[shatner]

As far as wartime assets, Atlantis has always been about having (webbed) feet on the ground. I've been recruiting an Angakok and 10 Arssartuts plus probably 25 or so Ice Guard every turn forever (and I could turn that 25 into 50+ if I needed to). Given 2, maybe 3 mages casting buffs, these troops will result in even or favorable battlefield attrition... and I can win a war of attrition. In other words, if your baseline troops are just plain better, more numerous and as-or-more mobile than your opponent's, you don't really have to do anything fancy to win; cleverness is for people who are fighting uphill... the other guy just has to not trip while he charges downhill.

I've got a fully tricked out Bane Lord and Wraith Lord just sort of hanging out waiting to stomp on any raiders that wander over. I have one Elemental King of Earth and I could easily have all three Water Queens but I haven't bothered since I don't have any water-born threats. I've got a fairy queen and as many S2E2s, A2s and N2 neutral mages as you can shake a stick at. I also have a few pimped out ancient kraken, but those are mostly relics from my war with Jomon. I have an ever growing pile of naiad warriors, ghosts, catoblepas, and LOTS of wights. I also have dozens of thugged out banes (frostbrand + lycanthrope amulet or demon slaying sword + jade armor or dual axes of hate + lycanthrope amulet) and dozens of winged boots lying around ready to send my counter-raiders out in force.

The theme behind all this is flexible defense; until now I've always been fighting the other guy on his turf way away from my home provinces. So far my opponent's ability to project force on my homeland has been effectively nil. That means my need for a garrison, domes over key provinces or any other sort of defensive counter-measure has been minimal to non-existant. Even if Jomon or Patala had crushed my forces, my power base would still be untouched. With Marignon, I was having to gear up for all sorts of flying, raiding, teleporting, remote crap that I previously hadn't had to worry about.

My plan has been to pick a few outlying areas of Marignon's (island holdings mainly) and invade the crap out of them with excessive force while staying out of my allies' way. Meanwhile, I have such an insane stockpile of gems, a truly awesome gem income, and almost 100% research (8s or 9s in everything except thaumaturgy), I can pretty much cripple Marignon's economy without having to set foot on their homeland. The opening turn of the war was going to involve Marignon eating at least a dozen tidal waves that'd wash about half of his population out to sea which, combined with the massive unrest that spell causes, would heavily drop his gold and blood slave income. In other words, I'd attack Marignon's mainland with Tidal Wave, Locust Swarm, Blight, Volcano, Wolven Winter, etc. while conquering his peripheral holdings. Any sufficiently large armies that wandered out into the open would probably eat a Murdering Winter or two. All major battles would include Demon Cleansing and Neifel Flames.

I intentionally didn't bother with artifacts or super-high end summons because I played with that stuff last time I was LA Atlantis and this time I wanted to try going for lots of mid-range stuff economically equipped or buffed. I have two provinces that let me scry on stuff so I had very thorough accounts of Marignon's assets. For example, Gath was planning on casting Wish and asked me whether there was something he could steal from Marignon. I told him to wish for a Seriph and then have it forge the lamp to steal Marignon's genie (the archdevil wasn't worth stealing and I didn't know which Heliophagus he had because the scrying kept reporting his forgelord's name instead). I also had 1-2 scouts in every province of his because while the land routes into his mainland were heavily patrolled, the water routes weren't. I have an UW 20% conjuration discount, which is nice but still kinda limited because there's a lot of stuff you want to summon and most of it can't be summoned underwater. I have a crystal mage site, an illusionist site and an animist site, all of which really helped my magic diversity.

It's surprising the mileage you can get out of high-level water and mid-level death. Atlantis really is a very efficient nation whose handful of strengths seem very limited at first glance but are surprisingly versitile once you get used to them. But mainly this was a game about diplomacy.

Good times.


Edit: As for the "attacking him will be more interesting and instructive", or any of the other advice I gave any of my allies, it was all true. Gath had a pretty good idea of what I was capable of throwing at him, it was more a question of what volumes I could call upon, as well as how artful I was scripting it all. Late game LA Marignon however... that's a hard foe to anticipate. Hence my somewhat conservative strategy for the opening of the war.