Re: Late Age Atlantis
 

I'm playing LA Atlantis in an SP game, and I like them very much so far.

For my pretender, I chose a dormant Ghost King with D4 magic and nine candles of Dominion strength. Cold 3 + other positive scales. My proposed strategy is to get my dominion out to some neighboring provinces, then use the Ghost King (and any ghosts he can summon) to expand into that dominion. Meanwhile, the majority of my expansion is ice-armored heavy infantry.

Actually, I think that LA Atlantis has some great units. Their heavy infantry is really stellar in cold weather, which can always be assured with Wolven Winter. Even better, their heavy infantry has a strategic move of 2, which is much more mobile than other grunts.

The only area in which LA Atlantis is lacking is bless strategies. I agree with Jazzepi (and others): LA Atlantis simply doesn't have very good sacreds. So skip the bless strategy and concentrate on scales....

Re: Late Age Atlantis
 

I have to say that I really like the Assartuts. They may not be Vans, but they definitely sustain a bless strategy quite well.

Your non-capital mages can be good for a few effects. Frozen Heart is the obvious choice, and along the way to it you get nice Alteration spells. If you like, you can make D3 Angakok Soul Vortex thugs with the same paths.

With just a few boosters, the non-capital mages can do quite a bit of useful (if not great) battle magic.

I'll chime in with the 'take Cold-3' idea, if for a slightly different reason. Frozen in Snow's efficiency seems tied to the Cold scale of the province you cast it in. As this spell is one of the easiest/fastest ways for Atlantis to pick up useful Earth magic, it works well.

Re: Late Age Atlantis
 

Last year I've quasi won a game (stopped before end) with an awake Dagon and a simple W9 bless (my scales were dom 9, mag1, cold 3, turmoil 2, luck 3, prod 1, death 2 iirc). I took luck/turmoil because units are cheap and you have more use of gems than gold with Atlantis (death summons + ice guards are invincible if you can afford a wolven winter to prepare the province).

I found Dagon a great trampler even without high reinvigoration because (unlike the great mother) he don't need an armor (and against indie 8 I never had trouble to find provinces he can take alone even without items and before any spell is researched).

The speeded assartut with an high dammage weapon are terrible too (and don't really need arrow protection when they start behind walls of ice guards and undeads).

But in fact it was mostly a good game because I started near LA Ermor and rushed him (with all the mages priests, and most troops able to hit ethearal, Atlantis is probably the best nation for that, only equaled by astral powers) then with a crazy gem income (15d of Ermor + luck/magic) I focused on conjuration and enchantment (both leviathan and catoblepas are great, as well as bane lords with quickness boots, and you also have unfrozen and spectres for diversification - I then found wizards and druids and ended with all paths but blood).

IMO one of the biggest weakness of the nation in MP is the size of the good mages, when you have no other size 4+ recruitable unit. Expect all opponents to fire large monsters (very bad especially when they use black bow of botulf etc). I had hard times against Man using lots of magical ranged weapons, untill I started to use size 6 leviathans in big ice guard squads (fire large target a squad with large monsters but hit random units in this squad, so ethearal crossbows etc... often just kill a guard).