First thoughts:
Underwater nation with zombie pirates and robots (golems), pretty cool (all you are missing are ninjas)
The sprites look dominionesque.
Here's what I tried, and some feedback:
NI - Cradle of Dominions Map
vs 8 impos. AI (1 of them being Oceania)
6 indep str
All other standard
Strategy used:
Went with a sleeping D9,S6,W4 Lich with 7 dominion
Max scales in Turmoil, Sloth, Cold, Luck
1 scale in growth and magic
Early expansion with one marrow mage, 2 harpers, and some spearfisher chaff. Extensive use of animate drowned eventually kills everything.
Went for Conjuration 2 asap to get the drowned mage, to make it my prophet for reanimation. Then research became low priority.
Quickly stopped purchasing all troops on turn 3, then went for some sacred razorfins after turn 6. Used money saved from not purchasing troops to start constructing a fort on turn 6. Started site-searching relatively early with one marrow mage and one earth razer.
On turn 9 started using 3 marrow mage, 3 harper groups with 0 other units for continued expansion since sharks or other
undersea creatures no longer fly underwater. This drowned strategy resulted in 0 losses until encountering 2 Oceanian Bishop Fishes.
Around turn 12 I summoned a golem. Frankly I was kind of dissapointed with the underwater penalties, so I decided not to use it in combat.
Final Thoughts:
So after around 25 turns, I have to say that while the atmosphere of the nation is similar to that of other water nations, the play style is more than different enough. So in my opinion you've definitely succeeded in regards to flow/style/gameplay. I confess that I have little experience playing water nations or playing competitively, so while for me nothing was unbalanced, there seem to be things that have potential for abuse by stronger players. I suppose I should elaborate, while no individual part was overpowered, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
The assassin, spy/preacher, and 3 different flavors of strong mages just give rise to very broad and flexible strategies to employ against the other water nations. It's difficult to say how the limitations of many of the units being stuck underwater would play out in a competitive game, and I suppose a large part of it would be based on what sort of map it is. I imagine other Underwater nations do not roll over indies in quite the same quick fashion that Meso does, which should give it an early superiority which should lead to a win over the other underwater nation(s). Some more feedback/analysis is probably in order.
Overall, nice job.
