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

[Agema]

Sorry, I missed that you included Magic-1. But nevertheless, if you get 9-10 research heroes on average every 8-9 turns, this will, by turn 30 say, have given you only about 350-400 extra research in total. Depending on various factors, that's about what a single turn's research would be at turn 30, in essence it's put you only about one turn ahead of where you would have been.

I appreciate what you mean about your God forging and researching, and I agree it's a good idea to get Oracles out there as thug/SCs quickly. However, I disagree you need to do it that quickly, because I strongly disagree that Agartha's troops are as weak as you think.

Firstly, your giants are enormously survivable. Yes, 9Att 10Def is weak, but they should gain XP and not die, and will rapidly be about 11Att 12Def, which is perfectly respectable. Plus you are in a prime bless situation: +1/2Att is pretty easy to afford.

Secondly, don't get too hung up on Agartha's terrible Att values. Pale Ones have a ton of HP, which creates a compensation. Think of it as hits inflicted during lifespan. Although Pale Ones might only hit at the rate of about 60-70% of a human, they only need to live 50% longer and in fact they will score, on average, the same number of hits before dying as a human, and they've got the HP to do that.

[LDiCesare]

I think the guide doesn't mention the fact that Agarthans are amphibious. This is one of the only strengths of Agarthan troops, and very much worth mentioning. Of course if you're playing a game with a single big ocean and 3 water nations inside, it won't do you much good, but if there aren't that many or there's a nearby lake, it can help a lot.

Nature bless reduces afflcition by 1/8th, but not afflictions due to age. It usually makes a big difference.

Lambasting Agarthan mags precision is also exaggerated. They can cast destruction + blade wind, and they will kill a lot of people with that. Sure they aren't precise, but the amount of blades you cast makes for the poor precision.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

Lambasting Agarthan mags precision is also exaggerated. They can cast destruction + blade wind, and they will kill a lot of people with that. Sure they aren't precise, but the amount of blades you cast makes for the poor precision.

I can testify from "Legends of Faerun" that the precison on those Oracles is certainly worth lambasting as much as possible. I've easily killed more of my own troops with Blade Wind and Magma Eruption etc. than I have of my enemies. The abysmal precision also makes casting buff spells a lottery. As even when I've surrounded my Oracle with those he was meant to buff, he still regularly missed 50%+ of the intended targets, with the rest of the spell covering thin air.

From my experience in that game, as far as the Agarthan mages are concerned, the amount of times you can cast a spell such as Blade Wind does little to make up for the number of times you will miss everything with it at long range, and hit your own troops at short range.

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Calahan

I can testify from "Legends of Faerun" that the precison on those Oracles is certainly worth lambasting as much as possible. I've easily killed more of my own troops with Blade Wind and Magma Eruption etc. than I have of my enemies. The abysmal precision also makes casting buff spells a lottery. As even when I've surrounded my Oracle with those he was meant to buff, he still regularly missed 50%+ of the intended targets, with the rest of the spell covering thin air.

From my experience in that game, as far as the Agarthan mages are concerned, the amount of times you can cast a spell such as Blade Wind does little to make up for the number of times you will miss everything with it at long range, and hit your own troops at short range.

I've had great success with evocations as EA Agartha personally. The only reason why my mages killed my own guys was that f*** regenrating Niefel giant stuck in a whole in the cave who wanted to rout but couldn't, and was surrounded by my soldiers who couldn't reach him to strike him. The bug of people stuck in unreachable parts of the battlefield has been fixed since, fortunately.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

The bug of people stuck in unreachable parts of the battlefield has been fixed since, fortunately.

Didn't know that it had been fixed. But I did run into that exact bug a few turns ago in the 'Red Ruby' game when I tried storming the LA Agartha capital. So it's not a totally busted bug yet unfortunately

[LDiCesare]

I was pretty sure it had been fixed in one of the patches. I think they had removed cave battle maps with holes.

[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...

[Frozen Lama]

i think the reason everyone wants a N bless is that this guide is all about SC's, and if one of them gets a chest wound, or such, he's retired instantly. if you were focusing on building troops, the F might make more sense, but with SC's, they need to survive, and most afflictions cripple them. if you have 1/8 the afflictions, that's 1/8 the amount of retired SC's

[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

[thejeff]

I know Bless claims to be Prec 100, but I've never completely trusted that.
I've definitely had solitary thugs miss trying to bless themselves. (Jotun Jarls, I'm looking at you.)
Does the AoE not always include the actual target square? It's the only way I can match 100 prec with reality.