The Ancient Olm, a viable strategy?

[Itchykobu]

This guy is my favorite character. For reasons I can't explain, I really enjoy the blind cave salamander theme. I'm currently pulling a 6E6W Ancient Olm pretender who has racked up hundreds of kills, 3 of which were an enemy Draikana pretender (I'm playing against CPU).

Now, there is a big "HOWEVER" clause here. 1) I'm a complete newbie to this game, so I'm still learning a lot of ins and outs. 2) The AO pretender has lower stats in all areas compared to most pretenders (in fact, I'm surprised I've done so well with him). I can't find many pluses to using this guy, other than the large success I've experienced.

The first game I played I tried a solid D9 pretender and tried to blitz to researching Utter Dark (those Olms are good at night!). Unfortunately, the other pretenders got globals out way before I did, and my empire crumbled. So, I tossed away the Utter Dark strategy.

Now my victories sound like quite random circumstance compared to last game. Does anyone else use the Ancient Olm? If so, what are the real ups of using this guy? I'm certain my luck is either (a) random and can't hold out forever, or (b) randomly good choices by me that I should repeat.

Input?

[quantum_mechani]

It's certainly possible to do well with the Olm, but I would not say he is very optimal, compared to the risen oracle. His main problem is low dominion and lack of fear, meaning it's not too hard for even chaff to swarm him to death.

[Cor2]

IIRC I use it as a imprisoned 9e9w bless, good for all those fun statues and stuff and good for you mages.

[JimMorrison]

Yeah, thing is, anything can be viable in SP, that's half the fun of the AI, is it will allow you to make even the most improbable strategy succeed, if you put enough effort out.

On the other hand, as far as MP goes, the Olm is not very good as an SC. The first problem is, to make it work for any kind of bless, you won't afford to have him be awake. but if you have him awake, he doesn't start with Fear or Awe, or any armor, so he will not get you very far, and in MP your SC is either awake, or a very bad idea (there is a niche for highly developed strats involving Cons 4 at the end of year 1, and a sleeping pretender, but few even try to make it viable).

So as Cor says, really the only reason you'd want the Olm is to imprison for blesses. Unfortunately for Agartha, Earth bless is fairly useless for your summoned statues. Plus, everyone seems to agree that Agartha NEEDS at least a minor Fire bless. What it comes down to, is that the Olm would be amazing for most other nations (W and E are my favorite majors), but is not a very efficient way to spend points for Agartha. A shame, really, he really is SO COOL. I tried to use him once as an awake SC when I first started playing. Squished worm, he didn't stand a chance.

[Kuritza]

Anyway, it feels rather strange that Olms arent reflected in the Agartha race. There's that Olm pretender, and there are half-Olm heroes. Other than that, there's no hint that they are even there.

[HoneyBadger]

My feeling is that Agartha should be revamped, atleast EA Agartha, and given access to all sorts of weird underground creatures, mainly as summons. We're seeing a lot of new nations, lately, that get literally dozens of national summons (Lanka stands out, but also Gath and Bogarus), and I think the older nations deserve some of the same treatment. And personally, while I'd love to see more underground nations (there's 3 ocean nations plus all the amphibians, and only one cave nation? gnomes anyone?), Agartha's basically it. So it would be great if they could get more summons. There's tons of cave weirdness out there that would *easily* fit into the game, to great effect.

[Zeldor]

Wait for new CBM version better


HoneyBadger: Acutally Agartha is one of the best nations when it comes to summons. Especially when you count 'old' nations. There are other nations that could use tweaking more, for example Man.

[Lingchih]

Good, but some of us do not play CBM. I only play it one mp game and one test game, myself.

[HoneyBadger]

I know they're not bad, Zeldor, compared to most of the other nations, but compared to the new nations, they're still slightly lacklustre, and underground creatures-even the real ones like the olm, let alone fictional monsters, like the ancient olm-are just terribly interesting.

By the way, if you've never been inside a real cave, I highly recommend it. The experience can be every bit as alien as the bottom of the ocean.

[Zeldor]

The new nations are mostly overpowered, hard to compare anything vanilla. Especially when we talk for example about Lords of Civilization.

And I would classify Umrals as one of the best summons in the game when it comes to price/value ratio. I wish they came as commanders though