0. 2 Description 3 Credits
Download 5.74 Mb.
|
| Meanwhile you¿re cranking out mages as fast as you can with a laser beam focus on conjuration if possible. You may need to sidetrack to alteration if you¿re hard pressed (more on that in a second), but you¿ve got three critical goals under conjuration. The first is Voice of Tiamat at con-4, this spell gives the water nations a huge leg up in the gem income department. As all the water nations are going to be getting this fairly early it¿s not going to give you an advantage so much as make sure you¿re not at a severe disadvantage. The next two major goals are both at con-6. Shark attack is like having nuclear weapons for underwater fights¿if one guy has it and the other guy doesn¿t the fight is probably already decided. The other is the often overlooked Atlantis national summon the monster fish.
This leads into my next topic, your next research target is alteration. Underwater fights differ from land fights in a couple important ways, but arguably the biggest difference is the lack of good evocation spells. This ties in with the lack of conventional archers to make the goto spells for underwater domination alteration spells (the lack of archers means your mages can and should be mixed right in with your troops for optimal buffing). I outlined a suggestion for a very nasty Ancient Kraken above, the same logic applies to any other reasonably tough chasis. If you¿re sorely pressed early on the con-3 summonable krakens are pretty darned tough for the cost with similar buffs (iron warriors, quickness, iron will, body ethereal, luck), but the crown jewel is the monster fish. This guy has 128 hit points, decent MR (especially when buffed) and most importantly has a rather unique attack. It does 25 damage (factoring its strength), but X2 vs smaller beings and is AOE 1. That means anything which is not size 6 or has a whole lot of hit points dies regardless of defense or protection and it can gobble up a bunch of smaller units in a bite. Cast quickness on him and each one of these guys is clearing two squares per turn regardless of how fancy the enemy troops are. Throw iron warriors and body ethereal on him and it takes a loooong time to do 128 damage to him. Throw iron will on him and he¿s got a respectable 17 MR so those typical animal counters aren¿t gonna help. Now figure he¿s only 10 gems so you should have several (he¿s not being swarmed by himself) and you begin to see why I like these guys so much. Support them with some reasonable chaff and a few war lobsters to break the enemy¿s initial charge (while you finish buffing) and this becomes a very tough nut to crack. Well, this is one example (my favorite), but obviously the logic can extend to whatever your summon of choice is. Many people disregard mages underwater because of the lack of good damage dealing spells, you don¿t have that luxury playing as Atlantis. Your mages (and summons) are going to be the backbone of your army, your troops just plain suck. So, you¿ve invested heavily in all this underwater only stuff and you¿ve managed to conquer every underwater province on the map. Now what? Now you¿ve got to shift gears because you¿re no longer the underdog, you¿re a submarine. Though this seems simply trite at first, I don¿t mean this in a symbolic sense, I mean it in a strategic one. Strategically, on the land you have to think of a land nation as a battleship while you¿re a submarine. If you surface and start trading blow for blow you¿re gonna come out the looser almost every time. That¿s not how submarines fight, and it¿s not how Atlantis (actually this is applicable to any underwater race trying to take to the land) can successfully fight on the land. A couple things to keep in mind. 1) You¿ve invested in some aquatic only heavy hitters and have several other significant advantages fighting under the water against land-lubbers. 2) Assuming you¿re in control of most of the water you¿ve got very long borders with several nations which are likely lightly defended. The first point is important because it¿s going to be extremely rare for a land nation to launch an offensive war that takes them under the water anytime before extreme late game, and if they do you¿re generally sitting pretty as you can inflict casualties much easier that way before bringing the war back to them. This means you very rarely want to have NAPs with land nations initially, they¿re much more limiting to you than they are useful. At the point you¿re in control of the water you should have several long relatively undefended borders to choose from and the freedom to choose your target. This is where it¿s important to remember the submarine analogy, you have to make sure that the fight is over before your opponent has a chance to react. Look for a target that 1) You have a long coastal border with 2) Is just a little smaller and weaker than you 3) Is involved in another war front 4) That you can make a war alliance against with somebody else. 5) That you can gain political advantage from taking out (use this as an opportunity to make an ally of his enemy) What you want to do is hit him with an overwhelmingly large barrage of torpedoes¿er¿raiders in a totally unannounced sneak attack. With a long border and teleporting thugs you should look at attacking 12+ provinces the turn he realizes there is a war on, and having 20 by the time he has a chance to react. Remember, you¿re looking to take out PD and capture territories, not kill big armies so hit him everywhere at once. If you choose your target well and time this right (as he¿s otherwise engaged and you have a wide vector of attack) it will be over before it starts. Remember, if you sneak attack a castle with no troops in it your opponent won¿t be able to recruit any troops there unless he can break the siege which can be a problem if the nearest army is not very close. Use the element of surprise to its full advantage and don¿t let that battleship bring its big guns to bear. At this point you should be sitting pretty with all the water provinces, a good chunk of land, a strong gem income, strong research and a strong ally or two. Your options are pretty open at this point and I¿ll leave them as an exercise for the student. Now, here¿s some suggestions on what to do with your mages. Initiate of the Deep I told you not to get these guys, didn¿t I? You can use them for Frozen Heart if you disregarded me¿. Seer of the Deep Astral & water buffs as outlined above body ethereal, luck, quickness. Gatewaying troops around (cap + crystal coin). You can use them for communions as well for truly sick falling frost spam. In a pinch you can use them to mind duel those Starspawn who are trying to Soul Slay your Monster Fish (use the ones that are diseased because they¿re old. ). With a cap and coin these guys are also mind hunt capable and Atlantis can easily forge rune smashers, eyes of the void and spell foci. Speaking of Mind Hunt, not only does Oceana not have any astral mages, but also there are no (to my knowledge) underwater indie astral mages so mind hunts will be a shooting gallery. King of the Deep As I said above, these guys are the centerpiece of your nation and I¿m going to have to break down each random pick to do them justice. Now, keep in mind that these are also your mainline researchers so don¿t be shy about pulling them to other uses as need dictates, one of your big advantages is that you¿ve got a large pool of them to pull from as needed. Also, I¿m only going to talk about the 4 100% random pics, you¿ll get several more flavors with the 10% pick which give you important diversity into things like crystal coins. Water (5W) slap a water bracelet and a robe of the sea for a 7W mage. This is going to be your heavy artillery on land, most of the water evocation spells scale exponentially in effectiveness as the mage¿s power grows and having 5 or 6 7W guys casting (as appropriate) Falling Frost, Cleansing Water, Ice Strike, or Living Water is a pretty ridiculously effective given the cost of the mage and how many times they can cast it before passing out. Keep these guys as artillery in your army, they¿re the least useful as thugs and paradoxically not terribly useful for fighting underwater. For late game most anything not cold immune will have a hard time standing up to a couple Niefel Flames and being armor negating even cold resistant troops will go down to several castings if they¿re not totally immune. Fire (3W 2F) As artillery look at Acid Rain in combination with the falling frost/ice strikes cast by your water Kings to destroy those tougher enemies. This scales with water power as well so these guys will benefit from water bracelets and robes as well. As thugs slap good reinvig on them and think fire shield, phonix pyre, fire resitance and breath of winter to take out pesky cold or heat radiating enemies. Earth (3W 2E) These guys have several uses, but in case you didn¿t pick up on that yet I love using them to buff. Iron Warriors and Iron Will I¿ve mentioned, but also with earth boots and summon earth power these guys can lay down more potent Weapons of Sharpness or Army of Lead. As thugs think Summon Earth Power, Invulnerability, Quickness, Iron Will, Breath of Winter for situations where you need some uber protection. Astral (3W 2S) These are your super mobile teleporting thugs. Slap an astral cap, frost brand, decent shield and armor, some reinvig items then script Body Ethereal, Personal Luck, Breath of Winter and they¿ll take out most PD (modify your equipment and scripting depending on what you¿re actually fighting). You'll want basically every one of these you get as a thug, use the Seers of the Deep for any other astral needs you have. 8.12.3 LA Atlantis 8.12.3.1 LA Atlantis, another thread looking for tips -> I think the Assartut low resource cost mahes them interesting for beginning the game. I had a SP game where I was facing man and I had no problem punching through their lines (mostly used glaives). I almost never use chaff units when I can avoid it, I prefer to use my gold on powerfull units. I think chaff is mostly a weakness, specially the harpoon throwers, which will do almost no damage at range before getting killed rapidly in close combat, closing your army to the deadly 40 % loose. LA atlantis must rely on damage dealers (glaive people) 'cause you've got no archers at the beginning, and it's pretty hard finding cold immune indeps.
Among the last two, Banishment is effective, but against the Tomb Kings isn't likely to be enough on its own. That's where Dust to Dust comes into play. It's easy to overlook this level one spell, but it will continually prove useful throughout the game. It does 22 damage, with a range of 25, and is both armor negating AND ignores magic resistance. And did I mention that it attacks the entire square? It's main drawback is its low precision, but you'll likely have a bunch of death mages on hand, there's little friendly fire, and undead tend to travel in groups. I've used four Tungaliks (with support) to just ravage four Banes. Needless to say, I got the better part of the bargain. Because it's area affect, its not a total waste against MR boosted skeletons/skelly cavalry either. it's effective against LA Ulm's Ghoul Guardians, too, and several other late age units. If you've got Angakok, Cleansing Water looks similar to banishment, but with two key differences. First, it is not negated by magic resistance. Second, it has a fatigue cost, but that only comes to about 13 with 3 path water and 3 encumbrance. It's a handy method for clearing out lesser undead. That unfortunately takes until Evo 6, but don't underestimate the utility of Dust to Dust, available much earlier. 8.12.3.2 LA Atlantis - frozen death from all directions Article Author: Baalz LA Atlantis is another nation which people tend to avoid touching with a 10 foot pole. Their only real mages are capital only and they¿ve got trouble with magic diversity. Their units are resource intensive and struggle out of their own dominion due to the temperature. They got kicked out of the water by R'yleh who has only got meaner in the mean time. They¿ve just generally got a funky lineup with few obvious synergies. Well, those of you familiar with my guides know where I¿m going with this¿Atlantis can most definitely be a sleeper nation who clobbers the crap out of the popular ones if handled with a bit of finesse. Many of their strengths are not the standard ones, but they are wicked effective properly deployed and almost all of their stuff works so well together you¿d think it was designed to. Let¿s take a look at the cast. Seal hunter Pretty average as far as chaff goes but they do have a rather unique harpoon ranged attack. Just a single shot, but it does entangle the target so this can be very useful in getting high defense troops/SCs to hold still for a round so that your heavy hitters can clobber them and you¿ve got some nice heavy hitters. Snow warriors what passes for light infantry in LA Atlantis, though of course that¿s a relative term. As with most of your infantry your armor scales with the cold scale so you¿re gonna be quite a bit weaker on offense most of the time. These guys also don¿t have any shields so watch out for crossbows. Still, you¿ve got magic weapons with a good repel, good protection in a cold environment, partial darkvision, partial cold resistance, true amphibiousness, above average strength and hitpoints. Overall, not bad units at all. You generally want to go with the glaive guys, those are magic weapons and they pack enough punch to even give giants a pause. Note, your heavy infantry has a mapmove of 2, so really the only reason you¿d want to go with Snow warriors is to get more feet on the ground for the resources you¿ve got. Keep in mind that¿s not a terrible strategy when fighting things like giants where the extra protection doesn¿t really help, go with more glaives! Ice warriors Skip them, most roles are better filled with Snow warriors or Ice Guards Ice Guards Very nice heavy infantry, particularly in a cold environment. Everything said about Snow Warriors is more true about Ice Guards. They¿ve got outstanding armor in the cold, good hitpoints, good stats in general, 75% cold resistance and a choice between a good shield or a clobbering ice glaive, with of course magic weapons. You¿re pretty much never going to have much excuse to have leftover resource points at the end of your turn, always spend anything leftover on these guys. Finally, these guys have an unprecedented 2 mapmove for such heavy infantry, combined with their amphibiousness this is a significant strategic mobility advantage. Mournful These guys are pretty decent for the price, but the moral is a killer. Still, they¿re the best choice for several situations. They¿ve got relatively low resource costs compared to your other units, so if you need feet on the ground fast this is the way to go. They also don¿t melt in the sun, so consider them when you¿re pushing outside your dominion. Finally, with a star or two of experience and a sermon of courage the moral issue is greatly reduced, and you can also mix them into groups with your higher moral troops Arssartuts are a good choice as they have the same movement speed so they¿ll stick together and of course have outstanding moral. Arssartut - Wow, these guys don¿t immediately jump out at you but once you start playing around with them you¿ll be amazed at how good they are. They¿re cheap as far as sacreds go, have good hitpoints, good protection, good attack skill, good encumberance, good strength, good movement, cheap resource requirements, and that glorious, glorious bone glaive. Out of that list (with the possible exception of the bone glaive) nothing jumps out at you, but adding them all together you end up with an amazingly solid unit. They¿ve got the toughness and encumbrance for staying power combined with a magic weapon which is extremely effective against everything from chaff to SCs. They also have great synergy with the Mournful in attacking outside your cold dominion, not dropping in power and moving at the same speed. I do want to make special note of their glaive, its magic, deals 22 damage with their strength, and has an addition weakness effect. The weakness effect means anybody tough enough to live through a couple hits of that 22 damage will have completely permanent damage done to their strength. This will of course pile up on any really tough guys to the point that they¿re useless in melee - you¿re guys are all cold resistant and your mages can cast Fire Ward, so you don¿t even need to worry about frost/firebrands. Now, before I move on to talking about the commanders I wanted to talk about the bless choices for your Arssartut. One of the big advantages in your corner is your truly amphibious nature I mean you¿re Atlantis for crying out loud. You should be able to dominate any land nation underwater, and even the other amphibious nations are significantly weaker than you there. Unfortunately, there¿s a big old tentacled turd in that punchbowl. If they¿re in the game *everybody* needs to plan from the beginning about dealing with LA R¿yleh, but Atlantis more so than anybody else. Fortunately, you¿ve got the tools to do it. It¿s absolutely imperative that you carve out a solid chunk of water *and* land, several of your national strengths are tied to being the best amphibians around. I like an S/E bless, with a minor N component if you can afford it. The twist fate helps a whole lot in several situations - letting your Arssartuts close under archer fire, blunting the heavy cavalry charge, ignoring the SC¿s first strike so you can whack the crap out of him with your bone glaives. Contrary to most of the time people take an astral bless though, the more important component is the MR boost. With +3 MR you bring the Arssartuts up to a respectable 14, and with an astral pretender you can drop an anti-magic on top of that making you effectively immune to R¿yleh¿s strongest weapons for the early and mid parts of the game. (strong MR also adds shadow brands and many other heavy infantry counters to the list of things you don¿t need to worry about) The earth bless not only brings you up to a very nice 16 protection, it also gives you a net 0 encumbrance. Those two factors, along with your length 4 uber damage bone glaive and small regen make you *perfect* chaff killers, thus neutering the second prong of R¿yleh¿s dominance. Finally, this kind of goes without saying, but you don¿t need to worry about R¿yleh¿s final prong being entrenched underwater. So, with such a blessing and a couple good buffs there¿s not much the Arssartuts can¿t handle in style from chaff to SCs. You go right ahead and carve out a chunk of the water, the inexperienced R¿yleh player is going to take a little convincing, but never let anybody convince you you¿re not the other LA water power. For scales, cold-3 is obviously a no-brainer. Death -3 also is not only thematic, but offers a good synergy of making invading armies get the double supply whammie so there is a good chance they¿ll have trouble with starvation, while your own armies are going to be on the smaller side (due to resource constraints), you won¿t suffer from the cold, and you¿ll have castles to help supply you at home. You¿ve got no old age units, so that¿s a good place to pick up the points for an expensive bless. Your other scales are up to you, but Magic-1 is a very good deal considering how weak your non-cap mages are. Speaking of... Tungalik are your only non-captial mage, and they are admittedly a bit underwhelming at first glance. Thing is, they¿re quite cheap and holy, which is not the worst thing in the world combined with high resource troops. You should end up with an above average number of castles, and an above average number of mages though admittedly weaker than most. Mostly you¿ll be recruiting them to be your research base, but there are some clever ways to use them effectively in combat particularly keeping in mind their strength - strength in numbers. Frozen heart spam. This is the obvious choice, and what your opponent will be expecting. Still, it¿s the obvious choice because it¿s often quite effective, several Tungalik spamming this will be devastating to the unprepared opponent. Ghost grip spam. A bit less common, but this is also an obvious choice, though a bit harder for your opponent to counter. It also works very well with some of the other fatigue strategies I¿ll be getting into in a minute. If your opponent has high encumbrance in the cold and needs to whack all day at your uber armored infantry, a couple guys casting ghost grip is all it takes to be terribly effective with an earth bless your guys can cast this 10 fatigue spell all day long. Frighten spam. Don¿t underestimate this. Marching into a cold-3/death-3 dominion gives a good chance of catching invaders partially starving, and half a dozen frighten spammers is surprisingly effective if those starving guys started out with average moral and are also in your dominion. Make sure you cut off their retreat using your map move 2 amphibious infantry and sailing! Note, this tactic is much more effective in combination with some of the stuff listed below. Mini-thugs. Heh, seems kinda pointless to thug out, huh? Not so fast there. These guys are holy and you¿ve got a nice bless. You¿ve got a 21 protection with the cheap black steel plate, and of course other options are available depending on what you¿ve got available. You¿ve got reinvigoration, and can self buff with quickness and breath of winter, and hopefully even a little regeneration from your bless. Of course twist fate doesn¿t hurt either, nor your quickened high defense (add water shield if you¿re underwater). Mix them in with some ice guards or wights set to guard commander and dual wield frost brands¿.against the right type of opponent this is going to be devastating. Being able to self buff quickness has another large advantage - ranged weapons. If you get lucky and land an A2 Angakok, bows of war and thunder bows are great on a quickened commander. Other fun things you can easily forge are vision¿s foes, the black bows, and banefire xbows. Again, you¿ve got to think about using these guys in decent sized groups 6 quickened banefire xbows are pretty devastating to troops without long lifespans, 6 bows of war will have the effect of over 150 archers, and 12 black bow arrows per turn will give even the toughest SC with bodyguards pause. Not a bad switch when your opponent was expecting some frozen heart spam. A few other things to remember to pull out when the situation merits it spirit curse (as if the SCs didn¿t already have enough disincentive to attack), dust to dust (very effective cast en-mass against that prince of death or tartarians giving you a hard time), slime (not the best spell in the world, but can be effective en mass combined with your heavy hitting infantry and cold auras). Also, once you get up to con-6, cheap water bracelets will pull these guys up into ice strike, cleansing water, numbness, and desiccation. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
|