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

[Baalz]

Oh, I wouldn't generally suggest trying to overcast mother oak. It makes a lot of sense if you have a pretty good chance of being the first one who can cast it (you're researching alt anyway and have a best in class nature gem income), but if you have to fight for it it's just not worth it generally because it takes too long to pay for itself...assuming it stays up.

[VedalkenBear]

Wow, you guys are making me want to play Rlyeh.

[Lingchih]

Does it bug anyone else that Oceania is mispelled in the title of the post?

Ballz? Ballz?

[lch]

Originally Posted by Lingchih

Does it bug anyone else that Oceania is mispelled in the title of the post?

Ballz? Ballz?

It bugs me every time when I am reading Abyssia or *hiem or R'yleh or Formoria or Malverni or whatever else some people continue to use. Then again, I have been using Pangea for the longest time, because I somehow wanted to differentiate between the nation and the continent.

Nice illustration of how misspellings can be annoying. Ballz?

[Baalz]

Well, here's the thing - nobody is arguing that MA Oceana is not crippled on land and that you've got a major uphill fight. The question is, do you 1) not use your national mages at all in combat 2) use them in their magically crippled form with ridiculous upkeep and very limited spells they can cast 3) transform them. To me, clearly #3 is the way to go despite its drawbacks, *particularly* because this also means you'll be fielding *many* more mages.

Look at it this way, when you transform 15 mages you've conceptually just forged a special soul contract which instead of generating demons spits out a capricorn every turn (with the upkeep cost you saved). Looking at it that way you can see why even if you do have a high attrition rate it's better to do it than not just for the upkeep benefit, not even considering the fact that your mages are vastly more powerful on land now. I also think that if you're clever the danger from having a very small MR is more a limitation to where and how you deploy your mages rather than that your mages die left and right. Instead of sneaking around and single handedly clearing PD you've got to keep your mages with a group of otherwise mostly useless animals and crossbreeds, but still a bunch of mages who move at the speed of the slowest dark vine is *much* better than no combat mages at all.

[WraithLord]

It sounds reasonable but I'd very much like to see how it holds up in a real MP game.

Had I faced MA O. that opted for mass transformation. I'd have probed all the castles with MH. Every castle that didn't have an astral mage or dome would immediately get MH raining down on it. I'd move a host of assassins with heart finder to its castles. I'd cast leprosy on the castles. Hell, I'd open the manual and look for all the MR check spells, attacks and weapons and I'd bring all that I can get to bear.

In battles I'd use any of a host of spells:
paralyze, mind burn, soul slay, enslave mind, master enslave, charm, sleep, nether darts, disintegrate, astral fires, petrify and I'm sure the list is way longer but my memory ain't.

As I see it, this saves gold (which is not even the main resource in late game dominions, which is of course gems) and opens a huge weakness, just waiting to be exploited.

Bottom line, I have a hard time believing this is viable. Some hard MP proof is required IMHO.

[JimMorrison]

The crux of the problem, is that you need to get to Transformation fairly early, or your economy will stall out. In order to justify the Transformation strat, and to expedite your UW conquest, it's my understanding you buy Capricorns from the get-go, as you can afford them. So in order to justify the bother of Transforming, you are committing yourself to that course of action.

The problem is, in order to even have then around at all, you are pretty reliant on mid-high level Death summons from Conj to protect from Mind Hunts, and to commit them to battle you are relying on Blood summons that you have no initial access to, which then have a collateral reliance on even more mid-high level Death summons.

I can see this working fairly well overall, should you actually drive straight for Well of Misery, and by some miracle get it up and keep it up. Otherwise, your Death summons, which are in fact the linchpin of the entire strategy, can hardly be numerous enough to fill all of the roles that you need them for. Too bad there's no pretender that auto creates Death gems, or that comes with a "Sickle Whose Crop is Pain" as default weapon.

< Heads off to work on a new concept, the "Screw Combat Magic, here comes the Capricorn Thug Squad" concept. > 9E and Shrouds? Hmmmmm. I'm just not sure these guys really can do anything well enough to scare anyone with any skill, after the second year of the game. >.>

[Hadrian_II]

As this oceania guide was able to go over 7 pages, maybe someone might be interested to try it in a real MP environment.

So please join at: Lapis Game

[Illuminated One]

Hmm, I have given this some thought, and the death/lamia route sounds great but I too can't see how massed transformation will get you anywhere.


I really like transformation but I don't think transforming all of your mages is a viable route.
First thing is transforming 15 mages doesn't give you an extra mage per turn but exactly 15 new mages. With that it's the cheapest summon but it has a hidden cost in mage and castle turns (move out of the water, heal feeblemind, went wrong). If you start loosing lots of the transformed mages it's hardly cheap.

And while transformation can add some new capabilities to your mages if you do it to every mage the enemy will just know what to expect from you and the stats aren't great for all animals. Add low precision (well, eagle eyes gets you to 10 prec that doesn't cut it imho, especially as it would get a capricorn to 18 prec and since you don't have the most spectacular magic you'd have to hit more often than the enemy) hp, and morale as other weaknesses. Why not transform selectively and give some of the capricorns a booster (water bracelet costs the same as transformation, thistle mace costs 4 gems more) so you can have a mixed force?
Some high nature animals to cast battlefield wide spells and buffs. Some boosted capricorns to cast area effect spells and make mindhunts, succubi, archers, fear not certain win counters. I don't know about battlefield mr spells but a capricorn might just fill the role of soul slay bait compared to your low hp animals.

[Baalz]

Well, to each his own I suppose, but the way I look at it is like this - would you rather have a transformed capricorn or a non-transformed? Low MR is certainly a significant drawback, no doubt. However, you get two huge benefits: +1 to all your magic paths and no upkeep. I've highlighted the compounding nature of the no upkeep benefit (which, if you continue to do it does generate a never ending stream of free mages from a gold point of view as long as you're pumping nature gems in), but I think those of you complaining that transformed capricorns are useless in combat are failing to appreciate how crippled they are out of the water by default.

In the left corner two 1w 2n mages, and a 2w 2n mage with good MR. In the right corner a 2w 3n 1e, 3w 3n, and 2w 3n 1a mages with low MR. In exchange for the low MR you have picked up spells from falling frost to rust mist to freezing mist (hint: did I mention you struggle with damage outlay by default?) and everybody is spamming charm, poison cloud, stream of life not to mention the forging and ritual benefits (like, say the dragon master + ice drakes I mentioned). Yes, low MR is a big penalty, but your mages are next to worthless without it anyway. When you add to that the benefits from having no upkeep your choice is really more like: those 3 high MR, low magic capricorns or 10 low MR guys with the higher paths. Low MR or no, it seems like a no-brainer to me who I'm bringing to battle (most of the time) *despite* the obvious drawbacks.

There are many situations where having a low MR is a critical weakness, but there are plenty when it's not even if your opponent knows your weakness. March against Ulm or Caelum or Man or Eriu etc. with lots of decoys (ice drakes, dark vines, etc) and that low MR is not going to be the end of the world. Plus, if you're fielding many more mages due to lack of upkeep you can certainly still come out ahead after some casualties from the low MR.