Guide: MA Oceania - OMG, I think I've done it

[KissBlade]

Illithids eat too much and are way too expensive for non sacred units.

[vfb]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

... Illithids are bacon savers..... You can't even really effectively stop them with a single high HP/MR unit, like often works against Astral magic spam, as they always spread the love around a bit.

You can, you just need a passive attack. I defeated some Illithid+Troll invaders with a single Wraith Lord who cast Soul Vortex . He was paralyzed almost the whole battle, until the Illithids ran out of bullets. Then they charged forward and got killed too. I think I had something like a Frost Brand, Vine Shield, Starshine Cap, MR Ammy for gear.

I'm not sure if anything else would work as well as Soul Vortex, but you might get equivalent results with Fire Shield and enough Regen and Reinvig.

Like everything, if you just build Illithids (not that that's what Jim said at all), you're gonna be screwed. But it's worth throwing a few into your armies, and target fliers or large monsters or something else you'd like to disable in a battle.

[JimMorrison]

I want to elaborate on all of that, but getting way off topic, now.

I tried a start similar to this one last night..... In this game, those Temple of the Deeps are in about 1/5 provinces, WHY have I never heard of them before? It's ridiculous. But, overall growth is just a bit slow. I'll try again, fiddle with it a little bit. But not until I start mass Transforming these Capricorns, I'm just too excited for it. I don't know why, but something with such an unknown random factor really makes things a lot more fun for me.

[vfb]

Anything about Illithids is not off topic for a MA Oceania strategy thread.

Another thing I did fighting MA R'lyeh was to load up a couple Bane Lords with MR items, the works: Lead Shield, Ammy, Starshine Cap (okay, so I didn't bother with armor). Stick him at the front of your forces and watch as all the Illithids target him the entire fight and ignore the rest of your army. Unfortunately if you've got Sea Kings in your army then you need to use one of them as the decoy instead because they have higher HP.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by vfb

Another thing I did fighting MA R'lyeh was to load up a couple Bane Lords with MR items

This is the Achilles' Heel of this strat, actually. I don't think that it can be downplayed, how useless the Capricorns are. In theory, it is really nice that you can remove their upkeep, and restore their paths, with Transformation. In practice, 90% of your new forms will have 5MR, and even just a random Mind Burn here or there will destroy them.

I think I may try again, but try to work it completely onto the summons angle. I mean, you are probably best off getting Capricorns for your aquatic conquest and early research - and then Transforming them when you get the chance - but seriously, 90% of them can't be committed to combat against a human opponent. So they become upkeep free researchers (that absolutely MUST be well protected from overland spells), and you will have to do all of your battlefield magics with your summons. It just seems..... like a bit of a stretch.

Oh and final tally for this last test, 21 water provinces, 4 Ancient Temples of the Deeps, 2 Kelp Fortresses.

Funny note, I was Transforming at a front line Lab without a castle. One of my Caps turned into a weird form of a Hydra, and I got attacked that turn before I even knew the results of the spell, and lost 2 mages to the poison cloud. Also got a bog beast, a Chimaera, 2 Ice Drakes (and a MOOSE)..... Had 0 deaths, and about a 16% rate of Feeblemind. Was using 3 Luck.

[chrispedersen]

See, my take on MA-Oceania sort dovetails with yours Jim.
The whole question of transforming Capricorns is to avoid upkeep.
Generally, I believe the point of the castle strategy is to make mer mages.

Whats the point of taking an expensive research mage, blow 15 gems and transform him into an animal mage.

Why not just make more of the lower upkeep mages? Playing a +3 0 -3 -3 +0 + 0 scales, I generally can't afford to max out production of mages even from the beginning.

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Whats the point of taking an expensive research mage, blow 15 gems and transform him into an animal mage.

The chance of just losing him aside , Trasformation's just 3 gems in CBM

[JimMorrison]

Yeah it makes a lot of sense at 3N per casting, though the vast majority of the forms, I still feel are wholly unsuited to combat use.

Out of 25 mages (2 died the last turn to Mind Burns, can't remember what they were, but I think they can safely be classified as "MR too low to survive combat" -

3 Foulspawn = 8MR
2 Dragonflies = 3MR
12 various animals = 5MR
1 Winged Monkey (so cool!) = 7MR
1 Bog Beast = 7MR
2 Ice Drakes = 9MR
1 "Hydra Hatchling" (looks like a mature Hydra missing some heads, only 1 form) = 12MR
1 Wyvern = 12MR
1 Chimera = 13MR
1 Amphiptere = 16MR

So if I count the 2 that just died, I had 20% Feebleminded (the Foulspawn and Dragonflies, who are actually at 3MR and -2MR atm from Affliction), and 16% who have >10MR before items. Of those 4, none of them have anything but misc slots, so besides the kind of awesome Amphiptere, none will surpass an unbuffed Capricorn, even with an Antimagic Ammy. (on the bright side, 25 ex-Capricorns with 1 star, and in 1Magic dominion will net you 250RP for free, and cut upkeep by ~583g)

As far as Mermages as support mages..... they are almost identical to a Capricorn out of the water. Without going into length, I'll just say that I didn't think I was the only one that felt that it wasn't just that Capricorns were too expensive once removed from the water, but that their paths just sucked in combat by that point anyways. Not to say that some Mermages wouldn't come in handy, but there is little good they can do that won't have them passed out by round 5, and not much they can do before that.

So, trying to look for an angle that allows land to be conquered early on, and Conj to be researched early enough to not only get a good stable of summoned mages up very early, but to make them visible to your neighbors, so they understand the risks involved in trying to marginalize your holdings. All this is a very tough task to accomplish, when it's well known that you won't get better than N2 or W2 for combat magic without your pretender, or summons (or booster items, but Water is way out of early reach, and Nature seems a very poor use for your gems, considering your other goals).

[Baalz]

Yeah, no doubt this is a challenging position to play which has a lot of handicaps which you're hoping to mitigate but will never get rid of. I do, however, think that it's quite possible to have even *more* strong support mages than most nations. That's because of the way you're methodically building an upkeep free nation. What that means is that you're gonna have *so* many more 350 gold powerful mages than other nations could remotely contemplate.

Using them in combat does present challenges, but I think it's absolutely wrong to feel that you can't use them in combat because of their MR. Some of the forms are going to be particularly hard to use in combat (really high hitpoints and low MR), but that's OK you need research mages to. You'll have *plenty* of mages with tiny hitpoints and plenty more with medium hitpoints who have no problem at all blending into the chaff you should be fielding with them. Summon animals, cast crossbreeding etc. and slap an amulet of MR on a mage who transformed into a black hawk and he'll have nothing to worry about. Against anything but concentrated astral opposition you won't have trouble using even the big animal mages by making extensive use of blood vines, ice drakes, etc. You've got plenty of options for good cheap decoys and enough mages that you can afford to use them all over the place.

[JimMorrison]

Well the problem in question, is of course the difficult transition into Blood. In the test I refer to, I only had 2 (land) provinces at the time, and due to struggling cash flow, had not gotten the research to really start grabbing a lot of summons (including, of course, Lamias). Also I tried casting Mother Oak, and 91 gems didn't overwrite the AI's casting.