[Micah]

I thought the pillar hero was taken out in 1.6, are you looking at the latest version?

As far as the guide, I have to agree with the critique of it being a little over-optimistic. The suggestion that you can beat focused nations to Mother Oak and Well of Misery seem particularly far-fetched. You have no cap income of either path and have to rely on your pretender to turn up sites. Mother Oak is an early target for N-heavy nations and you're just asking for an overwrite if you try to throw it up, there's no way you can compete against a nation with capital income to cast a level-5 global. Same thing with Well, though you suggest burning gems to mentors on top of being reliant upon a single early site searcher. Maelstrom is a strong global and a much more reasonable one.

Also, voice of Tiamat is kind of terrible for Atlantis, as they are capable of searching for everything but A with the basalt kings...is a single mage turn to move around really worth 8 gems and having to wait for conjuration-4 instead of getting your gem income rolling as soon as you grab a king? A income is nice, certainly, but exceedingly rare in the water. If you're smart you dovetail your site searching kings in the direction you want them to go later so you have some more guys stationed closer to the front instead of sitting in your fort, so the time spent moving them around isn't even a sure waste.

Likewise, fire gems are really scarce in the water, and you really run the risk of not being able to run the lantern factory you were planning on if you're assuming you'll find a ton of them. That being said I'd probably drop luck to get magic over drain, especially with the coral priests making such an impact on atlantis' research prospects, which you totally trash with drain scales. This can change with trading though, but so many of my games have banned trading recently that I'm starting to think of it as a default.

Similarly, I question the ether lords, since an S mage of the deep can do most of what the ether lord can do with some boosters, which are a lot cheaper than an ether lord is to summon. Antimagic especially is a sucker move to use an ether lord for, as it's just asking for your 70-some gem investment to vanish in a puff of magic duel vapor. Much better to risk an S1 motd with a skullcap for those vital battles (antimagic is castable at S2 with an extra gem), or add a coin for teleporting support, still way cheaper than an ether lord (plus if you do duel-die and win the battle you have a decent shot at getting the items back, not so with the chassis.)

Anyhow, it was a long guide and there are plenty of great ideas, so I want to make sure that's recognized, but I think there's some room for improvement, or at least elaboration on why my concerns are unfounded.