Strategy for Agartha Early Age

[SunTzu84]

Hello. I'm trying to learn the game one nation at a time, and the first one is EA Agartha, also my favorite. But the nation seems to me pretty hard to control properly - my troops are incapable to dealing enough damage even to lightly armored opponents, and get always beaten in underwater provinces. Even elite units have serious problems overcoming far inferior foes. I tried to use summoned monsters, but is pretty difficult to mass them (btw, there is a way to queue the cast order for ceremonial spells for more than one turn?). I'm using a Risen Oracle. Any advice?

p.s.: sorry for the bad english

[Agrajag]

1) You can make your commander cast the same ritual repeatedly every month by using M for Monthly ritual.
2) Your troops don't deal enough damage? Agarthans have pretty high Strength, which means they deal quite high damage, especially the sacred giants.
My guess is your problem is low Attack, so your soldiers can't actually hit.
3) Your high-priced mages all have 3E - optimal for Bladewind (evocation 4), which is a very effective spell in EA
4) You should consider a bless strategy, you have the H3 to pull it off, and the Ancient One sacred could really use a Fire+Nature bless. (Fire so they can actually hit something, Nature because 40hp works well with regeneration.)

[SunTzu84]

Agrajag said:
2) Your troops don't deal enough damage? Agarthans have pretty high Strength, which means they deal quite high damage, especially the sacred giants.
My guess is your problem is low Attack, so your soldiers can't actually hit.

Yes, probably this is the problem. There is some sort of malus battling against lower size foes?

[Agrajag]

SunTzu84 said:

Yes, probably this is the problem. There is some sort of malus battling against lower size foes?

Well, I mentioned size only because the bigger ones have 18 strength and the smaller ones have 13 strength.
And if you look at the attack of the smaller Agarthans you'll see its pretty low (as well as their defence, which makes them pretty lousy)

However size does affect the change to hit, though not directly, but IIRC for every attack against someone, he gets -1 defense against the next attack, so if you use (say) size-3 units against size-2 unit, you'll have 2 units per square while your enemy will have 3 units per square (each square is size-6 big), so you'll be attacked more often.

[Maltrease]

I believe with Dom 2 it is a -2 defense for each attack (according to the manual). This makes swarming very effective vs high defense units.

The spell that summons 5 magma children for 2 fire gems is pretty good with Argatha. 1 out of 4 earth readers can cast the spell... and of course you can get the flame oracle if you want a guarantee.

I'm curious if it would even be worth taking a heat scale to make better use of these guys. Its a real shame they are not sacred or could get really interesting

You can hit Conj3 on the 7th-9th turn if you get an awake pretender. Or much faster if you build a sage for this purpose (then the sage can site search and help bring in all the gems needed to mass produce the units).

[PDF]

I've only been battling against EA Agarthans, never played them myself, but they are pretty good with F9 (and possibly W4 or N4 as well) blessed Seal Guards, and Magma Children summons. The little warriors are not good though .
Their mages are potent (they can have up to E5 !) and quite tough, my Abysians assassins never managed to kill one...

[krpeters]

I've dabbled with Agartha EA in single player and came up with a moderately useful strategy -- Troglodyte horde. A small group of stampeders has a tendency to get enveloped and consumed, but a squad of 20 stampeders can break apart any squad and squish them flat...

...you do have to beware of archers, though. But then any Agartha squad (no shields) has to beware of them. Maybe backing up the troggies with cheap slingers would work?

Note that this strategy takes advantage of both Dom3's massive increase of gold and supply.

[SunTzu84]

PDF said:
I've only been battling against EA Agarthans, never played them myself, but they are pretty good with F9 (and possibly W4 or N4 as well) blessed Seal Guards, and Magma Children summons. The little warriors are not good though .
Their mages are potent (they can have up to E5 !) and quite tough, my Abysians assassins never managed to kill one...

But they cost 400 pounds and are recuitable only in the capital. Usually I employ mercenaries (in sp) to battle against the indie, because the smaller agarthans are sadly weak and the Ancient Ones so difficult to mass and can be swarmed easily (hoburgs seems to be the bane of these poor giants...). Until now I found the earth boots useful for Oracles, but my knowledge of magic objects is very limited.
The magma children are nice, however, I'm going to try massing them.

[Wyatt Hebert]

Basic Strategies for Agartha EA

1) Use your National Summons. Umbrals, Magma Children, and Earth Elementals are all quite good.

Reasons:

a) Umbrals: Undead, Ethereal, Life Drain w/ High Str. Ridiculously cheap for their effectiveness. Guaranteed casters (even cheap ones).

b) Magma Children: Magic Unit (problem), and, iirc, an 8-pt Armor Piercing AoE 1 Flame Strike. Just so you know, this means that they hit the entire square for 8+(random) Fire damage, and the opponent has halved protection against it. And this is each individual Magma Child. Try to keep away from your other units, though.

c) Earth Elementals: Magic Unit that has Trample. Trample is useful, and their high morale make them quite useful for running through the opponents.

That's a basic synopsis of, imo, your best units, barring a particular bless. The game I played with EA Agartha, I played and E10 Cyclops. The bless gives all your mages Reinvigorate, and allows me to Forge useful equipment on the cheap (or VERY cheap with a few effects).

Other questions: 1) Pretender design? 2) Opponents?

My game was against Ulm and Helheim (at least), and neither one could really get past my defensive set up. Helheim, while usually tough (even AI against new players, honestly), just completely folds to the Flame Strike (btw, AoE (Area of Effect) attacks don't have to roll to hit... they just whack the whole square), and the tramplers are useful against them, too. Ulm just required a good deal of screen, Tramplers, and Magma Children.

Definitely research Conj 3 and Evo 5 (Blade Wind's level, right?) quickly, then Cons 2-6, as desired. Thaumaturgy 2, early, if you want to be able to remote search (Gnome Lore, etc.) your provinces.

Just some of my thoughts...

Wyatt Hebert

[NTJedi]

Wyatt Hebert said:

a) Umbrals: Undead, Ethereal, Life Drain w/ High Str. Ridiculously cheap for their effectiveness. Guaranteed casters (even cheap ones).

These are very powerful and very cheap for only 2 death gems when they should cost 4 or 5 death gems.