Guide: LA Agartha - Armies of Darkness

[TheMenacer]

I definitely agree that the Oracle pretender is sort of useless. You don't need him for early expansion and he's not gonna scare away a determined rush, at least not for long enough to make a difference. I personally like going with the Lord of Rebirth. The splash of nature magic makes a huge difference once you hit the midgame.

The real key to Agartha as I see it isn't the national summons at all, as sweet as they are, but rather the ability to summon Lamia Queens to jack up your magical diversity like crazy. They're reasonably cheap, they use nature gems which you aren't really going to be using in the first place, and are easily summonable by a Lord of Rebirth. These guys will get you access to water, which is handy of course, more nature magic, more death in case you were worried about that, and most importantly, a splash of blood for blood stones. Not only that, but a handful of nature boosters on your Lord of Rebirth will get you Fairy Courts later on, just in case you'd felt like getting a bit of air magic. Granted, that's not gonna happen til late-midgame, but it's always nice to have.

In the meanwhile, your necromancers should be replacing your crossbows with skeleton archers and of course Umbrals are still absolute monsters no matter what research level they're at. Water gets you naiad warriors which perform fairly well against normal troops and use water gems which you aren't really using anyway. Tomb Oracles make handy SCs, but I prefer to keep them casting spells, small groups of thugs to mess up armies supported by Tomb Oracles spamming disintegrate to keep the usual thug counters off them is tricky to beat, especially when TOs have enough HP to live through the usual counters to groups of mages like rain of stones or earthquake, particularly with a small nature bless.

All this said, it still doesn't patch up your early game vulnerability. Rushing conjuration to get all that awesome midgame stuff means that you're not rushing evocation or enchantment to allow your necromancers to hold off early attackers. I suppose the only thing to do is to fly under the radar and buddy up to your neighbors. The durability of your cave knights ensures that you'll be pretty obnoxious to take by anyone who isn't really dedicated to rushing you, but it's hardly something to rely on. The build I usually go for is a Lord of Rebirth with E4/D4/N4, a splash of order and growth for castles, luck for gems, and cold to make the battlefield as unpleasant as possible. Like I said, it's not gonna hold off a rush, but I think the thing to do isn't to weaken your overall game plan in the hopes of patching up your one weakness, particularly when, assuming you get out of the early game, it patches itself.