Working underwater without gills

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by sansanjuan

Any comments on the strategic importance of taking that "token lake" province?

Sure, get a lab in there, and you can gateway prepared armies into the lake. Forcing your opponent to create water breathing items to get you out of the lake. Against nations that cannot branch into water paths easy, it really gives you a nice forward staging post.

Get the barrel of air and Sea kings goblet, and your teleporting, gateway, ferryman mage can transport a lot of troops. (The only problems are the lack of leaders in the lake, and the lack of leadership of most mages).

[sansanjuan]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Sure, get a lab in there, and you can gateway prepared armies into the lake. Forcing your opponent to create water breathing items to get you out of the lake. Against nations that cannot branch into water paths easy, it really gives you a nice forward staging post.

Get the barrel of air and Sea kings goblet, and your teleporting, gateway, ferryman mage can transport a lot of troops. (The only problems are the lack of leaders in the lake, and the lack of leadership of most mages).

I like your thorn strategy.

If I remember voice of tiamat (?) can be very nice for land site searching and is castable only underwater.

Water Royalty (underwater) can be sweet too. I believe one is amphibian.

-ssj

[Zeldor]

You cannot target land provs with voice of tiamat.

Only one water queen is amphibian and she is cool. But you lost 100gems if you summon 2 aquatics in a small lake. They cannot get on land even with fish amulet afaik.

Water-breathing gear gives poor amphibian ability, so check that for fatigue etc. There is reduced AP, so less damage from lances.

The most important resist uw is probably poison, many units have things like poison barbs - nasty things. 2nd is ice. But remember that it does not protect from Encase in Ice [great spell to own SCs by time limit] - target won't take damage but it will get stopped.

[Mithras]

At least one aquatic water queen can get on land with amulet of the fish. But they lose all the cool stuff, specificly the insane regeneration.

[Fate]

Just to reiterate, the easiest way (in my experience) to get underwater is assassins (indies only, of course). Constr 2 gets you amulets of water breathing, and UW commanders are generally weaker than land commanders (just watch out for the occassional powerful W mage).

5 gems (3 w/ hammer) and 100 g (for assassin) is a nice investment for a water province.

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Fate

Just to reiterate, the easiest way (in my experience) to get underwater is assassins (indies only, of course). Constr 2 gets you amulets of water breathing, and UW commanders are generally weaker than land commanders (just watch out for the occassional powerful W mage).

5 gems (3 w/ hammer) and 100 g (for assassin) is a nice investment for a water province.

Just watch out for all those poisonous weapons.

Also, you need to have access to assassins and water magic for this to be easy. If you do, it is indeed an effective way of taking out water independents, but not that many nations fulfil the requirements to the best of my recollection.



When you are fighting against underwater nations, I find battle magic to be invaluable. You need to use everything you can, of course, but without equalizing magic, natural water nations will stomp all over you.

Thugs are good, but the water nations' thugs are probably better under water, so divert some extra mage time in battle to really buff your thugs up to their new-found gills.

Encumbrance is a very real problem under water, so it is usually a good idea to use troops with low encumbrance and increase protection with spells.

Use a variety of summons if you have the gems to spare; it is often a cheap way to keep the enemy mages busy and away from more important troops. I particularly like Krakens, as they pack a mean punch and are big enough to distract enemy mages from your real thugs.

Finally, do not fall for the line about evocations not working under water - it is probably some propaganda originating from R'lyeh or Oceania (Atlanteans are too busy blasting the other two to bother). There are plenty of air, nature, astral and death spells that do work. You can also exploit an enemy's false sense of security when it comes to elemental or ranged damage in general. Things like a small communion of mystics teleporting in to cover your enemy's ranks in astral fires can win you a major battle and force your opponent to expend valuable resources on fire resistance.

[Agema]

Well, Evo is badly hampered underwater. Nature, Air, Fire and Earth are almost non-existent for long-range damage, and the few spells that are still castable target few units or have low range.

Three paths in my view retain good ranged damage functionality underwater - Water, Astral, Death. Any underwater nation you face has at least one of those in plentiful quantities. And unless you're dripping water gems like a Jotun's sweat in Abyssian domination, supplying enough waterbreathing is not a given, especially if you then plan to summon a load of krakens, sea serpents and so on. Death is possibly your best bet, as so many undead mages are poor amphibians already.

On that basis, what you may be best off doing is maybe a relatively small force of powerful mages hitting big unit buffs.

[chrispedersen]

Things like a small communion of mystics teleporting in to cover your enemy's ranks in astral fires can win you a major battle and force your opponent to expend valuable resources on fire resistance.

I'm not spending a dime on fire resistance. Magic duel is another question = )

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Agema

Well, Evo is badly hampered underwater. Nature, Air, Fire and Earth are almost non-existent for long-range damage, and the few spells that are still castable target few units or have low range.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but that seems not quite right. Nature does not have that many evocations to begin with, but sleep cloud works fine, as do poison cloud and stream of life. It is similar with air; you lose thunder strike and wrathful skies, but lightning bolt, orb lightning and shimmering fields remains.

Three paths in my view retain good ranged damage functionality underwater - Water, Astral, Death. Any underwater nation you face has at least one of those in plentiful quantities. And unless you're dripping water gems like a Jotun's sweat in Abyssian domination, supplying enough waterbreathing is not a given, especially if you then plan to summon a load of krakens, sea serpents and so on. Death is possibly your best bet, as so many undead mages are poor amphibians already.

Well, you usually do not need that many Krakens and other summons, just enough to catch attention.
Going under water does require an investment, though, and that is as it should be.

On that basis, what you may be best off doing is maybe a relatively small force of powerful mages hitting big unit buffs.

That is a good start, but not using everything you have is rather dangerous. The underwater nations can use unit buffs as well, and their units are better suited to the environment from the start. It may just be me, but I have never managed a successful underwater campaign against an underwater nation as a land based faction without using a liberal amount of attack spells.

That said, it is certainly a good idea to strive for effective use of a limited amount of powerful mages.

[Adept]

Shadow Blasts and Nether bolts reap the field just as well underwater, and you are less likely to face enemy magic artillery.