very good scales
3) A minor E/N blessing

Good luck affording all that with a pretender who is also top shelf for late game. If you've got a suggestion for one that would work better I'm listening. I also think you discount his combat utility a bit too much, having that invincible battering ram zooming about like superman set to attack rearmost not only makes me happy to think about, it certainly is the sort of thing that will wreck an opponents day in many situations. You won't be using him to singlehandedly take down armies, but used as part of your overall strategy you shouldn't have too hard a time putting him to good use.

@Aezeal - he's got over 200 hitpoints with just one candle, so pushing a strong dominion is certainly not required. You don't want to send him into strong enemy dominion of course, but mildly friendly should be fine along with all those buffs. I didn't mention it, but you'll want to put up enough temples in those forts to make sure your nice dominion covers all your land. He's only got two misc slots, so I'd outfit him generally as I said with an amulet of MR and a ring of whatever resistance seemed best at the time (lighting by default as it's the biggest danger).

@Redeyes - yeah, swarm will give all kinds of different SCs problems, Oreiads included. Haven't tested it, but size 4 wyvern bodyguards should be a fairly effective screen against swarm I'd think.

@analytic_kernel - yeah, I agree. Maybe I didn't make it super clear, but I do mention chariots are your goto guys outside of your capital. There are lots of situations where chariots are next to useless though, anybody who sticks a couple crushers at the front of their army will pretty much ruin your day if all you've got is chariots. Myrmidons certainly have a niche in your army.

@Dragar - The earth is an very important component of the blessing. It doubles the effective time your wind riders can fight which is important for units used in smaller numbers. It's also a non negligible benefit to your Oreiads, and as central as they are to your strategy it seems like a good idea to invest in them.

[cleveland]

Hey there -- I did up the white bull. With those scales dom 5 and E4N4 you seem to have 65 points left over.

Am I missing something?

If not, it seems you could either take dom 6 and N5 with 3 points left, or keep dom 5 and get rid of either the cold or death.

I noticed the same thing, but I have 48 points left over. Under both CBM 1.41 & CBM 1.3. Hilarious, really.

Totally agree with taking Dom6 + N5...Faery Trod + Army of Lead = Goodnight Irene. Put that in your lategame usefulness pipe and smoke it.

Alternately, I recommend taking another point of Cold and investing in some Blood magic. Why? Because it's the funniest image in all of Dominions:
Arcoscepalian Squire, nervously clutching Sanguine Dousing Rod: "Er, Highness? You want me to put it WHERE?"
Great White Bull: "MOOOOOOO!"

Horn of Valor is a close second. :D

[KissBlade]

I'm actually fond of the Green Dragon chassis in CBM for a bless. mostly because he flies as well!

[Fantomen]

[quote=Tichy;677242]
Alternately, I recommend taking another point of Cold and investing in some Blood magic. Why? Because it's the funniest image in all of Dominions:
Arcoscepalian Squire, nervously clutching Sanguine Dousing Rod: "Er, Highness? You want me to put it WHERE?"
Great White Bull: "MOOOOOOO!"

Horn of Valor is a close second. :D

:D A somewhat less obscene but likewise fitting piece of gear would be the bell of cleansing.

[Wrana]

Also, the Blue Dragon makes Wind Riders very heavy-hitting while protecting Oreiaedes. Still, Earth bless is very good. And Bull is VERY thematic here. :)

[DonCorazon]

:D A somewhat less obscene but likewise fitting piece of gear would be the bell of cleansing.

I am so glad you didn't say Bag of Wind, that would have just been sick :)

[JimMorrison]

Carcator the Pocket Lich?

"Why is it so dark?"

:angel


Stop writing guides please Baalz, you keep making me want to play around with the nation. :p

[Ironhawk]

....and back onto EA Arco...

@Aezeal -

@Redeyes -

@analytic_kernel -

@Dragar -


How come I didnt get an @? I'm going to pout in the corner now. :cry:

[Illuminated One]

What I've been wondering is if you could make good use of the sceptics.

You have a lot of castles, probably more then you can build a lab in, your dom isn't to strong and you don't need to much temples.

So in theory you could take drain, get better scales otherwise, and put your research centers at the front, where your masses of bloodhunting sceptics are keeping both your and the enemies dominion out. And if you just see your enemies dom being vulnerable sneaking 20 sceptics into his lands is a nice surprise.
The biggest problem is that once you have drain in a province, you can't do much about it, so you must conquer a good bunch of territory without your god.

[aaminoff]

The swing from magic-1 to drain-2 does get you a significant stack of design points, I like your idea of using skeptics to create a magic scales neutral research center, and in the first year those philosophers are not hurt too badly by it at research 8-1=7.

So I have been wanting for months to try this using the Virtue. My question is, how important is the minor N bless? In my experience with Helheim's Vanjarls, the regen just does not kick in all that often - if you are taking damage, you take enough damage that fairly quickly the mistform gets popped and then a couple large hits and thats it. Whereas most of the time awe + defense + protection keeps the hits off entirely. The exception would be poison, where regen is a great way to be poison-immune, but we can get there by using nature magic instead.

I want to skip the N bless because with the Virtue's new path cost of 70 or so, I can afford only one new path: E4, which also bumps up her naked protection into the range where stray hits that get through from typical indies are fairly minor.

[edit: Im contemplating this under CBM, where the Virtue starts with A and S and is a bit cheaper]

[Maerlande]

The whole problem with skeptics is simple. Why the heck are you recruiting skeptics instead of mystics?

[Maerlande]

The whole problem with skeptics is simple. Why the heck are you recruiting skeptics instead of mystics?

[Graeme Dice]

If you're mad-castling, it's possible to run into the situation where you can't afford to recruit a mage in every castle. Or where recruiting only mages would be detrimental to your war effort because what you really need is more bodies to either speed sieges or protect those mages you already have out fighting.

[Maerlande]

Fair enough Graeme. But he was talking about spamming 20 heretics. Better to save the money and buy 8 mystics in my opinion.

[aaminoff]

Why the heck are you recruiting skeptics instead of mystics?

It's a matter of choosing which path you want to take to defeat your opponent. Arco is never going to win trying to go toe to toe with the big combat powers. So instead I would invest a bit in sceptics and try for the dom kill. Admittedly even with Dom10 it is harder without blood sacrifice, but certainly the judicious use of a few sceptics to remove the critical few enemy candles seems vastly easier than defeating their uber blessed army / SC pretender / hordes of chaff. Still, 20 seems like hyperbole unless you are talking about late game. I suppose one should be able to figure out the math for how many sceptics it would take to reliably create a neutral magic scale research center against own dominion.

Does anyone have any comments on the necessity of a minor N bless?

[Maerlande]

Of course there are some variables. But when i've played arco I made stone idols instead of skeptics.

[Trumanator]

Try stone idols + skeptics for extra lulz.

[Burnsaber]

Try stone idols + skeptics for extra lulz.

Heh. Delightfully paradoxical.

Sceptic: "THERE ARE NO GODS!"
Peasant: "No.. Gods?"
Sceptic: " THAT'S RIGHT! NO GODS.. Other than this Stone Idol! Worship it!"

[Baalz]

So I have been wanting for months to try this using the Virtue. My question is, how important is the minor N bless? In my experience with Helheim's Vanjarls, the regen just does not kick in all that often - if you are taking damage, you take enough damage that fairly quickly the mistform gets popped and then a couple large hits and thats it. Whereas most of the time awe + defense + protection keeps the hits off entirely. The exception would be poison, where regen is a great way to be poison-immune, but we can get there by using nature magic instead.

I want to skip the N bless because with the Virtue's new path cost of 70 or so, I can afford only one new path: E4, which also bumps up her naked protection into the range where stray hits that get through from typical indies are fairly minor.

[edit: Im contemplating this under CBM, where the Virtue starts with A and S and is a bit cheaper]

I don't think a N bless is critical for EA Arco, more nice to have. It is critical for nations like Eriu with a whole lot of lighter thugs, but the oriads can cast regen themselves if they want to and are likley tough enough to make do without in lots of situations. Plus, you're not fielding that many (compared to ie Eriu) so you can stick better equipment on them.

[Alpine Joe]

First off....Great guide Baalz it is really good. Ea Arco is a fun nation to play.

Having just come off my first dom3 win ever (nonforum game), as EA Arco, let me explain my build in case anyone wants to try out something a little different.

I humbly submit this as my preferred Arco build:

Awake Forgelord F2A3E4S3
Dom 10 O3S3M2D2

Awake, this pretender can expand as well as Baalz' bull but offers a lot for the mid-end game.
With Dom 10 he has enough awe against line troops, Cast Air shield to protect from arrows.
Forge yourself a midget masher on turn 1, start expanding from turn two. This guy can take on normal indy concentrations just fine. Your philosophers research alteration which give the FL the buffs he needs to take on tougher indies while you also expand with slingers/chariots.

Once expansion is done the FL really shines. He can forge some really useful stuff for arco. Cheap rings and really cheap staffs of elemental mastery mean you can get oriads and mystics up to casting any elemental spell. I particularly liked mobile orieds with SoEM and RoW dropping first round Fog Warriors/Wrathful Skies/Rain of Stones/Army of Lead/Gold depending on what I was facing. Crystal Shields instead of SoEM if you want a staff of storms along. All this can be done really cheaply with the forgelord. If they bring lightning immunity it is not hard at all to reach firestorm, heat from hell, grip of winter, or other big elemental battlefield enchantments. Even with Drain you have great research, particularly if you use skeptics to create a neutral research province, so I think you have a good chance to get to artifacts first, and your forgelord can forge almost all of them dirt cheap (I did this in the game I won). I really like to build up icarids in my forts, they are weak, but can fly. Once you are dropping Fog Warriors and Army of Gold in every fight what really starts to matter is their mobility.

Of course, a lot of this can be done with communions, but they are really unwieldy, so having cheap rings and staffs to boost levels makes you a lot more flexible. It is particularly handy to have an independent oriad along with the communion to first-round fog warriors or army of lead/gold incase they try to kill a big communion with rain of stones or firestorm.

No death makes thugging hard. I took away a Necromancer site from an enemy in my game which made it not too hard to get into death with rings already forged, but before that I made do with sleepers, golems and oriads. In retrospect with all my savings from forging I probably could have gotten some of the elemental royalty but I always assume they are already gone.....

With elemental boosters you are in reach to cast all of the big gem-gen globals. I found EBDW with my pretender particularly useful.

Of course, this win was against some pretty noobish players, so probably doesn't mean much, but I think it is fun to at least think about a pretender who can both expand and be an awesome forging machine mid-game in contrast to Baalz' bull (which has its own advantages).

[Illuminated One]

Yeah, the forge lord is really my fav.

An interesting twist would be to take him with death 4. Does get you into death, and you're forging skull helmets for 6 gems.
But I have no death mages for the boosters...
Yeah, but you have recruit anywhere flying/stealth commanders which will only cast the item spell raise skeletons. You can easily get quickness which lets you cast the spell twice. One of these guys can take strong PD on his own, combine them for a massive army out of nowhere.
Oh, and when you exchange the skull helmets for life drain standards on some of them good riddance enemy sc.

[Baalz]

Oh yeah, I love me some forge lord. I find when I play one though at a certain point its hard to justify using him for anything other than forging rings of wizardry (for 17S I think?) and crystal shields, which makes the opportunity cost of sticking other paths on him high. For dropping big combat spells crystal shields are often better than elemental staffs for you (cheaper, leaves a hand free). Even once you've got a good stock of RoW yourself you can usually trade them for a massive profit - even alchemizing. Just my experience using the forge lord...I have a hard time really leveraging extra paths.

Oooh, I've also been burned too often to take strong death + strong misfortune. Completely unscientific and antectdotal, but it seems like in my testing d3/m3 cripples you in year one around 25% of the time. D2/M2 is probably not that far off.

[Foodstamp]

Yay another Baalz guide. The one you wrote recently on MA Oceania inspired me to pick the game up once again after months of playing other stuff. I am about to wrap that game up, so I will definitely try this one next. Thanks for your efforts!

[Alpine Joe]

Oh yeah, I love me some forge lord. I find when I play one though at a certain point its hard to justify using him for anything other than forging rings of wizardry (for 17S I think?) and crystal shields, which makes the opportunity cost of sticking other paths on him high. For dropping big combat spells crystal shields are often better than elemental staffs for you (cheaper, leaves a hand free). Even once you've got a good stock of RoW yourself you can usually trade them for a massive profit - even alchemizing. Just my experience using the forge lord...I have a hard time really leveraging extra paths.

Oooh, I've also been burned too often to take strong death + strong misfortune. Completely unscientific and antectdotal, but it seems like in my testing d3/m3 cripples you in year one around 25% of the time. D2/M2 is probably not that far off.


I should clarify that the D in this case represents Drain. I have also had tragic experiences with death (3 half-pop plague events on turns 2,3, and 5 in my cap, with luck 3! in mists of time) and pretty much never take it anymore, especially not with misfortune. Also with mystics being such a good recruit-anywhere, I wouldn't want to tank the income hit from death. Drain is okay with arco as you still have good research and can set up a neutral research province.

Air on the FL is optional of course, but lets him cast air shield early (vital for soloing early indies), and is also really useful for affording the multiple staves of storms I find i need all over the place in the endgame.

SoEM also let you get access to any elemental ritual. Even with RoW and earth boots, you still need SoEM to cast earth attack, for example, a ritual I am probably too addicted too. Also the gem gen globals which you can opportunistically grab. Lastly, A/F combo lets you forge the magic lamp, and the Djinn is great to have access to as Arco (this is just personal preference, I love the Djinn!)

[aaminoff]

I suppose I should post this in a general dominion-push thread, oh well.

For purposes of pushing dominion, is Dom9 + 5 temples the same as Dom10? If you have Dom10, do additional temples not help you at all? (I mean other than generating the temple checks).

- Alex

[Torin]

its almost the same 90% vs 100%. But the reason behind 10 is better awe to your awake expander.
To the purpose of dominion expand 10 is too much.

Forge lord is too good in CBM i guess. I didnt take it for my current EA Acro game however.

With a polarized nature this nation has poor troop choice and very nice commanders. If it had spies and powerful priests then it would be close to 100% in terms of commander usefulness.

sceptics are cheap in cbm but will ignite your neighbours when found. Better use on the side your enemies are.

[Dimaz]

Forge Lord with his hammer forges RoW for 13 s and with ordinary hammer for 17, and also forges hammers for 3 e. It's too much I think, currently it's hard to find better pretender aimed for mid/lategame effectiveness.

[Viajero]

Just read the guide and have a quick question regqrding Oreiads.

They seem indeed to be a very strong unit, except for a detail that is bugging me no end as I prepare to play this nation in a multi era game:

Isn't the 10 HP a big problem for all the strategies discussed in the guide? Stoneskin and mistform can only help so much... it only sufices 2 lucky hits (1HP by mistform plus another hit) to wipe out much more than just 10HP... not sure personal regeneration helps a bit when you only have 10 HP. Has anyone actually used Oreiads as intended in this guide re Combat and managed to have them survive for long?

[thejeff]

I'm no expert, but the low hp is a problem and you will lose Oreiads because of it. They're very nice but fragile.

If the mistform pops, she's basically dead. The regen is to keep the 1 hp that gets through mistform from adding up.

[rdonj]

Mistform is only negated if hit by a magic weapon, or a particularly hard hit. As long as the oreiad avoids trying to solo thugs she should be fine.

[thejeff]

And avoid those nations that get magic weapons on recruitables (or even PD?). Caelum and Atlantis jump to mind in the early age. There are probably others.

[rdonj]

TNN gets them on the cap only sacreds. Hmm... I can't think of any others offhand.

[Ferrosol]

Hinnom and Ashdod get magic weapons iirc. Not sure about gath though.

[Viajero]

Mistform is only negated if hit by a magic weapon, or a particularly hard hit. As long as the oreiad avoids trying to solo thugs she should be fine.

The "particularly hard" hit, when it comes to 10 HP, represents 2.5 HP of dammage (25% of total HP as per the mistform definition...) :rolleyes: so no diference at all...

So, I wonder if anyone has used them as described in the guide...: script, stoneskin, mistform, resist lightining etc and let her alone thugging?

[thejeff]

I haven't used them extensively, but Sidhe Lords should have the same problem (maybe a couple more hp, but not enough to change the equation).
I've definitely seen them take a good number of hits without breaking the mistform. If it only needs 3-4 hp that seems unlikely.
And mistform on an actual high hp SC should be almost unbreakable without magic weapons, but I've seen them lose it too.

Are you sure about that definition?

[Deathjester]

I've tried it, and it works great. The main thing is the awe though. With awe +5 almost no hits get through, and they very seldom pop the mistform. She can script "air shield" as well. Against anything except high morale giants, undead and tramplers, she is near invincible.

[Viajero]

I've tried it, and it works great. The main thing is the awe though. With awe +5 almost no hits get through, and they very seldom pop the mistform. She can script "air shield" as well. Against anything except high morale giants, undead and tramplers, she is near invincible.

Yeah, the awe is true enough. Still... I do not know why but I feel some reluctance to have a 400 gold, fully kitted 10 HP ubermage melleeing at the front lines...

[DeathDaemon]

I did use them, and they worked really well in groups of three. I had to make a couple tweaks:

forge ring of lightning resist - my bodyguards weren't keeping enough cavalry, wolves, flying, etc off the mages to prevent casting
issue with cold - I lost a few to cold auras because of stoneskin
for revig - I used boots of messenger on E2, and earth boots + amu of resilience for E1 so I could cast summon earthpower w/o gems.

[Verjigorm]

I didn't like the "Oriead Thug" concept either for several reasons:

1. Orieads only have 10hp, so even with all of their protections up, they still get killed frequently by a single lucky hit.

2. Awe is nice, yes, but it can be countered easily by berserk units. Orieads, if left to their own devices rather than being scripted to attack, will spam Stream of Life until units get in range of Shockwave. One Berserk unit made in this way will utterly ignore the Awe aura.

3. Mistform is countered by magic weapons.

A 400gp mage that has easy access to reinvigoration and items thereof can cast a lot of battle magic. Is it really worthwhile to take such a unit and have it run into melee? I certainly don't like seeing an Oriead surrounded by a swarm of units. Against indie units, fine, they do quite well, but not against an enemy player's army.

Why would I want the Orieads (whose numbers are rather limited) to fight armies when I could use them to assassinate commanders? Their thugging ability is provable, but against a great host, they are always endangered. Why not use their power against a smaller force of usually a single mage or commander, or at most such a commander and 10 body guards?

[llamabeast]

The "particularly hard" hit, when it comes to 10 HP, represents 2.5 HP of dammage (25% of total HP as per the mistform definition...) so no diference at all...

I think mistform is broken by 25 damage, not 25% of hp.

[chrispedersen]

I didn't like the "Oriead Thug" concept either for several reasons:

1. Orieads only have 10hp, so even with all of their protections up, they still get killed frequently by a single lucky hit.

2. Awe is nice, yes, but it can be countered easily by berserk units. Orieads, if left to their own devices rather than being scripted to attack, will spam Stream of Life until units get in range of Shockwave. One Berserk unit made in this way will utterly ignore the Awe aura.

3. Mistform is countered by magic weapons.

A 400gp mage that has easy access to reinvigoration and items thereof can cast a lot of battle magic. Is it really worthwhile to take such a unit and have it run into melee? I certainly don't like seeing an Oriead surrounded by a swarm of units. Against indie units, fine, they do quite well, but not against an enemy player's army.

Why would I want the Orieads (whose numbers are rather limited) to fight armies when I could use them to assassinate commanders? Their thugging ability is provable, but against a great host, they are always endangered. Why not use their power against a smaller force of usually a single mage or commander, or at most such a commander and 10 body guards?


I don't use oreo thugs much, but assassination is a losing game.

[Soyweiser]

I don't use oreo thugs much, but assassination is a losing game.

Why? With access to a nice thug, and a spirit helm. It works often.

[Viajero]

The "particularly hard" hit, when it comes to 10 HP, represents 2.5 HP of dammage (25% of total HP as per the mistform definition...) so no diference at all...

I think mistform is broken by 25 damage, not 25% of hp.

Thanks for the correction. I guess the Wiki definition got me quite confused as it shows also the >25%HP in the list: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mistform

[chrispedersen]

Fundamentally, it loses due to cost/return.

It costs too many actions to assassinate.
To concquer an indy you will have to assassinate 3 commanders.

To conquer an opponent you will have to stealth assassins. Which will take one or more turns, usually and runs a risk of detection. Assassinations also frequently fail.

Assassins pay a 'premium' usually for the stealth ability, and roughly speaking are inferior to equivalent thugs without.

So the extra turns - stealthy, or assassinating are the costs.

The return problem is this: The average mage, thug or SC has the opportunity (and will usually succeed if winning the fight) of killing *multiple* enemy troops and/or mages/SCs.

The 'return' on the action is therefore much higher than an assassinations possible death of an opponent.

Toss in the fact that the chances to score loot are lower too.

I'm *not* saying a well timed assassination, or surprise stealth of a key retreat province can't be an incredibly viable tool.

But merely that generally speaking much less so than other options.

[thejeff]

I don't use oreo thugs much, but assassination is a losing game.

Why? With access to a nice thug, and a spirit helm. It works often.

Because it's not worth the time and effort.

Even if you succeed, you're likely to spend your time killing indy commanders.

And you have to keep moving, or they'll patrol with a force designed to kill you. Since they know where you are and how
you're geared & scripted.

When you could be raiding, taking provinces and sneaking away before you can be attacked.

Not that assassination doesn't have niche uses. Multiple assassins on an unprepared target can be effective. Assassins can kill commanders in an attacking army to split it. But not as a main use for 400gp cap-only mages.

[Baalz]

I've used this strategy verbatim, I'm a bit surprised how many people are dismissing it without even trying it. The ultimate answer is it works very well (in most situations), just try it. There are several people commenting that it worked well for them, and near as I can tell the people saying it doesn't work are speaking from a (flawed) completely theoretical point of view. For a bit more of a technical discussion...

As I discussed in my thug guide, mistform is a game changer spell as to what can thug. Magic weapons are a no-no, but theres plenty of situations where that's nothing you need to worry about when you're talking about cloud trapeze/stealthy guys that can dictate when they fight. Excepting magic weapons, once you get any sort of protection 25 point damage blows just doesn't happen so you've only got a 1% chance of mistform popping each time you get hit. Awe/vine shields trigger before defense (easy access to vine shields, no reason not to double dip), so if you've only got a couple people actually swinging at you each round, even a fair defense will counter most of them and against most foes you're looking at getting hit in the rough ballpark of a couple times per round. When you're talking about having a 20+ protection (iron /bark skin on top of armor) most of the times you're hit don't do damage (no chance to pop mistform). Again, just try it. Orieads with any cheap armor and mistform will only take roughly 1 damage every round even against pretty tough opponents. With regen (and reinvig) they just can't be taken down by regular troops - a pretty solid definition of a thug. With nicer equipment I'm not exaggerating that they can clear whole armies if the army is not fielding anti-SC strats (I've done it more than once in MP games) - a pretty solid definition of a SC. Magic weapons or mindless troops are easy thug counters for many thugs, but against "normal" troops - even pretty good ones the Oriead will clean up. Being able to pick up 100% elemental immunity to whatever seems appropriate cuts down a good bit on magic weapons you need to worry about.

BTW, even if you get unlucky and mistform pops from that 1% you're still pretty solid against plenty of troops with a 25+ protection, good defense, awe, vine shield and regen.

[Verjigorm]

Oh, believe me, I didn't whiz on your Cheerios until after I had attempted it. Too many 400g units went down the toilet for my tastes. I decided to go the standard route of kitting up Sleepers. I didn't find the strategy wholly ineffective, especially wrt indies, but I didn't like the Oriead's loss rate versus players. All of the items I put on my list of objections are observations, not hypotheses.

As for assassinations, I like to assassinate enemy encampments besieging castles. Drop in several Oriead thugs and then "Massassinate" their commander group. Combination with Dark Skies increases the probability of seduction.

[chrispedersen]

Yes, now that is something I completely agree with.

I *love* wrathful skies, and I *love* assassinating when sieged.

[Viajero]

I've used this strategy verbatim, I'm a bit surprised how many people are dismissing it without even trying it. The ultimate answer is it works very well (in most situations), just try it.

In my case, I am going to definitely try it! Mistform, stoneskin and the rest notwithstanding I'm just a bit worried about those 10 HP for a 400 gold, cap only, fully kitted etc unit;) In addition to smart play and skills one has to perform a sort of a Leap of Faith to get there I guess.. :D

[Viajero]

Quick one the recommended pretender in the guide:

My game is going to be a "non standard" Indies at level 7. I made some tests with the pretender and scales recommended here but even fighting with the easy indies, as recommended, survivability of the Bull was borderline in the early game, and the slightest mistake in province selection for attack could easily end up ina dead bull...

So I tweaked a little bit the proposed pretender/scales so to get dominion 9, with awe, at the expense of the luck scale, to neutral (or -1, not really sure as away from game as I type). Although still need to be very carefull when selecting indie provinces to attack early game this pretender seems to have a higher resilience.

Any ideas/opinions on the above?

[chrispedersen]

Yep, I like my play of arco much better. = )

[Ferrosol]

Quick one the recommended pretender in the guide:

My game is going to be a "non standard" Indies at level 7. I made some tests with the pretender and scales recommended here but even fighting with the easy indies, as recommended, survivability of the Bull was borderline in the early game, and the slightest mistake in province selection for attack could easily end up ina dead bull...

So I tweaked a little bit the proposed pretender/scales so to get dominion 9, with awe, at the expense of the luck scale, to neutral (or -1, not really sure as away from game as I type). Although still need to be very carefull when selecting indie provinces to attack early game this pretender seems to have a higher resilience.

Any ideas/opinions on the above?

i find the bull way to fragile for expansion, I prefer to take a Cyclops myself you can get a Dom9 E6 cyclops O3S3Mis2M1 and he will be able to take on anything short of heavy cavalry especially if you can give him a weapon of some sort.

[chrispedersen]

Lord of rebirth. Gives you death access, and after you research alteration makes a perfectly fine Sc.

[Ferrosol]

Lord of rebirth. Gives you death access, and after you research alteration makes a perfectly fine Sc.

If you take him sleeping then sure he is a decent expander. but that still leaves the question of what do you use for your year one expansion?

[ano]

Ferrosol
You'll probably be surprised but I managed to overexpand W9S9 TC played by a good player with... guess what? Peltasts and a PoD. It was vanilla game with Indies 5. Without a PoD you can still expand with peltasts very well and rapidly research Alt with Philosophers so that your dormant god is able to go killing the turn he awakes. It is perfectly doable especially if you consider that you'll have a lot of money for mercs because philosophers are so cheap.
So peltasts + mercs is the answer. The trick is that peltast is an absolutely decent unit against EA indies who are basically a lot weaker than in MA. You will lose them and have to replenish your ranks but it IS doable. Just leave really heavy provinces for your pretender and do some testing before each attack.
I think I failed only once or twice against indies with peltasts in that game at all and it was against barbarians (should've tested better)

And once you have enough resources, you may switch to chariot archers that have a good second form just in case.

[chrispedersen]

Lord of rebirth. Gives you death access, and after you research alteration makes a perfectly fine Sc.

If you take him sleeping then sure he is a decent expander. but that still leaves the question of what do you use for your year one expansion?

I'd like to echo ano's comments. I believe I was the first one - but I absolutely say the *best* unit in arco's repetoire is by far the chariot archers.

I cannot begin to say how good these units are. Ok, they aren't jag warriors. But they are hands down a great unit. Whats not to like with a cheap trampling unit with two forms? And with the special targeting options that archers get?

Now, as for sleeping or awake. A lot of people like the PoD - and he's a perfectly ok choice. However I like the Lord of Rebirth better. He generates an insane amount of gems, and provides fast access for dwarf hammers, and death path access.

As for 'you can't use him awake..'

you have to be careful with him. However, once you get earth meld you're golden. earth meld is 100 research points. And if you go with a proper arco build, each researcher is 10-12 rp (going from memory). Assuming its 10 this means that you have
100 rp on turn 5.


The question therefore becomes is 4 turns of expansion with your pretender in year one, worth the sacrifice in design points.

Personally, I can't think of anything else to do with the points, so I usually answer yes.

Now like I said, you need to be careful with him. you have to script something like:

Stoneskin, earthmeld, earthmeld, earthmeld, earthmeld. If you dont' script the earth meld.. he'll cast stupid stones.. and die.

So you accompany him with lots of cheap troops.. cardaces, or even slingers. Chariot archers.

You have to move him forward, or back, depending on the opposition he's facing. You want him close enough to have good precision on the meld, and far enough back he doesn't get mobbed.

But as I just scripted.. he binds up any opposing troops, and they run over them.

[thejeff]

But that's not pretender expansion. That's pretender & lots of troops expansion. Which means you're not building other expansion parties.
The point of an awake SC is to add to expansion with your regular troops, not to replace it or back them up.
I'm not a EA Arco expert, so I don't know how their national troops do at indy clearing, but do you really get enough advantage from using an awake pretender like that to cover the 150 design points? Especially when you take less provinces with your troops, because some are being sent with the pretender, and then probably reinforced since you're using cheap ones.

On another note, I doubt the "special targeting options that archers get" carry over once they switch forms and charge into melee. I believe they switch to attack closest. On second thought, what special targeting options? The only difference between the "fire" and "attack" targets is that "fire" lacks a "rearmost" target. What's the advantage?

[Ferrosol]

EA Arco can expand reasonably well without an SC true. Although I would argue that SC pretender offers the best "bang for your buck" you can get. I would further point out that if you intend to rely on chariots to expand with (which I agree are excellent btw) you need an awake SC who can attack on Turn 2 to secure the resources you need (especially if you go the typical sloth build for Philosophers). As such I would argue that as the Lord of Rebirth is not capable of turn 2 expansion due to its flimsy Armour and non existent damage. Precisely which awake SC you take is up to you but I would argue that the Cyclops is probably the single most effective SC Pretender in the game.

[Verjigorm]

I use an immortal for an early expander, preferring the Phoenix, since I already have good magical diversity. The Master Lich is my #2, but he isn't as capable of early expansion. The first two provinces taken with the Phoenix may take 2-3 turns each until you get Evocation Level 1, but you can expand with chariots anyway, and 1.5 provinces per turn is better than 1 province per turn.


I like the immortals because I don't have to worry about them getting killed, and even if they get horror marked beyond any reason (to the point where they get a horror attack every round), they can still act as a capitol mage (since the perpetual horror attacks generally confine him to center). You can always attack with the Pretender, of course, via Teleport/Trapeze/etc. or within their movement radius (which is why I love the phoenix) but the horror attack will always send them back home. You rarely want to put equipment on an immortal except for ritual magic anyway (Exception: lich), so that's immaterial except that the horror marked pretender can't use boosters without losing them to the horror attacks, so your ritual options become a bit more confined.

[chrispedersen]

But that's not pretender expansion. That's pretender & lots of troops expansion. Which means you're not building other expansion parties.
The point of an awake SC is to add to expansion with your regular troops, not to replace it or back them up.
I'm not a EA Arco expert, so I don't know how their national troops do at indy clearing, but do you really get enough advantage from using an awake pretender like that to cover the 150 design points? Especially when you take less provinces with your troops, because some are being sent with the pretender, and then probably reinforced since you're using cheap ones.

On another note, I doubt the "special targeting options that archers get" carry over once they switch forms and charge into melee. I believe they switch to attack closest. On second thought, what special targeting options? The only difference between the "fire" and "attack" targets is that "fire" lacks a "rearmost" target. What's the advantage?

Regardless of whether you want to call it SC or SC+troops expansion, the difference is very strong. The SC will easily lets you take+4 territories the first year. and more like +8 the second.

As for the design points - you can argue it either way. As I indicated. As for the the chariot archers, yes, if you order them to fire - the order converts when they switch to melee. And vice versa. If you order them to Hold and attack rearmost - they will advance to bow range and fire.

[chrispedersen]

I use an immortal for an early expander, preferring the Phoenix, since I already have good magical diversity. The Master Lich is my #2, but he isn't as capable of early expansion. The first two provinces taken with the Phoenix may take 2-3 turns each until you get Evocation Level 1, but you can expand with chariots anyway, and 1.5 provinces per turn is better than 1 province per turn.


I like the immortals because I don't have to worry about them getting killed, and even if they get horror marked beyond any reason (to the point where they get a horror attack every round), they can still act as a capitol mage (since the perpetual horror attacks generally confine him to center). You can always attack with the Pretender, of course, via Teleport/Trapeze/etc. or within their movement radius (which is why I love the phoenix) but the horror attack will always send them back home. You rarely want to put equipment on an immortal except for ritual magic anyway (Exception: lich), so that's immaterial except that the horror marked pretender can't use boosters without losing them to the horror attacks, so your ritual options become a bit more confined.

The phoenix is one of my favorite pretenders in CBM. However, it is not especially effective for arco. The phoenix does best with a high dominion score - which wastes the effects of skeptics - or at least requires you to spend design points that sceptics otherwise mitigates.

[chrispedersen]

EA Arco can expand reasonably well without an SC true. Although I would argue that SC pretender offers the best "bang for your buck" you can get. I would further point out that if you intend to rely on chariots to expand with (which I agree are excellent btw) you need an awake SC who can attack on Turn 2 to secure the resources you need (especially if you go the typical sloth build for Philosophers). As such I would argue that as the Lord of Rebirth is not capable of turn 2 expansion due to its flimsy Armour and non existent damage. Precisely which awake SC you take is up to you but I would argue that the Cyclops is probably the single most effective SC Pretender in the game.

Under CBM Cyclops is 125 points, and needs awe to safely expand early. That is 295 points more than the lord of rebirth.

The lord of rebirth gets you into death, the cyclops does not. Arco needs the alteration school anyway for Oreos. Finally, the proof is in the pudding. I have much more luck with Rebirth than I do with Cyclops = )

[Verjigorm]

The phoenix is one of my favorite pretenders in CBM. However, it is not especially effective for arco. The phoenix does best with a high dominion score - which wastes the effects of skeptics - or at least requires you to spend design points that sceptics otherwise mitigates.

Well, the strategy for using skeptics is exactly the opposite when using an immortal pretender.

When you use an immortal, you want wide dominion so he can travel, thus you use your Skeptics to collapse dominion walls in advance of preachers and your stealthy flying prophet. You use them to expand rather than contain your dominion. There are two aspects to dominion sculpting: containment and expansion.

When assaulting a castle, I like to collapse dominion in the province and then preach my own into it so that my pretender can participate in the assault. This also has the added benefit of preventing any immortal units inside (vampires) from resurrecting. Skeptics are very powerful heretics (level 3), so they have a 90% base chance of nullifying a candle which means they are effective both at containing bad scales and rapidly enabling the encroachment of your dominion on others. You can work down the candles on a target province long before your preaching force arrives to mop up the mess.


Additionally, when used in this way, skeptics function as a primary scout force rather than hanging about in your own lands.

[chrispedersen]

I don't use skeptics to contain my dominion. Effectiveness of skeptics to remove candles depends on the number of candles in the province.

[thejeff]

Regardless of whether you want to call it SC or SC+troops expansion, the difference is very strong. The SC will easily lets you take+4 territories the first year. and more like +8 the second.

As for the design points - you can argue it either way. As I indicated. As for the the chariot archers, yes, if you order them to fire - the order converts when they switch to melee. And vice versa. If you order them to Hold and attack rearmost - they will advance to bow range and fire.

You must be playing on big maps if you expect to get 8+ provinces with a pretender in the second year. Aren't you usually more constrained by other players by then than by expansion parties?

I'll have to experiment with the chariot archers. I'd thought that archers on hold and attack would fire if they were in range, but not advance the first 2 turns. Then attack without firing.

[Verjigorm]

I'm aware that candle removal is dependent upon the number of candles.

I recruit chariot archers in the beginning because they have a lower resource cost. Putting them on hold and attack causes them to fire arrow volleys for 2 turns and then advance and trample.

After I have sufficient resources, I switch to regular chariots since they have a lower cost and upkeep.


If you don't use skeptics to contain your dominion, then what does this mean?
The phoenix is one of my favorite pretenders in CBM. However, it is not especially effective for arco. The phoenix does best with a high dominion score - which wastes the effects of skeptics - or at least requires you to spend design points that sceptics otherwise mitigates.


Having high dominion makes dominion spread take a little longer, and it means that once you get dominion into a province you can make it very difficult to remove it. I like having high dominion with skeptics, but if you just take the Phoenix' base dominion, her cheap 50 point design point cost is still worthwhile considering the immortality and free Phoenix Pyre.

[chrispedersen]

having high dominion does not make dominion spread take longer.

The chance that dominoin stays in province is higher; but the number and effectiveness of temple checks is greater. The latter outweighs the former.

[Gregstrom]

The number of temple checks is greater? How so?

[chrispedersen]

The number of temple checks is greater? How so?

Sorry.. brain about 6 steps ahead. The number of temple checks is exactly the same, the effectiveness is increased.

I was thinking about the awake pretenders extra dominion increases.. (vs a sleeping pretender) but its not germane.

[Horst F. JENS]

every time i read one of your guides i must play dom3...again :-)

[chrispedersen]

Well good, keep playing Jens.. we need more players

[aaminoff]

I have lost an embarrassing number of Oreiads in my current MP game. (This is the one where I'm using a Virtue Dom10 pretender). Here are some of the ways:

I tried to be cute and combine a shock resist item (or was it Resist Elements?), Ironskin, and Resist Lighting. Somehow the math worked out that I was only 75% shock resistant. This was when I learned that resistance is a % chance to avoid the attack entirely rather than damage reduction. So eventually she killed herself with a shock wave.

Fatigue was occasionally a problem. I really don't understand why she persisted in swinging her frost brand instead of using shockwave when only at 60 or so fatigue.

Ulm's PD and troops are just that good. High enough morale, attack skill, and strength to produce enough 1-pt hits that mistform pops on a 1% per hit chance. This is probably the most common failure mode.

forgetting to script correctly or at all

trying to seduce, failing, losing the assassination battle. Once it was skellyspam, another time I was facing something really big.

As I am thinking back, I just realized something. I was scripting stoneskin, mistform, strength of gaia. The point of Str of Gaia being +nature and +regen. However, does the barkskin effect of Str of Gaia over-ride stoneskin? I don't think I have a recent battle to view to check this. Argh.

All in all, the thing about Oreiad thugs is that they are fiddly. My first ever MP game I was Helheim. I put firebrands & golden shields on Vanjarls and CTd them all over, and I was amazed at how well it worked. Whereas Oreiads I have managed to screw up in multiple ways. So I think an experienced player can make Oreiad thugs work, but newbs should think twice. Also, Vanjarls are recruit anywhere, and cheaper than Oreiads.

[chrispedersen]

Exactly my criticisms of oreos.

They are a great unit but miscast and only occassionally userful as thugs.

[thejeff]

I'm not sure I buy resistance being a % chance. Are you sure you weren't just getting bad open ended rolls combined with critical hits due to fatigue.

A mage in melee with opponents will only cast spells half the time. It has nothing to do with fatigue.

[aaminoff]

> I'm not sure I buy resistance being a % chance. Are you sure you weren't just getting bad open ended rolls combined with critical hits due to fatigue.

The case of the self-inflicted lightning strike was quite dramatic. Here we are, smacking down shockwave, and then oops, we just did 11 points of damage to ourselves with our own shockwave. Goodbye!

> A mage in melee with opponents will only cast spells half the time. It has nothing to do with fatigue.

Right, of course. I get it now.

[Squirrelloid]

aaminoff is right in one thing. %reduction vs. %avoid should be really easy to tell. In particular, %reduction would show up small amounts of lightning damage every time you were in the AoE, but %avoid would show no damage most of the time and then *bam* lots of damage. Word to the wise, don't use ironskin with shockwave. =)

[Squirrelloid]

EA Arco can expand reasonably well without an SC true. Although I would argue that SC pretender offers the best "bang for your buck" you can get. I would further point out that if you intend to rely on chariots to expand with (which I agree are excellent btw) you need an awake SC who can attack on Turn 2 to secure the resources you need (especially if you go the typical sloth build for Philosophers). As such I would argue that as the Lord of Rebirth is not capable of turn 2 expansion due to its flimsy Armour and non existent damage. Precisely which awake SC you take is up to you but I would argue that the Cyclops is probably the single most effective SC Pretender in the game.

Under CBM Cyclops is 125 points, and needs awe to safely expand early. That is 295 points more than the lord of rebirth.

An E9 cyclops does not need awe to expand turn 2. Try it before you claim it doesn't work.

That said, i think awake SCs are the single worst use of points in an MP game. They rarely help cover holes a nation has, and they do little or nothing to set you up for the end-game or even mid-game. And killing a single unit really isn't that hard by early midgame, which means your SC pretender gets relegated to lab duty where he's not very good.

Also, doing really well early tends to get you ganked by experienced players.

So unless you absolutely need the awake SC to cover a really weak expansion game, I'd go with something else. Something that will retain utility all game long, or at least most of it. Burning 150pts for the privilege of awake + points for the chassis + dominion necessary is a lot to pay for a pretender whose job is basically done by the end of year 1, mid year 2 at the latest.

[rdonj]

I have lost an embarrassing number of Oreiads in my current MP game. (This is the one where I'm using a Virtue Dom10 pretender). Here are some of the ways:

I tried to be cute and combine a shock resist item (or was it Resist Elements?), Ironskin, and Resist Lighting. Somehow the math worked out that I was only 75% shock resistant. This was when I learned that resistance is a % chance to avoid the attack entirely rather than damage reduction. So eventually she killed herself with a shock wave.

Fatigue was occasionally a problem. I really don't understand why she persisted in swinging her frost brand instead of using shockwave when only at 60 or so fatigue.

Ulm's PD and troops are just that good. High enough morale, attack skill, and strength to produce enough 1-pt hits that mistform pops on a 1% per hit chance. This is probably the most common failure mode.

forgetting to script correctly or at all

trying to seduce, failing, losing the assassination battle. Once it was skellyspam, another time I was facing something really big.

As I am thinking back, I just realized something. I was scripting stoneskin, mistform, strength of gaia. The point of Str of Gaia being +nature and +regen. However, does the barkskin effect of Str of Gaia over-ride stoneskin? I don't think I have a recent battle to view to check this. Argh.

All in all, the thing about Oreiad thugs is that they are fiddly. My first ever MP game I was Helheim. I put firebrands & golden shields on Vanjarls and CTd them all over, and I was amazed at how well it worked. Whereas Oreiads I have managed to screw up in multiple ways. So I think an experienced player can make Oreiad thugs work, but newbs should think twice. Also, Vanjarls are recruit anywhere, and cheaper than Oreiads.

They are building up too much fatigue. Try to keep it down to more manageable levels like the 10-20 range or the mistform becomes a LOT easier to pop. If you start getting much past 40, you become ridiculously vulnerable to critical strikes making it only a matter of time before something goes wrong. Also what does the gear look like? How much +reinvig do they have? What sort of shield? Vine or eye shields are probably your best bet. And eye shields should work extremely well on ulm.

Skelly spam *will* eat oreiads alive, though. They will never be able to kill all the skeletons, so they'll never kill the death mage. At best this means a rout.

[Baalz]

[QUOTE=aaminoff;750616]
Skelly spam *will* eat oreiads alive, though. They will never be able to kill all the skeletons, so they'll never kill the death mage. At best this means a rout.

Nah, you can eat them up just fine if you're prepared for it.

Option 1: vine shield + fire brand + thug gear/script and you can chew through skellies all day long until the enemy mage passes out. You just can't count on your awe obviously.

Option 2: Earth boots/random. Summon earth elemental. That's a 1 gem (2 gems if your mage is level 2E) earth attack that'll squishify a fairly arbitrary amount of skellies.

Option 3: No equipment summon air elemental. This one is a bit riskier but can certainly be plenty effective depending on who you're attacking.

Option 4: (depending on your opponent) use some blockers then spells that don't effect undead. Swarm, poison cloud, poison cloud. By the time the undead

[thejeff]

aaminoff is right in one thing. %reduction vs. %avoid should be really easy to tell. In particular, %reduction would show up small amounts of lightning damage every time you were in the AoE, but %avoid would show no damage most of the time and then *bam* lots of damage.


I just played around with this a little with Eagle Kings modded to 75% SR. They seemed to take more damage than I would expect with 75% resistance, but they also had fatigue most of the time. More importantly, I never saw one in the AoE not take some damage.

I'm sticking with the assumption that resistances are %reduction not %avoid.

[chrispedersen]

EA Arco can expand reasonably well without an SC true. Although I would argue that SC pretender offers the best "bang for your buck" you can get. I would further point out that if you intend to rely on chariots to expand with (which I agree are excellent btw) you need an awake SC who can attack on Turn 2 to secure the resources you need (especially if you go the typical sloth build for Philosophers). As such I would argue that as the Lord of Rebirth is not capable of turn 2 expansion due to its flimsy Armour and non existent damage. Precisely which awake SC you take is up to you but I would argue that the Cyclops is probably the single most effective SC Pretender in the game.

Under CBM Cyclops is 125 points, and needs awe to safely expand early. That is 295 points more than the lord of rebirth.

An E9 cyclops does not need awe to expand turn 2. Try it before you claim it doesn't work.

I have tried it - many times. Teach your mom to suck eggs =P.
There are a *lot* of indies that will gank a cyclops. Ichies, bandits, crossbows, cav, nightmares, awakened vines, air masters, mandragora.... to name a few.

[Verjigorm]

I've tried the standard SC's. The Cyclops is a weak choice for EA Arcoscephale. They already have significant earth power and Earth mages do not stand in as much need of an Earth blessing.

Cyclops' paths cost too much to make him useful in diversifying magic, and even if you still want the Earth blessing, you can take the Master Druid and get a dual bless with nature cheaper than you ever could with the Cyclops and he allows better magical diversity, even though you don't really need it for anything besides Death which you could do nicely using the Lord of Rebirth who, in CBM, will provide you with an excellent additional gem supply in exchange for the points and costs slightly less. In Vanilla, I doubt he's worth the 125 cost.

I prefer Immortals (especially Phoenix for early expansion), Rainbows (for site searches and easy access to all paths), and Big Astral--I found that a Sphinx with Death magic like this one (CBM) can make for interesting late game strategies.

Sphinx (Body 159, 500 hits)
Magic: Earth 6 Astral 10 Death 6
Dominion 5
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 2
Imprisoned

You want Thaum-8 or better by the time he escapes so he can teleport.

Stygian Paths to your enemies capitol and supply him with gems. He just casts a lot of Thaumaturgy spells:

Master Enslave
Undead Mastery
Soul Drain
Wither Bones
Burden of Time (if you plan to go with this strategy, of course, you'd want to take neutral or production scales, magic 1 or 3 and not get too many Philosophers, and I've never tried using BoT with Arco, but Orieads are relatively resistant to BoT)

You also get Charm on your Orieads which is one of the things they're great for, and access to the very useful Gale Gate, Imprint Souls, etc...

[Verjigorm]

Taking a step costs 15 death gems and 250 gold if you have to build a lab, but the Sphinx is definitely not easy to destroy especially in its own dominion.

Parking it inside a castle is a most excellent defense. Bing! 30 million tons of Astral Malevolence is now guarding your province... and no one can see it until they break down the doors and find their souls ripped out by a massive stone God.

There is one thing you should avoid, however...

The Sphinx cannot tear down a castle wall by itself, nor can it build a lab in a province with a castle. Therefore, if you teleport the Sphinx onto a castle, you need to be sure that the army that it brings along with it can tear down that castle AND storm it successfully as the Sphinx itself cannot do either of these things. Your best bet is to park the Sphinx in a province adjacent to the target castle and then use Gateway to transport in troops to siege and conquer the castle.

There are so many nifty things to do with the Sphinx in EA Arco.... I have played a bit, but haven't fully explored it's awesomeness. One thing is sure, though, I don't take the fountain anymore--The only immobile I select is the Sphinx. I have tried the Statue, and she's quite nice, but not as nice as interesting as Sphinxy. Teleporting the fountain into battle is very dangerous. It says the fountain is difficult to destroy in the description, but it's not that tough and it can't run away.

I've never encountered the "50-turn rout" problem with Sphinx... Not sure what happens, but I bet it's not good on the offense. Fortunately, his offensive movements are few and far between since he usually attacks opportunistically and then defends his landing spot from whatever might come there. If you can predict the path of your opponent's march (bridge provinces) you can set dastardly traps.

Sphinx is my favorite Late Game Astral pretender. Indestructible lovliness.

[Squirrelloid]

Under CBM Cyclops is 125 points, and needs awe to safely expand early. That is 295 points more than the lord of rebirth.

An E9 cyclops does not need awe to expand turn 2. Try it before you claim it doesn't work.

I have tried it - many times. Teach your mom to suck eggs =P.
There are a *lot* of indies that will gank a cyclops. Ichies, bandits, crossbows, cav, nightmares, awakened vines, air masters, mandragora.... to name a few.

Almost all of which you'll see coming. (The small numbers of crossbows or HC that occasionally avoid showing up in scout reports won't end you). And most of which are rare. Are there even crossbow indies in the EA? I mean, most awake SCs have things they can't handle, just don't attack those things.

And those air masters will end just about any standard expansion party or SC. So dying to them is kind of par for the course.

[chrispedersen]

Sure squirrel. But not only do you get awe with dom9, you get much better hitpoints -and therefore MUCH lower chance of a crippling affliction which ends your usage as an SC.

Anyway, we agree he isn't worth the points.

Verji, I don't think in MP play people are going to allow you to get away with an imprisoned pretender. Arco tends to get jumped...

[Squirrelloid]

Verji, I don't think in MP play people are going to allow you to get away with an imprisoned pretender. Arco tends to get jumped...

I honestly don't understand this emphasis on pretenders to defend against rushes. I defend rushes with national mages and troops all the time. Now, my EA Arco experience is pretty limited, but you have earth magic and good research, it can't possibly be that bad.

You know, i think i feel a general strategy post coming on...

[rdonj]

[QUOTE=aaminoff;750616]
Skelly spam *will* eat oreiads alive, though. They will never be able to kill all the skeletons, so they'll never kill the death mage. At best this means a rout.

Nah, you can eat them up just fine if you're prepared for it.

Option 1: vine shield + fire brand + thug gear/script and you can chew through skellies all day long until the enemy mage passes out. You just can't count on your awe obviously.

Option 2: Earth boots/random. Summon earth elemental. That's a 1 gem (2 gems if your mage is level 2E) earth attack that'll squishify a fairly arbitrary amount of skellies.

Option 3: No equipment summon air elemental. This one is a bit riskier but can certainly be plenty effective depending on who you're attacking.

Option 4: (depending on your opponent) use some blockers then spells that don't effect undead. Swarm, poison cloud, poison cloud. By the time the undead

Oops. I should have said: "Skelly spam *will* eat oreiads set to cast spells alive...". The elaboration doesn't hurt though.

[Stavis_L]

Option 4: (depending on your opponent) use some blockers then spells that don't effect undead. Swarm, poison cloud, poison cloud. By the time the undead

... by the time the undead what?!?

Oh no! It seems Baalz got eaten by a horde of zombies!

:p

[Verjigorm]

I think they can take a rush provided you don't take the standard, Sloth-3 and can actually build a good group of troops. The Sphinx I suggested above still has Sloth, but that could be exchanged out especially since I took that extra gravy point of Astral magic and I didn't touch Misfortune. Mis-2 could be exchanged for the Sloth-2 for respectable troop production.

EA Arco has some very nice units. The only reason they are ever subpar in early game is because of the Sloth scale. 17-prot Myrmidons, Flying Cavalry, Trampling Chariots? Come on... They can defend themselves.

[rdonj]

Mm... myrmidons are a bit iffy. Their insane encumbrance value makes them tricky to use effectively other than as pure arrow catchers. The flying cavalry looks awesome on paper, but it is also tricky to use effectively, because of the way flyers seperate from each other and build up fatigue super fast. But I have only ever used them against the AI. Against a human, definitely they would be much better.

The archer chariots are pretty good though. And peltasts can be surprisingly effective.

[chrispedersen]

slingers for glamour
chariot archers for (almost)everything else.

You know, it seems to me, if you're flying you shouldn't' be trampled.

[Verjigorm]

Well, I tend to use a diversified army...

Icarids are excellent anti-archer and can be quite effective against infantry as well provided you outnumber them because in large numbers, they tend to flank opponents which, for a group of archers, results in a very, very quick death.

As for the flying cavalry, if you don't have a large number of them, for some odd reason the AI tends to spread them out and you get 1 vs. 27....

[Mightypeon]

Some points I would like to review:

Under current CBM, a number of pretenders work differently, are costed differently and have slightly different synergies, even though the rough approach is still the same.

Imho, Awake Pseudo SC to kickstart expansion with a minor bless, sloth 3 and ok scales still works nice, but I would like to offer the following thoughts:
Acrosephale has access to Heretics, and, with Sloth 3, still good early research under a moderate drain scale.
Given that Drain 2 instead of Magic 1 saves a lot of points, and can be partly mitigated. Basically, one is getting 120 design points but pays significantly less in opportunity (compared to nations without heretics) for it. It can be very worthwhile to invest those in either even better scales or in an improved Pretender chassis.
Likewise, Acrosephale is quite good at mitigating Death (Healers) or Misfortune (Barbs) too, although it is not neccesarly wise to take both of them together.
In my opinion, the Forge Lord is a quite good choice for this.
In CBM, Forge Lords and White Bulls have the same base cost, but a Forge Lord needs Awe for early expanion. With the Forge Lord itself, there are a number of choices apart from E4 for the obvious bless.
Fire 4 would open Fire quite nicely, and gives a "usefull" bless to your both Oreiads and the Sacred Cavalry, although imho an N bless is neccesary for Oreiad thugging.
Some points in Astral can get very cheap access to Rings of Sorcery/Wizardy /Scullcaps etc. One could also go for 4 points of nature, even though that can get expensive.
I think that either Astral or Air are needed, since Air allows a First turn Midget Masher and Astral allows a First turn enchanted pike. The Repel from the Pike backed by Awe allows the Forge Lord to deal with non scary indies. Although the Midget Masher (+ Air Shield from the Air pick) is better in the short term. Choosing this kind of Forge Lord is not advisable under more than 5 independent Strength, as what he can solo (be aware of Wolf Tribe Warriors in addition to other early game nasty indeps) drastically depends on the indep power. However, one should not hesitate to simply back him up with some Mercs (EA Acro should have a crapton of money, we are still only recruiting Philospohers for most of year 1) or some supporting troops.

[PriestyMan]

Likewise, Acrosephale is quite good at mitigating Death (Healers)

healers dont heal old age afflictions btw

[Mightypeon]

Source?

[Anaconda]

....and, when they dont, if you manage to lower your hero's age, will them healers be able to get rid of the old age afflictions if hero's current age is under the treshold of beginning of old age?

[PriestyMan]

source is by playing the game. try it dude. and to anaconda: no

[Scaramuccia]

I've tried the prod EA arco in SP oracle s6 + great scales (you could have omfg scales with it). It looked really good. You start to mass oreiads earlier and have great troops. Should give this build a try in MP.

[Immaculate]

Given that Drain 2 instead of Magic 1 saves a lot of points, and can be partly mitigated. Basically, one is getting 120 design points but pays significantly less in opportunity (compared to nations without heretics) for it. It can be very worthwhile to invest those in either even better scales or in an improved Pretender chassis.

Huh? whats that with the first part there? Is this a change i am unaware of?

[PriestyMan]

He means that it cost 40 points to have magic 1, but you gain 80 points by taking Drain 2.

[JonBrave]

source is by playing the game. try it dude.

Don't wikipedia rules apply for posts here? ;)

[Deathblob]

source is by playing the game. try it dude.

Don't wikipedia rules apply for posts here? ;)

What's a wikipedia rule?

Anyway, clarification needed:

Healers can't heal afflictions on units with old age. The game doesn't track where the afflictions came from. They just check: are you trying to heal a unit with old age? Well, then you are out of luck. Chalice/GoH works, of course. And if you make the unit not-old any more (N path boost/B spell/TC spell) a healer can heal its afflictions.

[Colonial]

Healers can't heal afflictions on units with old age. The game doesn't track where the afflictions came from. They just check: are you trying to heal a unit with old age? Well, then you are out of luck. Chalice/GoH works, of course. And if you make the unit not-old any more (N path boost/B spell/TC spell) a healer can heal its afflictions.

Oh. Ya learn something new every day. < runs to change multiplayer file >

That does actually match my results...

[legowarrior]

So, weird to resurrect such an old thread, but with CBM making sloth harder to take, is Bazz's original strategy still viable?

[Immaculate]

I recently wrote this is the Shared AAR experience thread (link (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=48589)).


So, by this point I had tested some other arco builds, being very dissastified with the rate of expansion. I conclude that the sloth build for arco may have been viable in earlier version of the game but that the rate of income modification from the production scale is too great and impoverishes the player. Also, it greatly limits he rate of initial growth by limiting the number of troops one can hire. The strength is supposed to be that you save money by researching with philosophers instead of oreids or mystics but I would counter that with a production build you will make a lot more money because you will control way more provinces. The other end of this is that philosophers are old and you lose the research edge with nothing to show for it but dead philosophers; they cannot cast spells. If you choose to do your early research with mystics or oreids, then you can use them in battle… and you don’t lose them to old age.

All in all, I am very dissatisfied with my build but then again, I knew that it would be difficult to expand without an awake pretender and decided to proceed with it anyway. That was a mistake. If I were to do a sloth build again I would have taken an awake pretender. But more importantly, I would have taken a production build. I would be glad to hear someone argue the opposite point but that’s how I felt at this point in the game… and still do.

[legowarrior]

Thanks. Maybe if philosophers weren't capital only, there would be more interesting.... ah well.

[Immaculate]

Maybe it works with an awake pretender- like baalz said. I skipped that part and paid the price but maybe if i had followed the guide more closely...


That said, i feel the chariot archers are much stronger than the Pegasus, even with a bless- possibly not against giants but against anything they can trample, they are a stronger option. If i had to redo my arco build, i would take production 3 and expand with chariot archers and i feel i would be in a better position vis-a-vis the mid-game.