Bogarus Quick Guide
 

There has been much *****ing in respect to the power of Bogarus. Let's start with a breakdown of the mages:

* Starets. The Star, indeed, the raisin deeter of the entire nation. Much hash has been made over their low cost - they cost the same as an Augur elder, the Augur elder is quite excellent, and the Starets is better. I don't view this is a balance problem - you recruit one every turn, which is the same number you'd recruit if the cost 75gp more, and, by and large, you are going to end up spending the extra money on your dismal military.
While their low cost is not that big a deal, their high total research output (regardless of cost), *is* a big deal, and gives Bogarus the sharpest early research graph in the game, sharper even than EA Arco.
In the long run, you actually don't have a research advantage on cost anyway. These guys produce 12RP/17gp/turn, compare to an Archtheurg at 9RP/13gp/turn. Over the long haul, it's sacred researchers that really pay off.
But in the short run you've got a huge leg up, and you'll want to take advantage of it.

* Master of Names. By and large, you will recruit one of these in every non-capital fort, every turn. When you have all the science, they turn into serviceable communion slaves.

* Kalendologist. The argument can be made for these guys, but personally I'd rather have more science and take the bad events.

* Alchemist. Recruit 1 or 2 of these - they'll search for sites (only earth you get) and may perform alchemy if needed. Even at +50% alchemy is not a great idea most of the time.

* Astrapelagist. Another site searcher. The event prevention is not worth the loss of research, most of the time, BUT these guys are your best bet for cheap combat mages out of the many, many fortresses you will be building. If you're at war (and you probably are), you'll want groups of 8 who will form a communion and spam thunderstrike.

* Occultist. The final leg of your native site searchers. You can use these guys to blood hunt, or you can use five fold angels, it's probably about a wash.

Note that this gives you F1A2E1S1D1B1. Pick up a couple of trivals to find nature, and the only site you're missing is water.
This is one reason I recommend *against* aiming for the water summons. No income.

* Five fold angels. Use them as blood hunters (the unrest is bad, but the low upkeep and second point of blood magic are good), or stealth preachers, as you like it. Skopets are amusing but I wouldn't bother.

military:
Dateline: Stalingrad, 1943
* Scum, from the huts of scum. To conquer indie provinces, you will be recruiting peshti of one kind or another (I recommend the axes, so that you can kill some heavy infantry) and voi archers.
These units suck, and you don't care if they die doing their internationalist duty. When they can't conquer anything else useful, you bring them home to be patrollers. At least they're cheap.
You can give 1/3 of them axes if you really want to extend the red army joke.

* You can use the Voi infantry as skirmishers if you have the patience (scatter them around in front of your real army to soak spells and arrows), but your peshti are expendable enough that I wouldn't bother.

* The cavalry are decent and only moderately overpriced, especially the medium cav with composite bow and sword. Their great virtue is that they aren't strat move 1, so once your past the very early wars, use these guys, or tribal archers and light infantry, or something other than your SM 1 national troops.
Even these guys aren't much compared to a real army, so mainly you'll be wanting chaff who can die in droves while your communion drops thunderstrikes.

* Khlyst are stealthy. This means they are actually better than flagellants. Not worth a bless, though, imo.

Pretender Design:
You *need* a supercombatant God. If you don't have one, your opponents are not going to sit there and allow you to build up an insurmountable research lead.

This is my build, you can vary it somewhat:
Prince of Death, Awake, Domstr 10, Earth 4, Death 5, 3 Order, 3 Sloth, 3 Cold, 3 Growth, 2 Misfortune.
A few notes:
* The extra point of cold is probably going to be cancelled during summer of year 1 (when it really matters), and helps to bring the edges of your dominion to the desired cold 2 more quickly.
* Your dismal military really cries out for 3 Sloth.
* Your capital is a great city which changes the relative value of certain scales.

== Early Turns ==
1. Recruit a starets and a bunch of the archers. Send your PoD blind into the highest income-looking adjacent province (avoid forests, as dark vines can still kill him). Absolutely set him to attack - if he tries to use magic, that's bad.
Raise your TR to 150% and set your initial army to patrol. Your scout should be a prophet.
Alternately, raise your TR to 200% and have your scout sneak after your PoD, he'll build a fort on turn 2. Probably better to wait, though.

2-4. Build a starets every turn, and some scum if you like. Put all RP into construction. Keep your starting army in your capital until you have 1200 gp for a walled city, then lower your tax rate back down and build it in a nice-looking province. With a TR of 200% you can sometimes do this on the 2nd turn, but you miss out on a staret so it's not worth it.
Your POD should be wandering around killing stuff. Avoid enemy dominion, avoid amazons or undead provinces and dark vines. Avoid Hvy Cav unless dominion in the province is at least 3.
Once you have the money for a walled city, send your pile of archers and spearmen around conquering weak indies.

Turn 5 - Rerout your research to get const 2 and them thaumaturgy.

Turn 6 - You just got construction 2! Build the following:
Enchanted Sword, Pendant of Luck, your choice of:
Fire Plate, Fire Sword, Copper Plate (Fire Plate is usually what you want against an F9 bless enemy.) Have your God come home and get it.

If you have an opponent with weak dominion, your God can personally kick his *** now. More likely, your God is going to intercept your first neighbor to invade you (expect this next turn). Fighting inside your own (strong) dominion, he can stop pretty much anything at this point, and bite back against an enemy with anything other than a SC God of his own.
Early research priorities are Thaum 1 and Evocation 4, so that you can put together a communion of 8 Astrapalegists (4 masters, 4 slaves) to spam thunderstrike.
Then you probably want blood (for thug chassis as well as big piles of demon troops) and construction, or possibly enchantment (for flaming arrows) and alteration (for wind guide.)

Other Sundry:
1) Flaming Arrows + Wind Guide. You have enough fire and air to pull off both, so you probably should. Your national archers are an bang:buck ratio, but you'd probably rather have tribals for the improved strategic move.

2) PoD and risks. Your PoD is going to pick up a few afflictions. Try to avoid them but don't have kittens when it happens. Place him at the far rear of the battlefield (to avoid crossbow bolts) and set him to attack rear. This both minimizes his exposure to archery, and will hopefully inflict some morale damage on the front line infantry before they can turn around and get him.

Mostly they'll be pretty irrelevant (Chest Wound doesn't matter when you have no enc., Weakness and Never Healing Wound can almost be ignored, etc.) but there are a few that will end his career of conquest.
Use your research edge to beat everyone else to the chalice.

3) Stealth Communion Fun. See "stupid pet tricks". Make a master matrix, give it to a druid (or other stealthy nature mage.) Give him some nature gems. Send him along with four angels scripted to cast sabbath slave, and a bunch of Khlyst.

When they fight, he casts Mass Protection - tada, you get some kind of army!

Note that this is in-no-way worth a bless.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

I don't how good of blood hunters Five fold angels will be, since they cause unrest.

As mostly a challenge: is it even possible to make a strategy out of their stealthy, unrest causing sacreds. At their price I can't see it, but it would be fun to try. Flagellants at least have two attacks.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

With patrollers in place, I didn't even notice the extra unrest from the angels.

They have one more blood magic than the occultist, and cost about 2/3 the upkeep. But you're right that I don't actually know how much unrest they were making - if they require enough extra patrollers, that'd cancel out the benefits.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Just a note: The Angels seem to cause 4 Unrest a turn just by being there. (If you wanted a number...)

Upkeep of Occultist: 7.33g/turn
Upkeep of Angel: 6g/turn
Difference: 1.33g/turn
Break-even point: 52.63 turns

By this analysis, going by pure stats you have to have an angel for 53 turns before it's better than an Occultist in terms of money. You can put in the better Blood/Holy magic on the Angel in the same bin as 'causes unrest' and 'higher up-front cost' and it'll probably come out a wash.

For this reason, I think I'd use Occultists before I'd use Angels for Bloodhunters. Also, IIRC the Angel is a Spy in addition to everything else it can do.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

that low end dog summon has patrol bonus 20. so they should be able to cover all the patrolling needs at a very affordable cost. though i dunno how many people get killed off fo rthat.

what would you recommend doing against rain of stones? it seems like trouble for a communion dependent nation.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

FFAs generate about 3 unrest a turn. With 2 hunting in a province, tax at zero should preserve zero unrest. With other blood hunting nations, I usually tax at 20 with 2 B2s and unrest remains at zero.

Dr P, I like your stealth preaching idea with the FFAs. With a weak dominion neighbor, you could build a few early, head over to an enemy capital, generate unrest above 100 to prevent detection/recruitment, then preach for a dom kill ... at H2 they've got a decent shot at it. Should work really well with your suggested Dom10 PoD.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

yes, they are quite good (if expensive) stealth preachers.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

If you manage to have Will of the Fates and Army of Gold both up, you can survive a rain of stones. So Alteration 9 should be a high priority for the mid game.

Otherwise, my advice is to cultivate an attitude of extreme serenity regarding the savage casualties that can be inflicted on you.

Combine this serenity with the resolve to avoid being predictable. If you know T'ien Ch'i might try to pop a rain of stones, send in a moderate force of skirmishers to see if you can flush him out.

If he does it by cloud trapezing in the spellcaster, there isn't much you can do about it; the leaders of the communion should probably have modest armor. You ought to be ahead in research, anyway. If you aren't ahead in research as Bogarus you're toast.

Vedelkenbear - that second point of blood magic makes a very big difference in efficiency, but with the unrest penalty I suppose it's about a wash. The angel is *cooler*, however.

That second point of blood magic makes a big difference on a blood hunter.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

I've encountered a strange occurance, I won't call it a bug, in my first game playing Bogarus. On about turn 15, unrest in my capitol increased to over 100. There was no message saying that anything bad had happened. Over the next several turns it increased to 133, though I had troops patrolling. The only nation near me is Atlantis, which has no unrest causing stealthy commnanders. Very stange.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

And you're not doing anything like stockpiling Khlysty or FFAs or Likhos in your capitol, right?

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Disregard. I had taxes set to 150%, and had forgotten about it.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

How about: Virtue, Awake, Domstr 10, Air 3, Astral 2, 3 Order, 3 Sloth, 2 Cold, 3 Fortune? Or: Virtue, Awake, Domstr 4, Air 3, 3 Earth, 3 Death,3 Order, 3 Sloth, 2 Cold, 3 Fortune?

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Have been messing around with Bogarus as well, and came to most of the same conclusions as DrP. The big one being they have absolutely abysmal infantry, which was hard for me to believe since their graphics looked so pretty!

Any advice on the best battle mages to pair them with for earlier (say before turn 10) expansion? Or are they doomed to fight nothing but the weakest indies?

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

I would say some kind of earth magic would be awesome. maybe if your pretender can make earth boots with some earth power for one of the alchemists? That would allow you to cast legions of steel on the infantry and this spell does really help survivability. It is an idea. Im going to try it myself..

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

p.s. those same alchemists could also cast magma eruption with this, so you get a good caster and buffer...oooo.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Why is the Simargl armed with a falchion?

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

I tried the 2 last Nature summons : a driad with A3, S2, N4 maybe, and Heal.
And another strange one (need N5 and 60 gems) : shapechange bear, with N5, Earth and another path only on forest

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

I disagree that Bogarus calls for a sloth scale.

Heavy cavalry, Malaia Druzhina, is ok. Just 5 gold more expensive than Chelms knight, with slightly lower head protection and strength but with 50% cold resistance which may come handy time after time. Its your only real troop, and its rather resource heavy.
Infantry is not stellar, but at least its pretty. City guards even have an above-average morale. If you want to see a really crappy infantry - check caelum, these flying retards dont even qualify as a meat shield because they rout so fast. Bogarus has a decent meat shield to back up its mages.
As for archers - precision 8 is crap, I agree. But these guys are cheap! In great numbers, precison doesnt matter as much. Also, Bogarus has got access to both wind guide and flaming arrows, and thats worth something. I have a feeling that Bogarus archers may be made a force to be reckoned with.

All in all, I'd say that Bogarus armies are rather weak if you compare them to favourites like midgard, mictlan etc, but not bad enough as to justify sloth 3. You wont go far with no troops at all; besides, production scale allows you to produce your units en masse when you really need them instead of recruiting a couple of them each turn, thus paying less upkeep.
Oh, and if you're so affraid of rain of stones, get yourself arrow fend.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

I agree with above poster. The infantry is so cheap you can field great numbers of them in a hurry (just like the soviets did in WW2), not to mention the ease to boost them thanks to great magic diversity. This should not me overlooked I believe.
The milita actually have rather nice stats if you consider the price and thus the number you can hire. The only low point is morale of course, but that could be dealt with some excellent morale boosting summons and other units with banners.
One should really take advantage of the fact that they all have frost resistance meaning that they do not take the encumbrance penalty for extreme cold (-3). So try to fight where your dominion is high; use your rather cheap and excellent priests for preaching.

Some tips:

1. Do a fast expansion, grabbing lots and lots of territory with your awake pretender.
2. When war is declared let the enemy come to you and slowly wither them down with low cost troops. Making them pay dearly for every inch of ground. Hit the provinces with freeze spells if they aren't cold enough. Use your stealth units for partisan attacks and raiding.
3. This strategy will buy you valuable time for research and heavier troops. Because back in your empire you are building heavy cavalry and summoning birds and three-headed wyverns.
4. When the time is right, hit the enemy rear with the shock troops and continue on towards his capitol.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Another interesting point of Bogarus is the absolutely incredible amount of seduction capability. Granted, the early seducers are water-based (my first game's pretender was a W6/N6 Lady of Springs), but it's phenomenal.

My favorite trick was Skull Talisman on a Rusalka set to the way, way back of the screen. If the seduction fails (which it usually does), you just spam the skeletons until the enemy dies. The only person I lost to was (from Agartha) was his prophet. Managed to take down an Earth Reader, a Cave Knight commander (he broke eventually), and multiple other national commander types.

Another thought is to actually take Drain 2 or 3 for points. You'd get Cold 3, and their research bonus on their primary researchers means you aren't hit that hard for it.

Oh, and Baba Yaga is nutsily evil. ;D

Wyatt

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Their army seems to be really pathetic, and you can't make a lot of it with Sloth 3. Against LA Ermor army was useless, PoD was useless too... and my PoD massed afflictions really fast.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Another thing that occurs to me is the fact that there are stealthy commanders with blood vengeance is a reasonably good deterrent to many commander targeting rituals. Seeking arrow right back atcha! That alone makes me think the angels would be better bloodhunters to have scattered around...

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Drain 2 is pretty much okay for research, since outside the capital you've got the "Master of Names" researchers too, 160 gold for 7 research and possible S3 casters is good. I'm not liking the MR boost from Drain though.

If you've got a Death 5+ PoD, Wither Bones is nice against LA Ermor. Take his armor off first.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

My PoD got afflictions on crossbowmen :/ and then got one fighting militia :|

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Had a quick game with Bogarus and there troops suck big time!

Indi heavy infantry managed to defeat my massed hordes Voi archers protected by Peshti spearmen 4 turns in a row. Just expanding through indies is hard with Bogarus troops.

I agree with Dr.P, a awake SC is a virtual must. If I was in a MP and Bogarus was my neighbour, guess who I would attack first? Bogarus may become even more a favourite target for an early kill then Ulm. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Not sure about the sloth 3, I think you need resources to recruit your one and only decent troop type Malaia Druzhina. Those guys are decent, them plus a awake SC should keep you safe in the early game until you get your excellent magic and research going.

Mid/late game Bogarus will become a nation of summoned troops backed by powerful magic, with lots of options.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

But LA gives much smaller gem income, so it may be really hard. Especially against Mictlan and Ermor. And that spells attacking water will work only against R'lyeh, and you would need to really amass them to beat R'lyeh. If they were insanity-resistant it would be nice.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Simargl should not have falchion, and IIRC we lowered patrol to 10 in the last version. Seems to have been neglected by the compilator http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Bogarus have quite good PD I think. Might compensate a bit for early weakness in troops.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Actually, 'starets' means 'elder' . 'ts' shouldn't be pronouced separately. They form a single sound together. Russian alphabet has a letter for this sound. It's pronouced like german 'z', or polish 'c' . Polish language uses latin alphabet, so we'd just write 'starzec'. Plural for 'starets' in bogarussian would be 'startsy'.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

I haven't played around too much with blood vengeance, how effective is it at +0? Does this just mean a unit has to make an unmodified MR roll to successfully do damage? Those angels are blessable and can join sabbaths, even without hands I wonder if you could do something interesting with them. They wouldn't need to really attack to do damage with that blood vengeance. With regeneration (bless), iron skin, mistform and fireshield (plus several other buffs if you're feeling extravagant) it seems like they'd be pretty effective at just running up and being attacked. Might not be a terrible way to use your blood hunters when attacked.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Baalz:

Do they have enough HP to survive long enough for regen to work?

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

If my memory serves they have 9 HP and no protection. The blood vengeance aspect looks tempting, but in my own experience that won't get you far.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Blood vengeance: will reduce the amount of hits they take
Iron skin: 20 protection will stop a decent amount of attacks from dealing any damage (depending, of course, on what they're fighting)
Mistform: those attacks that do land will only deal 1 damage

You'd have to have several of them for this type of tactic to make any sense, so you're talking about a group of them, not a single guy who's quickly surrounded. So...depending on what you're facing it seems likely they're only getting hit for damage a couple times a round, and each hit is just doing 1 damage. With a little bit of regeneration this turns them into something that requires a specific counter.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Baalz:

But when they are not hit hit blood vengeance won't do any damage. And doesn't damage from it depend on how much damage they receive? And they can still die from smites and spells.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

As I said, I haven't played around with BV much so I'm not sure how it's resolved but my thought was that if you fail the MR roll you attack yourself - so for instance casting a fire spell at a fire immune guy with BV could still hurt you. I may be wrong on that though.

And yes, of course they can go down to spells and smites, though with the blood vengeance and ability to be buffed with lighting, fire and cold immunity, luck, etc. seems like they'd be more resistant to that than most.

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

Great thanks for a nation with old-slavonic motive!

Btw: Fivefold angel has fist attack, but description says her hands were cut off. Maybe 'useless kick' would be better? (like commanders with two schields)

Re: Bogarus Quick Guide
 

no no, give them a falchion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

I am only one who thinks that this good looking troops should not be just waste of space?

If this nation modelled after trade cities of Novogorov, Kiev, etc... they should have decent citizen militia. I like slow movement for peshti (infantry) because they would not like to go away from home. But broadsword guys should be a bit better. At least 11 in attack/defense - they would have SOME soldiers that are OK on foot.

The black hoods (karakalpak) feel a bit wrong too. Why the heavy, full helmet? Kalpak is 'hat', and in this case, it's a fur hat - like mongols, tatars, etc... Leather cap at very best. And they should have bucklers - same for Grid Druzhina - eastern horse archers mostly had bucklers.

Actually, lack of shields is strange. The knyaz also should carry a shield, with 'coat of arms'. Why does black hood carry the banner anyway? They were displaced nomads, working as mercenaries. Not ones to carry flags. Give it to druzhinik...

As for magic, I find dominance of blood over nature strange. It would make sense if we get a 'middle era' Rus, based on nature, wise women, etc... But as it is, without back story, it feel strange.

By the way, I am not Russian :-) Not my fault that my name could be.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

The answer to all of your questions is that dominions does not make any claims of complete historical fidelity. Bogarus is not the nations which inspired it.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

In the osprey books used for inspiration the black hats wear visors to protect their faces from incoming arrows, thus the name black hats/hoods.

The mid age Vanarus will be more nature oriented.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

Those troops are *not* a waste of space. I would've given the Peshti kite shields (no need to change the artwork, those are kite shields they're holding,) and I think the Malai Druzhina is paying too many RP for his barding, but the army is useable as is.

Firstly, they suck, and you're never going to conquer another player with them, however many you recruit, because other players are geared to fight indies who also have hosts of crud. But hosts of crud are NOT useless...

Against most enemies, I'd rather have 5 Pre 8 shortbowmen than 4 pre 10 shortbowmen, and the combination of fire and air magic practically cries out for wind guide + flaming arrows, which you get relatively quickly for your research bonus, making you much better at this than Shinuyama.

The suck infantry are better than most militia, and they cost 8 gp. Against many enemies, it doesn't matter *what* you have because all your troops are chaff, so cheaper chaff is better.

The heavy infantry really wish they had javelins and a better shield, but:
* With spears, they are relatively low resource cost and have a repel attack, making them useful meat shields for your mages.
* The axemen and swordsmen do quite well against equivalent resource worth of hvy inf from other nations. Their armor isn't great but it isn't hugely resource intensive either.
* The voi infantry are cheap and expendable, and do fairly well as far as blood hunt patrollers go.

The big weakness of their military is the strategic move of 1. No human opponent is going to let you get away with that.

So their military is pretty weak, but you still use it, especially the elite components, and it's balanced against the strength of their magic.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

the one strat move makes their troops nearly useless except in marginal ways. i'd end up buying 2 stat indy shortbows and a whatever for a little meat shield.

the cavalry are useful, though, as is usual, rather costly in gold and materiel.

the khylist are close to useless... not worth getting any real bless, and complete crap w/out one. They do, however, have strat move of 2 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

I'm having a hard time beating the AI with your build, DrPraetorius. POD gets afflicted easily, I can't seem to buy a decent number of troops, so the AI keeps attacking me, and, although the research is great, I just can't seem to keep ahead of the curve of the AI building massive numbers of troops to attack me before I can utilize the research.

I have to think that a build with no sloth, so I can build my national Knights, and maybe some drain, since it doesn't really hurt research too much, would be better. At least in SP. In MP, who knows? It would depend on your diplomacy skills.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

Are you playing with standard settings?

Because I did several starts with this build, one of the four I had major affliction problems, otherwise no. If it remains a huge issue for you, have him avoid any significant foes until you have equipment for him.

Are you sure that your God isn't casting spells? If you let him cast (which is what he'll do by default), he'll get mauled.

You can certainly do drain instead of sloth. I dislike the gem evaporation events.

EDIT: Also, in single player, there's no reason to attack blind on the first turn. That's the sortof hyper agressive thing I do in MP, but obviously you're going to get killed outright some of the time if you do that.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

I tried your built for fun, and after the second forts troops arent such an issue. Besides, until you have several forts you shouldnt be building the knights anyhow.

Also my POD had lots of afflictions but it didnt affect his efficiency because its all about making them run, as long as he can fly and smack some you are good.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

You'll get less chance of afflictions if you research the very first turn with the PoD instead of sending him out blindly.

Your HP during combat are based on the dominion of the province you move from, not the province you are fighting in. Higher HP means less afflictions. Sitting for one turn also allows you to choose your victim, picking the province with the best income/recruitable commander/danger tradeoff. It also should give you a longdead.

If you are able to attack a province immediately neighboring your capital (this is a good idea anyway to stay in high dominion), put your single longdead on attack closest at the front, your PoD at the rear on either attack archers or attack closest. I've seen the longdead survive by a couple volleys of arrows and some melee that would otherwise have been aimed at the PoD. You'll probably spawn another longdead in the new province and you can rinse and repeat.

I'll even take a turn to search with the PoD if dom is not high enough or if I'm missing my longdead chaff. I've never had the PoD retreat because the longdead got killed.

Your initial prophet and army plus hiring archers the first turn can also take on most small (20,30) vanilla infantry/archers indies, or tribal indies if you are lucky enough to come across any. 2 times sermon then smite with the prophet. I hire more of the same shieldmen/archers and shuttle to the front with indy commanders.

I used a D5E6 PoD, those two extra earth points really do help cut down on initial afflictions. I tried D10 instead for more fear and a big affliction bless on Agony from FFAs, but it didn't work, probably because of my drain scales.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

The heroes are interesting.

Baba Yaga's a flying hag with A3W1D4N2; Alexej's a D1B2H4 human who's old enough to be a Twiceborn candidate and who attracts Khlysts; and Koschei the Deathless, well... is unusually old http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Not something to build a MP strategy on, but fun.

Bogatyr multiheroes are a nice bonus. H1 cavalry commanders / standards.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

The ground troops
As I wrote before I believe that the ground troops are mostly good for defense with their map move of 1. One of them even has castle defense bonus for exactly this purpose.

The Khlysts
One exception to this is the Khlyst with map move 2 and stealth, meaning that they are suited for partisan activity. The unrest causing ability also hints at this. The commander for Khlyst groups should be the Five Fold Angel for the same reason. He can also stealth preach and bless the group in battle. The blood magic he possess can be used to for buffs and offensive spells.

Cavalry
The cavalry is, as I see it, the real army for offense. Forget the slow infantry when attacking as they will only bog you down. Let them slow down your attacker instead so you can mount a successful counter charge with horses.

The summons
As most of them are flying they can be used in conjunction with cavalry to strike selected weak spots in your enemies defense. You find out which these are by infiltrating with your Five folds.

The seducers
Use them to further stall and hamper the enemies attack upon you so that your lowborn ground troops can stand a chance in battle.

The general strategy, roughly
Early game
Spend all your money on research, meaning more castles and gold producing provinces. Do not bother to buy more troops than needed to expand. Preferably: use your awake pretender to do the expanding without hampering your research and castle building budget. The choice of pretender is up to you, but why not a blue dragon or the like. At least choose someone that can expand on himself.
If someone is attacking you defend with your fast and hopefully very mobile (flying) pretender and some chaff.

Mid game
Now you should have done lots of research, mostly in the conjuration school. This enables you to have a broad base of specialized summons, with seducing and stealth preaching abilities and whatnot.
Your blood economy should also be up and running using Five Fold Angels as blood hunters (with a few Khlysts to accompany them). They should blood hunt in provinces bordering the enemy you soon believe to be attacking you, making the first provinces he conquers poor and unrestful. When the enemy really is attacking, do NOT pull back your Five Fold Angels, as they will now be used as partisans and spies, liberating temporarily provinces behind the attacking enemy army.
The blood slaves they have hunted should be used to achieve this goal. Use the excellent spell "pain transfer" for example. It should enable the FFA to take and deal damage against enemy PD, and in conjunction with some blessed Khlysts it should not prove too difficult to overcome it.

The defense
Let us look at your assets at this moment. You should have:
Many researchers.
Five Fold Angels + Khlysts (cheap in upkeep and overall)
A lot of castles.
Not much else.

Now for one of Bogaru's strengths.
Quickly shift focus from research to war summoning and military.
Use your former researchers to:
*Summon specialized elite fliers to terrorize the attacking army.
* Summon a chock army of fliers. Like the three headed wyverns.
* Forge items to kit your commanders out.

Use the castles nearest your front to:
* Build ground troops.
* Build some nice PD to be used in combination with your ground troops when defending. Do not waste much money on it when no ground troops are available to strengthen it.

The other castles should build heavy cavalry and offensive spellcasters and "buffers".

You should have all the money needed as you haven't built or paid for any military (upkeep and such) until now. But if more gold is needed fast you have your alchemists to transmute for it.

The attack.
Led by your flying pretender, the flying shock army, with a core of elites, should strike the enemy rear. A rear area in disarray to the enemy, much thanks to the FFA and Khlysts. The area is also well scouted and can be defended quickly by the same. Let your fast cavalry do the mopping up of the hostile attacking armies, thinned by seductions, starvation, cold and valiant sacrifice by your ground troops.
Obviously you should no longer build ground troops in your outer castles. Instead switch to cavalry and offensive spellcasters to strengthen your oncoming forces.

The enemy, having fought a long and costly war should now be weakened. Not only in military organization but also in research. The momentum is in your favor. Now it is time for you to relieve the ruler of this heavy burden...

The conclusion
I believe that the trick with Bogarus is to quickly and accurately switch from heavy research to heavy defense to heavy offense. This is something Bogarus is more than capable of. The hard part is to know when, as timing is critical to success. Also, knowing often means spying, so that is critical as well.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

Actually, I agree that city guards should get some combat training, above regular indies. +1 attack and defense or something like that.
Lack of a decent foot archer also surprises me greatly as many sources (both Byzanthian, German and Russian) state that slavs always fielded many skilled archers with composite M-shaped bows. Archeological discoveries back that claim.
Just as I'm surprised to see a Grid with a bow, but without a shield. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And back to strategies, khlysts... they are useless in combat, I think any strategy revolving around them as partisans will fail badly. Forget about partisans, its not the time for them as Napoleon is not born yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Khlysts may be used for raising unrest in the enemy territories, without actually attacking them. Think of them as of non-commander spies.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

The nice thing about non-commander spies is that they don't cause a "Spies are creating unrest" type message in the enemy provinces.

Re: Thoughts about Bogarus troops.
 

I didn't say that the Khlysts should take on a real army. Rather that they should attack the provinces left behind the attacking army. And I do believe that some 20-30 blessed Khlysts backed up by a FFA (casting "imp" for example) could take out at least 10 PD.

Remember that my defensive strategy revolved around making the attacking enemy divide his forces and spend money on non-mobile forces (like PD). All to make that counter attack of yours (with real troops) easier.