Agartha is inspired by fantasy RPG's in general, and an Earth Dawn setting of my brother's imagination, ripe with mummified ancestors entombed in ancient cavern halls, in particular. Old ideas of a race of pale, cave-dwelling humanoids from my ideas of the game “Shepherds of Creation” completed the conglomerate. Think of opulent halls adorned with riches of the deeper earth in which reside ancient bloated oracles with pallid skins ruling their kin with increasing desperation; desperation because their proud race is dying. Agartha is perhaps the most tragic of the nations in Dominions. Surviving oracles cling to memories of a glorious past unable to stop the unavoidable disappearance of their ancient race. I wanted a sense of loss to permeate the nation. - Illwinter

In dark caverns under the Roots of the Earth a strange kind of one-eyed humanoids has evolved. Untouched by the sun, they have become known to humans as the Pale Ones. When humans first met these pale giants, it was in war. With the destruction of the false god of the Pale Ones, an ancient Seal was broken and vast powers of destruction were released. The Pale Ones were almost wiped out of existence and humans could move down into the caverns of Agartha. Here they found fabulous riches and ancient secrets. The humans replaced the Pale Ones and now most of Agartha’s inhabitants are pale-skinned humans with large eyes. Everything left by the Ancient Ones has become subject to worship by the humans. Ancient statues are enchanted and given life by Golem Crafters, priest-mages of the Agarthan Golem Cult. A few surviving Oracles lead the Cult and keep the memories of past ages alive. - Nation Description

MA Agartha is a nation of slowly dying pale ones and their worshipful human servants. As the epithet implies, the humans have a golem cult in which they make statues of their pale one masters and enchant them with life. This is reflected in game by the bonus health to golems and national statue spells.

Agartha is a nation of cave-dwelling Pale Ones who live alongside humans. Pale Ones are cold-blooded amphibious humanoids adapted to life underground; all have high HP, strength, and magic resistance, and benefit from a siege bonus, but poor attack and defense skills.

Their mages emphasize Earth, with some access to Death, Water, and Fire; their cap-only Oracle of the Ancients is one of the strongest earth mages in the game. All are also priests.

Their troops are all infantry, both Pale One and human, with a variety of armor weights; most emphasize defense over offense. They have cap-only sacred Ancient Ones (giant Pale Ones) and Shard Guard, extremely slow but strong and durable half-olms.

MA Agartha also has a variety of national summons, and these form a core part of the nation's character; the nation often relies on them heavily. They can summon mindblasting Great Olms, cheap Magma Children, blobs of Living Mercury, and ethereal ghostly Umbrals and Penumbrals. Their most iconic and unique summons are the tough sacred statues in a variety of sizes, such as Sentinel and Granite Guardian.

MA Agartha's dominion empowers the constructs it creates. Constructs will have 10% increased hit points in this dominion for each candle present. This will help disciple players as well as enemies should they have any constructs. They also get +1 earth bless point as long as their pretender has other access to Earth blesses.

Special Race Attributes	Military	Magic Access	Priests	Buildings
Humans: 50% dark vision Pale Ones: Amphibious Siege Bonuses 100% dark vision Cold blooded	Medium and heavy infantry Variety of efficient national summons Siege bonuses Earth bless points +1	Earth (max 4) Fire (max 1) Water (max 1, 2 with national summon) Death (max 2)	Strong Priests (lvl3)	Standard Forts Can build Underwater Forts

Earth (max 4)
Fire (max 1)
Water (max 1, 2 with national summon)
Death (max 2)

Conjuration

• Summon Penumbrals 11 Conj 3 for 6. (Penumbral×4)
• Awaken Shard Wights 11 Conj 3 for 15. (Shard Wight×5+[1/2 lvl])
• Barathrus Pact 2 Conj 3 for 2, Cap only. (Earth Elemental×1)
• Rhuax Pact 11 Conj 3 for 2, Cap only. (Magma Child×5)
• Olm Conclave 11 Conj 4 for 20, Caves only. (Olm Sage×1, Great Olm×10)
• Summon Umbrals 21 Conj 5 for 8. (Umbral×4)

Enchantment

• Attentive Statues 2 Ench 1 for 4. (Attentive Statue×2)
• Enliven Sentinel 2 Ench 3 for 3. (Sentinel×1)
• Enliven Granite Guard 3 Ench 5 for 12. (Granite Guardian×1)
• Living Mercury 11 Ench 5 for 7. (Living Mercury×1)
• Enliven Marble Oracle 31 Ench 6 for 35. (Marble Oracle×1)
• Hall of Statues 5 Ench 8 for 30. (Sentinel×20 +[4/lvl])

MA Agartha is a nation partially defined by its national summons. Most players treat them as a core part of the roster, rather than an addition.

Statues: The most commonly-used of these are the Sentinels, who are sacred but relatively inexpensive (but cost lots of mage turns). Like all statues, they have 22 natural protection and slash/pierce resistance. Combined with their high HP from the Golem Cult dominion bonus, they are extremely durable melee combatants. They also have a patrol bonus: they can patrol out assassins, seducers, and scouts even in small numbers.

They are vulnerable to thugs with AP/AN weapons (particularly Smasher), along with shock damage unless they are blessed with shock resistance.

These statues have mapmove 20; this makes them faster than gold-recruit troops, so they can often outrun the rest of the Agarthan force with a fast commander (Attendant of the Oracles or an Oracle of the Ancients, particularly with Boots of the Messenger).

Umbrals and Penumbrals: These are the opposite of statues: no protection, but ethereal and with a powerful armor piercing lifedrain attack. Since they have no natural protection, players commonly buff them with protection buffs like Marble Warriors and further augment their damage with Strength of Giants.

They are stealthy, but Agartha doesn't have any stealthy leaders – although they can make one, by forging a Shademail Haubergeon, or use Camazotz indies who can lead undead because of their death path and are stealthy.

Umbrals can be summoned by death-random Oracles or any Oracle with a Skull Staff.

Shard Wights: These are undead Pale Ones with a cold aura. They are rarely used since Agartha generally doesn't have cold scales to help their aura, they fill a similar role to Shard Guard while not being sacred, and compete with other uses for valuable death gems.

Olms (Great Olms and Olm Sage from the Olm Conclave): The Great Olms are mindblasters, which are useful to break up formations, force opponents to cast Antimagic, stunlock solo thugs and SC's, and paralyze frontline troops so Pale One accuracy is not a problem.

The Olm Sage that comes along with them is the nation's highest national water access at Water 2. Since they are resistant to poison, they can closely escort Living Mercuries to buff them without risk.

Magma Children: These are incredibly cheap at 0.4 fire gems apiece; since Rhuax Pact summons them five at a time, many Agartha players make swarms of them. They are substantially better in heat scales thanks to their Heat Power ability. Since their attacks do armor-piercing defense-ignoring area-of-effect fire damage, anything without fire resistance will get shredded. Their fire shield and area attacks will eradicate swarmbugs and longdead.

These do 12 fire damage base, which increases to 15 in Heat 3 and 19 with Strength of Giants. They are efficient enough that many Agartha players take Heat 3 scales just for these. They are vulnerable to archery and evocations, however.

Note that their heat aura can pose a danger to anything deployed near them that is not fire resistant (and FR5 is not totally safe either).

Barathrus Pact: Paying 2 gems for a size 4 Earth Elemental compares poorly with Summon Earth Elemental or Living Earth, both of which are easy for Agartha to cast. However, they can't be gem baited and are disciplined (and thus can be readily point buffed with Iron Warriors), so there is a niche for disciplined elementals. However, they compete with Sentinels for earth gems, and thus see little use.

Living Mercury: While the poison cloud looks useful, it is generally more of a risk to friendly troops. The real value here is the three Strength 28 armor piercing attacks.

These absolutely love buffs – Iron Warriors and Quickness (from Olm Sages) turn them into absolute wrecking balls, and 28 AP damage is enough to pop Mistform and wreck protection thugs. Careful scripting can keep them away from poison-susceptible things – most of the time. They are safe around statues, olm sages, shard wights, and anything with PR10 or more once it is blessed; they are *not* safe around magma children since they'll get set on fire by the heat aura.

Their Protection 0 means that they will take attrition from mundane troops and PD unless prot-buffed. This makes them more suitable to fight elites (particularly those relying on protection) than chaff without buffs.

As an earth nation with good troops, most of Agartha's combat magic is generally dedicated to buffing those troops to make them even stronger. Rather than killing people with magic directly, Agartha tends to kill people with grumpy Shard Guard.

They are often able to paint Strength of Giants and Legions of Steel on everything, adding in Marble Warriors where appropriate once you get it. They are also one of the few nations that can cast Weapons of Sharpness without difficulty, which is an immense buff to troop damage. Obviously Army of Lead (or Gold) is excellent lategame.

They have ready access to Earth Meld and Maws of the Earth, which allow their less-skilled troops to hit things more readily and (for Maws) do area damage.

Their Oracles can cast and survive Earthquake, so they can set traps easily for nations that are vulnerable.

Quickness and Quickening are excellent buffs for Shard Guard and summons, and can be cast by Olm Sages or Golem Crafters with a booster. Also in Water, all Golem Crafters can cast Frozen Heart, which can punish thugs or elites without cold resistance.

Darkness is huge, since almost everything Agarthan can see in the dark. It is hard to cast, since it requires Death 4; this is either a Mound Fiend holding a Skull Staff, a pretender, a hero (Mason or Golog), or a high-level Death summon (Lich or Wraith).

Rigor Mortis generally hurts Agartha less than their enemies, since the statues don't care, the umbrals don't care, and the mages won't die quickly because of Summon Earthpower.

As a nation of impressively strong but slow infantry, Mass Flight is a gamechanger in some situations.

Since Agarthan troops and summons are core to the nation but slow, getting a Teleport caster can greatly enhance strategic mobility. This can be a pretender or an independent mage holding +leadership items such as Whip of Command.

MA Agartha's expansion is solid if unremarkable. Indies generally do low damage, so your high-protection human infantry with good shields (for archer protection) deal with them with low attrition.

Shard Guard with even a light bless expand very well.

Since Attentive Statues are only Enchantment 1, you might have them in time to help with expansion.

Basic Nation Analysis - MA Agartha by GeneralConfusionPlays (2019)

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia