Pretender Design: Water Cults

[Cainehill]

I've gone Water Cult with Marignon - it let me grab a couple of water provinces fairly early, unfortunately Vanheim, Caelum, and Ermor also also got into the water not long after.

[Taqwus]

Might be interesting with good stealthy sacreds for achieving a beachhead somewhere utterly unexpected, but this will cut you off from supplies and probably isn't very efficient.

[Gandalf Parker]

I think of it as a surprise tactic. Any game which agrees ahead of time to have no water nations or you are the last guy into the game see thats the case. You have this thread "Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it" and you have many threads asking "how can I get my nation started into the water quickly" which usually recommends the use of water mages and mercenarys. So being able to enter the water right away without waiting and bidding on the mercs that everyone else is hoping to see would seem to be an advantage. Being able to put my priests into the water next to someone and build temples in every water province on their border would seem to be at least a nice irritant (does water cult allow building castles? I dont remember). It might work best on a small tight map where provinces will be in short supply.

So the "what good is water cult" side by side with "how to I get in the water" seems to be the answer. Maybe not a great one, but a tactic worth keeping in the card file?

[Vicious Love]

Gandalf Parker said:
I think of it as a surprise tactic. Any game which agrees ahead of time to have no water nations or you are the last guy into the game see thats the case. You have this thread "Why Water Cult could be fun or worth it" and you have many threads asking "how can I get my nation started into the water quickly" which usually recommends the use of water mages and mercenarys. So being able to enter the water right away without waiting and bidding on the mercs that everyone else is hoping to see would seem to be an advantage. Being able to put my priests into the water next to someone and build temples in every water province on their border would seem to be at least a nice irritant (does water cult allow building castles? I dont remember). It might work best on a small tight map where provinces will be in short supply.

So the "what good is water cult" side by side with "how to I get in the water" seems to be the answer. Maybe not a great one, but a tactic worth keeping in the card file?

No castles or PD, meaning defending the aforementioned temples is pricey and unreliable. Besides, furnishing a few priests with water breathing is hardly a daunting task by the time that sort of dominion-pushing becomes relevant. And the element of surprise counts for very, very little when one can only produce 10>sacreds per castle per turn, move said sacreds at one water province per turn, and keep your dominion one step ahead of them.
Still, if one is willing to wait 30 or so turns for the element of surprise, there is something to be said for 100 or so previously invisible vans galloping out the ocean to bring The Pain to their foes. Coincidentally, there's exactly as much to be said for 100 or so previously invisible vans sailing across a neutral province to bring The Pain to their foes. Particularly before said foes have any clue their overseas neighbor is Vanheim. I'd find the latter scenario significantly more surprising, personally.

Mind you, this might not preclude making good use of Water Cult with Jotunheim or C'tis, but I can still hardly imagine it being worth 50 points and the exclusion of other themes. Ever.

[Graeme Dice]

Vicious Love said:
And the element of surprise counts for very, very little when one can only produce 10>sacreds per castle per turn, move said sacreds at one water province per turn, and keep your dominion one step ahead of them.

You can produce (temples/5)+(dominion strength) sacred units per turn, even if this goes over 10. Probably only possible for Marignon, but it's there.

[Gandalf Parker]

Vicious Love said:
Mind you, this might not preclude making good use of Water Cult with Jotunheim or C'tis, but I can still hardly imagine it being worth 50 points and the exclusion of other themes. Ever.

Well the goal is to make all tactics and strategies worthy of SOME use even if it doesnt become a winning tactic. But it is a very hard goal to achieve. There will always be something at the bottom and something at the top. Some people would always boost whats on bottom, others would always nerf whats on top. Taken too far those will ruin the whole. But if we can make sure that the top always CAN be beat, and the bottom always CAN be used, then its good enough for now.

Does anyone have a simple thing which might make water cult more useful?
Increase the number of followers that a water mage can take underwater?
Allow priests to take their 10 followers under the water?
Give that nation PD privileges?
Give that nation Castle privileges?

[Boron]

The main problem with water cult is imo that only 3 nations , mictlan , marignon + vanheim have noncapitol only sacred troops .
No matter which blessing they have marignons flaggelants would get extremely beaten by tritons with their 0 base protection .

Mictlan has severe problems spreading their dominion until lategame , and jaguar warriors have only 4 base protection as well .

So the only nation where water cult could be somehow useful is imo Vanheim but getting positive dominion in the water might be difficult for them also and vanheim has easy access to mech men which are better for water conquering then vans probably .


My suggestion for water cult would be giving a nation with water cult in each province with water ( = water , forest , river , farmland provinces ) and positive dominion an extra income of 1-2% per dominionlevel .

[The_Tauren13]

A simple thing that would make it fairly usefull imo is this: allow all national troops to enter the water in your own dominion. Perhaps as only poor amphibians if that might be too powerful.

[Chazar]

What should be the sense of the generic WaterCult Theme? I guess it should help non-water nations to enter the sea more easily...

So extra money for water provinces is probably not helpful, as it is still difficutl to enter the sea. Likewise for PD and Castles.

So the main problem is that armies composed of sacred troops only are usually too weak and to difficult to obtain. There are just not enough sacred troops around to compose sensible armies (which is generally a bad thing, IMHO, since I dont see why good bless-strats are really worth the cost as compared to good scales...).

Allowing priests generally to take units underwater like water mages is also a bad thing, for I like the idea that water-breathing is tied to positive dominion! So pushing your domininon into the water should remain a necessity. Maybe each priest should be allowed to take some units underwater depending on dominion strength, i.e. (priest level times dominion strength), but decreasing dominion would then introduce a random selection on the units who drown, which might be a bit odd.

In anyway, I think that WaterCult should include a possibility to take a number of non-sacreds into the waters....

[alexti]

I think that allowing to buy PD (tritons) in the sea provinces would do the trick. It's not that difficult to get into the water (with sacred troops or without), but it's difficult to defend those provinces, because any water mage or Mound King can easily take them from you. Buying tritons in every province just to have PD-level defense is too costly (to buy and to maintain). But if Water Cult nation could buy triton-PD their sea provinces would becomes as defended as empty land provinces.