Agartha, from my under-the-works demo guide

[Nerfix]

I see your point. I will have to try this out.

I can see him being good as an emerengy anti-hero commander though since he has higher native Attack value than the Ancient Lord and otherwise rather similiar stats.

No doubt he can also be good against armies.

EDIT: What sort of fatigue he gets from the armor?

[Nerfix]

The pretender/scale stuff. Sorry for the formating but I am a bit too tired to fix it...

Scale and Pretender Design:

When designing your Pretender God for Agartha you must think whether you want to purse a Bless strategy or not. Agartha can be played with a very
minor Bless Effect but can benefit from more powerful blessings.

Agartha has some tolerance towards Death scale because the vast majority of their units don't eat supplies. Death scale however leaves you with some
less Gold income and makes you more vulnerable to certain bad events and makes your units suffer more from old age. Taking Order to counter the bad
events and gold loss is a good idea if you go the Death Path

Taking some Order And Productivity can be a good decision as Agarthans can be expensive and resource intensive to build.

Magic scale can help you to boost your research, but it's usefulnes is somewhat situational. Playing with an Awake pretender means you can research
from the start while Dormant and Imprisoned pretenders won't be contributing to research for a while.

Noteworthy pretenders for Agartha are:

- The Dragons. Affordable, especially if you don't pursue a strong bless and you can have them to be Awake, have an OK dominion and economic scales
without resorting to the Death-3 path
- The Titan. You can get a low level Air and Earth blessing and decent scales and Dominion without going the Death-3 path or one of the Awakening
options. You can use either way to get more points if you want to.
- Cyclops. He is the easiest way to Earth-9 blessing if you want to pursue it.
- The Ageless Olm. A route for Water/Earth bless and he doesn't cost much in points.
- The Forge Lord. He offers a route for Fire/Earth bless and gets a forge bonus on top of it.
- The Risen Oracle. A terrific combat support pretender.
- Great Mother. She looks unappealing but offers a path to Earth/Nature bless.

[Morkilus]

Nerfix said:
- Great Mother. She looks unappealing but offers a path to Earth/Nature bless.

Heresy! She is a fertility (i.e. sex) goddess! For shame.

[Nerfix]

Maybe the Agarthans think she is hott.

[DominionsFan]

Here is my comment: excellent guide Nerfix.

[Lich]

Great guide, thanks Nerfix.

I'm new Dom3 and picked EA Agartha for my first full game; turn ~20 and things are looking good, mostly due to the tips in this thread

Couple of small things I noticed though.

the Earth Reader has 1 Holy, 1 Earth and 1 random pick of either Earth, Fire, Water or Death.

While this is almost always the case, I've had an earth reader come up with 1 earth and 1 blood so there must be a very small chance of getting at least B as the random school and possibly A/S/N too, although I haven't seen one yet.

Something else I found out to my expense was that Agartha benefit a lot from a high base dominion. Especially if you're pursuing any sort of bless strategy. This is because all their strongest units (except troglodytes) are holy and with low dominion you'll really suffer in the middle -> end game because you can't recruit them quickly enough. As you mentioned, pale one's really aren't useful for anything other than chaff past about turn 25.

[Agema]

Some quick thoughts from my experiences with EA Agartha:

Trogs are really expensive. Yes, they cut through independents. But you've got one of the best nations for a bless strategy in the game. Giants with a good bless (nature, should have earth, think about fire to up the Att values?) will cut through independents also. They also have good MR (14), so they'll be spell-resistant and useful later on as well. As they tend not to die, they can quickly get 2-3XP, which will make their Att respectable. Most critically, as they're sacred they cost half upkeep. The money saved can go towards oracles and castles.

Summoning strategies are important. Umbrals, magma children and earth elementals are all great for the cost, and can be summoned by earth readers, so won't distract your Oracles.

Earth readers need to do your research and national summoning. They might be fairly cheap, but they're pretty average researchers. Drain might hurt, although with lightless lanterns you can make up the deficit later. Get +Magic and you'll be well in the game.

Heat is important for Agartha. The cold blooded fatigue penalty is astronomical, even a max E bless will barely dent it in cold 2-3. I wouldn't even recommend neutral temperature, take +1heat minimum. Death is also advisable (maybe 1-2!) as you don't need supplies, and the points are better spent elsehwere.

Being amphibious and having Water mages (albeit only E3-4, W1-2, very rarely W3 or E5), Agartha can compete underwater. Don't expect to outclass a water nation, but Agartha can put up a very respectable performance. There are also obvious strategic advantages - pop underwater and come out on land on the other side. What I would stress about Agartha is that although you CAN build fortresses underwater, DON'T unless the province supports indy mages. You cannot build ancient ones, troglodytes or earth readers underwater: without indy mages, you've just build a useless castle.

[Agrajag]

Just a note for any recent readers - this thread is almost two years old.

[Lich]

Aye sorry, I came across it in the strategy index and didn't notice how old it was until after I'd posted. Most of the info is still current anyhow.

Agema, I went with a F4E4N6 Forge Lord pretender; I considered a E9W9 Ageless Olm for a strong bless strat but it would have required some pretty extreme scales, and given that EA Agartha don't really get any decent thugs (in the early game at least) I figured it probably wouldn't be worth it. Any thoughts on this?

Also, are you sure that ancient ones and earth readers can't be recruited underwater? Being amphibious I'd have thought there wouldn't be a problem.

[Boron]

Nerfix said:
- The Risen Oracle. A terrific combat support pretender.

The risen oracle is not a terrific combat support pretender, but a terrific SC god .

Otherwise very nice guides Nerfix .

Oh about the deathscale: Imho you should only take death in short games (blitzes), but in long games the income loss is too big usually.