Thoughts on balancing MA Oceania

[Ming]

Baalz,

My experience is restricted to SP only so my comments below may be completely off the mark - I hope you won't be offended if they are.

1. Bishop fish should be a good counter to both EA Oceania knights (when defended against flanking) as well as Agatha statues (with amulet of the fish). If you had allies you might have considered trading for air gems to make amulet of the fish to use your bishop fish on land. At sea EA Oceania has bishop fish too but if you had an overwhelming economy you could field far more bishop fish than he can to overcome his superior numbers of knights.

2. Your economic advantage might not be as great as you think. EA Oceania must have sacrificed his scales to get his heavy bless, so his true strength could be more than 50% greater than his raw numbers. If your Agatha opponent also follows a heavy bless strategy, you might actually be significantly weaker than their combined strength even though the raw numbers might say otherwise.

If the above were true, then your problems with Ma Oceania might have nothing to do with MA Oceania being hopelessly weak.

[cleveland]

Ming said:
Bishop fish should be a good counter to both EA Oceania knights as well as Agatha statues.

A Knight of the Deeps (KotD) has base MR of 14, so the odds of successfully connecting with a Smite are only 18%. If, of course, the EA Oceania player didn't take an Astral bless.

But let's assume he didn't and that conditions are ideal, i.e. the battle takes place in a Magic-3 province. The KotD MR drops to 12, so each Bishop Fish has a fighting 30% chance to connect. But the KotD has 16hp, so a Smite will only one-shot-kill a KotD about 86% of the time.

So - under absolutely conditions - only 30% * 86% = 25.8% of the Smites will work. Under normal conditions, 18% * 86% = 15.5% will work. And that's before factoring in the effects of any Astral or Nature (i.e. regen) bless.

Ming said:
If the above were true, then your problems with Ma Oceania might have nothing to do with MA Oceania being hopelessly weak.

I don't like this, it's argumentative & borderline insulting.

[Ming]

Cleveland,

I am shocked and surprised that you consider my comments to be "borderline insulting". There is nothing further from my intentions and to misrepresent it as such is not helpful. I have prefaced my comments by saying that I could be completely wrong and that my conclusion was "... MAY have nothing to do with Oceania being hopeless weak." and only "IF" my reasoning was right. In fact, my conclusion is only a logical conclusion IF my reasoning is correct. It is completely neutral and has no implied disrespect, much less insult.

I have no doubt that Baalz is an excellent player - his excellent guides provide ample testimony to that. However, that is not to say that one is not allowed to offer a different opinion on specific matters. If you belief that daring to disagree with such an excellent player is "borderline insulting", then I have nothing further to say.

As to your point of Astral bless for EA Oceania, I have considered the possibility but feel that an EA Oceania player is unlikely to take an astral bless as other blesses - water obviously, but even fire and nature - are more beneficial.

As to your comment on the effectiveness of smite on EA Oceania knights, please see my reply to Baalz's post.

[Baalz]

I don't mean to sound confrontational, but I don't find any of these suggestions viable.

Kydnids: These *are* good, but too easy to counter in the numbers you can field. Assuming you've got no more than about 120 N gems to play with for the early part of the game you're talking about a total of 60 Kydnids - basically one smallish army. Lets just take a look at all my neighbors this time to see what the army I'd been building up over dozens of turns would face:

R'yleh - mindless tramplers backed by mind blasters. Dead Kydnids.

Oceana - The knights have the moral to ignore the awe and the first strike damage to punch through the armor. Dead Kydnids (good luck killing the 23 defense 17 protection knights - they can just let the Kydnids fatigue out if nothing else)

Helheim - very similar to Oceana using their heavy blessed sacreds, only they'll supplement it with raining down lighting.

Argatha - sacred statues backed by destruction casting mages. Dead Kydnids.

Mictlan - triple blessed jaguar warriors will destroy Kydnids. Dead Kydnids.

Sauromatia - Androphag archers and hydras supplemented by skellispam while the Kydnids die from poison and exhaustion. Dead Kydnids.

Nefelheim - Frozen dead Kydnids.

Arcoscephale - Kydnids would probably do a decent job against elephants, up until my opponent started fielding heavy infantry backed by small communions. Dead Kydnids.

In all cases my enemy can replace his army in a couple turns while that's all the Kydnids I have available.

Bishop fish - assuming I sacrificed *all* of my research I'd still not be able to recruit a bishop fish every turn (for the first few turns while I'm expanding as fast as possible and recruiting a few mages for site searching). Oceanic Knights have a (unblessed) MR of 14 and 16 hp, so each smite has an 18% chance of causing damage and will on average have to hit each knight twice to kill them. This means best case scenario 10 bishop fish will kill one knight per turn, although in practice it will be nowhere near this good as they won't all focus on one knight until he's dead, they'll end up mostly wounding two knights per turn. As the knights do so much damage that battles don't last more than 2-3 rounds I don't see how it would be possible to field enough bishop fish to make a difference against 40+ knights.

Yes, obviously my income vs a heavy bless nation is not directly indicative of actual strength, my point is that I don't think I could have played MA Oceana better nor had better luck and there is now *nothing* I can reasonably field against any of my neighbors. In a 60+ person game I had the *top* province count. After successfully raiding their PD, at the point I had no choice but to start fighting real armies I had more than twice their *combined* province count and income - both gold and gems. I had more than twice their *combined* research. I had almost twice their *combined* number of forts. This was not a slight lead, it was an overwhelming economic advantage, and I also had production-2 scales. I've thrown everything I could think of as an experience player and been totally crushed every single engagement by the sophisticated strategy of marching straight towards me.

Now to be clear, I'm not complaining about a specific game, but rather using this as a good example to illustrate my point - rather a best case scenario for MA Oceana. I'm far from an infallible player, but I maintain that even with an overwhelming economic advantage there's not really any feasible thing I can field against any of my neighbors (which are a reasonably diverse sample). This would be 10X worse later in the game with more research done....where I've still got nothing to field and everyone else's power has scaled up.


*edit*

Cleveland is correct, my math is a bit off on the smite but the sentiment is still correct.

[Zeldor]

Yeah, I can confirm. When it comes to skill Baalz is few classes higher than his opponents he is fighting there. Well, Baalz is certainly in Top10 best Dominions players now. If HE says smth sucks it must really suck

[Ming]

Baalz,

Given that my previous comment seems to be misinterpreted as being "borderline insulting", I would like to first apologise if it has offended you.

On your point of the effectiveness of the bishop fish, I agree that they would not be effective ON THEIR OWN. However, I am assuming that they would be supported by your own sacred knights. With P2 you should be able to recruit 3 per turn and have 30 or so by the end of the first year since they are unlikely to suffer losses against indies. While they cannot match the EA Oceania knights in a long fight, they should hold up reasonably well in a short fight - certainly more than 2-3 turns even with only a weak bless (say W4E4). This should give the bishop fish time to work their smite. Bear in mind that a EA Oceania knight damaged by smite has a good likelihood of being finish off by your own knights.

Since you had the time to achieve a commanding lead and EA Oceania has the time to accumulate 40+ knights (even though theirs can be recruited anywhere) I imagine that the battle was fought no earlier than sometime in year two. Given your economic strength you probably have 3 or more castles. As battle magic is less important underwater, you should be able to devote at least one if not two castles to recruiting bishop fish exclusively (BTW, IMHO MA Oceania MUST devote his first new castle, and sometimes at his home castle too, to producing bishop fish when in, or anticipate, war). So an advantage of 10 or more bishop fish is not out of the question. In terms of cost one bishop fish is roughly 150% that of an EA Oceania knight (and much less resource). Adjusting for his heavy bless it is not unreasonable to equate them as 1:1. Similarly, 40 of your knights is roughly equivalent to 30 of his after using, say, a 50% adjustment for his heavy bless. So 10 bishop fish, 40 Ma Oceania knights, plus PD against 40 EA Oceania knights is a fair fight under the circumstances - and not taking into account of your superior economic position over and above the adjustment needed to compensate for his heavy bless. I have not tested to see if such a match-up is hopeless on your side but I suspect not. However, this is not the point and one can argue that the 50% figure I am using is purely arbitrary.

You are talking about a 2:1 advantage in economy. If I assume that it is before taking into account EA Oceania's heavy bless, it would still transfer into about 14 bishop fish and 55 knights against 40 EA Oceania knights. Again I have not tested such a match-up, but I would be very surprised if you do not win, especially since you are likely to have first strike (having PD's to screen their first strike).

Your excellent guides (which I have benefitted from and would like to thank you regarding them) have shown that some seemingly weak nations require thinking "outside of the box" to be competitive. I think MA Oceania falls into the same catagory. It has a fast start against indies and this needs to be turned into a lasting economic advantage (I find P3 to be necessary). You might even be able to rush your underwater neighbour if he is not being careful. However, you need to rely on Bishop fish against other players (so growth scale is important). At 120g for H3 it is competitive even against heavily blessed sacreds. Sacrifice you research to get them if you are in a war. Hopefully you economic advantage means that you can do both under normal circumstances. On land you have to rely on Bishop fish even more, but at 120G plus 5A and 5W gems (If you have lots of clams, invest in a dwarven hammer with 30S gems and each amulet would be 6S and 3W) its cost is still reasonable. I am sure that if you stop and think about it, you would probably come up with even better strategies or variations.

Please let me know if I have erred in my reasoning.

[JimMorrison]

I'd just like to point out that -sometimes- the math can be deceiving. Playing Bandar Log now with an S9 bless, Mictlan invaded me with 16 casters in support of their army. Of course, most of them are H3, and I can confirm that mass Smite can perform quite admirably even against hardened (high MR) targets.

[atul]

Bandar Log isn't the best example, their sacreds' pitiful base MR of 11 and 10 hit points make White Ones a prime Smite targets. Were you fielding Tiger Riders, well, that is probably the best bang for buck anyone gets from Smite.

[Sombre]

Black Knights and Black Templars are also prime targets for a smiting.

[Baalz]

Oh no Ming, I wasn't insulted. I wouldn't be posting here if I wasn't inviting people to try and poke holes in my arguments.

Well, I did the test you suggested, and though I have to admit it was more even than I expected, MA Oceana was still crushed.

Setup:
MA Oceana
40 knights - 4000 gold
11 bishop fish - 1380 gold
40 Oceana Tritons - 400 gold
11 PD - freeby
1 troop herder commander (not factored)
total - 5780 gold

EA Oceana
1 bishop fish - 180 gold
40 knights (with an E/W bless) - 3400 gold
1 troop herder commander (not factored)
30 Oceana tritons - 300 gold
total - 3880 gold

Losses -
MA Oceana 1/12 commanders 71/80 troops
EA Oceana 0/2 commanders 29/70 troops (mostly tritons)


Test 1 - Despite everybody being evenly spread out EA Oceana managed to get 3 knights to flank around and kill all the bishop fish due to their amazing amount of movement point. Uuuugly.

Test 2 - I scripted everyone to attack closest so that wouldn't happen again.
Losses -
MA Oceana 1/11 commanders 71/80 troops
EA Oceana 0/2 commanders 29/70 troops (mostly tritons)


MA Oceana got off 7 volleys of smite. As the math suggested generally 1-2 knights were killed by smite per turn when they were targeted, though it often hit tritons decoys because it had more chance of doing HPs of damage. Nothing else caused significant damage to the EA Knights who sported fashionable 22 defense and 21 protection.

Now, on to my reservations.
1) I don't feel like the MA Oceana sacreds are cost effective though they did surprisingly well in this particular setup. Dumping gold into them would have slowed my initial expansion quite a bit. Massing capital only sacreds is a slow process which can't be done after my initial expansion in time to meet my first fight. I also shudder to think how this setup (which takes almost a year to mass up the troops and commanders for) would fare against R'yleh chaff and mindblasters if I'd ended up fighting them.
2) Recruiting a significant number of non-mages in the early part of the game is crippling to research. Granted, one of my bones about MA Oceana is that there is hardly anything worth researching, but still 10 bishop fish is costing on top of the gold 70 research points per turn - *forever* even after they die. Does anyone think landing an extra 14 lightless lanterns in year one might be significant?
3) The idea of landing a significant number of fish amulets to get a dozen bishop fish out of the water, with practically no air income and..well, crippled research from massing bishop fish seems prohibitive. This seems completely infeasible out the water in an early enough time frame to be relevant.
4) I've seen W/S on EA Oceana several times, astral has a good synergy with a water bless on high defense units and Oceana is obviously planning on fighting R'yleh at some point. This would go even worse under that scenario.
5) This tactic has steadily diminishing effectiveness as research progresses. Even if you can somehow manage to leverage bishop fish into an effective initial force, what do you suppose you'll do once shark attacks (smite will almost always target the high HP low MR sharks) and shadow blasts start being cast, vengeance of the dead is being spammed at you, and thugged out high MR kings of the deep start teleporting in? Not to mention fighting above the water once real evocation spells start throwing down massively more damage than our smite can (assuming you get the priests up there in the first place).