Pretender Design: Water Cults

[Chazar]

I am wondering about sensible Nation/Pretender combinations for picking the Water Cult Theme. Suppose you want to play on a smaller map with quite some water on it and that you need to compete with nations that naturally have less difficulty with moving under/over the sea...

Since the water cult only gives sacred troops the ability to move into the sea (right?), one should take a look at nations with sensible sacred troops.

Another difficulty is to ensure that adjacent Water Provinces remain under friendly dominion, so one should take a higher dominion score and look out for good (possibly stealthy) preachers, no?

So my first guess for a suitable nation would be Ctis: Good priests and two sacred units (the not-so-nice sacred serpet and the nice serpent dancer) (both having poision resistance, which might be helpful against tritons). What would be a sensible pretender then? Which other nations would make sense?

(Another option instead of water cults might be a high water-based pretender: Blue Dragon, Frost Father (or the sailing Rime Mariner if you fancy Zen's Mods). Any suggestions for suitable nations for these?)

[Boron]

Imo the 2 best Nations for going into Water are Pythium and Caelum .

All their mages can go in the water and they can cast lots of useful spells underwater .


Taking water cult doesn't really work imo . The only 2 nations with really good sacred stuff are Jotunheim and Vanheim .

Imo conquering the water against a waternation is quite difficult because you get so many mali for fighting underwater .

Graeme said in a recent post that the best solution is to dominionkill the waternations .
I agree fully here . Try to outdominion them by negating them access to the shore . If really needed lategame you can try an invasion with tartarians .

[Gandalf Parker]

Jotunheim has some pretty buff mages. Able to stand up fairly well. After all, all you really need is to get your foot in then you can expand like a water nation using the independent troops. Build a lab and get some summons to help also.

Marignon has alot of decent blessed units. And can hold their own when they come across Ermor trying to expand thru the water

[Chazar]

Boron said:
Taking water cult doesn't really work imo . The only 2 nations with really good sacred stuff are Jotunheim and Vanheim .
...
Graeme said in a recent post that the best solution is to dominionkill the waternations .
I agree fully here . Try to outdominion them by negating them access to the shore . If really needed lategame you can try an invasion with tartarians .

I actually proposed preaching against the oceans myself awhile ago (Post#259089). Nevertheless I am wondering what WaterCults are good for and how this theme could be used in MP games. That is my intended question in this thread - and not how to circumvent the problem otherwise. Thus: Is it possible to successfully play a water-cult nation in MP and benefit from it? If yes, then how? What are the key points?

The map that I have recently presented here has quite a lot of sea provinces permeating the entire world. I agree that WaterCults are seemingly useless in the presence of nations that are at home at the sea (Oceania, R'yleh, Atlantis). So to give this discussion a chance, let us assume my map (102 provinces) played by 6-10 players without any water nations present then?

What are reasons to choose a WaterCult? How do I complement this choice in the rest of my Pretender design? I am asking for concrete Pretender Designs and the intended strategy behind them...

[Endoperez]

I think that if going underwater needs either pretender with Water or Water Cult, who not use a nation that can use Water blessing together with Water Cult? Vanir of course, and to lesser extent Tuatha, White/Black Centaurs and Serpent Dancers benefit from Water Blessing, and are reasonable units to try to take on underwater. Especially with some help from the pretender.

I am not skilled enough to answer to Chazar's second post, but in some cases the option of going underwater might be worth the points. It might be worth it for Vanheim, whose Vanir could retreat to seas if an oversea-attack failed... But I don't even know if that is possible

[tinkthank]

Sorry, pressed for time, just a quick reminder:

You CANNOT use Special Themes and Water Cult at the same time, hence you can never find a Tuatha (or Demons of Heavenly Fires, or Hangadrott, etc. etc.) benefiting from a Water Cult.

This is either an intended or unintended feature of dom2 as it now stands.

(I personally have little or no experience with water cult in competetive MP (although I have often taken Ceremonial Faith with success), hence I will try to avoid saying something useless here.)

[Boron]

Hm i think there is no use for watercult at all Chazar .
The 50 points are e.g. 1 scale and something .

If you play without water nations there are then much cheaper ways to kill the indy water provine guards like using an ID or some mech men .

All your watermages can go into the sea also and almost every nation can forge a waterbreath item which is enough to bring with enough good troops to kill the underwater indies .

Finally you will likely find a coast province with shamblers or other amphibian creatures which are enough to conquer the water also .

If Water cult would grant Water breathing to all your units then i would consider it . But as it is you better invest the points in an additional scale or something similiar .

[Chazar]

Boron said:
Hm i think there is no use for watercult at all Chazar

I fear that as well, but Dom2 would not be Dom2 if there would not be certain special case which warrants some usefulness to the weirdst of feature or creature... Gandalf???

So where are the experts that confirm that Illwinter has made the WaterCult rightly cost its design points? (In 2.14 it is 50, but I think with the Oceania mod enabled in 2.15 it is only 25 points. And doesn't the required magic scale cost additional 40 points as usual? or are there some nations that get discounts on these themes? I'll need to check that...) Otherwise for some wishful thinking, would it be too cheap to pay 50 design point to turn all national troops into poor amphibians within friendly dominion only?

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The only real benefit that comes to my mind so far would be the possibility to go underneath the sea early one, which might be nice for maps with almost guaranteed access to the sea from the initial starting position...

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Endropez made a point I am thinking about myself: if you depend on sacred units, one should go for a bless effect as well, while the water blessing means that the pretender can bring along non-sacred units...

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[Jack Simth]

It might be useful in a low magic, difficult research game when there are no water nations playing, as it could allow a player to get established underwater before anyone else could.

[Truper]

Water Cult is pretty hard to use. I've never seen anyone take it, and have barely toyed with the notion myself. Not many nations have sacred troops and sacred leaders that can stand up to masses of poisonous flyers. If you want to get into the water early, taking a Wyrm pretender is a simpler solution.