[chrispedersen]

Baalz,

I generally think you do a good job with guides - but I think you've missed the heart of Oceania. I haven't put all the attention to detail into this that you do - but let me give you my thoughts on Oceania - and perhaps you can develop them.

Death. Death, Death, Death, Death, Death. Can I say Death some more?

Being under water means that you are sheltered from many of the options that people use to remove a global: killing the caster. Many of the spells wont work under water, and most nations will have difficulty entering into water.

So, while I agree that entry to land is difficult for you - make maximum advantage of that by planning to cast spells to take advantage of the corellary - that it is equally difficult for opponents to hit *you*.

Many of your units recuperate. Can you say Burden of Time?
In the same breath, you should be thinking "Death Scales".

In general I completely agree that you need to site search quickly in order to get castles - huge advantage for Oceania.
Plus you need to accomplish the site searching prior to building castles - nothing worse than finding a castle on a square where you've already put one.

You are correct about the lack of damage output. However, nets are an incredibly potent and underappreciated. When you recruit units, alternate nets and non net units - so that when grouped you get even dispersal of both kinds of units.

Nets set defense to zero - allowing that humonguous first strike to hit.

Also as an aside - you have overlooked the benefits of quickness, haste, and friendly currents - which increase the AP of the units and *hence the damage* of lance equipped units.
(I may be wrong on the haste, its not in front of me), yet even so haste at the least give your units better range - and so is still very valuable).

Also consider that you *will* find shamblers - shamblers innately have two attacks so things that increase their strength and or rate of attack scale better for them.

So, where do you go after your initial expansion? Think fortress oceania. Mass undead or mannikens - or X - mass low or no upkeep troops as filler to leverage your troops that *don't* have underwater penalties.

Breakout when you can - and head towards a tartar sauce factory. Which of course dovetails with the nature portion of your plan - Goh! Personally I think you should consider a DxSx pretender (S depending if R. is in the game).

Again its a question of leverage. Your ability to mind hunt underwater makes it more difficult for your opponents to screen with astral mages - and more expensive as they now need underwater equipment.

Plus if you do mindhunt - and they don't have a screening mage - the troops that were reliant on that commander to breath.. die.

So give those ideas a whirl.... and see if you can give them the normal Baalz magic...