Guide: Agartha, Pale ones - a study in darkness (CBM)

[Fantomen]

Fourth gear

Now you have to break into that smithy and convince your forge lord to stop popping out mentors for a few turns and crank out a ring of sorcery, a skullcap and a ring of wizardry (courtesy of that holy searching) At this point your pretender has married the duracell rabbit and made a couple babies who needs a new toy. Your supercharged reseach engine will now be upgraded further by fire random Earth readers cranking out a many lightless lanterns as possible as fast as possible. Burn through that pile of fire gems. You should reach construction 7 before your forge lord finished those items, but when he does we have another job for him.

The rings for now circulates and helps you break into nature and possibly air and blood if you were lucky with indy mages.

At construction 7 either find a e5 oracle if you got one or pass out a pair of earth boots to a e4, make sure he´s not old. This guy will now use that pile of earth gems to drop mechanical militia with any extra gems you have scraped up. Remember that PD we invested in? Now this is early year 3 so some other nations might be thinking about launching a bitzkrieg with teleporting thugs and whatnot. Think again.

Construction 7 also gives us mechanical men if we need to combine with some lightning rods on mages and thugs (look at those trog lords again) against any lightning spams. And last but not least it gives us golems.

You probably don´t have any other choice but to pull your forge lord from forging to do this but a couple kitted golems is exactly what we need to perfect that fancy new defence system we´ve got. There are many ways to equip golems but you are uniquely well suited to forge stymphalian wings which gives fear, flying and trample on that enc 0 size 6 unit. Add a golden shield to that for awe+fear and you´re...well, golden. Have it forge itself a cap and give it boots of stone and you have a fearsome teleporting deterrent to any heavy raiders. And you still have a hand and two misc slots to play with for resistances or mr or whatever you need. Elemental armour + boots of quickness and a set of appropriate weapons should be sitting in your lab in case any tartarians or other big bad guys show up. Remember that you can swap gear and teleport the same turn, any raider should meet your golem perfectly equipped for the job.

We also got weapons of sharpness in the same neat package, spammable by your oracles. Your armies start looking pretty massive by now. Esoecially those cavern guards we´ve been massing really starts to shine.

Still early year 3, we switch to alteration. And this is the school that will transform our tank into a juggernaut.

[Fantomen]

Fifth gear

As you are blazing up the alteration tree faster than your enemies can say slartibartfast your armies are multiplied in power. Your pretender now forges a bunch of skullfaces and any other death gems goes into skull staffs. Every army is thusly complemented with a d4 oracle by the time you reach darkness and petrify, which should be something like early fall year 3. After that most of your death gems will be sitting on scouts sneaking along your frontiers.

Darkness is just crazy with Agartha. Those cavern guards are now leveraging their 23 AP damage against halved defense in most cases. Backed up by petrify spam on top of boulders, bolas, thugs, sacred elites, destruction spam, earth meld etc etc... All the while blights become a monthly occurrence in your enemies forts.

EVERYTHING IN YOUR ARSENAL SHINES IN DARKNESS! All summons, all recruits, all thugs, all mages, everything.

Now don´t come dragging with undead to counter this. Agartha can handle undead like no tomorrow. First we have a host of holy3 priests with our armies. Cleansing water are less than a turn away. Dust to dust and finally petrify will have you covered. And if that wasn´t enough wither bones is two or three turns away if you so chose.

Your pretender cranks out rings of wizardry and crystal shields mostly now when not summoning golems. you´ll be looking at effectively earth 7-8 on your oracles in combat, And pretty heavy fire, death and water too.

From here you can go in different directions. Either stay on target for army of lead/gold which also opens up a new staple in iron bane, just go another notch for marble warriors then umbrals. Evocation for magma eruption and other elemental shells for your cannons, Back to construction for forge, artifacts and poison golems or enchantment for deep well+hidden in sand factory. Conjuration for well of misery, earth attack and tartarians etc etc.

Whichever way you go it´s going to be one hell of a high tech tank to drive into the fray.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by Fantomen

...There are many ways to equip golems but you are uniquely well suited to forge stymphalian wings which gives fear, flying and trample on that enc 0 size 6 unit. Add a golden shield to that for awe+fear and you´re...well, golden. ...

Minor quibble - golems are size 5. Interesting guide