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[Frumple]

I think some of the Dom3 balance mods gave thrown boulders an AoE attack.

... y'know, it's very possible that's where I remember it from. Would make sense, I did play D3 with one or two of 'em a ways back, and never really had a need/interest in using boulder throwers (pale one or giant) in D4, so... yeah.

Someone should bring that back >_>

[Kagus]

For the AI, you can set them to fire, it's just that the range is really short so they have to be pretty much on top of the enemy for anything to work, and as Agartha you usually want to be further back. A line of blessed HP-bags up front with stone throwers behind them is a substantial battle force. It's not really viable in actual play, since it's expensive as all get-out (and vastly inferior to olms+chaff at similar gold expenditure and no bless) but there's always single player.

Yeah, but if you don't have a line of units in front of the throwers they'll occasionally just eschew throwing at all to go and punch things. And you don't really *want* anything standing in front of them, because they're still Agartha so their aim is still pretty atrocious...  Sometimes even with a front line, a few of the hurlers will walk out and punch things without ever throwing a rock.

Does fire/death blesses even effect boulders? Those or air would probably be about it. Well... actually, blood would help, too, for the strength boost, wouldn't it? I could sorta' see a blood bless with a couple strength of giant (or whatever) casters sitting in the back line bumping their range up.

Blood helps for range, but the range calculation is not very generous. In my opinion it should be STR/2, not STR/3 to make them viable. Agartha has a good set of options anyway, since the cave patch, but it would be nice if some of the older options worked a bit better.
Blood Stones are a substantial advantage, and having access to them is potentially worth the small amount of blood dabbling it takes to get them if you want the bless anyway.

Also bear in mind that the extra strength applies to the damage dealt, since they're throwing weapons. It's not much, but it's something to take note of... I tried doing blood bless on the Xibalban Muuch dart throwers, but they never really managed to do anything all that well even with the bless.

And yeah, I think fire/death apply to ranged attacks now, including boulders... At least fire was changed to work with ranged.

Generally, the times when I try to mess around with EA Agartha, I end up torching the countryside with awful death scales, which eats into the potential of taking blood. Agartha just manages death so easily, since most of their nationals are either not worth recruiting, throwaway, or sacred and non-eating. Supply and upkeep isn't really an issue for the few living troops you'll have, and they have such neat conjuration spells to fill out the ranks with more foodless, payless warriors.

Or D9, since Agartha likes big D a lot anyway.

Heh, heh. "Big D". Heh.

[Cruxador]

Agartha just manages death so easily, since most of their nationals are either not worth recruiting, throwaway, or sacred and non-eating.

Heavy death scales on a nation where everything worth recruiting is expensive as hell but better in large numbers, and where your usual early game plan is to take your time building up?
I really don't see it.

[Shadowlord]

Yeah, with MA Agartha at least (haven't played ea agartha yet): regenerating N9Ex shard guards can still kick all kinds of ass even in late game, especially if they're buffed by an E5 caster (army of gold/army of lead, etc), and agartha has no trouble getting e4 or e5 casters. Having growth and +income stuff is helpful if you want to recruit them constantly, or recruit a ton of indie crossbowmen or longbowmen.

(My last ma agartha pretender was a great mother with N9E4, dom6, O1 P1 H2 G1 L2 M2.)

[Cruxador]

EA Agartha doesn't play much like MA Agartha. You don't have statues. Your summons are umbrals (ethereal undead) earth elementals, living mercury, and children of rhuax, all at bargain prices. Inferior to MA in that regard. But your mages are far more potent, you can recruit E4 natively, plus earth boots is E5, and design your pretender for element staffs and/or blood stones to get higher. Those guys also get up to two paths in D, F, or W, and make good top-level mages. But your bread and butter is even better: E2 (thus easily E3 with earhpower or boots) and one each of those same three paths. You want as many of them as you can get, but they run you 185g a pop, so you need plenty dosh. And that's before getting into Olms, which are great in huge messes of a few score, and can take out any early game army (except undead or vast amounts of bats) as long as you have a lot of them and some blockers, or be a huge help in mid-game battles with some mages and summons to round things out and prevent your enemy from going for a simple counter.

[sprinkled chariot]

Tried EA Abysia, you can expand on the first turn, unless you ram into heavy cavalry. With combat pretender you can get two provinces on that one first turn.
Also fighting against abysians kinda sucks.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I wouldn't want to fight them early, but with a little magic you can negate their armour advantage. Above-human HP of the EA races should counter the heat aura, at least in scale neutral border provinces. If all else fails, play Pangaea and just crush them with earth magic and centaur warriors.

[sprinkled chariot]

GIANTS, GIANTS WITH FREEZE AURA, FIRE SPITTING GIANTS WHO BECOME ETHEREAL MONSTERS SFTER DEATH, GLAMOROUS DEMIGODS, OR DAMN MAGMAMAN.
Meanwhile, you can field some mediocre troops and fat old hungry for gold guys in togas.Aeternus Ermor dominatus non, amices.

[USEC_OFFICER]

And then those old guys with togas combine their powers and drop fire storms and bolts of dark energies on the attacking monsters. Being a giant isn't that helpful when you're paralyzed and on fire after all.

[Kagus]

And then those old guys with togas combine their powers and drop fire storms and bolts of dark energies on the attacking monsters. Being a giant isn't that helpful when you're paralyzed and on fire after all.

Just more fuel to burn

[Cruxador]

FIRE SPITTING GIANTS WHO BECOME ETHEREAL MONSTERS SFTER DEATH, OR DAMN MAGMAMAN.

Both kind of mediocre for reasons pertaining to gold and mage access.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Mind you, in MA/LA you get spells to summon the various kinds of oni which can be useful if you have a high Death pretender for whatever reason. For example, summing 13~14 ankle-biters for 7 death gems isn't the worst trade in the world, since they have quite a lot of HP and morale and so make good targets for buffs. Or if you have high Earth and some Death you can summon regular onis for 1 gem for 1 oni or something like that. Admittedly they do suffer from upkeep and Chaos Power, but I could see them useful if someone took a turmoil build for whatever reason. Like against Ermor (though they tend to have a ton of priests so maybe not).

Also I believe that I have found the most metal event in Dominions: "A handful of black onis were molesting a group of red onis and refused to stop. Not until Tsunekage slew one of the black onis and ate his heart did they stop. Another group of red onis witnessed this event and joined your army." Unfortunately you need a specific Yomi hero and use the 50 gold and 25 gold onis together to get the event so the chances of it activating are pretty damn low.

[Cruxador]

A handful of black onis were molesting a group of red onis and refused to stop.

Daily life in Dominions, eh?

[Culise]

A new patch has just been released, containing the first elements of the long-promised underwater revamps.  R'lyeh has garnered the greatest benefit with new monsters and a potent new ritual, and some significant and wide-ranging changes have been made to Therodos as well (lower popkill - but not low enough to make Growth a viable option, seemingly-significant nerfs to dancers and sacred strategies).  New UW units for Xibalba and Mictlan have leavened it out, as well as the usual bug fixes (fewer UW units with rusting iron, f'rex). 

[E. Albright]

Actually, these are the second elements of the UW revamps. 4.21 did a moderate overhaul on Oceania and Pelegia, and made rusting an issue. But I nitpick...