Pretender Design: Water Cults
 

I am wondering about sensible Nation/Pretender combinations for picking the Water Cult Theme. Suppose you want to play on a smaller map with quite some water on it and that you need to compete with nations that naturally have less difficulty with moving under/over the sea... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Since the water cult only gives sacred troops the ability to move into the sea (right?), one should take a look at nations with sensible sacred troops.

Another difficulty is to ensure that adjacent Water Provinces remain under friendly dominion, so one should take a higher dominion score and look out for good (possibly stealthy) preachers, no?

So my first guess for a suitable nation would be Ctis: Good priests and two sacred units (the not-so-nice sacred serpet and the nice serpent dancer) (both having poision resistance, which might be helpful against tritons). What would be a sensible pretender then? Which other nations would make sense?

(Another option instead of water cults might be a high water-based pretender: Blue Dragon, Frost Father (or the sailing Rime Mariner if you fancy Zen's Mods). Any suggestions for suitable nations for these?)

Re: Pretender Design: Water Cults
 

Imo the 2 best Nations for going into Water are Pythium and Caelum .

All their mages can go in the water and they can cast lots of useful spells underwater .


Taking water cult doesn't really work imo . The only 2 nations with really good sacred stuff are Jotunheim and Vanheim .

Imo conquering the water against a waternation is quite difficult because you get so many mali for fighting underwater .

Graeme said in a recent post that the best solution is to dominionkill the waternations .
I agree fully here . Try to outdominion them by negating them access to the shore . If really needed lategame you can try an invasion with tartarians .

Re: Pretender Design: Water Cults
 

Jotunheim has some pretty buff mages. Able to stand up fairly well. After all, all you really need is to get your foot in then you can expand like a water nation using the independent troops. Build a lab and get some summons to help also.

Marignon has alot of decent blessed units. And can hold their own when they come across Ermor trying to expand thru the water

Re: Pretender Design: Water Cults
 

I actually proposed preaching against the oceans myself awhile ago (Post#259089). Nevertheless I am wondering what WaterCults are good for and how this theme could be used in MP games. That is my intended question in this thread - and not how to circumvent the problem otherwise. Thus: Is it possible to successfully play a water-cult nation in MP and benefit from it? If yes, then how? What are the key points?

The map that I have recently presented here has quite a lot of sea provinces permeating the entire world. I agree that WaterCults are seemingly useless in the presence of nations that are at home at the sea (Oceania, R'yleh, Atlantis). So to give this discussion a chance, let us assume my map (102 provinces) played by 6-10 players without any water nations present then?

What are reasons to choose a WaterCult? How do I complement this choice in the rest of my Pretender design? I am asking for concrete Pretender Designs and the intended strategy behind them...

Re: Pretender Design: Water Cults
 

I think that if going underwater needs either pretender with Water or Water Cult, who not use a nation that can use Water blessing together with Water Cult? Vanir of course, and to lesser extent Tuatha, White/Black Centaurs and Serpent Dancers benefit from Water Blessing, and are reasonable units to try to take on underwater. Especially with some help from the pretender.

I am not skilled enough to answer to Chazar's second post, but in some cases the option of going underwater might be worth the points. It might be worth it for Vanheim, whose Vanir could retreat to seas if an oversea-attack failed... But I don't even know if that is possible

Re: Pretender Design: Water Cults
 

Sorry, pressed for time, just a quick reminder:

You CANNOT use Special Themes and Water Cult at the same time, hence you can never find a Tuatha (or Demons of Heavenly Fires, or Hangadrott, etc. etc.) benefiting from a Water Cult.

This is either an intended or unintended feature of dom2 as it now stands.

(I personally have little or no experience with water cult in competetive MP (although I have often taken Ceremonial Faith with success), hence I will try to avoid saying something useless here.)

Re: Pretender Design: Water Cults
 

Hm i think there is no use for watercult at all Chazar http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif .
The 50 points are e.g. 1 scale and something .

If you play without water nations there are then much cheaper ways to kill the indy water provine guards like using an ID or some mech men .

All your watermages can go into the sea also and almost every nation can forge a waterbreath item which is enough to bring with enough good troops to kill the underwater indies .

Finally you will likely find a coast province with shamblers or other amphibian creatures which are enough to conquer the water also .

If Water cult would grant Water breathing to all your units then i would consider it . But as it is you better invest the points in an additional scale or something similiar .

Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

I fear that as well, but Dom2 would not be Dom2 if there would not be certain special case which warrants some usefulness to the weirdst of feature or creature... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Gandalf???

So where are the experts that confirm that Illwinter has made the WaterCult rightly cost its design points? (In 2.14 it is 50, but I think with the Oceania mod enabled in 2.15 it is only 25 points. And doesn't the required magic scale cost additional 40 points as usual? or are there some nations that get discounts on these themes? I'll need to check that...) Otherwise for some wishful thinking, would it be too cheap to pay 50 design point to turn all national troops into poor amphibians within friendly dominion only?

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The only real benefit that comes to my mind so far would be the possibility to go underneath the sea early one, which might be nice for maps with almost guaranteed access to the sea from the initial starting position...

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Endropez made a point I am thinking about myself: if you depend on sacred units, one should go for a bless effect as well, while the water blessing means that the pretender can bring along non-sacred units...

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Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

It might be useful in a low magic, difficult research game when there are no water nations playing, as it could allow a player to get established underwater before anyone else could.

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

Water Cult is pretty hard to use. I've never seen anyone take it, and have barely toyed with the notion myself. Not many nations have sacred troops and sacred leaders that can stand up to masses of poisonous flyers. If you want to get into the water early, taking a Wyrm pretender is a simpler solution.

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

I've gone Water Cult with Marignon - it let me grab a couple of water provinces fairly early, unfortunately Vanheim, Caelum, and Ermor also also got into the water not long after.

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

Might be interesting with good stealthy sacreds for achieving a beachhead somewhere utterly unexpected, but this will cut you off from supplies and probably isn't very efficient.

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

I think of it as a surprise tactic. Any game which agrees ahead of time to have no water nations or you are the last guy into the game see thats the case. You have this thread "Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it" and you have many threads asking "how can I get my nation started into the water quickly" which usually recommends the use of water mages and mercenarys. So being able to enter the water right away without waiting and bidding on the mercs that everyone else is hoping to see would seem to be an advantage. Being able to put my priests into the water next to someone and build temples in every water province on their border would seem to be at least a nice irritant (does water cult allow building castles? I dont remember). It might work best on a small tight map where provinces will be in short supply.

So the "what good is water cult" side by side with "how to I get in the water" seems to be the answer. Maybe not a great one, but a tactic worth keeping in the card file?

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

No castles or PD, meaning defending the aforementioned temples is pricey and unreliable. Besides, furnishing a few priests with water breathing is hardly a daunting task by the time that sort of dominion-pushing becomes relevant. And the element of surprise counts for very, very little when one can only produce 10>sacreds per castle per turn, move said sacreds at one water province per turn, and keep your dominion one step ahead of them.
Still, if one is willing to wait 30 or so turns for the element of surprise, there is something to be said for 100 or so previously invisible vans galloping out the ocean to bring The Pain to their foes. Coincidentally, there's exactly as much to be said for 100 or so previously invisible vans sailing across a neutral province to bring The Pain to their foes. Particularly before said foes have any clue their overseas neighbor is Vanheim. I'd find the latter scenario significantly more surprising, personally.

Mind you, this might not preclude making good use of Water Cult with Jotunheim or C'tis, but I can still hardly imagine it being worth 50 points and the exclusion of other themes. Ever.

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

You can produce (temples/5)+(dominion strength) sacred units per turn, even if this goes over 10. Probably only possible for Marignon, but it's there.

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

Well the goal is to make all tactics and strategies worthy of SOME use even if it doesnt become a winning tactic. But it is a very hard goal to achieve. There will always be something at the bottom and something at the top. Some people would always boost whats on bottom, others would always nerf whats on top. Taken too far those will ruin the whole. But if we can make sure that the top always CAN be beat, and the bottom always CAN be used, then its good enough for now.

Does anyone have a simple thing which might make water cult more useful?
Increase the number of followers that a water mage can take underwater?
Allow priests to take their 10 followers under the water?
Give that nation PD privileges?
Give that nation Castle privileges?

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

The main problem with water cult is imo that only 3 nations , mictlan , marignon + vanheim have noncapitol only sacred troops .
No matter which blessing they have marignons flaggelants would get extremely beaten by tritons with their 0 base protection .

Mictlan has severe problems spreading their dominion until lategame , and jaguar warriors have only 4 base protection as well .

So the only nation where water cult could be somehow useful is imo Vanheim but getting positive dominion in the water might be difficult for them also and vanheim has easy access to mech men which are better for water conquering then vans probably .


My suggestion for water cult would be giving a nation with water cult in each province with water ( = water , forest , river , farmland provinces ) and positive dominion an extra income of 1-2% per dominionlevel .

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

A simple thing that would make it fairly usefull imo is this: allow all national troops to enter the water in your own dominion. Perhaps as only poor amphibians if that might be too powerful.

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

What should be the sense of the generic WaterCult Theme? I guess it should help non-water nations to enter the sea more easily...

So extra money for water provinces is probably not helpful, as it is still difficutl to enter the sea. Likewise for PD and Castles.

So the main problem is that armies composed of sacred troops only are usually too weak and to difficult to obtain. There are just not enough sacred troops around to compose sensible armies (which is generally a bad thing, IMHO, since I dont see why good bless-strats are really worth the cost as compared to good scales...).

Allowing priests generally to take units underwater like water mages is also a bad thing, for I like the idea that water-breathing is tied to positive dominion! So pushing your domininon into the water should remain a necessity. Maybe each priest should be allowed to take some units underwater depending on dominion strength, i.e. (priest level times dominion strength), but decreasing dominion would then introduce a random selection on the units who drown, which might be a bit odd.

In anyway, I think that WaterCult should include a possibility to take a number of non-sacreds into the waters....

Re: Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it
 

I think that allowing to buy PD (tritons) in the sea provinces would do the trick. It's not that difficult to get into the water (with sacred troops or without), but it's difficult to defend those provinces, because any water mage or Mound King can easily take them from you. Buying tritons in every province just to have PD-level defense is too costly (to buy and to maintain). But if Water Cult nation could buy triton-PD their sea provinces would becomes as defended as empty land provinces.