Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Well, that's rather my point isn't it? If you can manage to control the water (the hard part) you don't have any business fighting a fair fight on the land (easy part). The war with Caelum was negotiated before I ever set slimy toe out of water, the fight with Lanka (sorry, didn't mention this) I didn't line up a war ally until I had soundly thrashed his attacking forces (I think he expected me to be much more tied up with Caelum) and basically just trolled around for somebody willing to grab some land from his other side while I did most of the killing which I was able to do because I was at this point much bigger than him and using the income I'd grabbed from my rapid land grab to pump out Kings. Part of my negotiation with Sauro was "even if I'm wrong and he defeats me he's going to have to leave a large amount of forces guarding his coast", which made it a pretty good no-brainer on their part.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

The arcane workings of diplomacy are just as important as the art of warfare.

:)

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Ah, I thought you meant "fair" in the sneak attack sense, not the ganging sense, since diplomacy and lots of borders cuts both ways. See: Artifacts. It is true that you do have a nice diplomatic status as any aquatic nation given your defensive advantage and the thought that you'll be easy pickings later once more of your holdings are on land, but that can evaporate very quickly once you start to do well.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Well, both actually. At the point you're controlling the water you have the luxury of naming who and when you fight. Coasts are generally long enough that you've got several options and nobody is realistically going to be attacking you at this point. In the vast majority of cases you can just sit there until you can surprise attack someone who is already in a fight with no real need to defend your long border. Even once you've got a big bite of land you've got serious negotiating leverage as nobody really wants to fight with you when 2/3rds of your territories are underwater, and you can also potentially attack on another coast which doesn't touch your other land holdings. Artifacts was (is? ;) ) hideous in how quickly everyone piled on anyone who got at all ahead but in my experience this is not how things usually play out. It seems to me much more common for you to make a good war ally in your first or second war and have solid backup going forward.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Well, apart from troglodytes you are quite right. I rarely find them a problem, though, as they are not that hot under the water to start with and really bad as soon as they are in a cold dominion.

War shamblers are nice, but I have not been able to expand that well with them. It could just be a question of bad scripting on my part, though. I am not that good a player.


That AN damage is painful, but I am astounded by that result. I have never encountered anything like it in this matchup.

I experimented a bit after seeing your post, but I just cannot get my head around it.

About the only thing I can think of - apart from using just a couple of Basalt Queens as commanders and have them be killed by mindblasts - is that R'lyeh was using mostly slave troopers as screen and managed to mindblast all the shamblers (fire at big monsters?) - leaving you with decidedly sub-par damage against decent armour, but you should still have been able to make quite a dent in the screen.

What sort of screen was it? And how much of it?

I set up an experiment with similar numbers but with changed troop composition to make it cheaper and a bit more effective (I think, but I welcome critique). I used 40 War Shamblers (5 of them were actually Warriors of the Deep), 40 Triton Guards, 145 Deep Ones (with and without spears) and about 15 Shamblers of the Deep mixed in with the Deep Ones. I used various scripting and placement for the R'lyeh, but the best I managed to do was losing the battle, 26 Giboleths and about half the mêlée screen. Atlantis lost about 75 units, mostly Deep ones and Tritons.

The general idea with this, was to have nice diversions for the mindblasters whatever their scripting and manage to arrive at the screen with units that can hurt them. The tritons high speed (relatively speaking) make them excellent flankers and diversions for mindblasters on fire closest. Deep ones are tempting targets, but there are a lot of them, and they pack quite a punch. Shamblers of different varieties are good damage dealers and quite nice as damage sinks.

I am probably just missing something obvious when it comes to scripting the Giboleths, but I tried with both fire closest and large enemy monsters in different combinations.

There are just too many targets for the mindblasters to be able to paralyse them all and it is too easy for Atlantis to deploy troops (using differences in size, hp and MR) so that large chunks of the army will start killing the screen.


Basalt Kings and Queens are very easy to target, but Mothers and Mages of the Deep are next to impossible to single out. They are neither bigger nor have more hp than ordinary shamblers and they have better MR, which seems to make them less likely to be targeted by the AI.

Things ought to look better for R'lyeh when H2 priests can be used, though.

I am probably doing something wrong, somewhere, but I do not know what it is.

I also see it as something of a problem that the numbers we are talking about here implies that there should be at least some magic researched on both sides and that can of course change things around a bit.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Tactics will have mattered. Neither of us brought much magepower to the fight, as neither of us had many effective combat spells as it was early.

I can't remember the battle that well, but I reckoned that the gold cost of each army was roughly similar - within about 10%. I certainly had sub-optimal unit divisions as I was restricted by only one quality commander (Ldr-80+) and a load of Ldr-40 otherwise. I can just tell you the tritons routed very quickly, the War Shamblers and Atlanteans engaged the melee shield briefly before routing. It may have been fought in Rlyeh's Dom, and maybe magic-1.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

I had a battle where my heavy-blessed Agarthans against EA R'lyeh slaughtered a similar sized Slave Troll+Mind lord army. Granted, my opponent was even newer to MP than me (no cold dominion+drain scales).

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

In my opinion EA Agartha is as good underwater as on land. They have flaws in either sphere (like cold dominion), but are still competitive and certainly not easy victims. They've still got fully effective bless troops, thugs, most of their magic is as good. Note also Baalz's comments that sea nations have an advantage that they can usually assault a coastline with almost no fear of reprisal, which doesn't apply to Agartha.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Ugh. I hate the bashing of poor MA Man. *scampers off to write MA Man guide*

Oh, and Omni & vfb: Shame on you for not standing in their defense! ;)




*scampers off to get another scotch*

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Well, if I had, then you wouldn't be writing your wonderful MA Man guide!

I agree, MA Man can be a threat, but I think you must have been planning your attacks something like 12 months in advance. Not my style, that's for sure! I can't even remember what I plan from 1 turn ago.

Whollaborg's MA Man also had a leading position in Forseti, and the only reason he lost was because he got ganked after putting up the Forge.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Even with an awake SC pretender, you're good as dead within 16 turns, when you're about halfway to the research needed to kit and buff said thugs. I'm not talking about level 4 research, I'm talking about what you can reach during the first year, which might include one level 4 school if you took a research pretender. Do you have a solution in that scenario?


I should note, I've played water nations four times. Once I started with 3 provs between our caps in an ocean. The second time, I had a 4 prov buffer in an open lake. Third time, 3 prov buffer in an open lake. The last time starts were hand-placed at opposite ends of a river, probably about 10 provs between.

I'm not saying you'll never get to several mid-level research schools, but it doesn't represent the average underwater game at all.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

Yes I have a solution - stall. In theory R'yleh can be at your gates in 12 turns, in practice you'll often have a bit more time than that and can also buy yourself even more. The thing about mind blasters is they have to have critical mass and they're expensive, R'yleh has some built in inertia which makes them a bit slower out of the gate than, say Neifelheim. Even with an expansion pretender it's a pretty tough proposition to clear out indies and mass 50+ mind blasters at 40 gold a pop plus some chaff blockers (while recruiting expensive mages) by turn 8 or so in order to head towards your capital and get there on turn 12. So, assuming they pile everything they've got into one army and rush you you've got the 3-4 armies you were using to clear indies to counter-raid R'yleh while they can't really split up their expensive critical mass group very effectively. Dance around, feint, skirmish and fall back and you can buy your self more precious turns. If they bull rush to your capital cut into their territories with those troops they're ignoring and bleed them while stuffing your capital with some of those low resource high strength guys you've got and let the squids spend several turns sieging you while you pump out the research and forgings. All in all I can't really imagine you'll be forced into a decisive fight until turn 20 or so unless the stars are really just lined up against you.

Re: Worst Nations in Each Era
 

I have a lot of fun playing MA Man in SP with an s/e/d Master Lich. Of course the AI cannot deal with even massed longbows.

I think I could adapt a strategy to MP utilizing that pretender and taking advantage of bards and some careful diplomacy. I think a strategy based around massing lots of bards with a great economy would be a funny "F#$% You" early to early-mid game.

It's always the late game that gets Man.