EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

How do you fight EA Oceania as the other two underwater nations - Atlantis and R'lyeh?

With W9S9 bless, it seems those knights of the deep is just unbeatable.

I have seen EA R'lyeh throwing 500+ troops including over 100 mind blasters against less than 100 KotDs. Those 500+ troops managed to kill less than 20 KotDs. Even 20 KotDs easily defeated an ancient kraken combat SC.

Being Atlantis, there is no better luck either. No troop in their arsenal can touch (literally) those knights.

KotD is only 85 gold, recruits everywhere, and easily blessed with bishop fishes, and kills any and everything twice, three times, or five time the cost.

Summons? Low level summons are no good at all. Even level 9 abominations get killed easily. Attack spell? There seem to be no good attack spells underwater, against W9S9 KotDs anyway.

So how do you combat EA oceanias and their nicely blessed KotDs?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Are they aquatic only? If so, then combating a good bless for them is probably not something you have to worry about. If you're playing that nation, and you spend a whole lot of resources setting up a double bless for units that you can only use underwater, you're shooting yourself in the foot for the mid-late game when you'll be completely unable to get onto land. Your scales will be middling/poor, and your sacreds will only be usable in the water.

Basically if those units are aquatic, as I think they are, nobody is going to use the double bless strat.

Jazzepi

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Well, that mid-late game weakness is no help for the other two EA aqua nations. I do not see a way how either can survive for more than a few turns against those knights. Even by some miracle, those two nations survived to mid game, I still cannot find any reasonable counter to those knights.

In any case, EA oceania poses little threat to land nations until late game, but kills aqua nation really fast.

Is there anyway an EA aqua nation may survive against EA oceania?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I agree with Jazzepi.

When you are playing Oceania your focus has to be on getting out of the water and then building up armies on land. Basing your strategy on double blessed Knights seems a little foolish.

Its very easy to find yourself stuck in the ocean for too long and find yourself in a position where you don't have much influence on the outcome of the larger game (most of which is decided above the waves).

This is a game that provides no rewards for coming second.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

It's a pretty well known issue that in EA a competent Oceania will beat a competent Rlyeh, a competent Rlyeh will beat a competent Atlantis and Atlantis will,.. uh,.. die horribly unless it's the only aquatic nation.

EA Oceania is supposed to be the shizzle underwater. Thus their UW only sacreds are among the best in the game and well worth a strong bless to get a really strong start, killing off indies and other UW nations with relative ease.

Of course an expert Rlyeh player can beat a newbie Oceania player in EA.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

But those Knights can go on land with items, yep?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Nope. There aren't actually any items which allow aquatic creatures onto land, surprisingly.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

One thing : strong early game often translates into strong middle, or even late game. In fact, if you know in advance that you're going to face both R'lyeh and Atlantis, it may be worth it to use even double bless. You're going to conquer two 30 000 population provinces and two strong magic sites, 6-5 gems/month each depending on era.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

If there are alot of water provinces that form a big continous ocean then a double bless is well worth it as EA Oceania.

As you can slaughter the other 2 water nations and use voice of tiamat to give you a huge gem income very fast.

Once you are the only water nation, leave the land nations to fight it out well clamming and fever fetishing like a mad fish from hell. Then pump out loads of seraphs and other high level summons and wipe out the remaining land nations.

Seen it done a few times... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

But EA Oceania is overall balanced, as its also failed alot of times as well.

I personally have fought Ea Oceania and Ea R'lyeh (in 2 different games) as Ea Atlantis. I could not defeat either but I managed to fight them to a stalemate. All nations involved were played by good players, its tough but possible for the other water nations to survive.

In one I made good use of the basalt kings/queens as good thugs vs Ea R'lyeh and in the other vs blessed knights of the deep, I had to use my mages (lots of mages) to mass spam school of sharks to keep them occupied, water elementals to kill them and destruction to get rid of there protection.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Why not take an Arch mage for Atlantis, with Earth 9, Nature 4, Fire 4.
Imprisoned, resonable scales, you should have domstrength 6-7 and your living pillars will have a reasonable chance to stand against Oceania's knights.

Sadly, the choise of Pretender-chassises is very limited for underwater nations. Not one pretender with earth (or fire, air, blood)

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

No doubt about it, those knights are *tough* with a W/S bless, I'm going head to head with them as MA Atlantis in the Evermore game right now. The thing about Atlantis is their troops just plain suck, certainly nothing at all that will even make a decent speed bump to a big group of those knights. R'yleh isn't much better. You definitely have to work a lot harder (I wouldn't say its a fair fight against equal opponents), but with R'leh/Atlantis you should be focusing more on mages than troops...Oceana is both investing in expensive knights *and* the design points to double bless them. Then comes the trick of figuring out how to make your mage superiority effective underwater. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Since there are precious few damage dealing spells that work underwater you want to think more along the lines of buffs/debuffs as Meglobob alluded to mentioning destruction. Get some fairly tough summons (supported by chaff, of course) and then have a dozen mages casting body ethereal, luck, quickness, iron warriors, strength of giants, legions of steel, friendly currents, shark attack, school of sharks (great for soaking up that first strike bonus), and destruction. For example, as Atlantis I've been using Monster Fish (their national summon) to great effect when uber-buffed.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Relying on living pillars is not very efficient if Rlyeh is in the game (pillars have MR 8). Also without prod 3 you may not be able to make more than 2 per turn (thanks the crappy 20 admin capitol).

IMO Atlantis only has chances as a thugs/mages nation on big maps (starting with an awake Dagon pretender you have an ultra easy start, and can use your gold advantage to make a shambler army for taking indies, so you should have 18-25 provinces by turn 10, and other forts for researchers before the other sea nations, then you can focus on construction/alteration and start to use mostly basalt king/queen thugs by turn 15-20 or so ; and the only units you'll make after are atlantian spearmen chaff (or the version with poisonous armor if you have ressources) -because they have MR 10 and so are less a waste if Rlyeh is in the game-).

Against Oceania knights the only working tactic I know is basalt kings chain casting Earth Meld/destruction etc behind a lot of chaff, so you'll also use atlantian spearman and basalt kings only.

On small maps hum... I think EA Atlantis simply lose.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Just tried a game against the AI with EA Oceania--those knights are wonderful. Getting onto the land has proven quite problematic, though. I have almost all the water (there are a few provinces owned by someone I don't really want to go to war with right now), Atlantis is gone, and R'lyeh who amazingly owned only odd land provinces just died of dominion death.

Despite Wrath of God & Lure of the Deep the breakout proved very difficult--multiple beachheads were smashed. I finally managed to distract the AI from the real province by sending out the initial troops in both directions as bait. I had empowered & itemed my pretender to be able to cast lichcraft and I got a Tartanian factory up before the AI came after the real target. Almost all the really good summons are units that can't live underwater. (Yeah, I could have cast Thestis' Blessing but that would probably get me invaded.)

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

What tactics do you use with EA R'lyeh?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Mind Lords make very quick (and gem cheap) SCs with their high HP and AOE life drain attacks when you have the right alterations researched. They also can teleport, which is really nice. Everything else about the nation is pretty much a write-off, though. None of their morale 8 troops are worth recruiting, so you're left with only lobos and Mind Lords.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I disagree. The militia are fine if you use them as flankers.

Jazzepi

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Unless I'm mistaken and they've been removed since Dom 2, amulets of the fish allow aquatic creatures to go on land.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Welcome back Graeme http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I think Llama meant there is no item which allow troops (the knights of the deep) to enter land.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I did, yep - rather loose wording there on my part.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

hey, nothing stops you from gift of reasoning them... ;p

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

ALL of them? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

On that note, I fully support any item that would allow aquatic troops to go above-water. It would mean the most to Oceania and Rlyeh (EA each)

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Yeah I'd like to see that item. A barrel of water would make as much sense as barrel of air does.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Both EA Oceania & Rlyeh have national amphibians to hire in mass to access land & conquer indys, like an island, even early in the game. Most land nations require gems and research just to get into the water, even a small lake, unless they happen to get lucky with indy provinces.

An Amulet of the Fish is twice as many gems as a Ring of Waterbreathing, so using that scale a barrel of water would cost 25W + 25A gems, but at that difficulty even a 65W might be preferred.

I haven't dove into the sea nations yet, but do aquatics with the amulet of fish get the same penalties on land that non-aquatics get in water?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Water nations already have a huge advantage in the form of the sea barrier to protect them. I think its fine that they not be allowed to bring their best troops out of the water.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Seconded! But a disband command to get rid of unwanted aquatic freespawn (or other units) would be nice.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I'm playing LA R'yleh in a 3.10 game, and I have this odd feeling that the amount of aquatic only freespawn has been reduced significantly. I was expecting to cart around lots and lots of the little buggers to die, but that just hasn't materialized at all. I have played LA R'yleh two times before, in earlier versions.

Jazzepi

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Commanders, not troops.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

The diference between the barrel of air and barrel of water is why these fishies can't leave the water. The humans with the barrel of air simply need something to breath, but many of the aquatic-only troops have fish tails and such that makes them immobile on land. The Amulet of Fish shouldn't even work on these guys, since they need a way to move on land, not just to breath.

on that note, what does a Knight of the Deeps leader look like on land?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

He looks the same. In theory the Amulet of the Fish turns the air around them into water, allowing them to swim. Thinking about that too deeply raises all sorts of problems.

It would make far more sense to just claim it allows them to swim in air as well as breath it.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

well...

im R'lyeh in that game konming talking about...

im defeated in the 24th turn ...

how can u beat Oceania?

Oceania's dom designs:
o3p2c3g2m3d2
dom str:7
god designs:
Sacred Statue
w9s9,imprisoned

btw: research is difficulty

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I don't think you can explain a logical difference between barrel of air and a theoretical 'barrel of water' style item, because barrel of air already defies logic. How does a magic air barrel allow a bunch of fully armoured mounted knights to charge around underwater as if they were on land?

Because it's magic, of course.

Similarly a 'barrel of water' item would work because it's /magic/. Simple as that. It allows underwater stuff to act as if they're in water when they aren't, breathing and moving as normal.

It's an item I'd like to see in the game and unless it was seriously undercosted (not an issue with 90% of items in basegame) it shouldn't mess with balance too much.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

You could also have it grant the equivalent of "poor amphibian", but in reverse. The unit is at a penalty out of the water.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Haven't tested this extensively, but an ice elemental approach could be an effective defense against the initial rush.

Strategy is simple: take Cold-3 with high dominion and access Conj-5 as quickly as possible. With Magic-3, you can open it on turn 14 with 1 Slave Mage/turn; with Magic-1, you can open it on turn 13 with 1 Mind Lord/turn.

Recruit Lobo Guards & the Net-wielding Mermen at a 3:1 ratio. When the rush comes, assign to your mages in mixed squads, form a line in the back row (with gaps in between!), Hold & Attack closest.

Put your mages in the gaps with 3 water gems each. Script (Summon Water Power)(Summon Water Elemental)(Summon Water Elemental) Spells.

Since you took cold scales, your water elementals will be ice elementals: high-protection trampling thugs. They've also got a cold aura, decreasing enemy defense.

The lances of the KoDs will be absorbed by the lobos. The mermen will intermittently entangle them, muting their effectiveness. Your chaff will keep the elementals from being overwhelmed, and shouldn't rout too quickly, as the lobos have morale=50.

It's a reasonable strategy that certainly doesn't cripple Rlyeh. It actually synergizes with them: underwater, so lots of water gems and no penalties for cold scales; no production scale needed; conjuration school, so voice of tiamet will keep the front lines stocked with water gems.

It's not offensively viable, but it should hurt Oceania enough to make him think twice about pressing the attack. You then have some breathing room to dive into thaumaturgy for mind burn --> paralyze --> soul slay --> enslave mind, all of which will be relatively successful thanks to the penetration bonuses of your high magic scale & Light of the Northern Star.

Thoughts?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Don't forget to, EA Oceana has some real difficulty getting astral mages so mind hunting should be a field day if you can last that long. Not only do none of thier nationals have astral, as far as I know none of the underwater indies have it either. Outside of thier pretender...I guess they could give waterbreathing rings to lizard shamen if they managed to get out of the water at all...

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

You really did wait your while to tell that tidbit, didn't you? ;p

After initial rush, Oceania doesn't have that many things going for it. Magic-wise, against Atlantis, hm, guess only nature. Against astral. Yay. But it sure takes a while to get there.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I would never think of denying you the joy of finding out what I've concocted as it's dropped on your head! Besides, this is a 'how to beat Oceana' thread, not a 'how to help Oceana beat the snot out of Atlantis' http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I've only hit you with one so far though, I guess we'll test my thesis as to how effective it'll be in the coming turns. Nice thing about Atlantis though, easy access to rune smashers, eyes of the void and spell foci as well as the boosters to get failry cheap astral-4 casters. Even if a couple do get feebleminded, easy enough to swap all the equipment over to another 180 gold guy and reforge the eye of the void.

The down side is the research required for mind hunting takes doubly long as it's two schools that are otherwise very low priority for Atlantis (you also need construction, but you already need that anyway). But, as I said you should have a mage (and consequently research) lead on Oceana, so do your best to stall them until you can leverage it. Don't like to think how things would have played out if I'd started next to you....

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I was EA R'Lyeh in Evermore next to Atul's EA Oceania, and it was far uglier than I would have guessed (I still have not done many MP games as of yet).

I'm not naysaying you here Sombre, I am instead agreeing with you, but why is it like this?:


A game as complex and variable as D3 can't expect balance in all things, but having 1 of 3 water nations clearly better then the other 2 (and having 1 of those clearly better than the other) seems off. EA R'Lyeh is one of my personal favorite nations to play, but the sound thrashing that EA Oceania gave me, and this was after I pulled almost every mobile caster off research and hurled all my 2ndry force and home units at the multi-blessed knights, was terrible. My main force was way out west when he attacked, but I had at least 1 or 2 Mind Lords and several Aboleths with freespawns and other built melee troops to hold a line and it was quite one-sided. Those knights just screamed across the battlefield and none (or almost none) of my mind blasts or enslaves, or even my water-gem equipped shark summoners helped.

Having the aquatic only sacreds may not help in the mid-late game, but it sure as heck is rough for the other water folks early. I had a very similiar land experience vs DR P's multi-blessed giants in sophistry as Arco. Even with several casters and lots of national troops, it was a slaughter (of Arco by Niefelheim).

Baalz said:
Oh, it wasn't pretty. We (EA R'Lyeh) started really close to Atul's EA Oceania and even with an awake (if immobile) pretender to manufacture freespawn and give myself a research boost, it went badly. I'm still pretty green, but man was that ugly. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Yeah, I'm taking a second crack at EA Oceania against the AI's, this time against a pack of impossibles. At this point I have one astral mage--by empowerment from clams.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

I think the placement of the sea nations by DrP was quite deliberate - 2 duels in the early game, and sea winners duel at the mid game. In hindsight I should've just run over EA R'lyeh instead of wasting few turns trying to see whether there was any good opportunities to surface. Oh well, next time I know.

EA Oceania is really strong early on, but on sufficiently large maps/seas it starts to show they're the only underwater nation without Astral.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Since i know it's a big team duel,and it's possible to get help from allies,maybe you can start your SC god as a Son of the sea,take w6s4d3 or w6s6,o2s3c3g1m1 scale with dom6.Start magic research alteration 3 and enchantment 1,ask your allies give eye shield,fire brand,dragon helm,chainmail of displacement,boots of the messenger,ring of regeneration,amulet of resilience,equip your SC god and script battle order as:personal luck,body ethereal,quicken self,breath of winter,attack close.It's much better than the Kraken SC.It's cost your team 35 N gems and 10 A gems and 15 other gems,but if you lost,your team lost the contral of the sea,it's worth it.
Now you have an unbeatable SC,i have tested it three times,first two i let 2 bishop fish with 50 Kotds to attack the SC,and then i let 3 bishop fish with 100 kotds attack,three times the SC takes easy win.only the final time he get weakened.So if you really unlucky and got your SC take a nasty wound like feeble mind at early start,you lost the game.Besides that,your SC can lead you to middle-late game.(btw,eye shield works on high mr kotds,and all three battle take place on you own dominions.and i tested it with f9s9 bless,with fr 100,it's ok to beat the kotds.)

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

bgqsl, would it bother you terribly to stop using the letter 'u' as a word?

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

ow no he didn't really edit that.. why r u whining about u's lol... it's not like his post was that bad...

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Aaagh Aezeal, stop it! I'm with Agrajag http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Its nice to see I have support http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
But since you asked a question, I will answer it:
1) It's annoying.
2) It's more difficult to understand.
3) It's discouraging, if you don't even put the milliseconds it takes to write two extra characters to improve readability and reduce annoyance, it makes me feel like not putting any effort in answering your questions or responding to your post.
4) It's confusing, especially the way he wrote things down originally (like sometimes using "u" instead of "a").
5) It's better for him* to get used to write things properly, as it can be useful later in life (for example, would you hire something that had "u" instead of "you" in their resume? Or god forbid "4" instead of "for"?)
*-I'm writing "him" and not "you" because I know you are being sarcastic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

With all that said, I'd like to thank bgqsl for editing his post.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

only 6 is a valid argument to me.. and me being the selfish being I am don't care much about what is usefull for him later in life http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif I just hoped to read an interesting new reply to this thread I as following.. and then I saw
"bgqsl, would it bother you terribly to stop using the letter 'u' as a word?"

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Language just changes over time. There was probably some point in history where some abbott was annoyed that the young scribes were writing "here" instead of "hither". Also, if you were going to design a new language from scratch, would you really use words like "through" when "thru" is perfectly sufficient? There are lots of holdovers from earlier times. The only problem is when you misspell words with one letter. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Besides, you're on the internet. You should expect a certain level of short-hand. Any proper grammar and spelling you read is a delightful boon. Not that I don't prefer proper and complete sentences, but I don't necessarily expect them.

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Not when the forum comes equipped with an ignore user button http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
And besides, that argument is also valid for "you're on the internet, you should expect people to post goatse* all over the place", and I'm sure none of us would support or allow that.
*-If you don't know, I really suggest you do not try and check it out for yourself. Try Urban Dictionary for information.
Well, the difference in negligible, it takes a very short time to type the few extra characters, and its not like you use "through" as every other word.
And you are more than welcome to switch to Hebrew, we've got almost no wasted characters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
(Then again, if you don't know a word in Hebrew, good luck with trying to figure out how to read it without nikkud {which is the only kind of word you can expect outside of children's books})

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

there are no wasted hebrew characters.. lol I'll not go there because it's probably politically incorrect but I could make some funny remarks about that which some wouldn't appreciate http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif... only I wonder if agrajag was never drunk ..

anyway basicly I agree with sector24.. only I didn't want to say it that seriously http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?
 

Agrajag, would it bother 'u' terribly to stop using 'Its' instead of 'It's'?

Agrajag, would it bother 'u' terribly to stop polluting this valuable tactics thread with your language preference discussion?

Oh, sorry. 'Its' annoying. (Why I don't have that feeling http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif); 'Its' difficult to understand (Everyone can understand why you can not http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif); 'Its' discouraging (Thank goodness 'u' are not a soldier or your squad will rout like rabbits...); 'Its' confusing(where? how? I'm confused...by nobody but Agrajag); Its better for him* to get used to write things properly(My god is that your business http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif).

You just want a chance to teach others and show how professional you are. Go www.language.com to get your position. Here is for dom3 not for you! what? I should put down "Dominions 3"? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif