The Bogarus Problem

[Ming]

K,

Thank you for your reply and free advice.

For your information, I have played test games against the AI using both strategies (eparch and awake pretender) and find the latter to be superior (and NOT just because it is better against the AI). Nevertheless, in deference to your ability (I can tell from your comments in other threads that you are a good and experienced player – certainly more than semi-competent!) I shall take another look and reserve my judgment. Our differences seem minor and might be no more than player preference anyway. i.e. both strategies requires compromises and it is a question of which is a better compromise.

I should, however, point out a couple of points that you seem to have overlooked in your comments:

Taking an awake pretender can still leave enough points to get good scales – the only significant trade-off is production vs sloth. The value of production diminishes over time. So in this respect you are not getting much lasting value by not choosing an awake pretender. Alternately you could invest the points in magic paths, but Bogarus’ recruitable mages already provide sufficient magic ability, so again the trade-off for taking an awake pretender is not that great.

Giving up 5-6 turns of staret recruitment in the beginning IS a major handicap. Sure you could catch-up, but you would otherwise be way ahead! What do you gain in return? Extra design points that might not make a major difference – AND your early expansion would still be slower than with an awake pretender.

Finally, using an awake pretender gives you more flexibility, not less, in the early game. With an awake pretender, you can still recruit eparchs if the situation still calls for it. Without an awake pretender, you will not have the option of calling for its help.

Anyway, as I said, I shall take another look instead of debating this further.

[Micah]

Jim- The evidence is the weight of people's experience and educated guesses. You can't say that an imprisoned magicless pretender with LA Ermor and maxed scales isn't a disproven strategy because no one's tried it yet. Obviously it isn't a good strategy.

I haven't seen a thing in this thread that would make me think about NOT taking an SC with Bogarus when I play them in a normal dominions game situation, so I disagree with your assertion that you've adequately shown that another strategy might be better. Yes, it's hardly an instant-win formula, but it sure as heck is the best option you've got IMO.

If you really want those production scales just take a PoD, you've got the points to go O3/P3/C3/G1/Misf2/Magic1 with dom9 and D4. Those are pretty excellent scales, especially with the cold preference.

[Micah]

K- Look at my example scales for an awake PoD. Note how they are not in fact remotely close to being bad.

The supposed SC counters you just listed are more straw men as well. A PoD is immune to Vengeance, and every single pretender has 30 morale, so fear is pretty unlikely to bother them much.

And yes, I am saying that if you start researching on turn 7 like you suggest that having enough research to have construction 4 (360 rp) + teleport (200 rp) + evo 5 (560) for actual useful battle magic as opposed to having your mages sit around casting blink + conj 3 200 for phoenix power is pretty much impossible, since that's 1320 RP. Researching starting on turn 7 you'll only have about 660 RP if all you do is research after your 10th staret researches for a turn. Add a bit for magic scale, still not enough.

OTOH, if you start making starets on turn 1 you'll actually have enough for all of that with some to spare for site searching. 1440 total RP after your 15th Staret researches for a turn. More than twice as much research. TWICE AS MUCH. That's probably got something to do with the resistance you're describing to your exarch spam idea. Sure, its fine if you're desperate, but it starts looking really obsolete right about turn 15 when you're losing out on casting falling fires and soul slays instead of smites.

[Kuritza]

What I meant is, when you dont produce mages during the initial 6 turns, first mages you make will have to choose between site-searching or researching - making the gap even worse, be it research gap or magic sites gap.

[Jazzepi]

Oh man. I just have to comment.

I've been extremely happy with my air4/earth5 dom 9 pretender for Bogarus in Kingmaker. Since you have air shield from the get-go he doesn't die to any indy province. If you script him right, he can even take on blood vine provinces.

I've been running him around since the beginning of time with zero equipment, and he only gets more amazing when you add onto it. Unlike PoD he can run right up front from the beginning. He's also 100% fire resistant meaning he can go toe to toe with sacreds using a fire bless.

Personally I would never recommend that someone use expensive, mapmove one, old age smiters as an answer to Bogarus's military problems which net zero research. In the early game they have enough trouble expanding, but a cyclops like I described is amazing. I had myself at the top of the expansion chart with him at the beginning of the game.

Also, you can research your way towards alteration two in less time then it would take the enemy to get ontop of you, giving you access to ironskin, and mistform. Throw in summon earth power and you have an early game SC.

And like Micah said, you still have great scales giving you tons of cash. I'm using O3S3G3M-2

Jazzepi

[Agema]

I can see that Bogarus doesn't have an obvious troop tactic. There's no great bless unit, the archery is mediocre, and there's no hydra-like monster. But they are certainly seem *adequate*. They've got solid infantry, and knights that can add some big punch if you crank a few out.

If you've taken sloth and can pretty much only recruit the Voi, you would be asking for trouble without an SC pretender. But I suspect you could hold enemies off with the quality troops. Add lots of very cheap voi archers behind a decent front line and it should be pretty effective. Shouldn't it?

[Tifone]

Jazzepi

Maybe I've done something wrong but your build, even with cold 3 (which you didn't state but i took it as implicit) still gives me -37 design points

[K]

Micah said:
K- Look at my example scales for an awake PoD. Note how they are not in fact remotely close to being bad.

Yeh, the scales are decent but that guy is not an SC. I ran several test games and he died somewhere between turn 4 and 8 when he accidentally hit a province with Calvary.

Maybe on turn 12 or 13 when you have some equipment for him he is decent, but the risks you are taking with that guy are pretty big.

Micah said:
The supposed SC counters you just listed are more straw men as well. A PoD is immune to Vengeance, and every single pretender has 30 morale, so fear is pretty unlikely to bother them much.

Yes, one of the potential SCs can't be affected by one of the potential counters, and all are a little resistant to another.

Crossbowman do perfectly fine if you don't have very high armor or Air Shield. Calvary don't even have a counter since they dump their payload of damage on turn 1 or 2.

In fact, the sheer number of SC counters in the LA are too numerous to mention. Baalz's LA Atlantis guide shows that even base troops have a good chance of killing an SC if you try.

Micah said:
And yes, I am saying that if you start researching on turn 7 like you suggest that having enough research to have construction 4 (360 rp) + teleport (200 rp) + evo 5 (560) for actual useful battle magic as opposed to having your mages sit around casting blink + conj 3 200 for phoenix power is pretty much impossible, since that's 1320 RP. Researching starting on turn 7 you'll only have about 660 RP if all you do is research after your 10th staret researches for a turn. Add a bit for magic scale, still not enough.

OTOH, if you start making starets on turn 1 you'll actually have enough for all of that with some to spare for site searching. 1440 total RP after your 15th Staret researches for a turn. More than twice as much research. TWICE AS MUCH. That's probably got something to do with the resistance you're describing to your exarch spam idea. Sure, its fine if you're desperate, but it starts looking really obsolete right about turn 15 when you're losing out on casting falling fires and soul slays instead of smites.

Actually, I never said Evo5 and Conj3 in addition to those other Paths (and eParchs are the H3s, not the H2 eXarchs).

I also don't think that Falling Fires is a great solution when nations generally have very high amounts of armor, but I get your point (and considering Bogarus's communions potential, deadly magic is actually much closer than you'd expect if you go some other route like Thaum 5 for Leeching Darkness).

But, here's a little test game where I was just tooling around and not planning it out too much, and I have all of those things by turn 21 even after I made dumb mistakes like forgetting to set mages to research or attacking provinces with too little troops because I forgot to check if I had blockers. I'm sure with a little more practice with Bogarus and more aggressive play I could cut it down to 17 turns, search more provinces for sites, and probably conquer an enemy (I have several armies doing nothing for around 9 turns). Considering that I said Turn 17 to 19, I'm actually not far off from my estimate.

[Micah]

Yes, K, a naked PoD has issues with cav, and archers as well. You also get scouting reports for a reason. Pick a prov without either on turn 2 and make an enchanted shield, alchemizing for the 5th pearl. Turn 3 you should hopefully have another province you can take that's adjacent to your cap...doesn't matter which one, since your PoD flies. Have your PoD kill the indies and your starting scout bring the shield over and give it to your Prince. He's now pretty much able to solo any indie province between the arrow blocking and the increased defense to stand up to a cavalry charge until the fear kicks in. Avoid the cav altogether if you want, there plenty of other stuff for your flying pretender to pick from. And this is just using national resources, you can do better if you trade.

If by "a little resistant" you mean "completely immune to" then yes, you're right about fear assassins. Fear doesn't work on morale-30 units, end of story.

There are a nuber of effective SC counters, it's true, but if you're letting troops that can kill your SC get into combat with your SC you're not using it very well. Flight is your friend.

And no, you didn't say anything about evo-5, but you did say "powerful magic" so I figured falling fires or something of that level was what you had in mind, since teleporting in mages to spam mind burn, rage and bonds of fire is pretty laughable. Maybe Flaming Arrows, which is level 4 instead of 5, but still, my point is that you're losing over half of your research by going with early priests. You'll have to forgive the naming confusion on my part.

And sure, you might be able to have all that by turn 17, but I bet I can have it quicker than that with an awake pretender and still have a highly mobile raider on top of a well-developed nation.

[K]

Micah said:
Yes, K, a naked PoD has issues with cav, and archers as well. You also get scouting reports for a reason. Pick a prov without either on turn 2 and make an enchanted shield, alchemizing for the 5th pearl. Turn 3 you should hopefully have another province you can take that's adjacent to your cap...doesn't matter which one, since your PoD flies. Have your PoD kill the indies and your starting scout bring the shield over and give it to your Prince. He's now pretty much able to solo any indie province between the arrow blocking and the increased defense to stand up to a cavalry charge until the fear kicks in. Avoid the cav altogether if you want, there plenty of other stuff for your flying pretender to pick from. And this is just using national resources, you can do better if you trade.

And that's no more interesting or effective than setting up smite armies to do the same. The effect of "more provinces" is the exact same, you just don't have to pay hundreds of design points for it.

Micah said:
If by "a little resistant" you mean "completely immune to" then yes, you're right about fear assassins. Fear doesn't work on morale-30 units, end of story.

I'm not quite sure what you are talking about because I've seen Pretenders route. If you route during an assassination, you die.

Micah said:
There are a number of effective SC counters, it's true, but if you're letting troops that can kill your SC get into combat with your SC you're not using it very well. Flight is your friend.

So you are saying that you'll avoid combat with this SC god.... then why even have it? It is still vulnerable to teleport ambushes and other enemy magic, so it just looks like a liability from my standpoint.

Micah said:
And no, you didn't say anything about evo-5, but you did say "powerful magic" so I figured falling fires or something of that level was what you had in mind, since teleporting in mages to spam mind burn, rage and bonds of fire is pretty laughable. Maybe Flaming Arrows, which is level 4 instead of 5, but still, my point is that you're losing over half of your research by going with early priests. You'll have to forgive the naming confusion on my part.

I think you must be joking with me because I can't imagine you do not know about Thaum 5 which in total gives you Gateway, Teleports, Communions, Soul Slay, Confusion, Leeching Darkness and a host of other spells that can seriously alter a war or battlefield. Being able to move armies from your castles straight to a war zone is a great power, but if powerful battlemagic is only a Communion and some equipment away, that's just icing on the cake.

Micah said:And sure, you might be able to have all that by turn 17, but I bet I can have it quicker than that with an awake pretender and still have a highly mobile raider on top of a well-developed nation.

Your "well developed nation" is going to get twice as many afflicted old mages every winter because you went G1 instead of G3 (1/3 instead of 1/6 by my tests), and who knows how much income you'll have lost from not having provinces grow as fast (and how much you'll lose once you start blood hunting).

But it is a good thing you have a flying raider. With your Misfortune, you'll need it to put down the barbarian and knight invasions that crop up even in an Order 3.

Whatever. I've made my point. I'll let this go.