Worst Nations in Each Era

[Zeldor]

Micah:

I wouldn't call river scenario really great. It means you don't have dominion in most of your provs and you need to move your armies for ages. You need backup somewhere - well, 8 turns of mapmove1 and you are there

[Baalz]

Ah yes, I actually haven't been in a lake scenario, I've played in a river scenario and a ocean scenario (where water wrapped around a good part of the edge of the map), and of course Artifacts, so I'm considering a lot of coastline. The MA Atlantis game I remember most clearly is the one I based the guide on, it was the second all-nation mega game (Evermore) so the opposition ran across the entire range of skill and there was a lot of coast to work with. After defeating MA R'yleh (Lingchih) I made arrangements with Velusion (EA Abysia) to jointly attack EvilHomer/Xietor (EA Caelum, Xietor came in to sub) and blitzed something like 25 provinces in the first two turns of the fight, sieging several castle with no troops in them thus crippling his ability to recruit reinforcements while Velusion did the heavy lifting of killing the existing armies after pulling them all over by canceling his NAP and massing his armies across the border. EvilHomer/Xietor played a good game but it was a mighty sucker punch and they never had a chance to recover their breath. Lanka (Hadrian II) attacked before Caelum was finished, but by then my research had ramped up and acid rain + teleporting thugs pretty quickly turned him into my third conquest (deep inland away from the coast) after negotiating another war ally against him (don't remember who..Sauromatia I think) at which point I went to war with EA Oceana (Atul) who controlled the other half of the water. Proved conclusively that buffed monster fish > dual blessed knights of the deep and also Oceana really despises mind hunts. Then went into a cold war with the leading triple blessed LA Mictlan (Admiral Zhao) but he won by province count before I could recover enough strength to attack after a bloody war with Oceana. Ah, that was a good game.

[Micah]

Nicely done Baalz, though of course it sounds like you got exclusively 2:1 wars there. A great tactic, but a bit, shall we say...fishy? to base a nation-balance discussion on. =)

[Baalz]

Well, that's rather my point isn't it? If you can manage to control the water (the hard part) you don't have any business fighting a fair fight on the land (easy part). The war with Caelum was negotiated before I ever set slimy toe out of water, the fight with Lanka (sorry, didn't mention this) I didn't line up a war ally until I had soundly thrashed his attacking forces (I think he expected me to be much more tied up with Caelum) and basically just trolled around for somebody willing to grab some land from his other side while I did most of the killing which I was able to do because I was at this point much bigger than him and using the income I'd grabbed from my rapid land grab to pump out Kings. Part of my negotiation with Sauro was "even if I'm wrong and he defeats me he's going to have to leave a large amount of forces guarding his coast", which made it a pretty good no-brainer on their part.

[Tolkien]

The arcane workings of diplomacy are just as important as the art of warfare.

[Micah]

Ah, I thought you meant "fair" in the sneak attack sense, not the ganging sense, since diplomacy and lots of borders cuts both ways. See: Artifacts. It is true that you do have a nice diplomatic status as any aquatic nation given your defensive advantage and the thought that you'll be easy pickings later once more of your holdings are on land, but that can evaporate very quickly once you start to do well.

[Baalz]

Well, both actually. At the point you're controlling the water you have the luxury of naming who and when you fight. Coasts are generally long enough that you've got several options and nobody is realistically going to be attacking you at this point. In the vast majority of cases you can just sit there until you can surprise attack someone who is already in a fight with no real need to defend your long border. Even once you've got a big bite of land you've got serious negotiating leverage as nobody really wants to fight with you when 2/3rds of your territories are underwater, and you can also potentially attack on another coast which doesn't touch your other land holdings. Artifacts was (is? ) hideous in how quickly everyone piled on anyone who got at all ahead but in my experience this is not how things usually play out. It seems to me much more common for you to make a good war ally in your first or second war and have solid backup going forward.

[Agema]

Tactics will have mattered. Neither of us brought much magepower to the fight, as neither of us had many effective combat spells as it was early.

I can't remember the battle that well, but I reckoned that the gold cost of each army was roughly similar - within about 10%. I certainly had sub-optimal unit divisions as I was restricted by only one quality commander (Ldr-80+) and a load of Ldr-40 otherwise. I can just tell you the tritons routed very quickly, the War Shamblers and Atlanteans engaged the melee shield briefly before routing. It may have been fought in Rlyeh's Dom, and maybe magic-1.

[Agema]

In my opinion EA Agartha is as good underwater as on land. They have flaws in either sphere (like cold dominion), but are still competitive and certainly not easy victims. They've still got fully effective bless troops, thugs, most of their magic is as good. Note also Baalz's comments that sea nations have an advantage that they can usually assault a coastline with almost no fear of reprisal, which doesn't apply to Agartha.

[cleveland]

Originally Posted by Zargen, Zeldor, Kuritza, Hadrian_II, elmokki, Meglobob, Tyrant, many others

MA: Man

Ugh. I hate the bashing of poor MA Man. *scampers off to write MA Man guide*

Oh, and Omni & vfb: Shame on you for not standing in their defense!




*scampers off to get another scotch*