Dominions 5 Nation Analysis: EA Agartha

[@HisRotundity]

Agartha is explicitly framed by the developers as a tragic nation permeated by a sense of loss, and you did a good job in the early introduction of the video discussing that, along with how much of their tragedy is ultimately self-inflicted. Agarthans are pitiable, not because they're innocent beings who did no wrong, but because they're decent but ultimately flawed beings who were given the shit end of the stick by a previous Pantokrator and continuously and reliably chose the worst possible options to improve their sorry state in life.

[@jej3689]

PLEASE never stop making dominions 5 videos! I must confess I only just found this absolute GEM of a game and I'm so sad that I judged this book by it's cover. I absolutely adore this game and your content. Keep up the great work!

[@PerunAU]

It really is a unique title and it takes forever to get it, but it rewards persistence and will always have a special place in my heart.

[@bearandwolfbros5422]

>be ultra elite seal guard >train entire life for 275 years >be entrusted to guard the prison of ultra powerful previous pantheon of gods >be given a magical obsidian glaive and armour >be one of the greatest and holiest warriors of agartha >10 attack skill >10 defence skill Should have trained another 275 years bucko.

[@Broken-bj8ly]

The best part of rock hurlers is that they are your wall PD, and wall PD has infinite ammo. So if you can block the gate well in a siege defense they can absolutely shred the attacking army.

[@dakka123]

Hopefully the James Webb telescope goes into operation soon so I can see the Mod Inspector info.

[@PerunAU]

Apologies for that. I need to be more considerate on that front.

[@dakka123]

@@PerunAU I was just memeing around, one can always open the dom5 inspector and follow along that way. : )

[@dakka123]

The last time I was this early the Seal was still unbroken.

[@Mewobiba]

EDIT: My post was complete misinformation, apologies. Litar gives the correct numbers below. Hurlers don't automatically hit the square, and would need prec 13 before they do. Values over 10 count as twice as high above 10, so prec 13 is functionally prec 16. Auto-hitting the square occurs if the distance is no greater than prec/2-2, so for prec 13 that's 16/2-2=6

[@Mewobiba]

Also, it's kinda funny that Obsidian Eye is the strongest voice against breaking the seal, when he's the most likely candidate to do it given his paths.

[@basileusbasil4041]

@@Mewobiba he's the one who knows the most about the seal. That's why he's so vocal about not breaking it. That's my head cannon at least.

[@mergele1000]

@@Mewobiba Manual gives auto-hit to targeted square at half precision -2. So for 18 prec that'd be only range 13 before deviation starts.

[@eerywax5631]

@@mergele1000 Precision points over a certain value (was it 10, or 14?) counds as double. I'm not sure which it is, but it does give a few extra tiles than 13.

[@Mewobiba]

@@mergele1000 Oh, apologies, have misremembered completely. I wonder if it's always been that way, or changed. Thanks!

[@Coolerx2x]

Just to chime in about Troglodyte Lords. I've found they are great support in early game for expansion, since you can put some blacksteel plate on them and let them trample away, since they have no head to be attacked they esseintaily become a 20+ prot unit occupying a large enemy force while your army gang up on the rest. Still doesn't kill stuff like barbs but helps a lot to get a consistant expansion. (Nvm, I saw someone else mention this as well)

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

Apart from early expantion (2 TL with black steel plates can take most non-barbarian provinces, and the really weak provinces can be taken with one) they are great as really cheap expendable thugs to raid (and counter raid) undefended enemy provinces (they can usually take on 6 or less PD)

[@JoJeck]

Circa 35 mins: repeatedly says the undead summons require a capital mage turn but any Earthreader with a death path (33% of them) can summon all of them using a skull staff for the Umbrals. Also Penumrals are size 3 and so 2 per tile and their cold auras will stack so in some situations they are better than size 4 Umbrals providing more attacks and more fatigue (useful with rigor mortis fatigue plays)

[@nicolinrucker5181]

Beak the Seal is literally "welp, I'm gonna die but I don't want you to get my intact cap and everyone will be mad at you!"

[@Broken-bj8ly]

Alternatively, it's "I am getting ready to win, let's cash in my cap for a whole army of Umbrals for the throne rush" Unleash is actually a reasonable spell to use, in the sense that if you have Alt 9 the game is probably near it's end in any case, so losing your cap isn't that big a loss, and it turns a bunch of gems into a lot of military power instantly.

[@entropius]

It gives you a *giant* pile of summons: I just tested it and it made 200 penumbrals and 66 umbrals. True, it destroys your cap income -- but by alt9 this should be only a small fraction of your income, and you are likely getting much of your combat power from gems. (It is supposed to give you +4 death income, and did in dom4, but the event that swaps your site seems to be broken in dom5.) You can still make oracles and olms from your cap. On top of all that -- it gives the world -3 darkness for multiple turns. This is a huge swing for your troops. As a special trick -- something I did in dom4 -- the huge popkill on your cap will give you a huge wad of death gems if you cast Raven Feast on it.

[@soccrplayr232]

@@entropius Something it doesn’t mention anywhere is that you get more undead the more pop your cap has when you cast it so unless your cap gets messed up you get a decent bit more in a real game after like 70 turns of growth 3.

[@flamedeluge1332]

Couple of items. One, you discussed the piss-poor Agartha att/def values, and you mentioned Darkness as one means of leveling that. However I don't remember you mentioning any of the three flavors of Earth Meld (Earth Grip/Earth Meld/Maws of the Earth). I've found this spell is critical for Agartha to turn the battle into a slow slog, which benefits them immensely. Earth meld does a lot of friendly fire, but it causes -75 % debuff to defense, so for Agartha because of their high str and hp, that sort of a brutal slugging match favors them immensely. Don't ever go into a fight against cavalry without a lot of Earth meld with Agartha. Agartha can twiceborn death Oracles with a skull staff. It's a lot of gems (25 I think for EA Agartha), but they get more HP, more prot, they don't have fatigue from combat, just casting, and the big deal is they go from cold blooded to cold resist 10 and chill aura. And they even get better att/def scores. Lastly, Agartha can elf people, they just have to make Shademail Haubergeons, which they have the paths to do. You can have any undead leader take a squad of Umbrals around, because Umbrals are stealthy too. Umbrals are also a good candidate for Gift of Reason, because of the big HP pool with the life drain attack, and with the built-in ethereal and stealth, they make good elf raiders. Slap an Armor of Knights on them and they're pretty good to go. In terms of bless, Agartha has long weapons + high str, so +att is very good, as it gives not just more offense, but also more defense via repel mechanics. You talked about Agartha getting their def harassed down by multiple attackers, but that's not relevant in an Earth Meld environment, but repel still works there. Like for a MA Agartha game, I did x2 attack skill, larger, poisonres5, blood surge for my bless. There I had size3 shard guard sacreds, so they got longer weapons when enlarged to size 4 (and took up more space and hence were harder to flank), but the point there is you can have attack around 19 and damage around 40 after buffing. At that level of damage, you can kill most humans _through_ shields and armor.

[@entropius]

This is the way. Earth Meld is amazing, but Maws of the Earth is just brutal, giving you more murder per earth gem than nearly anything else.

[@zorrozalai]

I tried a similar bless with EA Agartha. F6B4 for repels, and E4N7B1 for hardskin + regen + 1 HP for regen threshold on Ancient Ones. Attack on these guys with weapon length 3+1 is much better, than defense. Especially with earth meld. Another interesting way is E4N7B9, hardskin+regen+1hp+blood vengeance. You don't have to have attack skill buff, if BV kills your opponents, while you are regenerating & chilling out in an earth meld.

[@tax274]

You forgot to mention the Death Oracle's awesome Wight shape! Those things are really amazing on their own but when you consider how they (unlike much of the rest of your nation) do extremely well in cold dominion it is hard to argue that they are not an integral part of how the play the nation well.

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

One important point about olm mages are that they have very high magic leadership and are such very good for moving around armies of your summons (most of them needs magic leadership) Also, quickens and quickening are very good spells to cast on your summons.

[@entropius]

In particular, Olm Sages are great leaders for anti-thug Living Mercury squads. They don't care about poison and can reliably Quickness / Quickening them. A handful of quickened Living Mercuries will splatter pretty much any SC.

[@firetarrasque4667]

"Everyone in Dominions dies when an elf gets hit in the face with a boulder and dies." Truer words have never been spoken.

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

Umbrals do not ignore fear, fear work on undead with a mind, only mindless undead ignore fear. (umbrals are hard to scare though, because of their high morale)

[@sanneberg1728]

This is a blast from the past. I have Dominion 4 which shows how long it has been since I played.

[@sebs616]

you can expand with trog lords in blacksteel full plate against smaller groups of indies. They don't take hits to the head, they do fatigue out though

[@PerunAU]

I tried it once or twice and had bad results but that may have been a luck thing

[@ulizez89]

@@PerunAU They can kill pd just fine later on and since you have dwarf hammers, is even cheaper gem wise. But yeah, not much use unless you kit them out and by that point they aren't efficient anymore (resource wise).

[@whats82]

Have done this myself. You have to pick the right indie type to expand into but can be an effective expansion party that's cheap on gold. (because your gold will be spent on olms). I did 2 that game and merged them for harder targets and they accumulated alot of affliction but got me a good 6 provs on their own.

[@sebs616]

@@PerunAU you have to be careful in picking your targets, they can't be relied upon but can take the easy provinces you don't want to waste a turn of an expansion party taking. they also work really nicely to back up expansion parties which have taken attrition.

[@dr.kinderman5290]

I usually use 2 or 3 trouble lords with trogs and they stomp indies and small enemy groups. Takes some turns to crank out but they do good work

[@Broken-bj8ly]

The constant insults against the Pale ones and the praise for the Olms makes the video look like it was written by CoE's Imperial Scholar lol

[@shadowlord1418]

haha yea i love that guy

[@TheMelnTeam]

You have the paths to do iron warriors + quickness on troglodytes, and alt is a pretty important goal for Agartha after conjuration so there's a small use case for your tramplers depending on what you're fighting. Quickness trampling is pretty devastating. Also olms are very dangerous until numbers are large + opponent casts antimagic, which makes them sad. They tend to ruin a lot of thugging attempts though because they instantly screw with scripts and there are enough para checks that against a single target one probably gets through...which leaves thugs a sitting duck to relatively hard hitting low atk pale ones.

[@blaf55]

oh , another nation analysis

[@skeenk5472]

These guys took a real hit in Dom5, with Magma Eruption going from E3F1 to E2F2 and also being nerfed, and now Twiceborn costing twice as much and essentially no longer being an option. But where they really got massacred is RPcost. The system is unfinished and Pale Ones, who were meant to be spammed in larger numbers than standard human troops, now cost twice as much RP as those standard human troops and are bottlenecked horribly in expansion which used to rely on loads of Pale Ones supported by Olms to break up and stun indies so that the Pale Ones could actually land hits and reduce their naturally high attrition. It's hardly the only place where RPcost is wonky, but it's by far the worst. I haven't tested extensively but I suspect your best bet now (besides an awake Wyrm, the only affordable expansion monster they have in Dom5) is to ignore your precious Olms and give Seal Guard a hefty bless (like +4 att, +4 def and blood surge) to give them a layered damage mitigation of defense and repel with their length 4 weapons, then filling out the square with size 2 indy infantry later on.

[@entropius]

Oof, those recpoint costs are nuts. Perhaps they could use some "stat fixes"?

[@bingxilao9086]

Olms are 1 prod and 21 recpoint, I think with a few of those each turn Agartha's expansion isn't terrible

[@skeenk5472]

@@bingxilao9086 You get 8 olms and 30 pale ones, you've got a party that will last a while, if expensive, like any nation who needs to expand with 50g mind blasters. Except that's over 700 rpcost. Even with olms, you need a critical mass of fat boys so they don't get surrounded and to be padded enough in numbers that they can afford to lose a few every time they take a province.

[@Friendlysociopath]

@49:35 I'm not gonna lie- your, "(Breath) damn" actually got a chuckle out of me just for sheer timing.

[@zorrozalai]

To make EA Agartha great again with a mod, and in a thematic way, my proposals are: - give an extra astral path to engravers, and increase the price a little bit ( E1S1, 10 RP, 90 gold). It gives you limited communions with crystal matrix and engraver slaves, plus body ethereal as a thug point buff (also useful when storming castles) - buff ancient stone hurlers to 65 HP (and maybe 11 precision?) without a price change. They suffer too much from not being able to repel in meele, and they cause too much friendly fire.

[@zorrozalai]

+ it would be nice to have an extra N path on Olm sages.

[@utzius8003]

Idk why, but Agartha is my favourite nation. It was the first nation I played, as the fluff really pulled me into it. The story and the gameplay is great and fun. Edit: You joking about them not having passed hand-eye coordination made me realize something. What if their attack/def are so garbage because they only have one eye and so they lack any depth perception?

[@kekkres]

Old post but this, along with the general slowness at which they move is explicitly why

[@skitharixoftheshatteredmin5711]

@@kekkres Even older post, but that and the fact that they eat rocks.. Not a lot of energy in granite.

[@Garsemor]

Not exactly something that makes them worth while, but Cavern Wights have Attack 11, which actually puts them above all your other troops in Attack Skill. Entierly not worth 8 death gems, but I just felt like pointing it out, because I find it funny that Pale Ones are better fighters after they've been turned into shambling corpses. It's almost like their lacking intellect is an active detriment and they're better off without a brain all together.

[@utzius8003]

I think their combat abilities are so bad because they don't have any depth-perception due to having only one eye. The wight has spirit sight, since he can properly "see" now, he actually can gauge the distance to his enemies and hit them.

[@Broken-bj8ly]

Lapis can summon Kokythiads (With a water bracelet+robe) so that gives access to D3W3 casters. Kokyhiads with an staff can cast Darkness for your armies, or possibly Stygian rains (Although normally you should reach Alt 9 before Evo 7 anyway).

[@viktorkm9784]

Thank you for pointing this out

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

EA Agartha is a strong nation, and in the hands of a good player, who really knows how to play them, it is a great nation, possibly even in top 5 for EA. I do think that you need to play Agartha with a strong bless to really take atavange of all its strengths, and so far I have never seen anyone do really good with a scales Agartha.

[@АкеронЛиира]

From my experience as Agartha your expansion is more precise then usual. And trogs in low numbers will give you more power then olms. Like it's better to have 4-5 trogs with first army then same number of olms. And trog lords in blacksteel full plates is a way to make provinces out of commanders production early on. Also penumbrals are very good. They can be summoned by earth readers (and oracles have alot of important stuff to do other then summoning usually) very early and not only in Agartha, and 15 ap magic dmg which in reality is 19 because of str buff can eat those annoying paralyzed niefel jarls even in cold. Also they are stealthy and with high map move they can be deployed fast and anywhere.

[@krevin543]

This video is EXCELLENT and exactly what I was looking for. Been really interested in this nation and just picked up Dominions 6. These guys are my first play through. Still learning to play the game and this gives me ideas of some directions and strats to try with Agartha. Wondering if it is worth turning the pale ones units into mass fodder on the battlefield to tarpit and if their are any powerful casters I can summon into with offensive magics that can use that to communion and devastate from the backline.

[@Christopher-po8pt]

I mostly play LA Agartha, but this nation is my favorite through every age.

[@theral056]

A few years late watching this again, I want to add something. Troglodyte lords have some characteristics which make them really good a specific task. Their high morale, decently high attack skill with great strength and being a bag of hp with 9 natural protection and NO HEAD (so wearing a chest armor gives full body protection as there is no head to cover with a helmet) makes them quite decent anti-X thugs. I went up against yomi a few years ago and got some scourges via trade to kill Dai Oni. Add a blacksteel plate (the 5E gem one will do fine) and a burning pearl for higher attack skill, and set them to attack largest, and they smack Dai Onis back into the demon realm real fast, two hits and they're gone. I managed to get 2 rings of the warrior a few turns later, and adding that on top of the burning pearl makes it even more reliable. The chassis is pretty good at killing specific things. I imagine they'd be similarly useful against other things like Ifrit if you can get a moon blade. They're probably not the best at filling this role among the era, but certainly the best for Agartha and quite good actually, for a non-mage relatively cheap unit that does not need a helmet. Another note, if you use some of your early earth gems for blacksteel full plate (the 10E gem ones), you can send out 2 trog lords as an expansion party around turn 6-7 or so (depending on how fast you get the gems, events can make it faster), or just add them into existing armies. They're prot 27 or so tramplers at that point, which is quite respectable to squish some indies. I found it a good addition for troop expansion. Incidentally those expansion trog lords got veterancy from doing that and were quite the Dai Oni murderers, to the point of Yomi not daring to enter the arena global event when it came up which made me quite happy with myself :))

[@Bill_Garthright]

Great stuff, Perun! I love this kind of nation analysis! It's funny, but my limited Dom 5 experience has been _entirely_ middle age. I should branch out a bit, but then, there are so many MA nations I still haven't tried.

[@PerunAU]

Until relatively recently I had played barely any EA. As a game, Dominions is just huge so it's easy to get lost in one age.

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

Agartha can use breath of the desert to attack into cold provinces. They do need a pretender to cast it though, unless they get lucky with independent mages.

[@basileusbasil4041]

Is there a mod the simulates an alternate universe where some of the bad things that happen between early age and the middle age don't happen? Like the pale one's succeeding in their invasion or not opening the seal.

[@DPuljiz]

No, but would be interesting. The beauty of Dominions mods is that you only need Notepad and Paint (or better Gimp or Paint.net) to create your own nations and mods !

[@gibbcharron3469]

Neutral heat scales are actually still bad for cold-blooded troops, albeit not severely so, imposing a +1 encumbrance penalty.

[@throeawae2130]

I've watched this video at least twice and I never left a thumbs up? Criminal! Perun has no chill in this video. It's hilarious.

[@DRsideburns]

Yesssss i love nation analyses

[@bingxilao9086]

I like taking a Monolith with Farcaster, Larger, Reinvig, and lesser poison res. Plus 1 water for teleport into foul vapours. Trying to bless Seal Guard ATK skill feels like a doomed effort, better to just buff their HP with larger and then have far caster for easier Maws of the Earth, Earth Meld, Petrify etc. Fire res for easier magma child use, and lightning res, would be two other useful blesses.

[@draconisthewyvern3664]

@Perun cold blooded could also explain the lack of energy from the pale ones as cold blooded animals rely on ambient temperatures and their ability to pump blood to regulate themselves

[@CantusTropus]

It says that the Legions of Gods have "true ethereal". What's that mean? I can't seem to find it in the manual. Does it mean complete immunity to nonmagical weapons instead of immunity 75% of the time?

[@Broken-bj8ly]

True ethereal works on magical attacks. It negates 75% of everything.

[@theral056]

I hope to see you play them someday

[@TheArmored123]

Hey, thanks for the video, love me pale bois I think you forgot d random earth readers can do penumbrals and wights? And if one was to buff barathus pact, would you make it 2 size 4s or one size 6 earth ele?

[@DarkVeghetta]

1:07:21 Those are some positively _wild_ pretender names. Highlights include: 'EU IV OLM MEMES', 'Totally Valid Nation Choices', 'Feed Me Abysians', 'Sonic Adventure 2 Jiggle Physics', 'YOU SHALL BE MINDBLASTED', and ofc 'Huawei 5G Network' (which I think might be Ermor, kek). 🤣

[@basileusbasil4041]

Thankfully (or not if you are someone else) their attack does enough damage to get through most shields which make up most of the defense of most units. although that's quite useless against elves.

[@PerunAU]

Which is another reason to pick the glaive or ancient one versions, rather than the less useful 15 damage spear versions.

[@qaz120120]

Subscribed! By the way, which dominions 5 series of yours would you recommend?

[@PerunAU]

Depends what you enjoy. The Disciples series is a fun one but it's mostly about diplo rather than fighting wars. the Nazca one is much more of a warfighting one, so take your pick! The Ulm one will finish eventually but is still only part done, R'lyeh is complete if you want to see underwater strats outside of a disciples context.

[@draconisthewyvern3664]

@Perun give the ancients undying 5 and bark skin and they’re verifiable tanks. specially the one with the shield. if you wanna go extra deep into bless get earth 5-6 and get fire and shock resistance throw in an extra nature for poison resistance

[@draconisthewyvern3664]

of course at that point you might as well go full bless imprisoned or just drop the undying

[@dogebestest7187]

10 turn 1 Earthquakes AYAYA

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

Earth readers with a death random can cast all your death summon spells (although they do need a skull staff to summon umbrals) so you don't need your expensive cap only mages to do summon those

[@moleman7632]

Liquid fire of Rhuarc is just a weaker version of magma eruption at evo 5 instead of 6. Its not amazing.

[@teekay851]

Damn im getting old but that modinspector is ridiculously small even if i didnt need to go to Specsavers, why am i squinting ffs.

[@zorrozalai]

Anyone has found a way to make the stone hurlers playable?

[@Kaiser282]

The Barathrus pact comes at conj 3 and gives you a size 4 E ele that you can command and buff much easier. That might actually make it worth it with the right research.

[@leaderofcommunistchina1427]

interesting

[@3dLuck]

You are going to lose the capital, is a team game, there is no plan to take it back. You blow it by releasing Imprisoner ones??