EA Oceania - Knight of the deep too good?

[Baalz]

No doubt about it, those knights are *tough* with a W/S bless, I'm going head to head with them as MA Atlantis in the Evermore game right now. The thing about Atlantis is their troops just plain suck, certainly nothing at all that will even make a decent speed bump to a big group of those knights. R'yleh isn't much better. You definitely have to work a lot harder (I wouldn't say its a fair fight against equal opponents), but with R'leh/Atlantis you should be focusing more on mages than troops...Oceana is both investing in expensive knights *and* the design points to double bless them. Then comes the trick of figuring out how to make your mage superiority effective underwater. Since there are precious few damage dealing spells that work underwater you want to think more along the lines of buffs/debuffs as Meglobob alluded to mentioning destruction. Get some fairly tough summons (supported by chaff, of course) and then have a dozen mages casting body ethereal, luck, quickness, iron warriors, strength of giants, legions of steel, friendly currents, shark attack, school of sharks (great for soaking up that first strike bonus), and destruction. For example, as Atlantis I've been using Monster Fish (their national summon) to great effect when uber-buffed.

[Twan]

Relying on living pillars is not very efficient if Rlyeh is in the game (pillars have MR 8). Also without prod 3 you may not be able to make more than 2 per turn (thanks the crappy 20 admin capitol).

IMO Atlantis only has chances as a thugs/mages nation on big maps (starting with an awake Dagon pretender you have an ultra easy start, and can use your gold advantage to make a shambler army for taking indies, so you should have 18-25 provinces by turn 10, and other forts for researchers before the other sea nations, then you can focus on construction/alteration and start to use mostly basalt king/queen thugs by turn 15-20 or so ; and the only units you'll make after are atlantian spearmen chaff (or the version with poisonous armor if you have ressources) -because they have MR 10 and so are less a waste if Rlyeh is in the game-).

Against Oceania knights the only working tactic I know is basalt kings chain casting Earth Meld/destruction etc behind a lot of chaff, so you'll also use atlantian spearman and basalt kings only.

On small maps hum... I think EA Atlantis simply lose.

[Loren]

Just tried a game against the AI with EA Oceania--those knights are wonderful. Getting onto the land has proven quite problematic, though. I have almost all the water (there are a few provinces owned by someone I don't really want to go to war with right now), Atlantis is gone, and R'lyeh who amazingly owned only odd land provinces just died of dominion death.

Despite Wrath of God & Lure of the Deep the breakout proved very difficult--multiple beachheads were smashed. I finally managed to distract the AI from the real province by sending out the initial troops in both directions as bait. I had empowered & itemed my pretender to be able to cast lichcraft and I got a Tartanian factory up before the AI came after the real target. Almost all the really good summons are units that can't live underwater. (Yeah, I could have cast Thestis' Blessing but that would probably get me invaded.)

[konming]

What tactics do you use with EA R'lyeh?

[Potatoman]

Mind Lords make very quick (and gem cheap) SCs with their high HP and AOE life drain attacks when you have the right alterations researched. They also can teleport, which is really nice. Everything else about the nation is pretty much a write-off, though. None of their morale 8 troops are worth recruiting, so you're left with only lobos and Mind Lords.

[Jazzepi]

Potatoman said:
Mind Lords make very quick (and gem cheap) SCs with their high HP and AOE life drain attacks when you have the right alterations researched. They also can teleport, which is really nice. Everything else about the nation is pretty much a write-off, though. None of their morale 8 troops are worth recruiting, so you're left with only lobos and Mind Lords.

I disagree. The militia are fine if you use them as flankers.

Jazzepi

[Graeme Dice]

llamabeast said:
Nope. There aren't actually any items which allow aquatic creatures onto land, surprisingly.

Unless I'm mistaken and they've been removed since Dom 2, amulets of the fish allow aquatic creatures to go on land.

[calmon]

Graeme Dice said:

Unless I'm mistaken and they've been removed since Dom 2, amulets of the fish allow aquatic creatures to go on land.

Welcome back Graeme

I think Llama meant there is no item which allow troops (the knights of the deep) to enter land.

[llamabeast]

I did, yep - rather loose wording there on my part.

[archaeolept]

hey, nothing stops you from gift of reasoning them... ;p