Atlantis early expansion vs. independents set to strength 9

[Huzurdaddi]

Are there any really good ways to do this?

I've gone with some lobsters combined with crab infantry and it works, but it is pretty costly and takes time.

It would be great if I could use a pretender to smash stuff up. The problem is that a bunch of creatures in the sea are basically flyers and you can't do all of the casting that you normally would to buff yourself.

I tried the dagon and he's great and all ... but he can not stomp provinces flat in the 1st few turn by himself, unless I am missing something.

Any ideas people? I know you guys know the game inside out!

[ March 29, 2004, 00:04: Message edited by: Huzurdaddi ]

[Norfleet]

You need enough chaff to keep them out of your face until you can finish your buffing and start stomping on them. However, you also want other units that will not immediately be killed, or your pretender will auto-rout. So deploy a block of cheap chaff up front, and while the Tritons are butchering them, you can buff up: At the same time, deploy some unit that's a poor amphibian behind your pretender, to serve as an anchor, so that there will still be units in the area after the chaff goes down.

[DLC]

summons some cheap krakens, they work good
20 or so kills alot of tritons up to about 100's.
tritons are a pretty chicken so mindless units are good summons too.

[Wauthan]

The thing to remember is that Tritons are pretty cowardly and they will surround the group closest to them.

Put a sacrificial group in front, morale doesn't matter since they will not be able to retreat trough the mass of tritons around them. Or you can put some really heavy hitters with a lot of protection up front which will lock down the tritons for the whole battle. Movement is irrelevant since the enemy will come to you in the first turn.

Deploy your lobsters, tramplers and other heavy hitting units in two Groups at each flank, not too close to the "pointmen" or they will break formation too quickly. Mages and priests are placed no closer to the "pointmen" then that they can properly target the tritons with their spells and act as support (it's crusial to bring atleast two priest units since massive pointmen losses may cause instant routing). Later you can also deploy your own triton units (and seaserpents) in far back on hold and attack rear.

It's the classic "Trident" formation that have won me quite a few wins as Atlantis and it's tough to break in sea provinces.

Your objective is to kill and injure as many tritons as possible, which lobsters do with gusto, and cause them to rout before they can inflict significant losses. It's hard to go easy on the gold as Atlantis so you need to protect your investments well. I modded in an amphiban nature pretender to have Gift of Health available for this reason alone (micromanagement was getting too annoying) but putting a priority to train and equip a druid or the likes lets you use that excellent water9 blessing instead.