EA Agartha - the game's red-headed stepchild (CBM)

[Squirrelloid]

EA Agartha is perhaps the worst nation in the EA. They have virtually no units worth buying, really expensive top tier mages, and desperate need for an awake pretender. On top of that, most of their units actually worth using are sacred, and thus could benefit from a bless. Its enough to drive you crazy.

Lets talk about the units worth using first:

Units:
Troglodytes - they're good for indie clearing, and can even have use vs. other players armies. But they're also really expensive, and need to be massed to be effective.

Seal Guard - Ok, i'm not going to claim they're good. But they're durable and blessable. Its something.

Ancient One - worse than the Seal Guard, but easier to mass (ha ha) and you can sub some of these for Seal Guards in a pinch.

Commanders:
Ancient Lord - you'd never waste capitol time building one, but its a great thug chassis, and blessable to boot.

Earth Reader - decent research chassis (for you. You are EA Agartha after all). Also, not capitol only.

Oracles - Sacred, E3-5, at least thug quality. These guys are rather amazing, if you can equip them properly. They have some serious issues. (1) Like all agarthan units, they can't hit the broad side of a barn. (2) No starting equipment except a big club. Seriously? Seriously. (3) Old age. (4) 5 encumbrance base. Yes, with no equipment. Seriously.

So, virtually every above-named unit is sacred, so we need to talk about a bless. That most of our good commanders are sacred mages, and all of our units have encumbrance problems, immediately suggests an Earth bless. And with our abundant access to earth gems and magic, E9 sounds like a really good idea (bracer stacking is a good thing!)

Then we notice that our attack skill sucks. On everyone. So a fire bless is probably in order.

Now, you'll remember I said we need an awake pretender, so E9Fx is probably all she wrote for a bless. We'd love to swing Nature as well, but its really not in the cards.

Pretender:
You may have noticed the total lack of equipment on the Oracles. We're going to get around that by forging like mad in year one. Fortunately, we get 4e/trn from our capitol. More fortunately, the Forge Lord is available, and has E + F natively, which is perfect.

Awake Forge Lord, E9F4

Scales:
Despite the high gold cost of the Oracles, we're going to take crappy scales overall.

Order 3 - we need gold. Actually, we need to mitigate our other scale choices.
Sloth 3 - Troglodytes require 1 resource. Oracles require 1 resource. We're not going to build that many seal guards per turn.
Heat 3 - we're cold-blooded, and want to push away any cold dominion as fast as possible. Also, we need the points.
Death 3 - yeah, we have old mages. Sucks to be them. We need the points, and we don't need to eat.
Luck 3 - We need the windfall income, and we need the gems, and any other events that happen are just gravy. Also, we have *amazing* national heroes, including the multi-hero Great Olm. Luck 3 is not optional - EA Agartha requires it.
Magic 1 - makes the earth readers (slightly) better than pocket calculators.

However much dominion you can afford at this point. Should be +1 to 4.

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Ok, that already looks pretty nasty. What the hell are we going to do with this mess. Well it gets worse.

(1) Hope you start with many adjacent provinces. Less than 4 and you'll probably start thinking about setting AI immediately.
(2) Hope you start with an adjacent high-income province, it'll help.
(3) Hope you start with an adjacent high resource province or two - it'll help.
(4) Hope the indies around you aren't too strong.

EA Agartha has so much against it that a really bad starting situation and the game might as well be over for you.

Turn 1: Set Forge Lord to research, and set research to Construction. Patrol with starting army, and start scouting. Set taxes to 150.

Buy 8 troglodytes. Hit end turn.

(5) Hope your patrollers actually manage to keep unrest at 0. Your patrolling ability is rather variable, and while most of the time you'll do it, sometimes you'll totally fail at patrolling entirely. That's probably a game over, barring some help from Luck to save your bacon. Setting taxes lower won't help - even at 120% your patrollers will fail utterly, and you need that income now.

Turn 2: Set taxes back to normal. Give starting commander the troglodytes. Attack somewhere with all those units, preferably a high income province. However, while this army will utterly destroy some indies, it'll also get totally hosed by others. You're depending on these guys to get ~5 provinces before they bite it, so try to minimize casualties.

Forge Lord keeps researching. Buy an Oracle (death). If you need to, alchemize a fire gem or two into cash. If by some miracle you have extra cash (say a luck event), spring of a Seal Guard if you can.

Turn 3-5: Research to constr 2, keep expanding with army. You want to expand away from your capitol if possible. Buy oracles (water) when able, earth readers when not.

Why water oracles - they have better defense and otherwise at least equal stats to their rivals. We're also looking for E4 and no old age, which may take a few buys. (We'll take Old Age over E3 if necessary for SC roles).

The moment you get Constr 2, switch to conjuration research. Have the Forge Lord make a hammer. This should happen about turn 5.

The turn you make a hammer you also need to make a bracer of protection at full cost. It sucks, but tempo matters. Use the Earth Reader as a forge-monkey.

The following turn you'll pass the new hammer to the forge monkey, and make fire plate with the forge lord and another bracers with the monkey.

Its turn 7 and we're finally ready to party with our SC. Give an E4 non-old Oracle (water) both bracers and the fire plate. The fire plate keeps him from caring about the heat from our dominion, and it plus the bracers will let you count the E9 +4 protection 3x. Checking your army of seal guards, you'll have 4-6 at this point, take 4-5 of them with him. Set the seal guards and the oracle at the back, have the guards hold and attack, and the oracle divine bless (his aim sucks with bless, and the fatigue cost is identical, so...), and Legion of Steel, then hold one turn and attack. They'll take most indies with little problem.

Our trog+starting army has probably near-burned itself out or run out of indies it can handle - that's ok, it did its job.

You're also going to pass your hammer back to the forge lord and make another hammer for 3e. Sweet. Each new hammer should go to someone for forging, and start pumping out bracers and fire plate (after your third hammer).

Once your forge lord makes a 3rd hammer you're going to be putting out gear for an SC every 1-2 turns, assuming you have suitable oracle chasses.

As your death gems permit, use your one death oracle to make fear helms. (And otherwise consider splashing black steel helms onto your oracle SCs, as they have no helmet!) You may have noticed that even with the fire bless your attack skill is not much to speak of - fortunately Star of Heroes is a cheap earth forging that gives +6 to attack rating! We'll take it.

You should also shortly be up to ~3 Seal Guards/turn, so every 2nd turn 5-6 seal guards + oracle should be plausible. If you can't get enough Seal Guards, supplement with Ancient Ones.

Whenever conj 3 finishes, those oracles should go Divine Bless, Summon Earthpower, Legion of Steel - more reinvig and less fatigue from LoSteel will help with staying power and avoiding wounds. Your next research priority is probably Thaum 2.

Put up a 2nd fortress in a forest province towards the end of the year if at all possible. You'll want to get someone there to build a lab/temple to make earth readers.

At some point in year one you'll probably get a hero. Research may be the best use to put him to early, but they may be rather useful SCs or battle-casters later.

Post-Year One:
So year 1 is over and you have an anemic province total of maybe 15 if you're lucky. But you also have a lot of gear, strong SCs, and can likely defend what you have. Every single one of your oracles is also great at manual searching for E and H sites, plus some minor splash site searching. Consider prophetizing an E4 for H4 and manually searching asap.

Research Priorities post-opening:
Conjuration - your national summons range from decent to great - Umbrals are awesome, but far down. Summon Earth Power is castable by virtually every mage you'll ever send into combat, and you need the reinvigoration. You also have enough death to get access to some toys here. Note that Umbrals are moved to Conj 7 in CBM, which is a major nerf here.

Construction - Your commanders win battle by carrying the right equipment.

Enchantment - skelly spam for death oracles, army buffs, and eventually Earth Bloodwell Deep.

Alteration - Quicken Self may warrant a detour, as well as lots of earth buffs.

Thaum - level 2 for remote searching.

You can pass on basically everything else. Evocation especially, because your mages can't hit anything.

[chrispedersen]

You got some of this right.

Forget trogs, unless you are fighting in cold.
Nature bless however is mandatory.

Forget + luck. The heros aren't that good.

Trogs are 50. A variety of the sacred units are ether 35 or 40.
Plus, being sacred lower maintenance. Sure you won't trample. But you won't attrit yourself to death either.

There are two interesting routes you can go: A fire bless for the +2 to hit. Or a water bless.

So either F4E4N4, or you can take an ulm with W9Nx. Where x can be 4-9.

A E9N9 cyclops is also doable, but not as good as the previous options.

Completely different strategies. If you go water, your blessed sacreds will move around 19.. so you can use them to attack rear, in numbers. Your olm dom summions sacred units.

There's two ways to compensate for no ability to attack: outnumber enemy. Which can either be done via multiple attacks (water bless) or lots o units.

If you go the fire route - mix in 9/4 pale ones. Build Sacred/pale, sacred/pale. That away your pale ones will attrit (by taking 50% of the hits) but prevent attrition of your expensive sacreds.

Now a word about research:

Alteration. Because what can make all of your troops hit the broadside of a barn? EARTH MELD. No resistance, no save - and 1/3 earth readers can cast it.

After that your research priorities are somewhat fluid. I am partial to conj for dark knowledge - but I think your next priority CBM is Construction - for Legion of Steel. And to start thugging out SC's.

Anyway - too lazy to make a guide - but that should start you. Take a look at my balance agartha mod- which boosts Agartha a bit.

[Squirrelloid]

The heroes aren't that good?

First of all, 7+ research i don't have to pay upkeep on is always good in my book.

Second, those Olm heroes you can get repeatedly can have W and/or E up to 5. That's some serious high-path casting power.

Finally, there're gems like the E5F2 Oracle with Reinvigoration 4 already built in. With an E9 bless and summon earth power thats reinvig *12*. And with E5, he'll literally cast all day.

What passes for good heroes if these don't qualify?

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I fail to see the value of a nature bless. Healing 2hp/trn is *not* that exciting, and low regeneration doesn't lead to that much lower of a wound rate. I'd rather have the +4 protection any day, especially since it'll make for some killer SCs. I'm hitting protection 40 at the end of year 1 on my Oracles after two rounds of blessing. Now that's defense.

Similarly, your sacreds that are worth using will accrue fatigue - water bless seems like it exacerbates the problem. You don't hit often, so i can't see you winning combats quickly. Water bless seems to be a non-starter, but i'll try it.

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Starting with Trogs is the best initial expansion army I can find. I haven't really used them otherwise, but out of the box it seems to be your best value for your money turn one and will get your expansion going. And you need them to grab some provinces early to maximize good luck event chances.

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Note on blessing:
You need Oracles or a prophet for divine bless. Your mages (especially earth readers with their low area bless) will miss some of your sacreds even if there's only *5* of them. Even if you repeatedly cast blessing. This leads to dead troops you can't afford. So oracles seem to be your only repeatable and viable bless chassis.

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Earth meld would be great if you could hit anything with it. Precision what - 7? Not interested. Certainly not at the expense of really early Legions of Steel and forged bracers.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I'd rather have the +4 protection any day, especially since it'll make for some killer SCs. I'm hitting protection 40 at the end of year 1 on my Oracles after two rounds of blessing.

Not sure what you mean with that, but I read it as you suggest oracles (and others) can be blessed more than once per battle. That is not true. However, perhaps you mean the ability to cast stone/ironskin first, and *then* cast bless to get the +4 from bless too (so that you could get +7 protection from buff + bless on top of natural protection and armour)?

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

Not sure what you mean with that, but I read it as you suggest oracles (and others) can be blessed more than once per battle. That is not true. However, perhaps you mean the ability to cast stone/ironskin first, and *then* cast bless to get the +4 from bless too (so that you could get +7 protection from buff + bless on top of natural protection and armour)?

Err... yeah

Actually, i've been using Legion of Steel because its along the proposed research path right away, and it benefits my Ancient One/Seal Guard retinue.

But armor + 2x bracers = +12 protection from the blessing, +Legion of Steel in addition to that is 36 protection, 40 with a helm. (I assume displayed protection is averaging over body and head areas somehow?)

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

The heroes aren't that good?

First of all, 7+ research i don't have to pay upkeep on is always good in my book.

Second, those Olm heroes you can get repeatedly can have W and/or E up to 5. That's some serious high-path casting power.

Finally, there're gems like the E5F2 Oracle with Reinvigoration 4 already built in. With an E9 bless and summon earth power thats reinvig *12*. And with E5, he'll literally cast all day.

What passes for good heroes if these don't qualify?

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The problem isn't the quality of the hero.
Even with a luck +3 its only a 6% chance to get one each turn. Its simply not worth the 120-200 design points. Plus, magic paths duplicate ones you already get.

Luck doesn't scale either. Sure, multiheros you can get forever.
But the other part of luck that you are paying 4 - tops out at 4 events. And there are iirc 2-3 heros.

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I fail to see the value of a nature bless. Healing 2hp/trn is *not* that exciting, and low regeneration doesn't lead to that much lower of a wound rate. I'd rather have the +4 protection any day, especially since it'll make for some killer SCs. I'm hitting protection 40 at the end of year 1 on my Oracles after two rounds of blessing. Now that's defense.

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Rather like comparing apples and oranges - since you are talking about e9 vs n4. 360 design pts vs 80.

Prot 40 looks awesome. Still loses to a lightning bolt. Or petrify. Numbness. Slime. Curse of stones.
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Similarly, your sacreds that are worth using will accrue fatigue - water bless seems like it exacerbates the problem. You don't hit often, so i can't see you winning combats quickly. Water bless seems to be a non-starter, but i'll try it.

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Starting with Trogs is the best initial expansion army I can find. I haven't really used them otherwise, but out of the box it seems to be your best value for your money turn one and will get your expansion going. And you need them to grab some provinces early to maximize good luck event chances.

Vs with my build I am typically building someothing link.. 8 sacred, 5 pales ones and 3 trogs.

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Note on blessing:
You need Oracles or a prophet for divine bless. Your mages (especially earth readers with their low area bless) will miss some of your sacreds even if there's only *5* of them. Even if you repeatedly cast blessing. This leads to dead troops you can't afford. So oracles seem to be your only repeatable and viable bless chassis.
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Precision/2 -2. If your earth reader is smack dab in the middle of your sacreds he doesn't miss. Set them to bottom right, hold and attack. Set your earth reader to bless, bless, bless, earth grip earth grip. (or fright etc).

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Earth meld would be great if you could hit anything with it. Precision what - 7? Not interested. Certainly not at the expense of really early Legions of Steel and forged bracers.

Precision +3/ and Check the AOE:5. Works pretty well.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

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The problem isn't the quality of the hero.
Even with a luck +3 its only a 6% chance to get one each turn. Its simply not worth the 120-200 design points. Plus, magic paths duplicate ones you already get.

Luck doesn't scale either. Sure, multiheros you can get forever.
But the other part of luck that you are paying 4 - tops out at 4 events. And there are iirc 2-3 heros.

Hey, I'll take 4 good events every turn. Especially since the Order + Luck combination seems to generate large numbers of taxation events, and the Magic + Luck combination favors some of the truly high value cash events.

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Rather like comparing apples and oranges - since you are talking about e9 vs n4. 360 design pts vs 80.

Prot 40 looks awesome. Still loses to a lightning bolt. Or petrify. Numbness. Slime. Curse of stones.

Yes, any given tactic has counter tactics. Congratulations. How does nature help with that at all? And there are obvious counters to some of those (like Iron Will for petrify), and no need to counter others (seriously, curse of stones, vs. a mage SC with good MR?). But none of these objections are at all relevant unless a nature bless actually does something to answer those. The obscene protection is still something an earth bless gives that nature doesn't, and nature gives... 5% regen? OH yay. 2hp/trn.

You never answered my question - what does a nature bless give you that you need? How is it relevant? I *tried* it (F4E9N4, slightly worse scales, same army size). It didn't improve the performance of my units that I could notice.

(And E9 is only 292 design pts with the suggested pretender, whereas N4 is 122, so still more points, but you get so much more).

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Vs with my build I am typically building someothing link.. 8 sacred, 5 pales ones and 3 trogs.

What are you doing with the sacreds turn 2 - do you prophetize your scout? (Doesn't seem worth it to me when you can have an H4 later). And 3 trogs don't feel very efficient. I'll try it, but i'm not sure why you think that's better than 8 trogs.

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Note on blessing:
You need Oracles or a prophet for divine bless. Your mages (especially earth readers with their low area bless) will miss some of your sacreds even if there's only *5* of them. Even if you repeatedly cast blessing. This leads to dead troops you can't afford. So oracles seem to be your only repeatable and viable bless chassis.
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Precision/2 -2. If your earth reader is smack dab in the middle of your sacreds he doesn't miss. Set them to bottom right, hold and attack. Set your earth reader to bless, bless, bless, earth grip earth grip. (or fright etc).[/quote]

Yeah, tried that. Missed the same guy all three times. Repeatedly. Earth Readers are utter fail at anything requiring aim.

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Precision +3/ and Check the AOE:5. Works pretty well.

[/quote]
For some reason i thought you were refering to the AoE 1 version which is castable earlier. Precision 10 isn't all that exciting, but with AoE 5 you'll probably hit something.

I think this speaks to a difference in research priorities. Whereas I'm rushing for legions of steel and forging better items, you're running down alteration.

Its hard to comment on how useful this is without knowing something about your pretender build. I don't know how early you have enough research for that to even be meaningful, whereas i'll have Legions of Steel at the start of turn 3.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Hey, I'll take 4 good events every turn. Especially since the Order + Luck combination seems to generate large numbers of taxation events, and the Magic + Luck combination favors some of the truly high value cash events.

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Yes, any given tactic has counter tactics. Congratulations. How does nature help with that at all? And there are obvious counters to some of those (like Iron Will for petrify), and no need to counter others (seriously, curse of stones, vs. a mage SC with good MR?). But none of these objections are at all relevant unless a nature bless actually does something to answer those. The obscene protection is still something an earth bless gives that nature doesn't, and nature gives... 5% regen? OH yay. 2hp/trn.

You never answered my question - what does a nature bless give you that you need? How is it relevant? I *tried* it (F4E9N4, slightly worse scales, same army size). It didn't improve the performance of my units that I could notice.

(And E9 is only 292 design pts with the suggested pretender, whereas N4 is 122, so still more points, but you get so much more).

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What are you doing with the sacreds turn 2 - do you prophetize your scout? (Doesn't seem worth it to me when you can have an H4 later). And 3 trogs don't feel very efficient. I'll try it, but i'm not sure why you think that's better than 8 trogs.

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Precision/2 -2. If your earth reader is smack dab in the middle of your sacreds he doesn't miss. Set them to bottom right, hold and attack. Set your earth reader to bless, bless, bless, earth grip earth grip. (or fright etc).

Yeah, tried that. Missed the same guy all three times. Repeatedly. Earth Readers are utter fail at anything requiring aim.

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Precision +3/ and Check the AOE:5. Works pretty well.

[/quote]
For some reason i thought you were refering to the AoE 1 version which is castable earlier. Precision 10 isn't all that exciting, but with AoE 5 you'll probably hit something.

I think this speaks to a difference in research priorities. Whereas I'm rushing for legions of steel and forging better items, you're running down alteration.

Its hard to comment on how useful this is without knowing something about your pretender build. I don't know how early you have enough research for that to even be meaningful, whereas i'll have Legions of Steel at the start of turn 3.[/quote]


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Ok..

Why Alteration before construction - because legions of steel is e3. And at 400 gp a pop, its too expensive to build Divine Oracles early. You need to mass agarthans.

As for pretenders so much depends. Its why I haven't specified *a* build - Because if you are starting (or have a high possibility of starting near water, you absolutely want an olm ESPECIALLY with a nature bless. Since he can site search water for free castles.

As for research.. I don't build Divine Oracles *at all* for most of year one. Sure they are great units - we agree. But for research earth readers are 20rp/gp (or less). And they don't die from your -3 death scale. Divine oracles are more than 40gp/rp. And you simply cant afford them. Now you might build 1, early, just to assure you can cast earth meld.

As for counter tactics - we agree. Everything has countertactics - but you are predicating your entire build on a tactic that has easy counters.

As for a few of your points - your first expansion group requires you to have a means of blessing - so absolutely you either prophetize your commander or your scout. Typically I do the commander.

Make sure to also SoC your trampling group. Make sure that your hit point sponges are 2/3 back, and your tramplers are all the way back corner. You want to string out your opponents.

obviously you look for low #'s to attack... but even better is low numbers where your scouting report tells you there are three kinds of units....archers militia and heavy infantry for example - tells you the militia will move forward - and the archers will damage is tolerable at long range.

As for nature bless gives you: Forging options on the forge lord. Better attrit survivability. Fortress searching for the olm. IF you go e9n10 the berserk + on protection and + on hitting ... Well as I recall with e9N10 LoS you were getting prot 21 from your sacreds...

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

I'd rather have the +4 protection any day, especially since it'll make for some killer SCs. I'm hitting protection 40 at the end of year 1 on my Oracles after two rounds of blessing. Now that's defense.

Really? How did you do that? Normally it's really difficult to get above Prot 32 or so at the highest, because armor Prot and intrinsic Prot don't really stack.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Note on blessing:
You need Oracles or a prophet for divine bless. Your mages (especially earth readers with their low area bless) will miss some of your sacreds even if there's only *5* of them. Even if you repeatedly cast blessing. This leads to dead troops you can't afford. So oracles seem to be your only repeatable and viable bless chassis.

Blessing is Prec 100, so the only reason you ever miss is because of AoE randomness. Sure, use an Oracle if you're blessing 40 troops, but if you've got 5 or 6 sacreds just have them Hold and Attack while the priest does Blessing x4. Everybody will get blessed, including the priest. (May as well do this from the back of the field so you're out of range of archers.)

-Max

[Calahan]

I'm currently playing EA Agartha in "Legends of Faerun", so don't want to comment too much yet (probably will once the game is over for me. Which may be one week or one year depending on what happens). But a few things to point out.

- The national Heroes are ok, but don't offer enough because they don't give access to non-Agarthan magic paths. High Earth pathed Heroes mean little to Agartha, and high Water paths have limited use in general for any nation. I certainly wouldn't give up a N4/6 bless for it as you have no easy way to get regen on your SC's then (and regen on SC's is mostly always a must)

- While the Fire Plate does negate the encumbrance effects of the severe heat scale, it doesn't help with encumbrance overall as the armour itself has +2 encumbrance (which is what the severe heat gives you). Plus it actually has an overall negative effect on encumbrance as it adds a further +2 to spell casting encumbrance (which the severe heat doesn't do). Although the positive value of putting some armour on a SC is another matter although (I just thought I'd point out it has a negative effect on fatigue).

If you are just after the effects of the E9 Bless and LoS, then equipping just Bracers covers both of these. As the Bracers act as 'armour' for the purpose of these spells, and so allows the protection buffs (Bless, LoS) to take effect.

- You will struggle to survive a proper MP game with a Dominion scale of only 4. Even access to H3 preachers won't stop your life being a misery, and probably very short. You would have to play on a very big map (+25 provs per player) to get away with a Dominion scale of 4.

- Death 3 - Definitely a good idea. I avoided it in "Legends of Faerun" and took Growth 1, as I was concerned of the effects of Death 3 over the course of a game that was likely to last well over 100 turns. (didn't care about my old age mages either. Sucks to be them as you say ). But I regretted not taking Death 3 before the end of year 1. Taking Growth 1 has certainly turned out to be 160 wasted design points

- I have some concerns for your early research. With your Pretender forging each turn (as he should do), and your other mages going out as SC's and/or forging Bracers/Fire Plates/Stars of Heroes, you are really going to fall behind badly in the research game. And new reasearch centres will cost you at least 1700gp (fort+temple+lab).

- You will really struggle for money with your build. The effects of your Order 3 scales will be minimum outside of your capital as your low Dominion will mean it won't spread very far. Unless your H3 SC's stop to preach. And if you run up against some Dom9/10 neighbours, you will be lucky to see your Dominion outside your capital.

Your Luck 3 scale might help with the income, but I have two games on the go right now where I took Luck 3. In one of them I didn't have a single money event inside the first 18 turns, and in the other it was the first 23 turns before a money event occured. So you can't, or more accurately, you shouldn't rely on the Luck scale for money (at least not in my recent experience). Although the Luck scale is far more reliable for money under Turmoil 3 than Order 3. But then obviously you get less money again due to the effects of that scale change.


Edit: One thing I certainly agree with you on though is that Agartha are the worst EA nation. Some claim it to be Atlantis, but Agartha can out crap them any day IMO.