Fun with Arco Astrologers

[Saxon]

Last night, my single player Arco nation was really getting moving well. I had just gotten construction level six and had spent a turn or three producing Starshine caps and Banners of the northern star, along with assorted minor protective gear. I took my ten astrologers off research, gave them the goodies to lift their astral levels, then teleported them off to join the fight against Man. Teleport is such an useful spell!

I had them on Body Ethereal, then Soul Slay. They joined the main army and the next turn entered battle against a big force. And then… The opposition just melted! Ten soul slays a turn punches an enemy army pretty hard. Do it four turns in a row, with 40 potential deaths and they are reeling. The astrologers also tend to target the bigger units first, or those closest, which usually hits the most troublesome units. They also keep firing after the army routs, so they eat up a lot of enemy troops, so you do not need to fight them again.

I just walked to the capital, often my melee units could not even reach the enemy, they were bLasted so fast. Once in the capital, I did run into a problem. The astrologers targeted the enemy pretender, who did have high magic resistance. This did seem like a waste, but after ten a turn for a few turns, one spell did get through. I would throw in a few spell penetration items before using this against pretenders.

In any case, I know the “Firing Squad” has been written about before in the forum and I know that I should expect a real power for my 1800 gold plus many astral gems, but the power of this combination really blew me away and I had to share.

[Blitz]

The astrologer is my favortite mage. He's definately the cheapest 3-astral mage, and IIRC also the cheapest 3-anything mage in the game. Being capitol-only is really his only drawback, as 180 gold for SSS and a true random pick is outstanding. I usually give each of them boots of the messenger, a skullcap and a clam. 180 gold and 25 gems is a big investment, but there's a big payoff at the end.

[Norfleet]

Yeah, being capitol only is a minor drawback, but being innately S3 means getting him to the front is trivial anyway.

[Saxon]

Capitol only is a bit of a drawback, but I found that teleport needs a bit of a network of labs to be really effective. As such, I was able to invest in other mages at the same time as buying an astrologer every turn. The other mages, who’s name I forget, are better at research and, with the two astral, are still a respectable three astral with a banner of the northern star. This blends in nicely with the soul slay barrage I used, or can be toned down to merely paralyze if you want to reduce fatigue. Your melee troops can usually take care of the paralyzed units… The other kind of mage also provided fair site search capability, as they can get a range of randoms.

On a really big map, I can see the capitol only limiting things, but medium and small should be ok. The armies are just not that big on the smaller maps.

All in all, I really liked this pair of national mages, they may be a new favorite.

[Boron]

hm that soulslay really works quite nice

i didn't experiment too much until now with battlefield spells that was a fault and i will do now
so are there any good other astral battlefield spells (preferred without gem costs , doing areadamage without mrcheck ) ?

a modification to your soul slay strat which comes to my mind and i will try now

the pythium theurgs can be produced everywhere , are sacred + cost 150 gems . so they cost only about 45% upkeep of the arco mystics + can be massproduced .
unfortunately they are only astral 2 .

but if you really need them early on you can at least mind burn with them and you can empower them quite cheap to astral 3 via forging

so all in all you can field the same number like arco mystics and pay only half of the upkeep .
pythium has a superior gem income to arco and for the saved upkeep you could either field the double number of mindburners/soulslayers or build some arch theurgs which are either due to superior magical equipment like penetration increasing equipment compared to the theurgs high mr resistance creatures ( like scs ) slayers or they cast via communion empowered air spells

what do you think ?

only problem perhaps is that at battles longer than 5 turns since the pythium mages are priests too they probably cast many crappy priest spells instead of casting soul slays , orb lightnings and so on

but for the first 5 rounds they will do more damage at same upkeep costs + are better massproduceable

[Kel]

Originally posted by Boron:
the pythium theurgs can be produced everywhere , are sacred + cost 150 gems . so they cost only about 45% upkeep of the arco mystics + can be massproduced .

Mystics can be produced anywhere, as well. Astrologers are capitol only.

but if you really need them early on you can at least mind burn with them and you can empower them quite cheap to astral 3 via forging

Paralyze is a really good 2s alternative if you have troops to accompany them. In fact, I tend to use paralyze more than soul slay in small/mid sized battles since you get better penetration and it costs less fatigue, due to the lower path requirement. In small/mid sized battles, enemies will usually die before paralyze wears off.

pythium has a superior gem income to arco

Only in the very early game. Don't forget that the 3 random elemental picks on the mystics will give you the ability to site search extensively.

or they cast via communion empowered air spells

Communion can be a bit fragile and laborious but one of the nice things is that, with random picks, it can give you access to a huge variety of buffs, making them very powerful and flexible. Mystics, of course, excel at this with 3 random picks, but even the one random of the arch can be used for a variety of battle effects (elemental resistances, flame arrow, wind guide, legions of steel, weapons of sharpness, strength of giants, etc.).

Theurgs do have some advantages. They are sacred, as you pointed out, and thus not only cheaper but also able to gain bless effects (like quickness from a W9 blessing, for example). You just might want to avoid giving them a berserker blessing

They also have a built in W for quickness (where as mystics will often have one but not always).

Plus, being a priest has some advantages in the field, flexibility wise. You can use them to preach and build temples which can be handy. Of course they also site search worse than mystics but you can't have everything.

- Kel

[Boron]

Originally posted by Kel:
[Mystics can be produced anywhere, as well. Astrologers are capitol only.
[/QB]

meant the astrologers , the one with astral 3

Originally posted by Kel:

pythium has a superior gem income to arco
[/qb]

Only in the very early game. Don't forget that the 3 random elemental picks on the mystics will give you the ability to site search extensively.

[/QB][/quote]

thats true but sometimes time wasting
depends on the magic frequenzy / research settings but if they are not too low / high :

you can get conjuration 5 with pythium quite quick . most probably you have amassed the initial astral gems and when you have researched accashic can cast 2-3 at one time with all your astral gems and hopefully find some astral gem producing sites again so that you can make 1 accashic every 2-3 turns .
and hopefully you got lucky and have meanwhile 1 arch theurg too who is able to clamforge

edit :
so if you are lucky with searching through mystics you find some nice sites early on but if you aren't and they are elemental 2 or nonelemental like the quite frequent death sites you perhaps find none while when you cast an accashic you find 2 , one lowlevel death and a lvl 2/3 elemental one e.g.

but you will find most astral gem sites so you get very good astral income earlier
on a rough estimation you find about 1/3 of the magic sites this way .
but the high level ones you never find with this and though they are rare on the other hand most of them are worth as much as ~5 lvl 1 sites

edit 2 :
but arcos national troops are more flexible like the pythium ones i think because pythiums troops are very expensive in resources
so because arcos troops are easier to massproduce it has quite an advantage because it can take far more sloth / worse admin rating castles like pythium and so gets more points .
and the 350 recruit costs for the arch theurg are heavy too

[ July 02, 2004, 16:41: Message edited by: Boron ]

[Kel]

and when you have researched accashic can cast 2-3 at one time with all your astral gems

If you are rushing your research to conj 5 and you aren't searching territories, you aren't likely to have 75+ gems to acashic 3 territories. Eventually you will, of course, but by that time, you could already have a good gem ecnomy going.

Now, if you had could figure out a viable, specific conjuration rush strategy with Pythium, I could see this being more useful.

so if you are lucky with searching through mystics you find some nice sites early on but if you aren't and they are elemental 2

Eh ? Not sure what you mean, mystics are commonly elemental 2 in one element. And, in any case, I wasn't necessarily saying they should go out and physically site search, site searching spells all find up to lvl 9.

or nonelemental like the quite frequent death sites

You search those sites with astrologers who get a random pick in death. Death is slower to develop but then again, so is acashic.

and hopefully you got lucky and have meanwhile 1 arch theurg too who is able to clamforge

It will take a lot of clam forging to not only pay for the cost of the clams but the 75 astral you have spent on acashic. Also note that mystics can both clamforge *and* fetish forge.

I don't think I could wait until I could afford acashic to start gem searching, even if I knew I had no enemies, didn't need to forge anything, etc. Getting gems early just leads to more gems (from site searching spells) and that leads to more gems. Plus, you can search for the gems you need faster and you can search the sites that are more likely to have them.

However, I will say that I am intrigued enough to go play some test games and see for sure. I have played with varying how long I wait until I start searching but never really developed a conjuration rush strategy, incorporating acashic.

In any case, even if you consider rushing to acashic(which is, admittedly, in a great research branch) more efficient than individual site-searching, in the early game, the difference in starting gems is pretty insignificant, which was my point.

- Kel

[ July 02, 2004, 18:38: Message edited by: Kel ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Kel:
It will take a lot of clam forging to not only pay for the cost of the clams but the 75 astral you have spent on acashic. Also note that mystics can both clamforge *and* fetish forge.

Not unless you empower them in Nature, they can't. Fetishes are FN, and mystic randoms are elemental only, so they cannot roll a N. Mystics can only clamforge if they roll one or more Ws, but this isn't really uncommon.

[Kel]

Not unless you empower them in Nature, they can't. Fetishes are FN, and mystic randoms are elemental only, so they cannot roll a N.

Oops, good point, knew there was a reason i don't actually do it...ok, I retract that sentence of the post, then

- Kel

[ July 02, 2004, 19:25: Message edited by: Kel ]