• + Tanky Gold
  Your troops have much more hp, letting them survive against magic and battle field wipes and act as chaff for spell casters.
  
  
• + Armor Busters
  You have access to ideal troops for taking mines.
  
  
• + Persistent Doomstacks
  You have access to tier 2 geomancy which when spammed can enable you to have
  regenerating armies
  
  
• + A bit of extra gold here and there
  Almost everything you have can swim or float, giving you dominant access to resources in the ocean and resistance to hydromancy.
  
  
• + Brainrot Artillery
  Access to olms which will paralyze and kill everything when massed.
  
  
• - Vulnerable to being swarmed
  Your troops struggle at killing things quickly due to bad sight, making situations where you are outnumbered leading to much more extra damage being taken.
  
  
• - Its over Anakin I have the high ground
  You have a very hard time taking fortified locations and citadels without summons, making it difficult for your troops to expand and grab resources.
  
  
• - Soft cap on economy
  Most of the things that makes your faction work are tied to limited recruitment offers.
  
  
• - Sacred offers
  Much of your faction's power is locked behind getting temples. You want 5
  
  
• - Easily Countered Summons
  Most of your summons are ethereal, squishy, frontline melee, making their usage become more and more limited as magic attacks become more prominent as the game progresses and independents are cleared. Also ethereal squishy melee units lose to ethereal squishy ranged units without even being able to fight back. (So even just cloud folk archers that most classes can buy will counter you)
  
  
• - Competitive economy!!!
  Pale ones are a gold class as much as they are a gem class, even though they can get resources from more places than most factions they will compete for resources on a team up to a point.
  
  Although this downside can be minimized if the pale one player foregoes all recruits and only buys special offers. Limiting map presence but doubling down the pale one player's role of building a single strong army.
  
  
• + Light at the end of the tunnel
  In the long run, if you manage to preserve your upgraded earth readers and oracles, t2 geomancy can overcome almost anything when massed enough.

My personal take on the faction

Illwinter overvalued most of pale one's troops and slow access to Agartha for resources when they decided how good their rituals should be. All of your good troops are very limited in recruitment offers which will quickly cap out how effective you can utilize your own gold income.

Usually your recruits just result in a good year 2 clearing army which classes with a better ritual economy like cloud lord and warlock can easily achieve ontop of having a better late game thats much more difficult to counter.

The faction feels unfinished and feels like it has a limit to how fast it can grow in power regardless of economy at all stages of the game.

Name: Pale Ones

Cost: 50 for 5


Basically a spearman that throws rocks and has double health, best used against low armor low hp swarmy things like animals.

Name: Pale One Slingers

Cost: 50 for 5


4 range and 1-2 damage is terrible for a unit you only get 5 of. But slingers have synergy with earth grip and can be used to counter mines defended by slaves, also will help stop your frontline from being swarmed by weak stuff.

Basically you use them to reduce the attrition your more important stuff takes especially after you have already filled out your frontline in an army.

Limited range of 4 makes it difficult for them to effectively assist larger pale ones

Name: Pale one Soldiers

Cost: 50 and 5 for 5


Looses the rock throw of the pale one but gains armor, can work against levies archers spearmen slingers and brigands to grab hamlets. Still won't get through armor very fast.

Name: Cavern Guards

Cost: 50 and 20 for 5

Very strong melee unit that you kind of want to spam, has enough armor to shrug off arrows and clear non-fortified settlements. Has the damage hp and initiative to beat alot of things in melee and a lot of the time its before they can even hit back. Your most accessible answer to armored enemies like dwarves.

Name: Ancient Hurler

Cost: 30 for 1

Offer Rate: 15%


They literally cost 3 humans worth of gold to purchase and will consistently oneshot a human every couple turns. They have the range to assist your larger frontline units. They are an exception to the ranged damage falloff from hitting enemies at over half the attacks max range. (Hidden mechanic that hinders archers)

They can also help clear fortified locations but expect to still take heavy losses unless you have a ton of hurlers.

Try to always buy them. Try to keep them alive. Use with larger frontline units.

Name: Ancient Pale One

Cost: 30 and 15 for 1

Offer Rate: 15%

Extremely Strong and extremely gold efficient frontline unit that is hard to kill as long as its only fighting mundane things and its not surrounded. Use with hurlers and maybe smaller pale ones on the frontline guarding the flanks to efficiently clear mines defended by enemy dwarves and pale ones and other high armor enemies.

Avoid things like dispossessed spirits or anything tiny and swarmy.

Name: Seal Guard

Cost: 50 and 25 for 1

Offer Rate: 10%


Cost makes it prohibitively expensive from buying early on but eventually you will wish you had many of them due to their magic attacks, high morale to counter awe, and the fact that they almost hit as hard as much larger giants like king of the deep and troll king.

Just like ancient pale ones you don't want them getting swarmed or surrounded.

Might be good to save for if a graveyard or mausoleum is terrorizing you, it can save your year 2 army from a scary ethereal ambush but dont go attacking said graveyard or mausoleum.

Name: Pale One Commander
Cost: 45 avg and 5 for 1
Offer Rate: 25%

Extremely tanky captain that laughs at brigand ambushes when leading, might be worthwhile sending him out on his own to scout if you cant afford troops for him just yet.

Unfortunately hes not tanky enough to survive his own siege tunneling attempts, pale ones just really love to dig a hole.

Name: Ancient Commander
Cost: 70 avg and 15
Offer Rate: 5%

Too expensive to use as a commander, too expensive to serve as an ancient pale one, just the right price to act as both.

Hits extremely hard but has low initiative, and they dont have the shield of the ancient pale one or the 3 armor of the seal guard.

Really expensive and painful to lose to siege tunneling. Even if its a low chance to happen, stay away from fortified locations that you wont clear quickly.

Name: Earth Reader
Cost: 65 avg
Offer Rate: 5% + 3% per temple (Max 5 temples)

Your main ritual casters until oracles (eventually?) become available

I typically dedicate only one of them to rituals while the rest are upgraded for better combat spells.

In terms of t1 geomancy for using them in their default form.
You are really hoping for tremor and stone shards on your starting caster because they are going to be in fast fights against brigands / archers / levies who have 0 armor to make the most of the fact that you are doing low damage multi-hit/aoe.

If they get iron skin you want them to eventually be with your ancient armies because youd be buffing an entire ancient rather than a tiny pale one that came in a squad of 5.

Strength is...acceptable on pale ones, pale one soldiers, and pale one slingers who need the extra damage output (good thing your starting army is made of these)

Earth grip isnt great but it can rarely be impactful like stunlocking a mage defending a magic library. It cant be resisted, only flying / floating blocks it.

Anything with like 7 strength or less wont be able to do anything even if they break out of the grip and while gripped all damage to the victim gets +2 added onto it.

Name: Oracle
Cost: 165 avg
Offer Rate: 0% + 2% per temple (Max 5 temples) x 3

Oracles come in 3 flavors and each type are independently boosted by temples.

They all have t2 geomancy along with the Fire/Water/Dead Oracle having t1 Pyromancy/Hydromancy/Necromancy along with a 25% discount on spending their gem type.

On paper 165 gold is obscenely expensive for a t2 caster, especially compared to library mages, even with the large hp pool and additional t1 spell casting

But t2 geomancy synergizes with pale ones having such high health since it can grant REGENERATION!!! And having regenerating ancient pale one armies running around clearing the map and fighting off enemy faction armies without losses is one of the best things pale ones can do for a very long time.

At the start of the game you get...

• The king of the deep, a giant hamster who will always find new and innovative ways to die.
  
• An earth reader, your actual leader even though you dont name them.
  
• 8 Pale ones, will probably be the first to die if you clear too fast or too difficult tiles
  
• 5 Soldiers, pretty easy to keep alive unless you fight halberdiers or dwarves or something like that.
  
• 2 Slingers, helps last hit enemies that your front line failed to kill so they dont waste next turn
  
• 1 emerald, 1 random color gem, 2 gold and 2 iron income.

You should almost always immediately leave agartha to start conquering elysium with everything you have if you can. This is mostly because, aside from crystal forests, even if there are resources in your starting cave in agartha they are probably too well defended to be worth taking initially.

Not only that, but you are on a timer. You want gold and iron so you dont miss your special recruitment offers since your faction lives and dies by them.

If roaming independent creatures are in your starting cave threatening your starting citadel you will need to address it, a purple worm on paper is the scariest thing since it will eat your entire starting army but thankfully it will almost always go down to the king of the deep by himself unless you are extremely unlucky.

Most other things you either send everything you have after it, or entirely avoid in hopes of finding another citadel before they take your starting citadel.

Once you pop out of your pit you need to take note of what area you appeared to have spawned in.

If you are on the coastline you might want to follow it for easy gold income from coastal hamlets and deposits in shallow water.

If you are in the south you are in a very scary but also very profitable place since the king of the deep can dip a tile or two into deserts without spending much ap to find potentially easy trade and gem income. Avoid serpent tribe, spider tribe, and pygmies since they hard counter your troops, use king of the deep to frontline against elephants.

If you are in the north you want to leave it asap and walk south with your army, king of the deep can either scout ahead and find the fastest path out of the snow or look around for easy tent villages.

If you spawn in a dreaded peninsula with rough terrain like mountains it might be a good idea for king of the deep to find a faster route to central elysium that involves swimming.

Your starting army needs to take you far, which is really daunting because most of your starting troops are melee, and not even hard hitting melee.

Most other factions with this terrible of a starting force at least get a tier 2 caster, but instead you get a poor man's excuse for a troll king.

You need to very quickly start expanding aggressively for resources, ignoring anything that might give you trouble since citadels are harder for you to take on average you need to travel farther than normal with your armies.

Fight weak animal stacks like deer and wolves between fighting humans, your troops should kill them without taking damage so its a free turn to heal.

Do your best to not spend any gold or iron on anything other than Ancient pale ones and Ancient hurlers and Earth readers (prioritizing hurlers and earth readers) unless you will start your next turn with over 70 gold and 15 iron.

This is actually really easy because ancient pale ones and hurlers and earth readers on average only need you to invest about 13 gold and 3 iron per turn total to not miss any offers.

Overtime this investment will help you make a powerful year 2 army back at home which will clear everything for you.

Seal guard are a good luxury unit to include in this army but they might be difficult for you to afford, earth readers are almost more important than anything else you'll be offered since every one you upgrade can potentially carry you so i would suggest buying them if you can keep them alive and upgrade them.

If you get offered an ancient commander and can afford it, you can send him off on his own clearing extremely weak independent animals like a discount king of the deep. His initiative is kind of too low to use against anything that can potentially hurt him like dwarves.

Speaking of the King of the deep.....


How are you going to use him.....?


Well you have multiple options...

• 1. Have him swim along the coastline abusing the vision to see ahead and grab safe resource tiles.
  
  Obviously not an option when not spawning near the ocean. But when its available its the safest way for your king of the deep to explore while separate from your army due to extra vision range and ability to retreat into the water for safety (so dont run out of ap on land please).
  
  Risky against brigand / dispossessed spirit ambush or mad cultist hamlets.
  
  Hilarious potential in multiplayer if you manage to get to the other side of the map within a couple years and steal a citadel, forcing the enemy to walk back with their main army to stop you from contesting their own resources.
  
  
• 2. Scout ahead of your main army to find ideal tiles to take while clearing easy animal stacks and joining important fights to quckly secure territory (standard)
  
  King of the deep is wayyyyy more effective when he has troops covering his flanks and your troops take wayyyy less losses against archers when king of the deep is the one getting hit by them half the time.
  
  The best way to convince you of this is that trolls for example have goblins to stop the trolls from being surrounded by halberds and chopped to death (even with sweep) but pale ones don't even have sweep...or regeneration....or fabulous noses...they have gills while lake troll warriors laugh at everyone involved.
  
  Also preserving king of the deep despite his designation as a martyr you are meant to eventually lose opens you up to strategies later on that greatly solve many weaknesses of your faction.
  
  
• 3. Die taking a city or port like a martyr cause description said he is destined to be one
  
  For a really long time the king of the deep is your best unit for taking citadels because he is giant sized to ignore walls, hits hard enough to not care too much about wall cover, and....thats it..as enticing as that this sounds to do...its usually not going to end well but I still encourage you to do this to get a feel for what kind of defenses in a siege battle your starting troops can handle
  
  Siege tunneling on your troops won't improve your odds by the way, most situations just result in your supporting troops getting focused down and killed before you even walk up with everyone else. Its another debuff to pale ones....
  
  Your earth reader might carry if he has a "spell" that allows him to throw rocks but otherwise its not going to end well unless you fight something that you think the king of the deep is capable of dealing with on his own..as in pretend its a non siege battle and its just the king of the deep alone, does he win? If yes add your troops and caster and you might be fine.
  
  Obviously avoid siege weapons unless its the only threat.

What are you doing with your main army? Well youre taking easy tiles like hamlets, you will ideally mostly be fighting brigands, archers, levies, spearmen.

Do not take fights where you are too outnumbered unless the king of the deep is with you and if your troops are wounded it might be worth waiting a few turns before taking the next settlement in the cluster while the king scouts a bit.

Unless you get a hilariously large brigand stack ambushing you, you should be relatively safe walking into empty settlements.

The same goes for that empty non-abandoned mine which definitely has a greater horror lurking in it chances are kingdom was defending it and brigands, animals, or even dwarves cleared it for you. (I assume its somewhere near a 1/8th chance for kingdom to be defending a mine and usually with extremely weak forces)

Its perfectly okay to leave tiles you think are only slightly too difficult to clear because chances are you are going to be sending a second army through territory you have already been through due to your inability to efficiently take citadels and replenish your starting army,

You need to both make your starting army last as long as possible to reach easy resources as far away as you can to generate more profit while also recruiting armies from sub-optimal citadel locations including your starting one.

In games with fewer teams (multiplayer) and not a free for all (vs ai usually) this is a good way to clear the map when you have no expectation of finding an easy forward citadel before the first year or so.

vs ai with lots of teams you do need to get a feel for spawn distance so you know to not over extend or you might get stepped on by an enemy army while you try to gather resources to put together something special back home.

Typically what I define as "early game" is when its still difficult for you to clear independents from most tiles that are valuable to you.

Pale ones are typically afraid of taking most fortified locations until they get their summons and t2 mages out, but unlike most gem classes, pale ones have a relatively early answer to most mines with just their recruits that require iron which is easy enough to trade for. Mines unlock the ability for pale ones to start doing summons, therefore the ability to clear most mines with little attrition means you are very much out of the early game.

More often than not, mines are defended by armored melee combatants in contrast to the mostly unarmored humans with bows and slings defending settlements

Mines with kobolds, kingdom troops, slaves, or ogres are an exception in that you can quite easily take them with ranged spam like with pale ones and pale ones slingers, or archers that human factions would use.

Infact seeing any of these mines early game is almost always a blessing because usually the easiest way to take them is to just recruit a few troops (slingers) and bring them up to help your starting army.

But mines guarded by bakemono, trolls, dwarves, and pale ones are going to punish you if your units do not hit hard enough due to high armor values and shields blocking half or more of your army's average damage output.

For clarification, bakemono and troll mines do often require you to not forfeit ranged dps either as they both use unarmored chaff to aid their main defenders (So use slingers and cavern guard and ancients).

One answer you have to the armored enemies are cavern guard, they have almost twice the damage output of a pale one soldier and therefore will kill the aforementioned armored enemies in a fraction of the turns and mitigating losses that you cannot afford. (Although cavern guard are still expendable in a sense that you would want to send them at a bakemono mine with an effigy that curses stuff)

Then there are others options that involve summons and good spellcasting but that typically takes time and rng to get rolling for pale ones while warlock gets a head start in that regard.

So this leaves the cheapest and most reliable method at clearing these mines which is with heavy utilization of ancient pale ones and ancient hurlers who will very often oneshot through armor and even give trolls and other pale ones a run for their money.

I typically get at least 3 ancient pale ones and 3 ancient hurlers by year 2.

Around this point you should have a decent chunk of the map uncovered and have a decent stockpile of gems to start doing rituals, maybe your initial army has already started using summons to continue clearing the map, maybe it has grinded to a halt due to lack of citadels and ways to reinforce it, maybe it died off completely in which case you might want to try again.

Regardless, try to fill up your frontline to finish your army at home and then get a commander to send it out, ancients are super powerful and gold efficient but you still need to not get them surrounded. Ideally you want your new army's frontline to be as wide as whatever garrison you plan on sending them at so your frontline doesnt get flanked and your hurlers dont ever see melee combat

This is going to have to be the part where you savescum to investigate yourself how impactful getting more troops will help you take that mine you really want and get a feel for how much you need to invest in your ancient army to reduce attrition and keep it going.

But once this army is ready and you've started clearing more difficult mines defended by dwarves I would argue you've successfully made it past early game.

Okay so you are entering the mid game for pale ones, you are finally able to clear mines efficiently in order to start collecting gems and taking citadels.

For pale ones I would describe this part as a never ending process of taking citadels and flooding every region of the map with summons and troops in order to find temples, gems, and gold income.

Despite being a class that uses gems, pale ones simply cannot get enough gold, 100 + per turn is easy to guzzle down.

Fortunately you have a monopoly over Agartha and the seas, although grabbing these resources can be tedious, slow, and difficult.

But before we get into this lets talk about your summons.

Pale ones have an extremely brutal gem economy because you can only use emeralds to unlock rituals and each gem color needs its own rituals to be spent.....you also need emeralds to upgrade your casters which is arguably more important than a lot of your summons.

You can realistically be stuck sitting on dozens of useless gems that would give other factions like warlock a powerful army and cloud lord better recruits, both without needing to reroll their rituals.

Worse yet, its often not even that great of an idea to waste emeralds rerolling rituals to spend your rubies and diamonds.....you want your ritual casters to be tier 2 so they can carry you in fights with t2 geomancy....often way more important.

So lets look at what you can summon

Lesser Lava Summoning
Gives an avg of about 2 lesser fire elementals for 10 (7 if correct oracle).

Lesser Fire




These guys are actually difficult to use in a profitable way, on paper they are amazing for taking citadels and other fortified locations but because their attack doesnt ignore wall cover you will see them struggling to beat archers on the walls even after surviving volleys and reaching melee.

If you are going to use them to take a citadel i recommend you have them outnumber the defending archers, expect to still have expensive losses.

I personally found the best use for them to be clearing up your territory from graveyard and ancient forest woes, lesser fires are really good at killing animals and ethereal melee undead, avoid spectral archers.

They also serve a purpose in Agartha which will be mentioned later.

Lesser Summoning of the Dead
50/50 chance of either a Penumbral or Cavern Wight for 10 (7 if correct oracle).

Penumbral





Kind of like a lesser fire elemental but technically costs a bit more than twice the gem value per, has crap health to show for it, but it can heal itself via draining life, and has spirit sight which makes your entire army ambush proof.

So far starters, its drain life attack sadly is still not armor negating, but what matters is it can heal so you dont have to worry too much about it taking chip damage, just try to keep it away from magic and lifeless stuff.

Cavern Wight





So cavern guard is basically a halberd on steroids. This is basically a cavern guard on steroids. Hits harder, doesn't have bad sight, nearly twice as hard to kill, can't be diseased, immune to a lot of effects.

Use it where you would use cavern guard, which is probably everywhere if you could help it.

Lesser Olm Summoning
Summons an olm for 10 (7 if correct oracle).

Olm





Massive crutch for pale ones that holds up the entire faction, their mindblast is a high initiative extremely long range paralyzing attack that can only be stopped by being mindless or having extremely high mr.

Which in many situations is also a benefit since it can cause them to all target that necro leading his army of skeletons.

Can clear fortified locations very easily only needing about 1 for every 2 or even 3 archers to not take much losses if at all, just make sure to protect them with a difficult to kill armored frontline.

Slow on the map so difficult to intercept enemy armies but you need to try and even bait.

Lesser Deep Summoning
50/50 on either a Cave Grub or Cave Cow for 10

Controversial ritual that I like to spam in multiplayer with the excuse that I want to use the cave cows when really I want to use both results.

Cave Grub





Slow blunt resistant tanks that can technically be used against troll and ogre and dwarf mines in a pinch but otherwise exist to be given to a single lone commander and used to dig tunnels through Agartha to find goodies.

They can also be used to dig to hell to force a very early and permanent connection, allowing demons to invade as a way to flip the table in a multiplayer game

Cave Cow




Has a 3 range acid spit that ignores armor and wall cover making them very funny to mass as long as you can maintain a thin but strong row of frontline infront of them (cavern wights?). Just note that they are considered animals vs animal charm and can even become primal.

Extremely potent at taking fortified locations provided that its either a guard tower or no more than a full row of archers on the walls since theyll struggle to reach the 2nd row.

Use with ancient hurlers to push them to the side in an army composition so they are forced to attack things on the walls. Having a couple large pale ones on the frontline wont hurt their ability to act too much in a siege battle since the large pale ones will group on the gate allowing the cows to walk up and hit archers on the walls.

Awaken Guardians
50/50 to summon an avg of 2 sentinels or 1 granite guardian for 20







Basically cavern guards / ancient pale ones made out of stone, extremely difficult to kill but also doesn't heal.

The only time I see anyone else use them is by summoning these guys on fairy circles so that they can safely helldive into enemy territory and possibly bully a forest class.

The only time I really got any usage out of this ritual was from summoning them in a pit after a curious player went to explore a cave i dug out in agartha with their main army only to then pop back out and find that they are now suddenly fighting a large pale one army with a frontline of statues.

They can be funny to defend chokepoints but they are still really expensive for what you get so usually its just painful to roll this ritual.

This ritual mainly exists to bait new players into thinking they should turtle and focus on holding territory as pale ones.

Cave Temple Construction

Pretty expensive ritual, 25 50 that turns an underground gem deposit into a cave temple

You lose gem and gold income but you get a temple for oracle and earth reader recruitment offer rates.

Obviously requires you to find an underground gem deposit which is what the next portion will be over.

Scrying
For 5 you get spirit sight vision of a 3x3 area that you clicked on (3 if correct oracle).

This ritual is alot more powerful in multiplayer than singleplayer, lets you scout ahead and look for enemy armies you want to intercept with your own. Helps overcome your slow olms by placing them in range of where you think the enemy will be next turn.

Battles that take place after you scry will be revealed to you but in multiplayer im not sure if it'll work if you are on a team later in turn order. When it does work it can be used to collect intel on what spells enemy casters have which can give a massive edge.

Do not recommend scrying agartha unless you can pinpoint locations under your armies incase you want to prospect a good spot to dig down.

Ritual of mastery 60

Upgrades an earth reader into an earth mind which gets t2 geomancy, you need them!!

Even though this place is pale one's main gimmick, their sand box, their identity....

Its very neglected, especially in multiplayer games which usually have everyone fighting and killing eachother around year 5 or 6 even on enormous maps with wilder on, which just is not enough time to excavate Agartha usually.

But there have been multiplayer games where I do manage to get a cave grub cave cow factory going early due to finding early emerald income and have incidentally made tunnels vast enough for enemy players to spend in game years wandering and exploring.

In terms of tunnels, i personally just strip mine, 1 straight tunnel with many more branching off in rows with a gap of 2 tiles in between so that I can uncover every tile with the least amount of digging in hopes of finding geodes which alone will pay for the excavation.

But many deposits you find down here will be extremely hard to take, especially on wilder. You will need to counter them in order efficiently clear them.

Umbral and penumbrals are hard countered by lesser fire elementals

Olms are hard countered by lesser fire elementals and penumbrals mixed in with pale ones to distract the mage....you need alot of them

Magma children, nagas, giant worms, pretty much all require lots of olms and solid frontline.

Magma children in particular I advocate for flooding the entire cave they are in and starting an excavation somewhere else, you will see magma children in groups that would cost you thousands of rubies to produce your own of due to crappy fire elementals sharing the same ritual. Its expensive to produce an army, its cheap to replace a grub that drowned to flood a deposit you want.

Earth elementals and earth gnomes require ancient pale ones, seal guard, or cavern guard to chop them up quickly.

Fire elementals, you can literally just bring lesser fire elementals of your own and slingers, the fire elementals will be stuck on eachother unable to hurt eachother while the slingers slowly kill.

Pale one armies you can efficiently beat with ancient pale ones frontlining and a caster boosting them, ideally bring olms, fire elementals, and penumbrals.

By now you would probably realize a small issue, mining is slow and moving an army to reactively clear deposits that you uncover is also slow and a massive investment that wont pay itself off for years.

Usually what i do is have an earth reader in my starting citadel, probably the first one I bought and decided to be the one i reroll rituals on, sit back and reactively make armies for deposits I uncover.

Note that agartha will NOT make you magically outscale other classes that can stack blessings or build economy like voice of el or cloud lord, you are fighting tooth and nail for resources while they sit around.

Getting resources from the ocean as pale ones is a very simple task, get a port, build a boat, summon like 4 olms and quite a few lesser fire elementals..

Congrats, for like 70 gems and 10 gold you've just made a fast naval army capable of taking most ocean resources for yourself and killing almost everything in the water, eventually giving you arguably enough gold and gems to justify it. You could also just zoom along the coast in search of ports with your pirate olms.

Most sea monsters have too low mr to handle olms and lesser fire elementals counter animals in the water just like the ones on land.

The only things you'll have trouble with is something that casts void magic or t2 hydromancy or large armies of spear wielding fish but those are pretty rare....

T2 Geomancy from Earth Minds and Oracles is when you start hitting your limit for what you can expect from the faction in terms of magic and rituals because going further is extremely expensive, overpriced, and rare to happen...also t3 rituals are a joke and not worth casting so I'm not even going to mention them, they are best left as disappointing spoilers. You have been warned.

T2 rituals cost 30 to reroll and just like their t1 variants you need to roll for the right rituals to spend your gems.

This means you might spend over 100 just trying to get the t2 lava summoning ritual on an oracle of subterranean fire!! Extremely expensive if you're impatient.

T2 rituals are (usually) arguably more efficient to cast compared to the T1 rituals, sometimes offering better summons but a dice roll on the count.

Keep in mind summoning count can explode and roll again giving you more than these averages.

Lava Summoning : 80 (60 if correct oracle)
Even split chance of 1/3rd each of either magma children, lesser fire elementals or fire elementals.

You get an avg of 16 lesser fire elementals so in terms of gem efficiency its basically the same as casting the T1 ritual when you roll it. Obviously more AP efficient. T1 ritual also explodes.

Fire elementals (avg 3 per cast)

Big fire elementals that have fire shield. Very good in situations where lesser fire elementals are already good in melee....they hit hard enough to not care about armor and their fire shield ignores armor and cover when struck.....they seem more efficient at taking fortified locations defended by archers due to this.




Magma Children (avg 3 per cast)

Extremely good hard hitting ranged unit that is a menace when massed..too bad you need to spend an avg of 3 casts or 240/180 gems for just 2 or 3 of them....


Summoning of the Dead : 80 (60 if correct oracle)
Even split chance of 1/4th each of either cavern wights, penumbrals, umbrals, sepulchrals.

Avg of 10 penumbrals so more efficient than T1 even when not exploding.

Avg of 9 cavern wights so more efficient than T1 even when not exploding.

Umbrals (avg 4 per cast)

Really big penumbrals that can take a beating and outheal said beating. Very strong in side armies bullying enemy mundane side armies....keep away from any form of magic damage because they die so damn quickly to it you'll feel bad about your massive waste of gems.


Sepulchrals (avg 3 per cast)

Basically undead seal guard, your strongest frontline units that you want in your main army infront of your geomancy casters. Hits extremely hard and doesn't go down easily unless banished or oneshot by some form of op magic. Extremely powerful when strength of the earth is put on them.


Olm Conclave : 120 (90 if correct oracle)
avg of 7 Olms lead by 1 Olm Sage

the olm sage can also mindblast while casting t1 hydromancy and geomancy so it depends if you value hydromancy and geomancy and a slow commander as much as 4 olms.

The olm sage can be upgraded for t2 hydromancy instead of geomancy.

Deep Earth Summoning : 80
Even split chance of Troglodytes, Lesser Earth Eelementals, Earth Elementals, Purple Worm


Troglodytes (avg 2 per cast)
40 gems per troglodyte is hilariously bad, imagine getting a slightly stronger moose as warlock instead of a pack of mist warriors. The possibility of getting this is an excuse to never use this ritual.



Lesser Earths (avg 14 per cast)
Acceptable units to hold onto and save to later add to your main army in anticipation of a final battle since they arnt traditional frontline units, they will pop out in the middle of the enemy army or even in their backline and cause havoc, potentially killing mages.


Earth Elementals (avg 3 per cast)

Same as lesser earth elementals but harder to kill and hits in a bigger cone, acceptable results.




Purple worm
This is an okay summon, will pop up around the enemy army oneshotting anything that isnt giant sized by devouring it, extremely low mr because its an animal so keep away from magic that can stun it or oneshot it.

Acceptable to put in a side army, much harder to counter than umbrals since it wont just die to magic damage, it needs magical oneshots and stunlocks or giant sized units to duel it.



Awaken Marble Oracle : 80

Marble Oracle (Comes with 2 Granite Guards)

You are spending 80 gems for a tanky t2 geomancer that you cant even move, those gems should just go towards upgrading an earth reader.

Potentially similar use cases of baiting the enemy main army into a fight with your main army with this present via pit..or jumping into a druid's ancient forest via fairy circle.

Ritual of Grand Mastery 240

Only oracles can cast this to upgrade their geomancy to t3 and their side path to tier 2.

Gives access to T3 rituals which are never worth casting and 50% resistance to fire and cold.

Acceptable if you plan on getting an oracle to cast wither / cloud of death / mass combustion, overpowered offensive magic is what youre lacking.

But I would still rather spend that 240 gems upgrading 4 earth readers for 4 t2 geomancers rather than save up.

T2 Geomancy is a huge step up from tier 1 to the point where I would even advocate for taking your T2 geomancers to a magic library to learn an extra tier 2 spell so they are forced to always cast t2 magic.

The problem you might notice is that at this stage of the game a lot of your spells become hard to use as your frontline becomes thicker with ancient pale ones and ancient hurlers while most of your spells only have 6 range.

This is alleviated by instead using buff and summon spells but if you are stuck with combat spells it might be worth not having ancient hurlers with the caster so they are up forward a bit more...or using cavern guard/cavern wights instead of ancient pale ones.

Summon Earth
This unironically one of the best t2 combat summons, it does not matter how far back your caster is they will immediately burrow and try to pop up within the enemy army, potentially next to an enemy mage and prevent them from casting or even kill them.

Earth Meld
Like earth grip but aoe and can hit things that are flying and floating (assuming the earth is reaching out to grab them) Only really high strength will stop this from being effective, can completely shut down an entire army when massed enough. Similar to sleep but with even fewer counters in the game.

6 range limits its usefulness

Iron Bolts
5x 1-10 magical blunt damage projectiles, only really countered by high armor and blunt resistance but that is exceedingly rare and earth meld can counter-act at least 2 armor.

Enough earth minds that know this spell will delete almost anything.

6 range but atleast if an enemy uses a combat summon or something to jump to your backline it should be deleted even amongst your vulnerable mages and olms.

* Strength of the Earth *
Burst 5 + 2 strength + 5% Regen
Almost every magic school has something in the tier 2 category that is powerful and hits above its own weight, this is both geomancy's (and by extension) pale one's main power, every army you have a caster that knows this can potentially shrug off all attrition, the more casters that know this the better. Extremely potent when paired with other factions and their units.

Soldiers of Steel
Burst 5 + 2 Armor
Can bump up seal guard to 5 armor and ancient pale ones to 4 armor (+ shield)
Combined with Strength of the earth can make pale ones very resistant to aoe magic damage spam and protect library mages from battlefield wipes so they can do their thing aswell.

Eruption
Burst 5 1-9 blunt.
Doesnt hit flying or floating and it stuns things that get hurt by it with a strength check.

On average it will kill most humans or atleast stun them, not much to say about it other than it atleast does enough damage to get through armor, it will definitely do something when spammed.

But you probably dont want it casted if something is among your ranks and its short range of 6 kind of encourages that possibility.

Tier 3 Geomancy Most of the time these arn't worth gunning for since they are locked behind 240 gems upgrading an oracle.

Chasm
A randomly traveling crack in the ground that will instakill most non-giantsized ground troops that it moves through. Travels 15 tiles and can reach enemy backline mages and oneshot them.

Maws of the Earth
A randomly traveling crack in the ground that is exactly the same but only travels 5 tiles and spews out 1-8 damage fire, allowing it to hurt more things.

* Army of Gold *
A full battlefield +2 armor +100% fire immunity buff to all allies.

You want this one since it means suddenly your casters dont need to waste so many turns buffing armor + you get immunity to fire ontop of it...you have a good chance of not getting it...

Earthquake
1-5 damage battlefield wipe that doesnt affect flying or floating units.

Can be good if you somehow managed to make a very large fire elemental + penumbral / umbral army against a faction that somehow doesnt have floating magic damage units this late in the game (dryad queen?)

Even though your own troops can be made very resistant against this spell spell there are probably better things to cast.

Also useful for destroying fortifications and sinking a fleet of boats.

Okay so you have giant ancient pale one armies running around, possibly backed by upgraded earth readers going from major fight to major fight clearing mines and enemy armies alike.

You have olms looking to join in fights against enemy armies with your ancients and in the meantime clearing fortified locations.

You have pale one commanders leading literal walls of fire around the map burning forests down and cooking animals and doing tasks that free up the rest of your armies.

You have either found a temple or you are looking for one in the sea and in agartha while still searching elysium.

You are probably wishing you got more commander offers because your summons and recruits combined are quickly filling up the limited 20 tiles of frontline you can have in an army, forcing you to start buying slingers until you get a commander to pick up your units.

This is the closest to peak pale ones that you can get.

Unless....

Pale ones are a very excellent faction for enabling planar exploration and they have 3 methods from least to most consistent.

1. Finding a gateway to the elemental plane of water in the ocean.

These spawn relatively often but not always, still pretty common. I usually find them when looking for temples in the water.

Just note that water elementals hard counter most of your summons, fire elementals instantly die to them, olms and umbrals cant hurt them, they have more initiative than your pale ones in melee.

You are forced to use lots of pale ones big and small, living and undead, along with several t2 geomancers to fight them, armor buff + strength of earth counters their low damage, massive investment and not ideal.

But if you manage to take an ice citadel utilizing the same strategy with the addition of olms you will be rewarded with the ability to recruit MIST WARRIORS.

2. Finding a granite citadel in Agartha.
(This always spawns because the king of mountains always needs a home)

Usually requires lots of digging and/or scrying, the garrison isnt as tough as it looks as the purple worm wont leave it during a siege battle to attack you so all you need to do to win is to out damage all of the regen, you will need several t2 geomancers that know iron bolts and strength of the earth, solid frontline, and some olms to stunlock everything.

Much easier with oracles of the dead due to disease halving regen.

Library mages that cast buffs like luck or instakills like soul slay can do wonders.

This and method 1 will give you a possible path to the elemental nexus which gives an additive multipliar to ritual cost reduction.

That means if you get a fire oracle to the nexus they will be able to cast fire rituals for half the original cost and then you could ferry the summons back to elysium.

Also the nexus has a portal to the primal plane which can be used to make primal cave cows.

3. Inferno
Aside from flipping the table in a game, you can actually utilize inferno and get quite a bit of gold income, gems, and maybe even demons of your own.

The trick is to dig a passage in Agartha that is at least 6 tiles long between a connection to elysium and where you will dig to inferno.

Then you want to dig towards the nearest sea until you hit wet stone, you might want to scry to make sure on the other side is a direct adjacent connection to water because diagonal flooding is buggy.

Now you want to simultaneously dig down to inferno with one grub while also flooding the Agarthan passage with the other during the same turn.

Now most demons that try to invade elysium, even the flying ones, will drown. Just give them some time to all come out.

One of the demon lords will repeatedly revive to try to use this tunnel but since he will be alone he will be very easy for you to take a single army to permanently kill in inferno, ideally with olms.

Now you can start invading inferno and plunder its deposits via this tunnel, ideally with olms since you will want them against the packs of hell hounds that guard inferno.

Funfact you can do this rather early to safeguard elysium from any future invasion since most of inferno's forces will be dead.

They want higher tier settlements so you somewhat compete with gold income, they can generally go without mines and hamlets.

Necromancer

With: Necromancy is good at helping you clear mines, banefire archers are able to be made from the start of the game and combined with your frontline can do alot of clearing without any casters needing to see battle.

Against: Necromancer has alot of chaff spamming spells which pale ones struggle to get through, luckily olms ignore most necromancer chaff. Still unwinnable if certain rituals like planar swap is abused.

Margraf

With: Like Necro but banefire crossbows suck compared to the banefire archers. Atleast margraf tends to want to spam lots of ranged units regardless which can work with your frontline to clear the map.

Against:

Vampire spam can win the map but an army backed by olms can easily take whatever old castle they hold.

If they can reach their lategame you will feel out manuevered but you can at least shut it all down

They want settlements so you compete with gold income, they can generally go without mines

Demonologist

With: They can clear fortified locations more easily than you if they get good starting spells / ice imps and you leaving olms around can give them safe places to summon and probably fail their rituals.

Their summons are tanky with high hp but they get so few that they will struggle to fill out frontlines. They are in the same boat as you but they can spam tanky casters and you can apply regen to everything.

Against:

They struggle to sustain chaff that doesnt fly in and die to melee, all of their demons are expensive and valuable so it becomes a game of how many olms you can accumulate vs their demons.

High Cultist

With: Their void magic can have very long range armor negating spells allowing their casters to work with your faction's strong frontline.

High cultist can also clear fortified locations much more easily than you while you can more easily clean up the map for them. Luck buffs also stack with armor and regen buffs to make your units increadibly tanky.

A high cultist caster can potentially just follow your starting army for a fully aquatic army that can cross lakes and rivers while their other cultists runs around with the human troops.

Against: They have access to ethereal buffs and instakills and enslave which all make it extremely difficult to fight back. Their damage spells will delete your own ethereal summons. You dont win without lots of olms and casters while most of your other summons will raid and avoid big battles.

Priest King

With: They have a rough start similar to you and have a bit of difficulty taking citadels and other fortified locations.

But slaves can clear anything not defended by archers just by themselves making them ideal for clearing mines for you.

While you have an arguably better time clearing low tier settlements for them due to armored troops.

Against:

You'll struggle to quickly kill slave chaff without a big investment into archers or slingers or casters of your own and their casters/summons can be nasty in long fights.

Raksharaja

With: Another heavy frontline faction. Their summons compete with your troops and summons for frontline space but they have access to ideal archers and spells to clear fortified locations.

Against:

For once, your lesser fire elementals can be good. Raksharaja lacks a bit in ranged dps that can go through ethereal and many of their troops are fire vulnerable.


You directly compete with them the most.

Warlock

You innately counter their hydromancy and you have more access to tier 2 geomancy.
But they can spam ranged ethereal armies and just win the map unless you have lots of olms everywhere.

Cloud Lord

Matchup from hell, will fly around and uncap all of your mines, their troops have magic weapons countering many of your summons and just like warlock they can have ranged ethereal armies.

Much of your gem income will just feel useless.

Kobold King

Not experienced in this matchup (I'm like the only person to play kobold king in pvp) but you both have decent counters for eachother so it seems pretty balanced outside of white dragon spawn beating your ethereal summons and taking your mines.

Illusionist

Another terrible matchup, they can also scry to find your armies and if they are ever threatened or find an easy target they can use gems to jaunt their armies around.

They will flood the battlefield with ethereal stuff that again counters your ethereal stuff but this time your olms cant save you, they can only kill the enemy casters to enable the rest of your army to fight back.

Hoburg

You cant really use ancients against their sapphire constructs due to the paralyze, spam cavern guard so there are more targets. Lots of geomancy helps. Burn every ancient forest to deny ents from being summoned.