Alright, since I can't seem to escape it

The reason I chose the Dagon is his obvious immediate advantage. You can nearly always send him out on turn 2 solo to a nearby province if you have a decent selection. Had I been given a little more leeway in my starting position I would have been able to exploit this a little more, but as it stands I was unlucky (not really a big surprise).

His paths were thought of in this light. After I chose my scales (I personally pick scales and theme before pretender paths).

Decided I wanted to go with a high production strategy in order to take advantage of a land based war. Also with R'lyeh in the game I wanted the significant advantage of being able to recruit an immediate horde of units to soak up mind bLasts.

With my scales decided, I then looked at my pretender.

With the points I had left, I had one of two options. A.) 4 in Water 1 in Another Path or B.) 3 in Water 2 in Another Path.

Now the one of the inherent strength of the Atlantis nation is their quick water gem supply (thus letting you, if you choose take provinces with Deep Seer's by speedresearching Conjuration).

I decided that I would not go that approach as it would limit the expansion of my Dagon and lower his survivability because I would not be able to take advantage of any immediate buffing spells.

So in Order for my Dagon to be viable as a combatant he needs to be able to cast his buffing spells and not be overtly fatigued in order to use his Trample (which uses alot of Fatigue).

So the choice of 3 Water, 2 Other was apparently, I simply had to decide which 2 the Other would be.

My initial reaction is Air. But I've already played that particular Dagon (who is very effective). 2 Air will let me Mistform, Mirror Image and Cloud Trapeze. Also gives me an assured forger of Flying Boots. But I've already played that Dagon so I pass.

My second reaction is Earth. With 2 Earth you could Summon Earthpower, Ironskin and eventually Invulnerability (though with a fatigue hit). But I decide against Earth as well because it just doesn't feel right.

My third reaction is Blood. Atlantis is unique in the light that it almost never counted as a Blood Nation and seeing a Turn 15 Ice Devil would be nice. But as I think more, the intricacies of Blood Hunting both detailing in an AAR and the nations setup keeps me from it. In order to have a reasonable Ice Devil production and equipment I'd have to have more King's of the Deep than I could reasonably aqquire with good random picks and lucky with the Voice of Tiamat. So for now I pass, but maybe in the future with a different pretender I'll look into hyper-quick Atlantis Blood.

So my Last option is to pick Nature. Nature seems interesting because I've had great success with Quickness, Bone Melter. It has access to Personal Regeneration, Elemental Fortitude, Living Castle (50 Nature gems for a free Citadel) and Foul Vapors.

So with that, I chose Nature. With the Random Picks of the King of the Deep and the way the game goes, I can't count on any one particular aspect of the game to remain constant (Will I have enough Gold to recruit enough Kings of the Deep to fill my missing holes?, Will Misfortune take me for a nose-dive? I don't need Nature because I can get Amazons (but never do), etc) I am going to just play it and see.

And voila! Zen the Dagon, similiar to, but not unlike his brother Phish the Dagon with Air

Also a note on the Prophetlessness of my Current Nation. I know what entails and benefits making a prophet. My feelings are that Atlantis has a hard time with Morale initially because Tritons cause alot of morale issues (as well as poison and attrition to poison) and in my experience my Coral Queen is regulated to Fantacism duty 90% of the time. If I stopped my expansion at this point to make my current Queen a Prophet it would not impact much the current battles. I could make my scout a prophet in order to spread Dominion, but I am fairly firm in the underwater temple strategy of dominion spreading. So for now it waits and my nation is not hurt by not having a prophet.

[ February 12, 2004, 21:03: Message edited by: Zen ]