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====== Guide to MA Agartha ======

Ah, the Pale Ones. They eat rocks, they're walking sacks of HP that (supposedly) can't hit anything,
they animate rocks, their magic is mostly ... rocks. Their lore is that they tried to conquer the surface world in EA, underestimated their opponents, broke the Seal in desperation, still lost, and got forced back underground. 

So they took up with some humans, developed a fondness for carving rocks into funny shapes that walk around, 
found a new god, and are back to give it another go. This time, they hope, it'll be different.

===== Overview =====

MA Agartha is probably the best of the Agarthas. They have a reputation for having hard-as-nails statues 
but being slow and clumsy, with low mobility and few tricks.

All these things are true. Agartha is an infantry nation at its core. 
But there's much more to Agartha than high-protection statues. 

Playing Agartha as a one-dimensional nation ("We've got high protection slow melee troops, come at us bro"!) 
is a recipe for disaster, since people can and will counter these.
Relying too much on any one of your tools will result in opponents bringing a counter
to that tool; using them in combination prevents opponents from fielding specialized counters,
letting the raw power that you can bring to bear win your battles efficiently.

==== National strengths:====

  * Nearly unmatched "infantry slugfest" ability
  * Highly durable and resistant to magic with the right bless/composition
  * Diverse threat vectors that all demand specialized responses make their forces hard to prepare for
  * Efficient and diverse national troop summons let you turn gems into midgame power very well
  * Strong ability to win large battles
  * Exceptional siege ability

==== National weaknesses: ====

  * Poor default access to mobility tools (fast movement, stealth, magic-phase attacks)
  * Summons compete with generic uses for gems
  * Extremely limited magic diversity (national E4 D2 W2 F1) means you will need to find critical path access from indies/god
  * Weak-ish research compared to other human nations

Used poorly, they can be outmaneuvered, countered, and cut to pieces; 
used well, they can leverage the surprising versatility of their summons and magic
to force advantageous fights, use the mobility tools and tricky plays they *do* have 
as force multipliers, compensate for their low mobility with tools that let them endure and kill,
and win wars through efficiency, adaptability, and raw power.



===== National Recruits =====

So, what do you have?

Agartha is at heart a nation of recruited and summoned heavy infantry backed up by earth magic.

While it's a misconception that Agartha is *only* about tough and slow
melee troops, they do form the core of your capability. You are happiest when a line of your infantry, heavily buffed by earth and water
magic, gets to close with the enemy and slug it out. This is how you want to fight; your other capabilities exist to enable and support
this.

Agartha has lots of national summons, and those have to be considered as part of the core roster; each has a different role to play in your forces. More than most nations, your national spells are not add-ons to your roster; they are essential to it.



==== Cap-Only Sacreds ====

=== Shard Guard ===

In Dominions 5, many nations are largely defined by their cap-only sacreds, and Agartha is no exception -- so I'll start here with what is often the best of the three cap-only sacreds you have: the ??Shard Guard??.

These are, essentially, warrior hybrids between Pale Ones and Olms. They have somewhat weak attack and defense skills for a cap-only sacred, and are //incredibly// slow in combat (combat speed 5). Everything else, though, is excellent. They are tough, with 28 hp and 16 protection. Like all Pale Ones, they are amphibious, do not eat, and have a siege bonus; like all Olms, they resist poison and cold. They have strong attacks from their two-handed Shard Glaives. By default they do 27 slash/pierce magic damage at attack skill 11 -- before buffs.
However, you have plentiful access to earth buffs, and you should have ??Legions of Steel?? and ??Strength of Giants?? cast on them always, raising their protection to 19 and their damage to 32. You can increase this further with blesses. Often, their attacks hit hard enough to do damage through a shield parry, making their attack skill more respectable.

Their weapons are length 3, so they will sometimes get repels and usually not be repelled. They have MR 14, better than most cap sacreds. They are resistant to cold and poison, and their magic weapons mean that you don't need specialized counters to ethereal opponents, Fog Warriors, and the like. Having huge damage magic weapons around solves a lot of problems; it makes it quite difficult for opponents to casually protection-thug against you.

They're only 45 gold, much cheaper than their competition. (They don't beat Anakites one on one, but they will rip them apart on an equal-gold basis.) Their slow speed means that they are unable to sweep down the battlefield crushing everything in front of them in a swift tide like sacred cavalry can. But they are relatively cheap in resources and quite cheap in recruitment points, meaning that you can take turmoil scales and still recruit lots of them. Agartha is one of the nations that can benefit from a domstrength of 7 (or even 8 with appropriate scales).

They will generally form the core of your power, like many nations' cap-only sacreds.

Blocks of Shard Guard supported by earth mages are not unbeatable, not by any means. They have counters. But they are very difficult to defeat with pure brute force; someone trying to face your shard guard head on is fighting into your strength, and many of your plays consist of using other assets as force multipliers for the shard guard corps and putting opponents in positions where they've got to come tangle with buffed shardies.

=== Ancient One Hurlers ===

You can recruit ??Ancient One Hurler??s -- giant Pale Ones with boulders to throw. They're good at two things: tearing down castles, and splattering high-defense low-hp targets that think they're special once you distract them with something else. Their boulders can do a frightening amount of damage when buffed with a strength bless and Strength of Giants, but their short range
and limited precision means that they'll really only hit things once they engage the rest of your troops. Still, they can keep elf thugs honest and force them to script Air Shield.

However, you'll never want too many of these.

They cost less resources than Shard Guard, so they can fill out your holy points if you're short on resources for whatever reason.

Note that they have more HP and less MR than Shard Guard, so things like ??Soul Slay?? target them first.

=== Ancient Ones ===

Ordinary ??Ancient One??s are armed with spears and rocks. On the surface, these look like they could substitute for Shard Guard: they're much faster and have more HP. But they do far less
damage (they have one-handed spears rather than Shard Glaives), and don't have magic weapons.

They are cheerleaders, though, so there's that. Still, usually just get more Shard Guard.

==== Non-Sacred Infantry: Humans and Pale Ones ====


Your ordinary troops are also slow footsloggers, but without the high damage and resistances of Shard Guard. These come in two varieties:
humans and Pale Ones. Unless you have lots of gold and are limited on resources, you will generally only recruit three sorts: the
??Agarthan Heavy Infantry??, the ??Defender of the Halls??, and rarely the ??Pale One Warrior??s. 

The Pale Ones hit a bit harder, have less protection,
and have the usual tradeoffs of Pale Ones vs. humans: they have more health but lower attack/defense stats, better MR, come two to a
square, and are amphibious and have a siege bonus. 

Don't get caught up in questions of attack density: these guys are generally not
here to kill things in a battle line, although they can skirmish/counterraid efficiently enough and the usual suite of earth buffs
gives them very good strength/protection for baseline infantry. They're here to bulk out your armies, take hits, die slowly, and
add even more siege strength. For that reason I prefer Defenders of the Halls. They have substantially more HP and magic resistance
than humans, they come two to a square (blocking lines and flanks better, and dying more slowly to evocations), and they benefit from
amphibious movement and the Pale One siege bonus. Amphibious movement is a bigger deal than you may think: frequently you'll want to
skip across a river or duck into a pond and have to leave the humans behind, but the Defenders can come with you.

Don't underestimate the value of this "chaffy" infantry in counterraiding and skirmishing, though. A ??Golem Crafter?? leading even a modestly
sized squad of these infantry and casting earth buffs can take on a lot of other mundane squads, letting you skirmish effectively. If you know they'll be fighting in these small-unit engagements, the human ??Agarthan Heavy Infantry?? can be better than Defenders of the Halls.

??Pale One Warrior??s are only 9 gold. They are blobs of HP with decent protection and MR, and have good siege strength, but they won't hit much. Still, sometimes you just want siege chaff or bulk.

=== Trogs ===

??Troglodyte??s are only useful if you find yourself with spare gold in the first 2-3 turns. Otherwise, pass on these.


==== Mages ====

You have three national mages you can recruit with gold, and an honorable mention that you can summon (the Olm Sage). All of these are sacred, all can lead troops, and all but the Olm Sage are priests. It's unlikely you'll recruit any of your commanders to lead troops: your mages can do it.

Since you have mage-priest-leaders, you pay extra for capabilities you won't always use, but you will never need to scrounge around for leadership.

Your magic access isn't great: at most you can get E4, F1, D2, and W2. This is more restricted than nearly any other MA nation, and so
you will be relying on good indies and pretender coverage for paths that you don't have, and putting a lot of thought into getting powerful tools in other paths. (There's a whole section in this guide about this!)

Earth magic will have to do a lot of heavy lifting for you, since it's mostly what you've got, although the other paths on your mages provide critical capability -- particularly water -- that you will need to use. Thankfully, Earth is a flexible path that provides a lot of tools.

=== Oracle of the Ancients ===

Your big mage that does it all: E3D1H3 with a FWED random on an Ancient One chassis.
They are expensive, they are vital to your nation, and you will never have enough of them. They ...

  * are your best earth access, all with E3 and 1/4 with E4
  * are your only death access, all with D1 and 1/4 with D2
  * are your best troop leaders (80 leadership, inspirational +1)
  * are Holy 3, giving you easy access to Divine Blessing and throne claiming
  * are beefy enough (40 hp, prot 6) to not die from stray arrow fire, so they can be positioned aggressively, and do not die to remotes easily later in the game
  * are mapmove 16, your fastest commander, capable of leading your statues and umbrals around quickly
  * are amphibious, and so will provide a critical part of your mage support underwater
  * can thug in a real pinch, if you are desperate, but are usually too valuable doing other things

You should switch your capital to Oracle production sometime in Year 0 and never stop. You will want a number of these in every important battle, simply because earth magic is much better at higher levels. 

=== Golem Crafters ===

These are your workhorse out-of-cap mages: E2F1W1H1 on an old human chassis for 210 gold isn't a great deal, but it's what you get. They //also// have many roles, and can take the load off of your limited Oracle corps.

In battle, they are mostly useful since they are E2, enabling them to cast Summon Earthpower to reach E3 and then cast earth buffs, ??Maws of the Earth??, and the like.

Their water path becomes surprisingly valuable once you reach Alteration 6, since they can cast ??Frozen Heart??. This is one of the premier
anti-thug/anti-elite spells in the game, and having multiple Frozen Heart casters around represents a threat vector your opponent's raiders and thugs must respect. (In my tournament game, the Ys player opted for Defense +4 rather than cold resistance, and many
Morvarc'hs died to Frozen Heart. The Vanheim player took only cold resistance 5, and Vanjarl thugs still died to it.)

They are not amphibious, so they often can't keep up with your armies without gear if you need to cross rivers or go swimming.

As their name implies, they do mage-turn intensive summoning, able to summon Sentinels, Olm Conclaves, Living Mercuries, and Magma Children.
Many Agarthan summons require lots of mage turns; summoning lots of Sentinels and Magma Children will cut into your research.

They are also leaders (normal and magic beings) and priests, so they can operate in a pretty self-contained way: carry troops around, bless them, and buff them.

=== Earth Readers ===

These are your research mages. E1H1 for 80 gold is not a great deal, especially because E1 is not a great path in combat and you have
plenty of other priests. If for whatever reason an Oracle isn't around they can bless things, but they'll spend most of the game in the
lab.

They're expensive compared to what most x1 mages cost, but they're what you've got.

They can lead troops like your other mages, and if they find themselves in combat, will either do priest things or Earth Grip something.


=== Olm Sages ===

These aren't on your roster, but they can be summoned, and you will summon quite a few. ??Olm Conclave?? gives you ten mindblasting ??Great Olm??s led by an Olm Sage, who is a W2E1 mage. The olm chassis is a good one -- innate cold and poison resistance, amphibious, sacred, and more robust than a human. Like all your other mages, they are passable (40) leaders.

These fill a critical role in your roster. They are your highest water access, capable of casting useful combat spells like ??Quickness?? and ??Rain??, casting ??Frozen Heart?? better than your Golem Crafters, and doing other water tricks with ??water bracelet??s. Quickness in particular
is very good for you: the increase in combat stats and attack rate is welcome, but the increase in tactical movement is more useful for you than many other nations because your units will waste less time lumbering toward their targets to hit them. 

They can follow your Oracles of the Ancients underwater and across rivers when you have to leave the Golem Crafters behind, and their water magic will be quite helpful if you have to fight underwater. Note that they are stuck at W3; they can't wear Robes of the Sea since they are worms. If you want to boost higher than W3, you'll need to either summon a Sea King or use your pretender.

=== Honorable Mention: Attendant of the Oracles ===

These are 45g H1 priests. Pure priests are often not that useful, but they have roles. Since your other mage-priests are so expensive, sometimes you just need a cheap preacher or blesser. They also have a bit of magic leadership, so they can cart around statues or Magma Children, and they are pretty fast.

If you find yourself with more fort turns than you know what to do with, but you need extra commanders (as assassin bait), sometimes these can be preferable over scouts because they can preach and bless. Still, you won't make many.

===== Summons =====

Agartha has a bunch of national spells. These are part of the core roster and you will make use of most of them. Unlike some nations'
national summons, you have access to all of these with just your national mages; no god intervention is required.

==== Statues ====

So: about the statues. Agartha is the Golem Cult, after all, and to many they are the most defining feature of the nation: zero-encumbrance statues with high protection and slash-pierce resistance that lumber around the battlefield clubbing things to death and tanking scary things trying
to chop them up. 



=== Sentinels ===

These are your basic and best statue: pay three gems, get a sacred statue with 22 natural protection, half pierce/slash damage, and a two-handed stone glaive.

They are really good at what they do. They can take an immense amount of melee punishment for something that cheap, they ignore a lot of scary things, and they hit back hard. They are MA Agartha in its purest form: slow resilient infantry.

But you will need //more than just statues// to succeed as MA Agartha. Don't make the mistake of seeing
Sentinels stomp a melee battle -- say, taking on Anakites head-on and winning -- and saying "damn, these are awesome, let's go all in on making them even more tanky in melee!"

**This is a trap.** An enemy forced into a slugfest with your Sentinels has already lost; you don't need to make them tankier, since the things that counter them will still counter them. 

Sentinels can do some things that Shard Guard can't and vice versa:

  * Sentinels don't have magic weapons (without putting it in your bless); Shard Guard do. If you need to kill a body ethereal thug, hack through ??Fog Warriors??, or blow up elementals, you need Shard Guard.
  * Sentinels are mapmove 20, so you can often move two provinces with a stack of Sentinels with a commander wearing boots.
  * Sentinels don't care about ??Rigor Mortis?? or mind-affecting things, but are vulnerable to ??Smasher??s, the spell ??Shatter??, and ??Moon Blade??s. 
  * Sentinels have patrol bonus 10 (each!). This is a nice source of patrol strength when you aren't needing to move them for combat.

It is possible to overproduce them: they are expensive in earth gems and mage turns, and opponents will field counters to them.

Sentinels fall off slightly as the game gets later. 22 protection is fantastic in the early game, but it's all natural protection. This means
that they don't benefit from ??Legions of Steel??, ??Marble Warriors??, Army of Foo, ??Mass Regeneration??, or any of the other buffs you'll be slinging
around.

Once you hit Enchantment 8, though, you gain access to the spell ??Hall of Statues?? that makes them two dozen at a time at a steep discount in
both gems and mage turns. As an ability to scale sacred production beyond your cap, this is fantastic.


=== Granite Guardians ===

??Granite Guardian??s cost four times what a ??Sentinel?? does, for more HP and strength. Unless you are very short on mage turns and have gems to burn, Sentinels
are more efficient. I suppose they have a niche use case when you need statue resistances but really need higher damage attacks.



=== Attentive Statues ===

Four gems gets you two human statues with stone swords and big shields. These are not sacred (walking statues are only suitably cool if they're
of Pale Ones). The only really notable thing about these is that they're Enchantment 1, meaning you can often get some to help with expansion. They are not
sacred and not nearly as good at killing things as Sentinels, but they are still very tanky. Their shields could be useful against crossbow nations. Still, once you get Sentinels, you're probably making Sentinels.

=== Marble Oracles ===

35 earth gems gets you a ??Marble Oracle??, essentially an even //bigger// Granite Guardian, but this one is a commander and Holy 2 priest (even though it has no leadership).
Why would you want a statue commander? Three reasons:

1) It can move around without a squishy human leader liable to get stabbed (or caught by an attack-rear squad or hit by a stray arrow)
2) It can use gear
3) It's fast (mapmove 22)

Generally, you shouldn't make these and load them up with expensive gear you make for them. If you put 70 gems of gear on one, you're looking
at a 100 gem investment. Then someone will cloud trapeze five Vanjarls with Smashers and Burning Pearls on its head, take its gear, and you will
be sad. That same 100 gems could have gotten you an Olm Sage, ten Olms, a dozen Sentinels, a dozen Umbrals, plus fifty Magma Children.

One big motivating factor for making Marble Oracles is free gear. Sometimes you get stuff from events; sometimes elves try to invade you and
you have to go kill them, and then wind up with thug gear you don't have a use for. You could sell it, or you could make a Marble Oracle to
put it on. In the game that inspired this guide, I've fought Ys and Vanheim frequently, and have a golf bag of gear they made and delivered to
me on their thugs that I murdered.

These things can be used as heavy army support thugs. Maybe you really need someone to carry a Greatsword of Sharpness or a Holy Scourge or even a Gate Cleaver that won't die easily and will hit like a truck. Maybe you are entering or creating a toxic battlefield (Rigor Mortis, Wailing Winds) and need to make sure
you aren't left without leadership while your Sentinels and Living Mercuries kill things? Put a Crown of Command on one of these.

They can sometimes be highly specialized turn-timer thugs using ??Bone Armor?? or ??Mossbody?? fluffers against armies that don't have counters to them. Still, they are a unique, specialized tool. In most cases, you'll get more mileage out of your troop summons.

==== Olm Conclave: Great Olms ====

At Conjuration 4 you get the spell ??Olm Conclave??. This lets you trade 20 water gems for ten ??Great Olm??s -- sacred mindblasting worms -- and
their boss, a W2E1 ??Olm Sage?? (discussed above). This is an amazing deal.
If the Olm Sage itself is worth 10 gems (as a useful and durable mage), you're essentially
paying one gem per olm -- much cheaper than the 50 gold plus upkeep R'lyeh pays.

What do Olms get you? Well, for one, they are a scary counter to solo thugs, even in small numbers: a Vanjarl is going to be reluctant to
attack a province if they think there's a handful of olms there. In larger battles, they stun mages here and there, break up formations,
force your opponent to //always// think about MR, and allow you to snipe independently-targetable enemy commanders occasionally. (For instance,
if the only flier in your opponent's army is an Air Queen casting Fog Warriors, putting 30 olms on Fire Fliers is likely to stop it from
ever being cast.)


      
==== Umbrals and Penumbrals ====
             
These are the unquiet spirits of long-dead Pale Ones that died to create the Seal, long ago. ??Penumbral??s are generally weaker in all interesting
ways than ??Umbral??s, and aren't much cheaper; generally you'll only make the big ones. They cost you two death gems each, summoned four at a time
by a D2E1 mage. This means a death-random Oracle, or any Oracle with a ??Skull Staff??.
    
They are in many ways the opposite of your ??Shard Guard??: no protection but ethereal, with 68 hp and an untyped Strength 22 armor piercing lifedraining
attack. This is serious business: 22AP will cut through a lot of stuff. They are only attack skill 12 and one to a tile; you can increase their
hit rate by filtering human infantry or skellies through their lines.
    
They're good for a number of things. They love buffs -- ??Strength of Giants?? increases their ability to slice through armor and ??Marble Warriors??
makes them less vulnerable to low-damage attacks. They can tank anything without magic weapons well once they have Marble Warriors,
and they're evocation and Banishment magnets thanks to their high HP. They're able to endure most of this thanks to their good MR and the fact that they come one to a square, though. They are vulnerable to Wither Bones, though.

They're vulnerable to enemies with magic weapons, and their life drain attacks don't do much to lifeless targets (like elementals), but they are yet another superb infantry option, often able to sustain themselves indefinitely by draining their targets.

They also help provide critical "trickiness". They have mapmove 20 and are stealthy. You don't have any national stealthy leaders, but the ability to have a powerful force that requires unique counters pop up out of nowhere is worth getting some. There are three good candidates: something wearing a Shademail Haubergeon (which anyone who can summon Umbrals can also forge), a Spectral Mage, or an independent ??Camazotz. 

==== Shard Wights ====

You can summon ??Shard Wight??s. But these are fairly redundant with what your Shard Guard do, while not being sacred, and compete with ??Umbral??s for your death gems. They may be a useful panic button early, but you'll generally not make them.
                                                                                                                                                             
==== Magma Children ====

In contrast to your ??Sentinel??s, a ??Magma Child?? is a glass cannon. These are incredibly cheap at 0.4 fire gems apiece; since ??Rhuax Pact?? summons them five at a time (but only from your capital), many Agartha players make swarms of them. They are substantially better in heat scales thanks to their Heat Power ability. 

These do 12 fire damage base, which increases to 15 in Heat 3 and 19 with Strength of Giants. 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.

They are efficient enough that many Agartha players take Heat 3 scales just for these. 

They are vulnerable to archery and evocations, and highly fire-resistant thugs can tank them, but they will obliterate anything else. 

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). 

                                           
==== Earth Elementals ====

MA Agartha can summon permanent size 4 Earth Elementals from its capital with ??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 Mercuries ====

While the poison cloud on a ??Living Mercury?? 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 on most things 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.                                                                                                                           

Note that allied mages are allergic to buffing them if other targets are around, even though they take buffs incredibly well.

===== Pretender Design =====

While Dominions 5 is notorious for stat-resist rainbows, MA Agartha loves omniresist blesses on wide rainbow pretenders even more than most. There are two reasons:

  - Your chosen method of fighting is to put your slow sacred infantry into blocks, paint them with buffs, and grind forward hacking your opponents into bits. On the way in you will be battered by everything your opponents' mages can throw at you. You don't have the speed to close with the enemy before their mages get their spells off; you have to endure them.

  - You have limited magic diversity and really appreciate a pretender with wide magic to break you into paths.

What you *don't* need is things like Hard Skin or Fire Shield or Auras. It may be tempting to either double down on your statues' resilience against melee attack or to give them alternate ways to grind down opponents. Giving them heat aura or fire shield is redundant given that Magma Children will kill anything not highly fire resistant already. Making them tank blows even harder doesn't matter if they all die to ??Wrathful Skies?? or fatigue out from ??Heat from Hell??. 

If you are going to take a rainbow, taking it imprisoned makes a lot of sense:

  * You will mostly be taking non-incarnate blesses
  * You don't have a combat chassis, nor do you really need one
  * Diversity paths are not as useful until year 3 anyway when you get access to things to do with them

==== Blesses ====

So, what do you need from a bless? Everything needs resistance against magic and your Shard Guard and Sentinels like just a little help killing things.

  * **Fire**: FR and +attack are obvious. You need to hit things and Attack 11 could use some improvement. Good attack also gives you more repels, since you have long weapons. The extra FR makes your stuff not get set on fire by Magma Children, not die to Heat from Hell, and helps deal with fire elementals and fire evocations.

  * **Air**: Shock resistance, swiftness, and precision all have merits. Swiftness lets your slow infantry close faster, and precision lets your mages land long-range ??Maws of the Earth?? which can be decisive. However, shock resistance is absolutely critical -- otherwise you will get battered by ??Wrathful Skies?? and ??Thunder Strike??. Major shock resistance is significantly better than minor -- it lets you shrug off Wrathful much better and takes a lot of the edge off of direct hits from lightning evocations.

  * **Water**: Cold resistance seems unnecessary since your Shard Guard already resist cold. But CR5 will let your statues and mages not die to Grip of Winter, and will stop random things with cold auras from fatiguing out your statues. The other interesting blesses are +defense and swamp survival. Swamp survival seems odd -- but it lets you cast Quagmire and ignore the penalties, which is a substantial boost to your relative effectiveness. Defense is less effective than on sacred cavalry nations -- your primary defenses are protection and hp -- but your Shard Guard and Sentinels can still dodge attacks especially when quickened.

  * **Earth**: You have +1 national earth bless point; what to spend it on? The contenders for earth blesses are strength, reinvigoration, mountain survival, and the Fire/Shock Resistance major bless. Strength is quite helpful on Shard Guard and Sentinels. More strength is overkill -- if you are hitting poorly armored humans. But you can deal with those regardless of your bless; there are many other things to fight that benefit from an extremely hard whack. Notably +strength functions a little like +attack; when you hit hard enough to slice through shields, it's easier to hit shielded targets. It also lets your Sentinels sometimes pop ??Mistform?? without magic weapons. Another contender is the incarnate Fire/Shock Resist bless. This can save you design points in Fire and Air, freeing you up to take +Attack and Swiftness. But it's a steep cost: you either won't have your fire/shock resist until year 3, or will have to take a dormant god. Reconstruction is a trap. 

  * **Astral**: The main contenders are MR and Magic Weapons. MR is useful for the obvious reasons. Magic Weapons seems silly since Shard Guard have magic glaives. However, Magic Weapons comes into its own in the lategame, when all your enemies will have ??Fog Warriors?? and you'll be proportionally relying more on Shard Guard. Another possibility is Far Caster, allowing you to drop ??Maws of the Earth?? and ??Frozen Heart?? on enemy formations on turn 1. 

  * **Death**: At least one rank of Undead Leadership will let all your mages lead umbrals and is a no-brainer. Beyond that, take Undying.

  * **Nature**: Your Shard Guard and Sentinels already have poison resistance, but your mages would really appreciate it. Foul Vapors is oppressive. PR10 is not overkill. Beyond that, +hp and Swamp Survival (for Quagmire) are nice.

  * **Blood**: The obvious contenders are +Strength and Blood Surge. I feel Blood Surge is a bit of a trap. Yes, once you kill something, it's better than +Strength, but you have to get that first kill. Strength lets you do that -- slicing through shields matters a lot. Surge is great for expanding, but you don't need help expanding. 

You can take as much or as little of a bless as you like. With little bless, you'll be relying more on nonsacred summons and national troops (which you'll have more of); with more bless, your shard guard and sentinels will be doing more of the work. 

In my tournament game, I went for a fairly heavy bless:

  * F5: +2 attack, fire resistance 5
  * A3: Shock resistance 10
  * W4: +2 defense, cold resistance 5
  * E3: +2 strength, mountain survival
  * S3: +3 magic resistance
  * D3: 20 undead leadership, undying 4
  * N3: 10 poison resistance, +1 hp
  * B3: +2 strength

==== Scales and Dominion ====

  * Order/Turmoil: Your stuff doesn't cost that many recruitment points, except for your national pale ones. You won't be recruiting that many of them; they're useful but not your primary front line. Shard Guard are surprisingly cheap on recpoints. Turmoil is a good dump scale.
  * Productivity/Sloth: Your stuff is fairly heavily armored, so you can make use of high productivity, especially if you want to lean on your national troops fairly heavily. You want to make sure you have enough productivity to max out Shard Guard production with whatever dominion strength you take (plus one, since you'll get five temples).
  * Heat/Cold: Heat 3 is nearly mandatory. Magma Children love it, and your pale ones are cold blooded.
  * Growth/Death: Growth lets you scale, but your appetite for gold declines somewhat as the game progresses, so there could be an argument for taking Death, or at least not maxing out Growth (hoping for a throne).
  * Luck/Misfortune: The greatest advantage of Luck is the free gems. Agartha *loves* free gems. Fire/earth/death/water turn into your powerful summons. But the others are even better: luck means that you'll have a stockpile of non-national gems by the time your imprisoned god wakes up even without searching, letting you summon mages to break into those paths.
  * Magic/Drain: Magic pairs well with Luck (free gems!). Magic 2 gives everything -1 MR in your candles, which can matter a lot for olm mindblasts. The extra research is nice. Alternatively, you could take Drain and research with Golem Crafters. 

Agartha actually likes a fairly high dominion strength. This isn't just for the golem hp bonus; since shard guard are so cheap in recpoints, you can get quite a few of them out of your cap.


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