MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Having drawn MA Atlantis as a random selection in the new cross-era game, I find myself a bit at a loss coming up with a strategy that will be competitive against the other water nations.

The good:
Reasonably strong mages for the price (physically and magically) with pretty good magic diversity
Most of the infantry deals some light poison damage, which will be effective against some types of enemies.
Strong recruit everywhere priests

The bad:
Sacred troops are decent, but cap only and not strong enough to justify an investment in a good bless
Non sacred infantry are middling – slow, lightly armored and lacking any ranged backers they struggle against indies much less most other nation’s elites.
War lobsters are interesting enough, but are expensive and expendable, a combination which makes them ill suited to hang a primary strategy on.
Mages are powerful in paths which require significant research to be effective, compounded by the lack of available underwater combat spells and difficult research (in the game I’m playing).
Magic diversity is based on random picks, which will make it hard to depend on a strength of more than one in anything but water.
Very few pretender chassises to choose from, limited choices for cost effective magic paths. (I thought about using the consort guy as a reasonable 80 gp sacred thug chasis, but what he really needs is a N/E bless and there’s no way that’s affordable on any of the pretenders available)
I’m sharing the water with EA Oceana, EA R’yleh, and MA R’yleh…I’m not going to have the luxury of having much research done before I’m hard pressed by good troops.

So, what to do, what to do? Playing around with some SP builds, it seems like war lobsters are capable enough to push some initial expansion, but they’re ruinously expensive at their attrition rate and cranking them out indefinitely will really cramp mage and castle investments (and they’ll be comically ineffective against mind blasters and heavy blessed triton knights). The “heavy” infantry likewise seems to take significant casualties against the average indies unless having an overwhelming advantage of numbers and they’re not cheap enough to make that feasible. Shamblers seem a bit fragile for the cost and the fact that they’ll usually be outnumbered (at that price) makes them drop pretty fast. There doesn’t really seem to be any effective underwater combat spells available early on. The mages seem like they’d make decent thugs, but only after significant research in multiple paths – and they’ll never be up to par with the EA water nation’s recruitable thugs.

So, what am I missing? An awake kraken would help with initial expansion, but what the heck do I follow that up with?

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I have said they are a terrible race along with ma ulm. The 2 worst mp races in the MA imho.

If I was stuck with ma atlantis i would take a master lich, with high death and hope to branch into d magic, OR I would take bad scales(but not d scales) and go for an insane bless on my mother guards.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Actually, MA Atlantis is missing something rather important from the "original". Atlantis in D1 had Mother Guards non-capped, but then it was changed to cap only in D2. Wonder what caused the change.

It's pretty unthematical too, since you, for some reason, get them from the site "Coral Towers" which is where you get the SEERS, while the description says that the Mother Guards are the personal guards of the CORAL QUEENS. Funnily enough you can get Queens everywhere, but not their personal guards.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

The problem with the mother guards is the same as the consort - the most beneficial bless would be a N/E and that is retardedly expensive on the available pretenders. The only economical blessings would be astral and water, and those aren't really gonna help an average defense, high encumbrance, low availability sacred. I just can't imagine mother guards being more than fodder for triton knights even if I could somehow swing a triple blessing. I guess an astral blessing would help against mind blasters, but I really don't see fielding enough cap only sacreds to do anything more than put up a speed bump. They're not exactly Vans...

Also not sure how taking a lich is gonna help much. Without any national death mages I can't see being any sort of death power until way, way too late to do any good.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I would not say they are as weak as MA Ulm. But do suffer from lack of good early expansion units.

I think you have little choice but to take a bless. The consorts will make a excellent thug that can bless himself. He is cheap and cheerful.

Could you go with S9/E9? A little unusual, but it would cover your weaknesses which are low MR and high encumberance. Twist of fate, plus the high protection will make your mother guards supported by coral guards decent for early expansion.

S9/E9 will be most useful later on for forge of ancients and wish which compliments your thug strategy.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Sphinx imprisoned,dom 6 e9 s9 n4

Order 0
sloth 1
cold 3
growth 3
drain 2

Before you bash drain 2, you get 80 points plus a bonus to your mr for a measly -1 research. I took the 2 drain in Alpaca with Pangaea and ended up winning even though i was dead last in research the entire game.

You have to pick your poison. Plus I traded for skull mentors in alpaca and feathers to get my research up high enough to get the basic spells i felt i needed for battles.

The bonus to mr is well worth it when you are facing astral races. I like growth for the income longterm. If you are worried about survival in short term, you may want to scrap the 3 growth and take production, higher starting dom(more sacreds per turn), maybe a bigger regen bless.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Those warlobsters are pretty cool. When the rider dies you have a lobster with 20 protection, 34 hp and trample, killing everything (including friends). Expendable yes, but they sure do some damage first.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

In the one MP game I am playing them in, I am leading most the graphs, and that's sharing the water with ME Oceania.

Also, the sphinx is absolutely awful. Normally I'd also say the order 0 is a total waste, but given that the scale bug often takes away positive order/growth/prod it is worth considering. If you are betting on this happening, however, you don't want growth either.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Scale bugg is rather uncommon, and it didn't occur in the other mega game (that had x2 the players). I would not bet on hit happening.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

It seems to be map related, on some maps it can happen almost 50% of the time.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Astral-9/Earth-9 is probably not a good idea - AFAIK, Twist Fate can be triggered by "hits" that do not do damage, so on a high prot unit you'll tend to lose your twist fate to being hit by a rock or something.

Given the nasty situation in the water, I'd take an awake supercombatant for my God, and get the best scales I could.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

QM:

You may be right about sphinx, but I was looking at the 3 s. you have to take either the sphinx or the sacred statue-those are really your only 2 viable options if you want the s9 e9 n4 bless.

I like the 500 hps high protection also. And the blind. he is amphibious. Equip him with the forbidden light and teleport him into a land province in his own dominion, cast a few buff spells, summon earth power, and destroy an enemy army.

Sphinx has several late game options. Being lifeless he is immune to many deadly blood spells, drain life etc. If he makes it to the late game and you can empower him to 3 d b1 and give him soul vortex and blood vengeance he will be hard to kill.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

high bless just isn't worth it at all. an awake SC does seem like a good option, and reasonable scales.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

This is precisely the problem: he cannot teleport. Thus the sacred statue who can is a far superior choice.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

"This is precisely the problem: he cannot teleport. Thus the sacred statue who can is a far superior choice."

That is strange. Why can the monolith teleport but the sphinx cannot?

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Because in Dom1/early dom2 it was abused for rush strategies. Now with harder research and more troops it is likely an outdated nerf, but it still stands currently.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

A bit sad the sphinx cant teleport.

I came up with:-

S9/E9 Sphinx, dom 5, imprisioned, order-3, prod-3, heat-3, growth-2, misfortune-3, drain-2.

Remember your bless will be used later on with plenty of thug consorts. Also via sacred shroud (also cheap and cheerful), you can confer the bless to any of your units, including mages. Even 0 protection units, as you can have boots of the stone for the protection. Those kings of the deep will make excellent thugs with shroud + boots of the stone.

Its the sheer number of thugs you could have by mid game that makes MA Atlantis fun. The kings of the deep will be teleporting thugs with astral randoms. Fire randoms, fire shield or phoenix pyre. Earth randoms, invulnerabilty.

Consort thugs, early game, kings of the deep thugs mid/late game.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

As Archeo and Dr. Praetorious say, blessing doesn't seems as good of an option as an early combatant of some sort. Personally, I favor a Wyrm with earth.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I a blitz small map the wyrm is good. But I like to think longterm on huge maps. And the wyrm will be outdated rather quickly, not to mention he will not stand up well to mind blast spam in enemy dominions.

I think the bless strategy has more longterm viability.

And I still like the idea of a ML with death and a more moderate bless. An immortal pretender that can cast shadow blast can work really well tearing down an invading army.

For those who doubters, my ML in the Big Game withstood the best lanka could throw at him, while dealing out insane damage via shadow blast, drain life, soul vortex etc.

He also softened up invading armies from other invading nations with only boots of the messenger and shadow blast.
I did give him some fire magic because i like banefire spam as well.

Of course the ML needs to stay in very strong dominion. Which is why i took 9 dominion with him. And I took a bit of air for mistform.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

The wurm is nothing to scoff at, the fast expansion will result in more mages, forts and the armies you need to secure a good mid game.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Size, I believe. could be balance.
Either way its not a bug, its WAD.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I think I recall now trying to teleport the Sphinx in dom II, and getting some size related message. I had forgotten it.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Don't sell the war lobsters short. In the perpetuality game I (EA Oceania) went to war with MA Atlantis, and those lobsters were the only thing that gave me pause. With Triton knights with W9/S6 bless, and outnumbering the lobsters 1,5 to 1 (while the triton knights also cost a lot more) and with Thug support I defeated them without too heavy losses, but I think 1 on 1 they could have beaten my Triton Knights.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Exactly. do not think you need the wyrm for early expansion with lobsters.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Have the kings of the deep been nerfed since Dom1/2? They used to always get their randoms in the same path, so you could easily get level 2 in other paths... I haven't played them since Dom3 and the changes to the random system, though.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

They still get matching randoms, in fact, they even have an extra 10% chance of a random now.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

This is probably as good a thread as any to point this out; the answers to a question like this would be really well-suited for the woefully inadequate dominions 3 wiki (hint, hint).

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

If its inadequate then why don't you go fix it? (far less subtle hint, hint)

^_^

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

War lobsters are good for early expansion. Just use them as indicated in the manual.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

This is off topic of course, but I'm the last guy you'd want to hear advice from on playing this game well.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

?

Looking at the math (for a different race) I found the sphinx to be second only to the fountain in efficiency if you are looking for a S9 X9 imprisoned pretender. And some races don't have the fountain as a choice...

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I've been testing out MA Atlantis and I have to say that a Bless strategy is not the wisest choice. With their very high encumberance(8) and gold and resources costs, they die far too easily for the investment.

Your best unit is the War Shambler.

Go for a Lich Research god (Min of Nature 4, Death 4, Earth 4, Air 4, Astral 4, Fire 1) and get your Water 5 Mages (Water 7 with basic equipment, and 8 with an elemental Staff and 9 with a clam-forged Ring of Wiz) to work dropping Falling Frosts on guys.

Make Consorts into thugs (Frost Brands and some kind of Water or Earth or Fire armor), Mothers into early-game smiters, and use your huge Water income to summon mages like Kolyikthads(sp?) and clam.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

The sacred statue is clearly superior as well. Skimming through the nations, the only one I spot with the sphinx and no statue or oracle is Abysia, which seems more the case of a specific nation getting shafted than a real sphinx 'niche' (aside from the fact s9 doesn't seem like one of the better Aby blesses).

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Another fun build is a awake ancient kraken with E9 bless, dom 6, order-3, prod-1, heat-3, growth-1, misfortune-3, drain-2.

Your ancient kraken gets 17 protection, so attack a indie on the 1st turn and every turn after. You will expand rapidly early on, always important.

The E9 bless is useful early on with the mother guards, on your consorts, cast earth deep blood well and then forge of ancients.

You can concentrate your research on conjuration/construction which is always nice. Voice of Tiamat will probably give you plenty of earth/water gems and some fire. You can have a go at the water queens/earth kings and as many unique artifacts as you can grab.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Any Abysia was the one I was looking at http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif. That explains things.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

order -3 and misfortune -3 ???

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Well, considering how oddly he said them...

It could be turmoil 3 (hence order -3), sloth 1 (prod -1), cold 3 (heat -3), death 1 (growth -1), luck 3 (misfortune -3), magic 2 (drain -2) (wtf). ;p Although the magic makes me wonder if he's just using negative and positive scale names in an inconsistent manner here and throwing negative numbers all over the place. That's because Magic 2 and 1 are just as good in vanilla for most things.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I'd assume that it's order 3 and misfortune 3. A fairly common build.

Dashes, not negatives.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Uh, but he said Order -3 (which is Turmoil 3, the positive term is combined with a negative number), and Misfortune -3 which could mean Luck 3 or Misfortune 3, difference is that here both the number AND the term are negative (double negative makes for a positive, but it's impossible to say which he meant without him saying it ;p). Both Order 3/Misfortune 3 and Turmoil 3/Luck 3 are fairly common builds.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Don't think of the "-" as a negative sign, just as a dash. A separator.

It's possible he's being purposefully confusing with double negatives, but it's far more likely he just means:
order 3, prod 1, heat 3, growth 1, misfortune 3, drain 2.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I agree K that Atlantis is not a great bless race. But they suck, and they have to do something.

They need thugs, but have no real access to thugs other than the water queens.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

I don't think Atlantis sucks that bad as this is making out. A few points...

-Poison damage helps rout enemies in melee.
-All units but trampling lobster are amphibious.
-Mages can bring knights underwater.

Atlantis is weaker than Ryleh without any doubt though. Ryleh is almost custom designed to beat Atlantis.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Basically, they are a powerful, commander based magic race, meaning they need tons of research and a lot of castles to really shine.

The King of the Deep, Coral Queen, and Consort are all recruitable anywhere, meaning:

--Consort: Hand him a nice cheap hammer-made Frost Brand(3 W), a hammer-made Luck Pendant(3 Astral) and some decent armor(3 Earth or Fire) and he thugs quite nicely.

--King of the Deep: With equipment, can toss down Falling Frosts big enough to cover whole enemy armies. Can also potentially cast such favorites like Flaming Arrows, Marble Warriors, Frozen Heart, Acid Rain, Quagmire, Grip of Winter, etc.

-Coral Queen: Smite armies, anyone?

Basically, you need money and research. The War Shambler is a decent match for most national troops with its very hard hitting power(24 damage w/glaive) and good armor(11, with a shield), and if you throw in commanders you are good to go.

A research god is best, but I can also see an argument for an Earth 9 SC god.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

That's another possibility. ;p I always thought that using space instead of a - (because it is also used to denote negative scales in many cases) is much better!

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

My experience with Atlantis is limited to fighting them-and they always seem easy to kill. Their lack of ranged troops on land really hurts them.

And falling frost seems to hit their own troops as much as mine. Of course, maybe I have never faced a great player with Atlantis-which is not surprising as most good players tend to select Astral races or a strong bless race.

Which is why I personally would take the Lich and pray i could find some d sites and crank out some banelords.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

• alpha
• beta

Rather than worry about negatives, why not use a UBB list? You can access it from the advanced interface when you 'preview' your post.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

The trick to using Falling Frost is to do three things:

A. Get a bigger Water. The higher your water, the more damage is done, the bigger the AoE, and better chance of enemy units failing the save for Frozen effect(cold effect?). This means that a Water 3 guy might kill a few guys and freeze some more, while a Water 7 guy will kill a third and freeze and heavily damage a third of a much larger area (some will escape, of course, but 2/3rds of the survivers won't survive another hit).

B. Keep your troops on Guard Commander. This gives you several more turns of hitting an army, possibly breaking their morale, and allow for

C. Thugging with Cold immune troops. This keeps the enemy army away from your army so that the FFs can do their work.

Results can vary, but this is a pretty effective tactic.

Re: MA Atlantis...am I missing something?
 

Correct!