Worst Nations in Each Era

[Sombre]

Atlantis needs a better starting fort. Or maybe a site that produces resources.

[Baalz]

Well, let me preface this by saying I've never played EA Atlantis, and don't even have a crystal clear idea of what they have so I may be a bit off on this. I did write guides for MA and LA though, and some of the thinking on those nations might be relevant (or not). I think Micah's comparison to Dai Oni misses an extremely important facet...well, not so much misses it as downplays it. The Basalt kings are amphibious. This is a defining characteristic even moreso than Dai Oni being demons. I go into this in a good amount of detail in my MA Atlantis guide, but the way a game with EA/MA Atlantis must go you've got really three different games to play (if you go all the way to a win) - underwater vs R'yleh/Oceana, attacking from the water to the land, & holding a big piece of land. For the first two stages the comparison between Dai Oni and Niefels isn't appropriate because of the difference in how the units are used and what they're fighting. For underwater/early fighting the basalt king with light equipment and buffs is the best recruitable SC chasis available to any nation. For sea to land attacking (before end game) the comparison still isn't fair because the water attacker almost always has the luxury of choosing his fight so having half a dozen Basalt Kings ready to blitz one of three coasts pending a good opportunity is a very different thing from how Dai Oni or Jarls are deployed. You have to play Atlantis like a submarine and hit your opponents with overwhelming torpedoes when they don't expect it. Slugging toe to toe with a land nation on the land you're usually gonna lose, so don't do that. A submarine attacking a battleship.

[thejeff]

No, a better starting fort would let you get more Pillars earlier, but they're still not worth the massive bless you need to make them useful. S8 just to bring them up to par with most sacred's base mr?

A cheap research mage would help. (A reef dweller mage, recruitable in coastal forts?)

A price break on Mages of the Deep would be nice.

[P3D]

Basalt kings have similar stats to the Niefels (or the other recruitable SCs) without the cold aura and less HP (50 or so).
Magi of the Deep are OK thugs but they are expensive for research.
A 10HP-ish Reef Dweller Mage with W1+100%FEW for 80gp is indeed what they need, as they cannot recruit anything useful in coastal forts.

[Agema]

I think Basalt Kings are fine for the price. They're extremely powerful. Similarly, Deep Mages are uncomfortably expensive for research, but Atlantis isn't the only nation in a similar situation (e.g. Vanheim).

[Micah]

Eh, an Oni with poor amphibian penalties is just as good a fighter as a basalt king is normally, so a few water breathing items closes that gap pretty reasonably.

Granted, with Atlantis you have great first-strike capability and mobility in the water, but you're either in a very tough battle down there with the other EA aquatics or you're pretty well short on provinces (Or you did....favors for whoever set up the player choices and map pick, I suppose.)

Glancing at your MA atlantis guide I see your strategy once you've exhausted your sneak attack options are "left as an exercise for the student." At least in EA the end of midgame where you leave off is where the crap really starts hitting the fan. Your aquatic advantage is diminishing both as you get some land territories and as more SCs start showing up, your research is inevitably trailing most every other competitive nation due to mage limitations, and your lack of A, D, N and all but rare and expensive S is really going to kick in. Lack of air and astral also means that you've gone from having movement advantage from being amphibious to being outmaneuvered by teleport spells, more so as your empire gets bigger, especially since you can't recruit out of the water.

So yeah, being amphibians is great if you want to win a war, it starts being a lot less shiny if you're trying to win a game.

[Baalz]

Well, to be fair at the point I suggest you can figure out what to do I've set you up to presumably hold all the water, have a good chunk of land, have negotiated a good ally or two, have a virtually unlimited supply of teleporting thugs, have batteries of very powerful artillery mages and are obviously in a position that has to be played very much contingent on what your very few left opponents are doing. At the point you've exhausted your sneak attack you should be controlling 3-4+ capitals and have got to the point where national troops aren't really too significant.

[Micah]

Baalz - Taking a closer look at the guide I don't see anywhere where you address Atlantis' (both eras) cripplingly bad gold:RP ratio other than to say "get lots of money."

You also suggest a 0-magic kraken pretender, which leaves you without any D access to speak of, and that's the premier path that makes "national troops insignificant" by virtue of tarts. You're also short of N, which is the OTHER major late game path for SC chassis-making and is vital for a lot of items, like regen. (Though once you make landfall you can at least manage some tribals.) Again, your guide does a great job getting to midgame, especially if you have to contend with the other W nations, but I'm not seeing a great path from there assuming a land nation plays equally as well...they're likely to have just as much territory, better magic diversity (and hence gems, most likely) much better research, and, evidently, better SC chassis.

This isn't supposed to be a dig at your guide, I think you did a great job working with the little bit you have to work with, but that's why I'm stating my opinion that Atlantis (both eras) could use a bit of love. They're not in need of a huge overhaul, but I think a slight price drop on the Kings to say, 450, would be justified, and some cheap researchers for both eras would be a godsend.

EA also doesn't have S access for any purposes other than site searching and light forging, so all of the teleport and gating ideas are off the table. The mages of the deep are also much worse than the kings, since they lose a W path off the bat and don't have linked randoms, meaning they're more likely to end up with a less useful assortment of abilities...E1 in particular is a wasted path.

[Baalz]

At the risk of sounding argumentative I do feel the need to defend my thesis here. The question of N gems does come up in the thread of that guide and I suggest using the small N income you'll get from level-0 underwater N sites (and possibly conquering Oceana lands) to eventually empower a king, and summon a Niad or two using water gems. You won't be fielding much combat nature but you'll have plenty to site search your empire and spend your income, cast GoR, whatever and shouldn't have much trouble having a very solid N income by late game. Lack of D is definitely in the "con" column, but not every end game strategy has to center on Tartarians- particularly with an obvious good tartarian counter (ubiquitous teleporting thugs who can quicken self and F magic for flambeauxs/scourges). What type of national troops you've got isn't significant not just because of SC's but also because of spells like army of lead, will of the fates, weapons of sharpness coupled with acid storm, niefel flames, etc. Obviously I'm not suggesting you're in an unbeatable position, but you've certainly got the tools to fight the good fight against any nation provided you've entered late game in style. It's also disingenuous to dismiss my suggestion as "get lots of money". To be fair my suggestion is to go for excellent scales and push your dominion hard to make the most of it, sharply limit how many troops you're buying, castle up quickly, pump out mages as fast as you can to the exclusion of everything else if possible, and tightly limit what you're researching to the essentials. You're not going to be leading in the research department but you shouldn't be dominated either.

FWIW, I have implemented this strategy verbatim successfully (finished second in a very large game).

[P3D]

I looked at Atlantis again, and experimented a bit.
Problem with EA Atlantis is their early expansion. Why?

The troops have mediocre protection and abysmal to mediocre (7-12) defense meaning they won't last long. Perhaps their most decent unit is the War Shamber, but that sacrifices the extra attack of the Shambler for some armor and shields - and won't get the Coral Glaive hinted in the description. Glaive, an extra point of attack/defence and a sharkskin cap would help them a lot.
Coral Guards/Pillars have just too high encumbrance to be useful with their single attack of 10. The two shamblers of the deep have abysmal defense scores besides their similar MR.
They have serious problems against Triton Guard and Amber clan independents unless they attack in great quantities (which Atlantis cannot afford with 250g non-sacred magi and 500gp BKs). And underwater capitals with the usual 3 neighbors means they will have strong independents next door.

The usual E9N4 giant bless is expensive, as none of the available pretenders start with Earth magic. And the BKs need magical armor to utilize it as all their starting equipment is a quarterstaff and a loincloth. They have a natural protection of 16 (with Earth) but they face either poison or tridents on the stronger independents. Some starting equipment armor+helmet, would help a lot - just slap on some Boots of the Behemoth and go. I'd also change the Dagon pretenders magic to W1E1 from W2, that'd fit better with the Basalt City thematic.

This means Atlantis needs a SC to start with, i.e. mediocre scales and restricted paths on the pretender - and they can afford neither.