[Micah]

Baalz: Excellent discussion. Maybe I've overstated my case by getting a bit carried away on Atlantis' weaknesses, but the tweaks I suggested for them seem pretty modest, no? Those were the minor price drop on the Kings (which is somewhat justified in that you lose the 50g I'm suggesting just off your cap's admin value being crap) and the major one: a cost effective researcher.

I'm not suggesting they get anything that wouldn't leave them "somewhat disadvantaged" in a fair fight...BK's don't quite measure up in the SC wars toe-to-toe and Atlantis' troops at large are not well-suited for land combat compared to land nations, especially if you want to win without a ton of attrition. This is as it should be, the mobility advantage and first strike capability make this a very interesting exercise in tactics and target selection and there's a lot of give and take there.

What I think should NOT be is that they have terrible magic diversity (especially in traditional late-game paths) AND what I think may be the worst researchers in the game. That just seems like a screwjob to me, and like it is too much of a disadvantage to overcome unless you simply outclass your opposition. It is also mostly a question of math, not strategy, which doesn't make for a whole lot of fun. (Unless coming up with clever solutions to being magically dominated are fun for you, in which case maybe Atlantis is great as-is...this is said half-seriously, since I think that would be a perfectly good thing to enjoy, but shouldn't be the basis for nation-balancing. Also, again, while it is possible to pull this off it again relies on simply outplaying your opponent on some level) Adding a cheap researcher option gives Atlantis a boost that doesn't show up til mid-late game when upkeep costs are really kicking in (right about when being amphibious starts to be much less dominating than it was), and also gives them additional strategic choices to make...do I build a combat-ready mage, or a researcher? That seems like a good tweak to make to me, and one that would bring them closer to "somewhat" disadvantaged in a fair fight, up from their current level of "terribly."

And I haven't played a proper early game with Atlantis vs the other EA nations (the one I lost was via a backstab) so I will reserve comment on the balance of power there and possible early tweaks to help Atlantis on that front...the late game thing mostly boils down to simple math and looking at their paths, fights versus blessed knights and the mechanics of mind blasts are a bit too much for me to theorize on. =)