LA Arco strategies?

konming · #1 November 6th, 2007, 06:00 PM

LA Arco seems to be an MA nation stucked in LA and I have found no successful strategy for it.

Its mages have diverse path (except A and B) but seems pretty weak to do anything major. Sure you can communion those mystics up for major battles, but with no cheap S slaves it is a pain to do. Your best mage, which is not too stellar either, is capital only.

The only thing I see going for them are the elephants which helps a lot in early expansion and priestesses who can heal your elephants. Also its cavalry is cheap and decent, too bad it is not sacred.

So what can be a good LA Arco strategy in MP?

Humakty · #2 November 7th, 2007, 09:52 AM

Armored elephants + high morale inf(can't remember their name)(put them in the same group) = mush mush your evil foes.( add att rear cavalrymen to get rid of crossbows)
Apart from this early'strategy', can't see anything you could do magically, but I don't play LA arco much.
Expand rapidly, and find yourself powerfull allies, so you have some time to recruit many of your random mages, hopefully some of them will be usefull.
Maybe you could try to go the communion way, but it will cost you many many pounds of gold.

Baalz · #3 November 7th, 2007, 01:51 PM

Take good scales (magic, order, growth, production) and use those righteous armored elephants to expand rapidly - get body ethereal fairly quickly and you'll pretty much only worry about other pretenders. Leverage your quick expansion and high income to plop down castles as fast as possible and crank out mystics. By the time your elephants start getting obsolete (they should crush pretty much anything during the opening turns) you should be recruiting 4-5 mystics per turn while recruiting your production maximum of heavy infantry. This will supercharge your research while also building up a good communion base. Mid game use your very good heavy infantry to block for communions of 12+ mystics (8+ mystic slaves) and you'll be surprised at your damage outlay - just make sure you only use communions with critical mass. Late game you should have plenty of options and one of the better research bases.

Lord_Bob · #4 November 7th, 2007, 07:10 PM

1.Elephants. And Healers that can cast Sermon Of Courage on Elephants. For 110 Gold. Did I mention that they can research to?

2.Search aggressively for fire sites/make fever fetishes(if possible).

3.Search aggressively for death sights!!!!

These will allow you to make Research boosting items. All the powerfull research boosting items in fact. With luck, or trade, get a few hammers.

Communions are VERY VERY dangerous for you. Make sure none of the Communion Masters has a path the Slaves lack.. and an itch to cast fireball 10 times at a slowly limping off the screen militia. You need to be sure before you use a communion the normal way.....

Or you could just have a few masters uber-buff the slaves and then shut them down and have the slaves cast.

When designing scales realize you have some measure of safety the first 10-12 turns. The Elephants will carry you against most things. Even bless rushes will be unhappy with armoured elephants. Almost certainly the bless rusher can be persuaded to attack someone else.

Remember you can heal afflictions! You can have ten 110 Gold Priestest ALL attempt to heal ALL afflictions in a province EVERY turn. A big menance for everyone else has been removed from your nation.

Folket · #5 November 8th, 2007, 10:54 AM

Get hammers by luck? Why not just forge them? Arco should get E2 mages who can forge earth boots.

Lord_Bob · #6 November 8th, 2007, 01:05 PM

Getting the Earth Sites is the problem. Site Searching. There capital doesn't give out earth gems, I believe. So you have to manually search, ect.

Yes, it can be done to one level or another. But it would be much easier if the capital produced earth gems. Luck is somewhat needed.

thejeff · #7 November 8th, 2007, 01:08 PM

Or just channel some of the astral gems into site searching. Generally by the time I have the site search paths and Construction 4 (for boots), I'll have an income in most paths.

Lord_Bob · #8 November 8th, 2007, 01:10 PM

And in the "Odd and Ends" box, you have a Level-2 Priest that costs 110 gold, recruitable everywhere, that can research.

You can actually smack another players Dominion down with these girls, and massing them isn't painfull because they are recruitable everywhere and perform reasonably cost-effective research while you are doing so.

This is not something to base a strategy around. It has a nitch use. The Healers are just awesome, and should be used in many capacities. Sermon Of Courage!