The Bogarus Problem

[Renojustin]

Bogarus's military is at such a disadvantage that there's no question that 90% of the nations in the game can successfully overwhelm you early, even if they are not a 'rush' nation.

Your scales don't do you a whole lot of good when you're beat back into your capital by turn 10.

When the choice is between super scales and no counter to this, thereby commiting yourself to a short, violent death, or mediocre scales and an effective counter, if through anti-army or anti-indy capability - and there certainly ARE pretenders that are more than capable of either one - I know which one I would pick. And I would be right.

[Ming]

K,

Thank you for your clarification.

I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective:

1. An awake pretender would give you more gold than strong scales by virtue of a faster expansion as long as you have O3 and G3. Please bear in mind that Bogarus has a weak starting army and would prefer C3 anyway because of its cold resistance troops. So your extra design points would only go to production, luck and magic scales, none of which is critical, or to magic ability. So an awake pretender is likely to be trading more gold and stronger start for less magic, not for less gold.

2. You would not be using your awake pretender to attack a dual blessed army without equipment. You would be using it to defend behind a 20 (minimum) PD and whatever troops you can scrape together.

I haven't tested this, but I would expect that at turn5 or 6 your awake pretender + PD + troops would have a very good chance of successfully defending against a (by definition smallish at such an early stage) dual blessed invading army without any equipment.

[sector24]

This thread has been very interesting so far. I'm surprised by the diversity of playstyles, and I had not considered recruiting the smiters for the first few turns to supplement the weak power of your starting army. Might be nice for frying some knights early on, but it does prevent you from getting to an early research goal like Thunderstrike spam or Construction 2.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone have a good Bogarus build that does not use an awake SC god? I'd like to try out these new ideas but I'm still skeptical that Bogarus can hold off a determined attacker without one.

[JimMorrison]

Renojustin said:

Kind of begs the question, Jim, how many games have you won with any strategy?

Oh rhetoric is fun. As you can see by the HoF, no one has won an MP game with Bogarus, including me. How many times have you lost an MP game as Bogarus, with an awake pretender?



Part of my point was that if you are going to use the SC defensively only, then the issue is essentially moot anyways. You are trading a defensive bonus against small highly blessed armies - at the expense of making yourself more vulnerable to strong scales strats. What are you going to do if an O3/P3/G3 Marignon shows up with 200 crossbowmen? That sort of raw firepower can rout a PD in one volley, and kill a pretender with the next.

There is a simple rule in dominions - you can't be prepared for every contingency, at any given time. That being the case, it just seems kind of silly to base your entire strat around what you think is the biggest threat in the first 6-8 turns. I can't believe I'm the only one who thinks that if you're going to be eliminated, that's the best time for it. I'd much rather have a really strong mid-late game with a shaky start, than to have a misleadingly strong start, with a late game that is weaker than optimal. You can argue that it isn't, but simply taking Drain, losing 2 RP per researcher for the entire game - may not be hurting you, in the way that you look at it, but it is compromising what is considered to be one of the greatest strengths of Bogarus. If your build is able to keep that 1Magic instead, your research will be utterly insane, and you won't have to survive very long to start leveraging that power.

[Micah]

Good expansion gives you a good mid/end game. SCs give you a good expansion rate, especially with a nation like Bogarus. +100% provinces in the first year is worth more than +10% income. You can also cover all the important scales just fine with an SC build.

[Dedas]

I found out that playing Bogarus as Maverni (in Baalz guide) was very successful. That means using good scales to buy as many bodies as possible, boost them and thus survive early game. Later on you use your mages and excellent research advantage to win.

[Edi]

Bogarus can recruit absolute hordes of chaff and there is a quality all of its own to a great quantity of their archers, especially if they manage to snag some good indies soon.

Some of the problems with Bogarus are that they have no access to Earth, Water or Nature magic, so those should be covered by the pretender. An awake SC pretender is a pretty big risk, but could pay off. A straight research rush to Evo 2 or 3, mercenaries and hordes of chaff can get you somewhere, depending. Archers backed by the city guard and then the cav units can be fielded rather quickly in large numbers, which may allow you to take on other nations even if they are going for a bless strategy.

I've found Bogarus interesting to play in SP, but that does not translate well to MP, of course.

As far as the comments about how many MP games Bogarus has won, that's a red herring. The nation has been in for only two patches and not been in any number of MP games compared to most other winners and since unlike some other nations, does not EAT EVERYTHING, there is going to be a learning curve and wating period before see it win. Remember that in Dom-PPP Caelum was once considered the weakest nation. Then somebody figured out Quickness + Summon Lesser Air Elemental and the rest is history (and why lesser elementals cost gems to summon since Dom2).

[JimMorrison]

Edi said:
As far as the comments about how many MP games Bogarus has won, that's a red herring.

Well it would be of dubious value if it were used as an argument for Bogarus needing to be "fixed" or otherwise changed in order to be competitive.

However, it is not. I was just pointing out that people can debate different theories for the nation all they want, when someone says they need X in order to be competitive, then that begs the question, "how competitive are they, with X?", and so far the data shows that they are not conclusively more competitive with X, than with Y or Z. Which leads to a more open-minded discussion of the relative merits of these capital letters at the end of the alphabet.

[K]

Micah said:
Good expansion gives you a good mid/end game. SCs give you a good expansion rate, especially with a nation like Bogarus. +100% provinces in the first year is worth more than +10% income. You can also cover all the important scales just fine with an SC build.

True, but you have to to be able to keep those provinces. A single SC is fodder for any number of countermeasures while sustained growth backed by mixed forces is much harder to counter.

[K]

Ming said:
2. You would not be using your awake pretender to attack a dual blessed army without equipment. You would be using it to defend behind a 20 (minimum) PD and whatever troops you can scrape together.

I haven't tested this, but I would expect that at turn5 or 6 your awake pretender + PD + troops would have a very good chance of successfully defending against a (by definition smallish at such an early stage) dual blessed invading army without any equipment.

I'd invite you to run a few tests using 30 PD + starting army + 20 archers and some Standard units + two H3 Eparchs scripted with Smite. They do a perfectly fine job killing 20 dual-Blessed + Prophet + starting army attackers (no losses in my tests).

A god on the front line in this scenario is more likely to get killed than to contribute meaningfully. Heck, Bogarus's ability to recruit H3 priests make them equally able to beat an SC god in the early game.