Worst Nations in Each Era

[Micah]

I saw the N bit after I posted, but like the rest of the guide I see it as making the best of a bad situation, not finding some secret. Having access by turn 30 (25 turns or so assuming you find 2 level 0 sites early) is not really a noteworthy way to break into a path, since that's about when you can get the booster rings to pretty much bootstrap anything, but especially N with shaman available for recruitment. Using the booster rings and 2 shaman and making 2 thistle maces gets you 2 haruspex casters as well, but saves you 43N, they can also start manually searching as soon as you get a lab + temple up (and they make fairly cost-effective researchers for most nations as well). If you're specifically going for clam production the Naiad is a better buy (arguably, I usually empower W, not N if I'm going for clams), otherwise you're blowing your N gems on top of being slow out the gate compared to other nations.

As far as D access...well, artifacts is warping my perception a little bit, since it's high-gem, low gold, but I'd have to say that tartarians are a vital part of late-game strategies, though obviously not the only one. They are simply amazingly cost effective, and they also have the benefit of providing their own counter-counters, since all of the less-useful chassis immediately pick up the job of damage sinks. Anything that's countering a tartarian is going to be a glass cannon and getting tied up in tartarian chaff is going to get them killed.

The other obvious addition to tarts are abominations, which will just eat anything that's kitted to take down tarts. Add in some darkness for extra fun. And of course by forcing your opponents to gear the 3x damage weapons you're drastically cutting down their strategic options.

Oh, and of course EA doesn't have teleporting thugs anyhow, making most of that previous discussion moot.

Army buffs are nice, but Atlantis isn't gonna be the nation that gets there first, research wise. Quickening and Weapons of Sharpness are pretty awesome though, I give them that. Outside of those two they do have issues casting Will of The Fates in EA, and Army of Shock Vulnerability is always a risky call against a smart opponent with access to Wrathful Skies.

As far as the gold strat...You're right, there's a little bit more to it than "get lots of gold" but not enough to cover the g:rp shortfall. The "standard" MP build people generally use for scales is Order 3, Sloth 3, temperature 3, misfortune 2, magic 1. Growth and temperature give about 25% more gold (20% base since temperature scales fluctuate so counting the full 24% the scales say isn't justified, so we'll call 25% a happy medium due to the ongoing growth effects.) Castling up is mostly meaningless with 10-admin forts, and keeping low troop numbers is standard practice, I loaded up a random game I finished a while back and my troops account for about 15% of my upkeep, so there's not much fat to trim there. (That was with LA ulm pumping out ghoul guardians too, in artifacts I have 53 militia, 2 men at arms, 1 xbowman, 6 trolls, and 8 voi axemen to my nation's name. Enslave mind and events account for all but the trolls.)

Assuming a magic-1 scale the mage of the deep yields a 35.7 g:rp return. Pulling out a few other EA comparisons: Ulm's shaman are 34.5 and are sacred (I'm giving them credit for the 50% random path here). Yomi's Hanneya are 25, Arco's mystics are 23, Augur elders are 27.5, Marverni's druids are horrible at a 42, but are sacred, Enaries are 21.4, anathemant salamanders are 26, and sacred. Hell, PANS, renowned for how horribly bad they are at research for their cost, still clock in at a 34.7. Sacred nations are paying about half what Atlantis is in upkeep, non-sacred nations around 2/3rds..even with 25% more gold than them they STILL have a research edge, and that's blowing 120 design points on growth, and assuming all you provs are in the water and thus not temp-sensitive, or another 120 points on that scale. I also made sure to pick combat-ready non-cap mages for the comparison...spire horn seraphs clock in at 15, Masters of the way at 25/sacred...Mictlan priests at 15/sacred, so the numbers are even worse in a real game when people have devoted researchers. The Heims are the only nations even close to Atlantis' suckitude research wise, and they're still winning the race due to sacred upkeep.

Again, your guide is fine, and makes reasonable sacrifices to do what it has to do to get the nation by, but I maintain that the nation itself could use a little bit of a boost. Player skill matters for a lot more than nation strength in dom, and you're one of the better players around. It's not surprising you did well with them in a larger game. Looking at the Hall of fame MA Ermor and MA Ctis have the same number of wins, and are clearly very different power levels...a couple of results don't prove much.

[Zeldor]

I agree pretty much on everything with Micah. I am playing both EA and MA Atlantis now, so I can make some comments:

General:
- resource-heavy uw nations just don't work, with 10 admin forts, 20 admin cap you can recruit ****, and you are not guaranteed 4-5 uw neighbours like land nations get
- W on SC/thug is really bad path to have, unless you can get lots of reinvig on your gear and don't put really heavy gear, otherwise no quicken self for you

EA Atlantis:
- no N, no free forts, no reinvig gear for BKs, no quicken self for them
- you need pretender to get starshine caps
- good paths for some forging [brands, hammers, golden shields for fear+awe on BKs]
- H3 priests fighting for recruitment with BKs
- totally useless units, the more expensive the worse they are
- crap research [really, just because you have F on mages to research it does not mean you are research powerhouse, you will need to use all F on lanterns to just catch with middle of the pack]
- Kings of the Deep are no thugs at all, but are more expensive than most of them
- no D, B, real S
- nothing to fight Oceania early on
- nothing to fight R'lyeh early on [8 MR elite troops? haha, you'd also want more MR on BKs before sending them alone agaisnt all that nasty stuff, so you'd want starshine or rainbow on top of AmA]

MA:
- no SCs here
- troops as sucky as in EA
- cannot forge hammers before const6 for E booster
- very bad paths for forging thug gear [W3S2, W5, W3E2, W3F2 is all they get]
- no N [no free forts, no reinvig for thugs]
- highly overpriced thugs
- no viable reseachers [60gp W1 mage is cap only, lol]
- no D,B
- at least some S...

If you take awake Kraken with EA or MA Atlantis, even if you win uw race, you are just doomed. You have totally no diversity, no important paths to use or site search for. Stuck with some useless pile of HP and being on mercy of other players to sell you gear you really need [cool uw indie mages are pretty much non-existant]. Your Kraken would get owned by EA OCeania knights anyway, or vs good mass of gibodais.

Baalz:
Your guide is a bit about hoping that someone you attack is blind. Sure, you can teleport in MA [only with const6], but good luck attacking someone with S mages. It will work once, on a limited scale. Later all your thugs are owned by Magic Duel. You will have much less mages than your opponent, less research and hard way to move any of them. You can use only those that are in your provs near his shore, moving anything through 5-6 water provs takes ages. And all forts you conquer will be useless - only indies to recruit and -15% income from cold3. You will have very limited mobility and for enemy it will be enough to put water breathing ring and trapeze/teleport into your uw provs to face just tiny PD.

Atlantis cannot and shouldn't win any uw wars assuming Oceania/R'lyeh are played by competent players. If you get small lake alone it means you have small area, small gem income, huge dominion problems. If you get big lake and kill other uw nations then... well, it's like assuming Marverni rulz as Hinnom player went AI and got conquered by them.

[Torin]

E9 blessing + summon earth power + girdle of might + boots of the messenger
thats enough.

[Zeldor]

Gimme a chassis for E9 for Atlantis. And N mage for boots. Unless the start is called "be lucky and find indie mages that fill your holes".

[Amorphous]

Look I do not want to give the wrong impression here. I do not consider EA Atlantis the most powerful nation ever, but I do also not consider it hopeless. I am all for critique of it - it is often a good opportunity to learn - but it needs to be reasonable.

Originally Posted by Zeldor

I agree pretty much on everything with Micah. I am playing both EA and MA Atlantis now, so I can make some comments:

General:
- resource-heavy uw nations just don't work, with 10 admin forts, 20 admin cap you can recruit ****, and you are not guaranteed 4-5 uw neighbours like land nations get

EA Atlantis is certainly not resource heavy. Decently cheap troops requiring all of 1 resource with two or three attacks (including a magic one if you need it) makes it pretty much a poster nation for sloth 3.

As an aside, land nations are not guaranteed 4-5 neighbours, as far as I know. I have certainly played plenty of games where that was not the case. A lot of maps people are using probably use that as a start condition, but presumably you could demand exactly the same for water starts.

- W on SC/thug is really bad path to have, unless you can get lots of reinvig on your gear and don't put really heavy gear, otherwise no quicken self for you

There are other spells than quicken self that require only water magic - I have used e.g. breath of winter to great effect. Regardless, Atlantis does have access to reinvigoration.

EA Atlantis:
- no N, no free forts, no reinvig gear for BKs, no quicken self for them

Say what?
All Basalt Kings can cast summon earthpower and without even the slightest shred of diversification, Atlantis can produce girdles of might. That is 7 reinvigoration right there on a 3 encumbrance unit.

- you need pretender to get starshine caps

Or just cough up 30 perls for an empowerment (to W2E1S2) if you cannot trade for any kind of S-booster. From there on the mages of the deep can keep on forging coins and caps without any further empowerment.

- good paths for some forging [brands, hammers, golden shields for fear+awe on BKs]

I also like staffs of corrosion. The mages can quicken themselves and then proceed to fire off two acid bolts each turn. (It sometimes happens that I have a mage present that has a path combination that is not that well suited to the battle at hand; a staff makes them into decent artillery.)

- H3 priests fighting for recruitment with BKs

Yes, but since Atlantis is not a bless nation, there is not that great a need for H3s. If you happen to have some minor bless for your kings, your ordinary priests can handle the blessing just fine.

- totally useless units, the more expensive the worse they are

They are hardly useless.
Even apart from the obvious hyperbole in the statement, I have a hard time seeing it. The various versions of deep atlanteans certainly have weaknesses, but they also have strengths. Darkvision and elemental resistances have their uses and their offensive power is absolutely top-notch for the price. Due to at best average defence and protection they tend to die a lot, but that is quite all-right as they are easily replaceable and give as good as they get.

- crap research [really, just because you have F on mages to research it does not mean you are research powerhouse, you will need to use all F on lanterns to just catch with middle of the pack]

Atlantis does not have good research, but it is not a catastrophy in my opinion. Mages are expensive, but not particularly slow.

The expensive mages are at least in part mitigated by the constitution of atlantean troops. You can levy a lot of them very quickly, so you can save quite a bit on upkeep.

- Kings of the Deep are no thugs at all, but are more expensive than most of them

With a bit of gear, they can be used as thugs, but I tend to use them more as battle mages, summoners and forgers. What they are good at depends on what paths they have, but they can all be used for cold spam. The ones with a astral pick bears special mention as they can access a lot of the more demanding spells through communions. If you absolutely need to get one off in the first round you can always forge a matrix.

- no D, B, real S

Quite.
Personally, I tend to take some nature on the pretender and then go as far into S as is feasible through clams via Naiads (this also nets me a late entrance into air). D and B are pretty much just viable if I find useful sites or commanders.

- nothing to fight Oceania early on

Oceania is certainly a lot better under water, but that is as it should be. Oceania does not have anything on Atlantis above the waves, so having them equal beneath them would be rather imbalanced.

- nothing to fight R'lyeh early on [8 MR elite troops? haha, you'd also want more MR on BKs before sending them alone agaisnt all that nasty stuff, so you'd want starshine or rainbow on top of AmA]

I really do not understand what your hang-up is with the living pillars. Why try to use them in a situation they are clearly not suitable for? It just does not make any sense.

While MR 10 troops are not ideal in fighting R'lyeh, they do work as long as you consider what the mind blasters like to target. Mixing in high-hp troops will make it possible to include numerous of the cheap MR 8 deep ones for cheap offensive punch. You will lose some, but again, they are easily replaced.

EA R'lyeh differs markedly from LA in that it has to actually pay for its chaff. And it is still rather bad. Counting on retreating and hiding behind PD is a losing proposition as the concentration of blasters (which is what R'lyeh has going for it) will go down and the PD itself pretty much explodes when coming in contact with Atlantis' offensively minded units.

Understand that I am not saying that Atlantis is horribly more powerful than R'lyeh under the waves. Indeed, it is probably at a slight disadvantage. However, it is a lot closer than the comparison to Oceania and R'lyeh certainly fares no better than the other on land.

Atlantis cannot and shouldn't win any uw wars assuming Oceania/R'lyeh are played by competent players.

I cannot agree.

Of course, Atlantis has to use what it has and not just pine for what it lacks. You should always keep in mind that you are the only fully amphibious nation in the age. Just as you use the relative safety of the water when attacking land nations, you should use the relative safety of land provinces when attacking your under water rivals. Carving out a big land empire early is probably not a good idea - you will be a too juicy target for real land nations - but a couple of coastal provinces is fine. Taking them from you will generally be more trouble than it is worth as it will inevitable result in you raiding them from your safe under water position.

This strategical advantage is huge.



@P3D: I agree with the part about slow expansion and need for an SC god. I do think that it is affordable, though. I usually go for a dom 10 Dagon with some earth and nature. This allows me to research straight up the conjuration school for Voice of Tiamat and pick up reinvigoration and regeneration on the way. This also lets me summon Naiads and get into nature in a big way as well as providing a rather slow but effective development of astral through clams, if nothing else.

Atlantis needs high order, but very little resources and taking cold 3 has a couple of advantages: you do not suffer financially under the waves and while you have cold resistant troops your under water rivals do not. Especially Oceania has quite a lot of high encumbrance troops and they are not happy with the extra encumbrance - it is not much, but every bit helps.

Before mid- to late-game craziness sets in, you should have won (or lost) the sea, so from there on you can leverage yourself to further victories through superior gem income.

[Agema]

As a minor point, Atlantis is not the only fully amphibious nation in EA: Agartha also is. Also, I found expanding with War Shamblers extremely easy as EA Atlantis.

I took on 70 mind blasters and a melee screen with about 250 MR-10 units, about 80 War Shamblers, 80 Triton Guards and 80 Atlanteans. I lost my army and barely scratched the melee shield. It would be interesting to see if a few Basalt Kings up front with Iron Will could take the punishment instead and let the army get through. On the other hand, you'd still be in trouble going on the offence, as with MR-17 against enough mind blasters the Basalt Kings will almost certainly be paralysed before they can cast it and very vulnerable. Successive paralyses when you're already paralysed can cause damage as I recall from the rulebook, plus the 1AN MR additional damage, which can add up to plenty of pain.

Bear in mind also, those nice, juicy high-HP units are begging to receive special attention from Rlyeh's astral mages: paralyze, soul slay, horror mark, mind blast.

[vfb]

Sea Trolls are great at eating Illithid (or Gibbodai) fire and diverting attacks from your mages. They've got regen, 14 MR, nice HP. They're only expensive in terms of mage time to summon, assuming you're in an early fight and can't get the whole court.

Atlantis units are just too slow, so hire a crapload of cheap indy Tritons, cast a few School of Sharks if you have conj-4, and you should be okay. If you've gotten some N, then a couple Summon Animals helps too, especially if you get lucky with a lot of Hippocampus.

[Sombre]

Sea Trolls are only an early game option with CBM on though, where the individual summon is lower research. In vanilla I think they're just going to come out too late to help against rlyeh.

[Baalz]

Well, I don't disagree with many of your points Micah/Zeldor, and as I mention I'm talking more of MA Atlantis and the conversation is getting a bit crossed. I will say, having played a fair number of games as aquatic nations I find it impossible to overstate the strategic value of attacking from the water to land the first (and possibly second) time. As I say with that sub/battleship analogy you're pretty undeniably weaker than a top notch land nation all things being equal. That said, I've never (in say 10 games) gotten to the point that I controlled the seas and didn't relatively shortly attack someone on the coast in an overwhelming sneak attack, which generally leads to a very good sized empire difficult to attack (because it's 2/3rds underwater) and a war ally. Given this massive strategic advantage I think it's appropriate that the underwater nation be somewhat disadvantaged in a fair fight. I'll concede you've got an uphill fight to get to that point as EA/MA Atlantis given their underwater opposition, but it's not a shutout and is appropriate for a more experience vs less experienced matchup.

[Sombre]

I think it kinda is a shutout if it's atlantis vs oceania in EA in the same sea. The knights of the deep are just savage and generally Oceania can go right for you without having to worry about overextending and getting ganked by someone else (unless rlyeh is also underwater and next to them rather than you, if they're next to you, you just get double stomped in a joint attack).