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Originally Posted by Squirrelloid
Lamia Queens are nice, but there are other options for breaking into D in a serious way.
Streams from Hades gives you W3D3 mages, and you can cast it UW. Cost is a mere W4D1 and 30 water gems. Now, while its certainly more expensive than Lamia Queens, it has a number of advantages: (1) No hoping for good randoms, (2) castable UW, (3) guaranteed D3, (4) less required investment on the pretender to summon (W2D1 is sufficient), (5) costs w instead of n.
And while you will be using your w gems for brands, you'll be using your n gems for shields, possibly armor, and various other things. In the post-clam environment, w is worth a lot less than it was, and thus 30w might be 'cheaper' in real terms than 15n.
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The thing is, you need the N bless and get the D for free with the the pretender chassis, so it's not as expensive as you think. Why is the N bless so crucial? In my testing, the KotD's expansion parties sometimes ran into horrible casualies because of poison. You can't avoid those few lucky 1-3 point damage hits form coral weapons. If you don't have N bless, a few of those lucky hits will kill them. A high N will also allow access to some nifty globals if the opportunity presents iself.
Also, W gems are suprisingly tight with Oceania. The amount of Water Bracelets, Frost Brands and Fish Amulets you *need* to build is staggering.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vfb
Anyone who is in Mooseknight, please stop reading now. 
Lamia Queens are not part of my strategy, that's all. I've got other things to spend my N gems on. Total KotD at month 13: 22, so I think I only recruited them for 5 turns at the most. 17 UW provinces, 4 land. |
How did you avoid losses of expansions squads due to coral weapon hits? Alhought this is somewhat luck based I admit. If you just get shamblers as independents, you don't need to wory about this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vfb
Well, I'm lucky, then.  5 Triton Kings with E1, 2 Mermages with E1. My god built a hammer the month after he woke up, and now he's going to do a little searching. I totally agree about the massive amounts of Fish ammies. Good thing I don't need to save those W for clams! |
Eh. I just like to cover my bases. I'd hate to lose because I couldn't beat the 25%(for mermages)/33% (Kings) for E random in say ~10 turns. Also note that you won't be building a mage out of your cap each turn, since you need Bishop Fishes too. So it's more like 6 chances at geting that E random before it's sort of too late. IMHO, you need to move fast with Oceania. If start diversifying on turn 40, it's just too late.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vfb
I don't like to erect temples that aren't in a fort. It just says "raze me", and then you're in a war. A fort is cheap (default=ramparts), and allows you to recruit more useful indies: some tribal archers, or amazons, perhaps. I agree there's not much point in recruiting Mermages in coastal forts. 175 for 6 RP (magic scale) is not great, 110 for 4 RP is better, especially for upkeep since all the tribals are sacred.
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If you hit nice indy mages (like Lizard Shaman), yeah, build a fort. I don't see much point in recruiting 1N shamans.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vfb
Quickness gives them move 60. With a lance, that's entertaining! They've already got a magic weapon and a spear, and high attack (esp Quickened), I don't think there's a need for a Frost Brand.
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Lance is just for one hit. Brand gives them much better def and damage output for just 3 water gems. IMHO it's very smalll investment for big gain.
Quote:
Originally Posted by vfb
You want to thug out a mage? Well, how about a 45HP mage instead? Who is also sacred, so gets your minor bless (but does unfortunately need an accompanying priest). He's the guy who gets to wield the frost brand! Pop an air gem on a W4A king, and you've got Mistform.
Anyway, I agree about the massive fun potential here.
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Kings are cap only and don't ge access to teleport spells. Combine this with the low movement in UW provs and you rarely have them in the places you need them to be. If you have a good tactical mind, you can start moving them 3 turns before the action starts, but that's not something that everyone has. It would be good to spread them around to each of your forts, but that costs research turns.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KissBlade
Haha, this guide is 100% my kind of guide. Hilarity xD! Btw, there's a bunch of typos in this guide so you might want to look it over when you get a chance.
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Yeah, I'm typing this from my parent's house and their keyboard has a broken "t" key - hat's why you see so many "he" and "hey". However, I took a quick look and ifxed some typoes.