Getting EA Oceana out of the water...

[Ironhawk]

NTJedi said:
Sounds like a good patch opportunity to introduce new features.

I disagree - Water nations have a serious advantage with the water barrier. Basically they are immune from early game rush attacks from all land nations. It should be hard for them to get out of the water.

As for how to get out - the above posts cover it pretty well. My suggestion is to scout the coastal lands well and find a place with good indy troops and good resources. Then take it and immediately build a fort so you can bang out a land army. Additionally, I've been told that Sea Trolls make for a good amphibious force? Then when you are on land you can summon winter wolves with your water mages, perhaps?

[Meglobob]

Ironhawk said:

I disagree - Water nations have a serious advantage with the water barrier. Basically they are immune from early game rush attacks from all land nations. It should be hard for them to get out of the water.

As for how to get out - the above posts cover it pretty well. My suggestion is to scout the coastal lands well and find a place with good indy troops and good resources. Then take it and immediately build a fort so you can bang out a land army. Additionally, I've been told that Sea Trolls make for a good amphibious force? Then when you are on land you can summon winter wolves with your water mages, perhaps?

Sea trolls are excellent, no fire weakness like normal trolls, higher HPs, just as good on land as well as sea, 1 sea troll for 1W gem is excellent value. Also sea trolls court is good, did you know the sea troll king produces 1W gem per month? So eventually he repays the 55W gem cost, also what else are you going to use those water gems for?

[Foodstamp]

<Insert my gripe about Oceania here.>

In all seriousness, there have been several threads talking about how Oceania underperforms. It is the worst of the three water nations and has the hardest time of the three coming to shore.

Let me look into my crystal ball and give you some insite into how these threads play out...

Someone tries Oceania and realizes that it is not that great of a nation.

Someone who does not play Oceania snaps at the person saying they do not know how to play the game or use the nation to it's full potential.

Several more people chime in talking about the air breathing amulet, the weaksauce troops that CAN come to shore and independent archers being viable alternatives.

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People who play the nation know that:

Most of Oceania's troops become weak on land, and the ones that do not are weak to begin with.

There is a bug where if a unit that has stealth in the water moves to an enemy land province, or to a province that is taken by an enemy while the land version of the stealth unit is still in the province, it essential dooms the unit to suiciding on the guards or praying the province gets taken back. (Meaning the unit cannot take further actions including "Move" like other stealthed units can)

Sirens have an abyssmal chance to lure a commander.

In the water, Atlantis and Rlyeh say "Here you go, we brought you a gift, your *** on a platter."

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[Endoperez]

Are you talking of EA or MA? It makes a difference. I understand EA R'lyeh is weaker than EA Oceania, and unlike Oceania, EA R'lyeh can't even make Amulets of the Fish.

[Saxon]

Good, good, good, all very interesting. To bring the thread back to the original question, how do you lift EA Oceana out of the ocean, what is your mid and late game?

Folks have nicely summarized how they are strong underwater and some have argued that it should be hard to get out of the water. Fine, now what?

NT Jedi has pointed out, and I second, that there are few spells and items to allow water only creatures to go on land. There are a lot of ways for land units to get into the water. To get them, you need to have water or air magic and do a fair bit of research. I agree that this is an area that could be looked at by the devs, as even with research and the right magic paths, I have a tough time getting my troops out of the water. One poster has said that getting units out of the water is the same as getting them in, but I must disagree. Open up that manual and show me the spells and magic items. Really, I challenge you! Partly to prove my point and partly in the hope I missed something you can show me.

Find a good independent province, build a castle and build a new army. As Death Daemon points out, you can grab archers and heavy infantry. Now, those are not bad, but do they stand up against the troops you will find on land? Poison hydras, Vans, Magma Children? I have never seen a thread on “Building a killer strategy based on independent troops!” My point is that these troops are not enough, we need more.

Summons. This is where I think the answer may be, but would love to hear more. Sea trolls are good, but it is a challenge to get enough. Most of my magic is centered around water, so there is competition for those water gems. Clams take 15 to build, which takes time to pay off. Also in the water gem competition are the Kynaiads (spelled incorrectly) These are the 15 units for 30 gems summon that have awe. I find them to be very durable and useful in and out of the water. However, they don’t seem to kill much, so I tend to have them as the center of the army, with my mermen with amour and tridents on the sides.

National units. The mages have a tough time coming onto land, I have yet to find a way around this. The sacred cavalry can not come on land (if you know a way, please tell me!) This is why I argue that you should not use a bless strategy with this nation, as the points you spend will not directly help you in the later parts of the game.

What does come on land are the mermen. The cheap one has a net, which tends to nicely blunt the first enemy charge. However, they then die quickly. The heavy unit is good, no complaints. I buy as many of them as resources will permit, every turn.

Death. I think death magic might be the way forward. Get a pretender with some and get him summoning specters as soon as he can. This gives you a wide range of magic. You can search with the long range spells and then build up an army of the dead. My only worry about this is that it is not thematic! I still want to know how to get Oceana to take over the world, as a water magic and water based nation.

Nature. This one seems to be the second choice of magic that is natural to the nation. I have always used this as a good buff magic, but not a summoning or attack based school. Gift of Health is nice, if you have the dominion to go with it, but not a game winner. How can Oceana use this path to power up?

[HoneyBadger]

I don't know about death magic not being thematic to Oceanea, it all depends on what you view Oceanea capable of-if you want The Little Mermaid version then no, death magic probably isn't your style, but if you want something dark and cold and deep and chaotic, like the sea itself, then it works just fine. I think it's pretty spectacular to imagine Oceanea sending the corpses of hundreds of drowned sailors out to drag their former friends and neighbers beneath the waves. This could be extended into Unfrozen where the dead of a thousand cruel winters take their revenge on those whose blood still runs warm in their veins. There currently are quite a lot of independent amphibious types of unit in the oceans of Dom3 already though-shamblers, icthys, and the sea-trolls who were already mentioned, not to mention the occasional illithid, which as far as I know are usually found in the water. I do have to say that there should be some high level water spell which allows you to bring troops from the water on to land. I don't think the calvalry commanders are capital only, am I wrong? if not then just use large groups of them for calvalry, they'll be better than the standard anyway. Make sure you get ahold of the Queens of Elemental Water-one of them is already amphibious and she's not a bad target for empowering and prophetizing. It's wasteful but so is most empowering, and atleast she's a good chassis. Are asp turtles amphibious? I've yet to see one, but I think they are. Overall, I think empowering a powerful amphibious chassis and using it to summon land-based troops might be the best thing you can do to support your independents.

[Ming]

If it were any easier to get sea troops on land many (myself included) would be clamouring for nerfing the sea nations, especially Oceania.

I have only played MA Oceania, and only in SP, but I believe the following strategy works in other ages and in MP with minor modifications (In MP you need to adept to what your neighbours are doing):

Step 1: Dominate the seas. Unless the map is cradle or full of sea squares there are likely to be at most one other sea nation. I believe Oceania has an edge vs either of the other two sea nations. So dominating the seas should not be too challenging.

Step 2: Cast Maelstrom. You should be ahead in both gems and gold even before the spell as the land nations busy themself fighting each other.

Step 3: cast Sea King's Court. With Maelstrom and the Troll Kings' gem production it takes relatively little time to gather a large Sea Troll army.

Step 4: Land. In MA the sacred troops are quite tough on land too.

I have left out a few details in case some of you want to have the fun of discovering them yourself.

[PvK]

Chosing a pretender who can summon mages and/or units who are either good on land, and/or who can summon units who are good on land, are some options. There are some paths like that for even EA Oceania's natural mages.

In my massive EA Oceania SP game, I took my first land provinces using plain trident heavy infantry mixed with turtle warriors and other amphibious fodder. In mid game, I used some nice summons to supplement my natural troops and indy troops - there are some good ones available, especially if you summon from one mage type to the next. Getting into the later phases of the game, I've got strong mages and summons from water, nature, death, astral, air, earth... hmm, all except blood and fire.

I'm also toying with the idea of gifting and equipping some of the more impressive sea creatures with land capabilities... Flying Asp Turtle, anyone?

PvK

[PvK]

Asp Turtles aren't amphibious until you cast Gift of Reason on them and then give them an item to let them go on the surface... I haven't tried yet, but I assume this will result in a flying saucer of doom...

[Shovah32]

PvK said:
Asp Turtles aren't amphibious until you cast Gift of Reason on them and then give them an item to let them go on the surface... I haven't tried yet, but I assume this will result in a flying saucer of doom...

Asp turtles with amulets of the fish and rings of regen/lucky pendants might be fun but i dont see them being cost effective.