How to kit a merman captain
 

I'm in LA game (cbm 1.84) with Ulm in the very early game and wish to expand to some sea provinces with ichtids (sp?) and my only amphib unit is merman captains from a coast province... any hints in how to kit it to try to conquer the indies?

It is very early game, so i can forge only level 0 trinkets for now... i have a lot of fire gems, a good amount of death gems and some astral, water and nature ones... my possible forgers have earth/astral, air/earth, fire/earth, earth2, astral/death and astral/nature...

any ideas?

Re: How to kit a merman captain
 

dont kit them. thats a waste of gems. you cant make them good. just build a ton of icthyds

Re: How to kit a merman captain
 

i cannot build ichitids... i only have access to merman captains and the mermans (the ones that cost 8 gold and 2 resources each) and wish to attack a ichtyd province....

Re: How to kit a merman captain
 

You'd be better off forging Amulets of Breathing and sending Hochmeisters in. Or wait for higher construction levels.

There's not really a lot you can do with trinkets and solo weak units.
2 weapons and Black Steel Plate. Underwater so a shield isn't a priority and none of the trinket shields have special properties.
Be prepared to go through quite a few of them. Icthyids are pretty tough, for indys. You'd be better off going after weak triton provinces, if there are any.

Edit: You've got mermen, not just captains. Build as many mermen as you can (at least 2-3x the icthyids) and swarm them.

Re: How to kit a merman captain
 

Merman swarm is really the cheapest and fastest way that early in the game, emphasis on the swarm.

barring rare exceptions and/or big bless, there isn't much in trinket on weak land commanders (or crap water commanders) that can solo a swarm of indies with UW penalties piled on top, you'd fatigue out and have problem hitting things.

A slight bit up the ladder at Const 2 will give you water breathing pills which your priest can forge, then just bringing say 2 pills worth of your elite troop of choice UW (ghoul guardians...etc) should work for UW expansion, if you have N, a single manual worth of troops is more then enough.

Re: How to kit a merman captain
 

If you can manage rings of water breathing (obviously a stretch for LA Ulm early game) you can conquer some types of underwater idies via summon lesser horror/retreat. :) You may need to send a couple of the casters as poison weapons can ruin a horror's day, but the low morale on indies will send them packing with not too much fear aura.

Re: How to kit a merman captain
 

Use Amulet of Breathing, which is A1, instead. You get that from your Black Priests!