New Player question - taking out Oceania

[K]

It's counter-intuitive that Water magic is not that great fighting underwater, but it's true.

What you need is Nature magic and Air magic for battle magic, and death and/or Earth for troops.

Battle magic for underwater includes Lightning Bolts and Poison Clouds, and a few army boosting spells like Fog Warriors and Army of Lead, for example.

For troops, building water-breathing items is a bit of a waste when you can just summon Marble Warriors or undead.

Since you are fighting AI, SCs are the best. Kit out a few Banelords or Elemental Royalty and take it to them.

[Tuidjy]

K, I have to disagree about water magic. It is useful for both summoning
(the shark line of spells), army support (friendly currents) and SCs (quicken
self, water shield, breath of winter) Niefel Jarls, for example, are beasts
underwater. Or anywhere, for that matter, except for hot provinces.

Against the AI, I suggest SCs. If you control the landmass, and have an
abundance of gems, Wraith Lords with firebrand, charcoal shield, spirit helmet,
chainmail of displacement, coots of quickness, ring of regeneration, and amulet
of luck are able to take on any amount of troops.

[K]

Tuidjy said:
K, I have to disagree about water magic. It is useful for both summoning
(the shark line of spells), army support (friendly currents) and SCs (quicken
self, water shield, breath of winter) Niefel Jarls, for example, are beasts
underwater. Or anywhere, for that matter, except for hot provinces.

All of which are useful things, but less useful than any other path except Blood and Fire when used underwater.

I mean, except for Water Shield and the shark summoning, all of the spells you've listed can be put on an SC or other unit through items, thereby saving your unit the fatigue cost of casting them.

I'd put the Paths in order or usefulness underwater as Death and Nature, then Air, then Earth or Astral, then Water, with Fire and Blood being completely useless except for items or ritual summons.

Underwater combat has been called "padded sumo" because of the difficulty of using magic there, so any spells which work underwater with basic mages are rated far more highly than niche tactics like nation-specific SC tactics.

[Tuidjy]

> I'd put the Paths in order or usefulness underwater as Death and Nature, then
> Air, then Earth or Astral, then Water, with Fire and Blood being completely
> useless except for items or ritual summons.

Well, you may file this as "nation specific", but I was recently engaged in some
underwater fighting as Niefelheim in three games. Let see what I used:

1. The combination of Wolven Winter and Grip of Winter is a battlefield wide
killer, and even non-giant water mages can easily protect themselves, and to a
lesser extend, their troops. The only other battlefield wide killer is Foul
Vapors, which requires Water and Nature.

2. The Ice Elementals are a terror, even against SCs, because the minuscule
trample avoidance damage is enough to attract the sharks from Shark Attack.
And when it is not avoided... ouch! And even by itself Shark Attack is one
Hell of a weapon in the Water Arsenal.

3. For single target, direct damage Water Strike and Frozen Heart are great.
And it helps that any water mage can boost them with Water Power.

4. Water Ward and Water Shield stack. Have you seen the Defense on Water thugs
underwater? Slap a ring of water breathing on a disposable nature Skratti, and
he rips troops apart. Sure, he could get Quickness and Breath of Winter from
items, but that's fewer slots for MR and Reinvigoration.. and of course, good bye
shape shifting, in that case. He would have to cast outside of wereform.

5. Encase in Ice and Prison of Sedna work quite nicely if the scripts run out
before the enemy has broken. I admit to never scripting them, but I have
enjoyed seeing them used.

Let me ask you this. You ranked Air Higher than water underwater. All other
things being equal, would you rather have, underwater
A) One A4, three A3, five A2, ten A1, and one W4 mage and a bunch of troops or
B) One W4, three W3, five W2, ten W1, and one A4 mage and a bunch of troops
Assume that the SC/Thug/wimp ratios are constant.

If you went with the Air heavy option, consider what your guys would do to a
Water based SC wearing a Charcoal Shield and a Ring of Shock Resistance.

[Xox]

Shark attack just recently got nerfed. Unfortunatley i think it got nerfed to the point of uselessness.

But its true, before the recent nerf, water was actually quite useful underwater, but mostly for shark attack as Lingchih recently taught me so well in our recent clash.

Now that shark attack has been overnerfed I have to agree with k.

[Tuidjy]

OK, so how do you protect against Wolven Winter and Grip of Winter, without
Water magic? And how bad did shark attack get nerfed? With foul vapors to wound
the enemy, I have been getting nice results even with the last patch... before
that, it was overpowered.

You guys may be right... after all, I have been playing Niefelheim, so I used what
I had, and what I had was Water, in combination with Death and Nature. But in
the three games I played, I decided that cold & water magic rule beneath the waves.

[K]

Tuidjy said:
Let me ask you this. You ranked Air Higher than water underwater. All other
things being equal, would you rather have, underwater
A) One A4, three A3, five A2, ten A1, and one W4 mage and a bunch of troops or
B) One W4, three W3, five W2, ten W1, and one A4 mage and a bunch of troops
Assume that the SC/Thug/wimp ratios are constant.

If you went with the Air heavy option, consider what your guys would do to a
Water based SC wearing a Charcoal Shield and a Ring of Shock Resistance.

That's a bad example that heavily favors Water magic for the following reasons.

1. Your SC is deliberately immune to most low-level Air magic. That heavily skews any comparison, so we can't even pretend it's fair.

2. The best air magic requires communions or more powerful Air casters. One Mists of Deception would kill this guy for only a few gems in cost, but your example won't allow that.

Heck, since we aren't even talking about a specific SC, he might even be vulnerable to Wind Ride.

3. There is no further information on the SC. If he's a Neifel Yarl, an Ice Devil, or one of the many classic undead SCs like a Wraith Lord or Bane Lord, he's actually more immune to Water magic because of Cold Immunty (with the exception of Water Strike, which is both feeble and inaccurate).

Overall, Air compares better than Water because:

A. In combat, you are far more likely to encounter cold-resistant or cold-immune troops than lightning immune troops. Both are essentially single target attack suites, but Air wins handily on this point.

B. Higher level Air battlefield spells win battles. Fog Warriors and Mists of Deception have no equal in Water magic.

C. Most battle magic for Water requires Cold to be truly effective, so you need to burn heavy amounts of Water gems for Wolven Winters or just get lucky with a Cold opponent. If you have a Heat opponent, it's a bad day for you.

D. Low level Air magic makes good SCs as well. Mist Form and Mirror Image can't be replicated by items, so casters who do Air instead of Water have the best of both worlds since the good Water magic can be gained by items.

[Endoperez]

K said:
D. Low level Air magic makes good SCs as well. Mist Form and Mirror Image can't be replicated by items, so casters who do Air instead of Water have the best of both worlds since the good Water magic can be gained by items.

Chain Mail of Deception grants Mirror Image. There's no item that grants Water Shield, and whether +4 defence is better than Mistform depends from the situation even though Mistform is generally more useful.

[K]

Endoperez said:

Chain Mail of Deception grants Mirror Image. There's no item that grants Water Shield, and whether +4 defence is better than Mistform depends from the situation even though Mistform is generally more useful.

I assume you mean "Chain Mail of Displacement", since there is no Chain Mail of Deception.

And that's not true. The Chain Mail of Displacement grants a Defense bonus, while Mirror Image grants images that have a chance of absorbing a melee attack. That's two separate effects. They just have similar flavor text.