[Fantomen]

Well in one of my test games I only had a death income of 2, and I still pulled it off. I got to construction 7 in early summer year 3 rather than early spring but thats no big deal.

The forge lord can make a skull per turn for 2 death gems. Starting so early thats enough to give you a very progressive research graph. Whatever death gems you have beyond that is an extra boost. Say you you start forging mentors summer year 2 and only found one death 1 site during year one. Thats will still let you make an extra skull the first 2-4 turns. So this guide is much less reliant on luck with site searching than baalz helheim guide for example, and I found that strategy to be pretty reliable.

After that you really only *need* to scrape up enough death for a few skull staffs. Then you can swap out skullfaces for rings of sorcery to get to that cruical death 4 on a couple oracles.

Frankly I have a hard time seeing how to play EA Agartha competively for long without darkness, and in terms of death gem economy you´d be spending a LOT more gems AND time to get there without the forge lord.

Regarding you reliance on mixed troops that Illuminated One mentions. Well, thats true that one uber unit would technically be better. Thing is: you don´t have one.

None of your units are very strong on their own without a very strong blessing. And even with a strong blessing you cannot compete long with just the sacreds, you need stellar research to be competitive. So you have to deal with what you have, and the truth is your units are best suited to work together taking different roles on the battlefield. This can be a weakness, it can also be a strength. You can adapt your tactics to different foes without really having to rebuild your armies. A weakness is of course that if your "hull" breaks then you are left very vulnerable. Another is that your best frontliners are mapmove 1, so your fast armies won´t be as tough in long battles. etc etc...

I think that strategically Agartha is well suited for "deep strikes". Build a solid homeland defence. Focus on a few big strong armies. Then go straight for the capital fort. You can take forts faster than any other nation, exploit this to the max as it is one of your big strengths.