Suggestions for Forge Lord pretender for EA Agartha.

endomorphious · #1 December 29th, 2010, 09:31 PM

Hello all,

Getting ready to build a new Pretender for a single player game. Using default settings, 14 random AI opponents on the Glory of God map. I really don't like the cost/bonus of most of the pretenders except the Forge Lord (who just seems so very NON thematic--the best that I can come up with was that he was actually emprisoned deep within the Agarthan Oracle complex by the previous Pantokretor(sic).

My question IS how necessary is the E9 bless for making the national bless useful? I would like to start with him imprisoned and just 4E 4F 4S, so that he could jump straight into forging on his release. The sticky guide really likes the E9 and N4 bless, but to have any kind of reasonable scales Id need to take him imprisoned and that would seem to really interfere with the benefit of having him as my forge-meister.

13lackGu4rd · #2 December 29th, 2010, 10:22 PM

EA Agartha really doesn't need a bless, as its sacred troops are laughable compared to real bless rush nations. the Forge Lord is great if you can survive the early game, otherwise an awake SC pretender is what you're looking at. seeing that your opponents currently are AI, there's no reason why you shouldn't survive the early game, thus the Forge Lord is very much viable. E4F4S4 is great on it, opens up most of the items you'll need, maybe add some D too for an easy way into tarts later on. also, take him dormant not imprisoned, imprisoned just takes too long to be available, and you want to start forging as soon as possible, so begining of year2 is perfect research wise and gives you plenty of points to play with. O3S3Misf2Magic1 are the standard scales you're looking at, taking temperature and death scales is optional for more magic on your Forge Lord, also possible to take temperature3+death3 and change misf2 to Luck3 for a lot of gems, but than you won't be able to afford as many magic paths on your Forge Lord.

rdonj · #3 December 29th, 2010, 10:38 PM

You can play agartha SP using an e9 bless, but it's definitely not necessary. You can really completely ignore using the agarthan sacreds. Troglodytes with some shielded agarthans as arrow catchers is sufficient for expansion and should work just fine. If you really want to make the national bless useful though, you need enough E to reach net neutral fatigue, or they'll just die like giant, expensive flies.

Squirrelloid · #4 December 30th, 2010, 01:10 AM

Forge Lord is a good pretender for Agartha, although an awake SC might be better.

Agarthan sacreds are crap. Independents are better for the cost. Seriously.

P3D · #5 December 30th, 2010, 01:41 AM

Sacred troops need F4E9N4 bless if you want to use them - with that they are OK, after collecting a few stars. Cast Darkness to be sure.
Even then they should not go into cold provinces. If you are not playing CBM, and you have points left, add blood for blood stones.

They can clear the seas, however. Not so against human-played water nations, who might pick cold scales if Agartha is in the game.

Fantomen · #6 December 30th, 2010, 03:11 AM

I also wrote a guide for an EA Agartha forge lord strategy some time ago: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43983

endomorphious · #7 December 30th, 2010, 09:51 AM

thanks folks...I just didnt want to waste the E9 points if the bless really wasn't very helpful. Thank you fantomen I did read your guide, but your geared towards CBM and as I stated in my post this is entirely NOT CBM and not for MP.

Again thanks all for your input.