Worst Nations in Each Era

[Micah]

I saw the N bit after I posted, but like the rest of the guide I see it as making the best of a bad situation, not finding some secret. Having access by turn 30 (25 turns or so assuming you find 2 level 0 sites early) is not really a noteworthy way to break into a path, since that's about when you can get the booster rings to pretty much bootstrap anything, but especially N with shaman available for recruitment. Using the booster rings and 2 shaman and making 2 thistle maces gets you 2 haruspex casters as well, but saves you 43N, they can also start manually searching as soon as you get a lab + temple up (and they make fairly cost-effective researchers for most nations as well). If you're specifically going for clam production the Naiad is a better buy (arguably, I usually empower W, not N if I'm going for clams), otherwise you're blowing your N gems on top of being slow out the gate compared to other nations.

As far as D access...well, artifacts is warping my perception a little bit, since it's high-gem, low gold, but I'd have to say that tartarians are a vital part of late-game strategies, though obviously not the only one. They are simply amazingly cost effective, and they also have the benefit of providing their own counter-counters, since all of the less-useful chassis immediately pick up the job of damage sinks. Anything that's countering a tartarian is going to be a glass cannon and getting tied up in tartarian chaff is going to get them killed.

The other obvious addition to tarts are abominations, which will just eat anything that's kitted to take down tarts. Add in some darkness for extra fun. And of course by forcing your opponents to gear the 3x damage weapons you're drastically cutting down their strategic options.

Oh, and of course EA doesn't have teleporting thugs anyhow, making most of that previous discussion moot.

Army buffs are nice, but Atlantis isn't gonna be the nation that gets there first, research wise. Quickening and Weapons of Sharpness are pretty awesome though, I give them that. Outside of those two they do have issues casting Will of The Fates in EA, and Army of Shock Vulnerability is always a risky call against a smart opponent with access to Wrathful Skies.

As far as the gold strat...You're right, there's a little bit more to it than "get lots of gold" but not enough to cover the g:rp shortfall. The "standard" MP build people generally use for scales is Order 3, Sloth 3, temperature 3, misfortune 2, magic 1. Growth and temperature give about 25% more gold (20% base since temperature scales fluctuate so counting the full 24% the scales say isn't justified, so we'll call 25% a happy medium due to the ongoing growth effects.) Castling up is mostly meaningless with 10-admin forts, and keeping low troop numbers is standard practice, I loaded up a random game I finished a while back and my troops account for about 15% of my upkeep, so there's not much fat to trim there. (That was with LA ulm pumping out ghoul guardians too, in artifacts I have 53 militia, 2 men at arms, 1 xbowman, 6 trolls, and 8 voi axemen to my nation's name. Enslave mind and events account for all but the trolls.)

Assuming a magic-1 scale the mage of the deep yields a 35.7 g:rp return. Pulling out a few other EA comparisons: Ulm's shaman are 34.5 and are sacred (I'm giving them credit for the 50% random path here). Yomi's Hanneya are 25, Arco's mystics are 23, Augur elders are 27.5, Marverni's druids are horrible at a 42, but are sacred, Enaries are 21.4, anathemant salamanders are 26, and sacred. Hell, PANS, renowned for how horribly bad they are at research for their cost, still clock in at a 34.7. Sacred nations are paying about half what Atlantis is in upkeep, non-sacred nations around 2/3rds..even with 25% more gold than them they STILL have a research edge, and that's blowing 120 design points on growth, and assuming all you provs are in the water and thus not temp-sensitive, or another 120 points on that scale. I also made sure to pick combat-ready non-cap mages for the comparison...spire horn seraphs clock in at 15, Masters of the way at 25/sacred...Mictlan priests at 15/sacred, so the numbers are even worse in a real game when people have devoted researchers. The Heims are the only nations even close to Atlantis' suckitude research wise, and they're still winning the race due to sacred upkeep.

Again, your guide is fine, and makes reasonable sacrifices to do what it has to do to get the nation by, but I maintain that the nation itself could use a little bit of a boost. Player skill matters for a lot more than nation strength in dom, and you're one of the better players around. It's not surprising you did well with them in a larger game. Looking at the Hall of fame MA Ermor and MA Ctis have the same number of wins, and are clearly very different power levels...a couple of results don't prove much.