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

[Baalz]

Hmmm, you'll get N4 capricorns often enough, but to cast mother oak you have to have N5 - on land. Since you lose a level going on land that means N5 in the water plus a thistle mace. You've got less than a 1% chance on each capricorn to get N5, so essentially you're scrapping the mother oak early strategy. You're also scrapping the llamia queen farm, and by extension much of your death magic and all your blood magic. You can still squeeze into death using your pretender, but it's an immensely steeper slope to climb than using your nature gems (fueled by the mother oak) to summon mages, while you use your limited death gems to site search. If you're using your limited death gems to summon mages with your pretender this drastically slows how fast you can site search.

As I mention, N5 is an expensive thing to do, but I think what you get justifies the cost. You very likely get hundreds of nature gems from putting the mother oak probably before anyone else can cast it and well before anyone is likely to try and dispel it. You get very solid entry into death, and a respectable one into blood. The alternative suggestion is to go with astral, I just don't see it bringing nearly as much to the table.

As to going for constr-4 first I think this is an expensive thing to do. I look at it this way, for your first engagement you're unlikely to have two mid level things researched, so would you rather have constr-4 or alt-5? Alt-5 brings numbness, quickness, wooden warriors, bone melter, encase in ice (perfect if your opponent has a SC god underwater) and swarm (perfect if your opponent has a SC god on land). Constr-4 certainly does give you a couple nice things, I just think it's better to focus on what gives you the most bang for the buck.

[vfb]

Thanks for another great guide Baalz!

Nitpick: Kokythiads are 'she' not 'he'. If you are going to cast Leviathan with them, see if you can do it at the Water Solstice, for 50% off. It's supposedly a rare site, but I've seen it pop up every time I've been in the water.

Transformation: IMO this spell is still teh suck. Every time I've tried it my mage has just died. Not that I tried it very much after the first few times. If there was just a chance of affliction, I could handle that, but instadeath? That just bites.

Merman Priest: Don't forget to site search with these, Ancient Temple of the Deep are frequent and H1 and give S1W1.

Bishop Fish: Can be used to smite MR5 Krakens and MR8 Sea Serpents.

[Baalz]

Mother oak is alt-5, there's no need to go for ench early. I think merms are not a good way to go initially because of a number of factors regardless of if you get friendly currents. Even with production scales you're going to be horribly resource constrained as to how many you can recruit and their encumbrance makes them not terribly viable until you've got something that can lay out damage faster than their staggering fatigue mounts up.

To be sure there's different ways to play most nations and I wouldn't begin to try and convince you that what you're suggesting could not also be effective, but I think we've got two different philosophies. You're looking to play a slow methodical turtling strategy involving clamming and long term investments. This is rather a classical way to play MA Oceana and relies on having complete water domination to comfortably fortify. My outline is a much more hybrid-amphibious approach which plays on different strengths and sets you up to be a solid land power from the beginning as well as a water power.

I disagree that you can't be competitive on land very early using the strategies I outline here, particularly if you're smart about how you expand. Are you really going to declare war on me (Oceana) in order to snatch 3 provinces before you get to the coast and our defacto new border while setting yourself up for constant siren harassment and coastal raids by troops that have no problem at all wiping out your PD? It's also a bit of a strawman to attack my suggestion of swarm, that's obviously not what my priority was, it's a bonus you pick up when you get wooden warriors and mother oak which is very useful in some situations you'll run into early game. I understand you played an effective game focusing on conjuration, but there's more than one way to play effectively. Also, though I didn't spell it out it's obvious from the rest of what I wrote that conjuration is a close second after alteration.

I also don't think you're really seeing the big picture with the mother oak/llamia queen plan. Yes, you have a solid nature income without the mother oak, but I'm suggesting spending a massive ammount of nature gems to transform scores of mages, summon dozens of llamia queens, not to mention the fact that every fairy queen you can scrape up is pure gold. If you can't find a good use for every nature gem then I think you're doing something wrong.

[chrispedersen]

But Baalz,

Have you actually cast transformation much? Even with a Luck-3, I seem to end up dead about 10% of the time, and feebleminded about 20%. And there are even more circumstances in which you end up with rather useless forms. Thats a pretty high opportunity cost - plus the mage action, plus the gems - and frankly I don't think you can really afford a +3luck +3magic design.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Baalz

To be sure there's different ways to play most nations and I wouldn't begin to try and convince you that what you're suggesting could not also be effective, but I think we've got two different philosophies.

Repeat after me, Baalz - "I am sure that you can make that effective if you try, but I am also sure that what I described is effective, but I also found it interesting enough and fun enough to write an actual guide for it".



I am going to put together an SP test to goof around with them, now that you finally got around to this. I'll do a bit of a different pretender, but I like your angle a lot, so it'll just be stylistic differences.

I do think it wasn't stated strongly enough how much you want a good land holding early on, so that you have area to site search, and for Blood Hunting before you intentionally open up a land war. I think key to not being pushed straight into the water again, is to have a decent holding, so it's not just "1, 2, you're out!", but also that they know you are strong enough that even if they push you off, you will harass then and drag them down for the rest of the game. I don't think a lot of people understand that attacking an aquatic nation's land provinces without a clear plan of how to kill them off ultimately just ruins both nations' chances, for little gain.

[Baalz]

[quote=JimMorrison;675603]

Originally Posted by Baalz

I think key to not being pushed straight into the water again, is to have a decent holding, so it's not just "1, 2, you're out!", but also that they know you are strong enough that even if they push you off, you will harass then and drag them down for the rest of the game. I don't think a lot of people understand that attacking an aquatic nation's land provinces without a clear plan of how to kill them off ultimately just ruins both nations' chances, for little gain.

Yes, to me, the ideal situation is to make the other guy look at it like this:

I've only got 3 land provinces I can take before I have to go into the water to pursue this war.

Unless I'm prepared to go underwater and dig him out (!) the best case scenario is I take those three provinces without much fight but then have to defend my whole coast for a very long time while being harassed by sirens, raiders, and rituals. More likely it's going to be a bloody fight for those three provinces.

Alternatively Oceana is offering me a nice NAP and peace of mind to not have to worry about defending my long coast. Plus he's got the paths to forge a couple items I need and might be useful to help me in a fight with our mutual neighbor...

I usually try to expand with this in mind, and play my diplomacy that way. 3-4 provinces on this coast, 2 more over there, and grab that island nobody else wanted anyway. Now, wait for a good opportunity to join a war against somebody who's doing a good job of loosing already...

[Dragar]

I'm looking forward to see how this goes in WildRed, although I can't but think Baalz will be altering this strategy for the game, its hard to believe he'd give the game away just as a MP game starts..

[vfb]

One more question ... why go 5A instead of 4A on the Ghost King? It's 40 points from 4A to 5A.

A 4A mage needs 4A gems to cast Fog Warriors instead of 3A gems for a 5A caster. But you'll be at 200 fatigue either way.

For the 5A rituals, you can make a booster.

[Tifone]

I was wondering about that too vfb 4A seems enough to me.

(and if you want really high A you can Wish later for the new A8 LA agarthan commander of CBM!! lolz )

[Baalz]

Well, the thing about transformation is it completely removes upkeep cost. The upkeep cost of a unit is 1/15th it's cost, so if you transform 15 mages your upkeep savings will give you gold for a "free" replacement every turn. I don't know what the failure rate is, but if it's 10% (and you ignore the gem cost of transformation) then it pays for itself in less than two turns. That is to say if you have to pay for a replacement mage 10% of the time you can do it with the upkeep savings after a turn and a half. This also discounts the fact that the mages after the transformation are significantly more powerful if you plan to use them on land. The failure rate is further dropped if you just stash those upkeep free feebleminded dudes somewhere until you've got a bunch of fairy queens sitting around to heal them.

As to the A5, that's a bit of a judgement call but I was thinking about wind ride when I did it. Also, until you get all the way up to conj-8 your pretender is your only air support and it's useful to be able to cast fog warriors and not pass out (A5 with 5 gems) so you can then cast returning the next turn to keep your pretender relatively risk free. You could put the points elsewhere if you want, but it seemed a decent investment.