MA Atlantis...am I missing something?

[Baalz]

Having drawn MA Atlantis as a random selection in the new cross-era game, I find myself a bit at a loss coming up with a strategy that will be competitive against the other water nations.

The good:
Reasonably strong mages for the price (physically and magically) with pretty good magic diversity
Most of the infantry deals some light poison damage, which will be effective against some types of enemies.
Strong recruit everywhere priests

The bad:
Sacred troops are decent, but cap only and not strong enough to justify an investment in a good bless
Non sacred infantry are middling � slow, lightly armored and lacking any ranged backers they struggle against indies much less most other nation�s elites.
War lobsters are interesting enough, but are expensive and expendable, a combination which makes them ill suited to hang a primary strategy on.
Mages are powerful in paths which require significant research to be effective, compounded by the lack of available underwater combat spells and difficult research (in the game I�m playing).
Magic diversity is based on random picks, which will make it hard to depend on a strength of more than one in anything but water.
Very few pretender chassises to choose from, limited choices for cost effective magic paths. (I thought about using the consort guy as a reasonable 80 gp sacred thug chasis, but what he really needs is a N/E bless and there�s no way that�s affordable on any of the pretenders available)
I�m sharing the water with EA Oceana, EA R�yleh, and MA R�yleh�I�m not going to have the luxury of having much research done before I�m hard pressed by good troops.

So, what to do, what to do? Playing around with some SP builds, it seems like war lobsters are capable enough to push some initial expansion, but they�re ruinously expensive at their attrition rate and cranking them out indefinitely will really cramp mage and castle investments (and they�ll be comically ineffective against mind blasters and heavy blessed triton knights). The �heavy� infantry likewise seems to take significant casualties against the average indies unless having an overwhelming advantage of numbers and they�re not cheap enough to make that feasible. Shamblers seem a bit fragile for the cost and the fact that they�ll usually be outnumbered (at that price) makes them drop pretty fast. There doesn�t really seem to be any effective underwater combat spells available early on. The mages seem like they�d make decent thugs, but only after significant research in multiple paths � and they�ll never be up to par with the EA water nation�s recruitable thugs.

So, what am I missing? An awake kraken would help with initial expansion, but what the heck do I follow that up with?

[Xietor]

I have said they are a terrible race along with ma ulm. The 2 worst mp races in the MA imho.

If I was stuck with ma atlantis i would take a master lich, with high death and hope to branch into d magic, OR I would take bad scales(but not d scales) and go for an insane bless on my mother guards.

[Sensori]

Actually, MA Atlantis is missing something rather important from the "original". Atlantis in D1 had Mother Guards non-capped, but then it was changed to cap only in D2. Wonder what caused the change.

It's pretty unthematical too, since you, for some reason, get them from the site "Coral Towers" which is where you get the SEERS, while the description says that the Mother Guards are the personal guards of the CORAL QUEENS. Funnily enough you can get Queens everywhere, but not their personal guards.

[Baalz]

The problem with the mother guards is the same as the consort - the most beneficial bless would be a N/E and that is retardedly expensive on the available pretenders. The only economical blessings would be astral and water, and those aren't really gonna help an average defense, high encumbrance, low availability sacred. I just can't imagine mother guards being more than fodder for triton knights even if I could somehow swing a triple blessing. I guess an astral blessing would help against mind blasters, but I really don't see fielding enough cap only sacreds to do anything more than put up a speed bump. They're not exactly Vans...

Also not sure how taking a lich is gonna help much. Without any national death mages I can't see being any sort of death power until way, way too late to do any good.

[Meglobob]

I would not say they are as weak as MA Ulm. But do suffer from lack of good early expansion units.

I think you have little choice but to take a bless. The consorts will make a excellent thug that can bless himself. He is cheap and cheerful.

Could you go with S9/E9? A little unusual, but it would cover your weaknesses which are low MR and high encumberance. Twist of fate, plus the high protection will make your mother guards supported by coral guards decent for early expansion.

S9/E9 will be most useful later on for forge of ancients and wish which compliments your thug strategy.

[Xietor]

Sphinx imprisoned,dom 6 e9 s9 n4

Order 0
sloth 1
cold 3
growth 3
drain 2

Before you bash drain 2, you get 80 points plus a bonus to your mr for a measly -1 research. I took the 2 drain in Alpaca with Pangaea and ended up winning even though i was dead last in research the entire game.

You have to pick your poison. Plus I traded for skull mentors in alpaca and feathers to get my research up high enough to get the basic spells i felt i needed for battles.

The bonus to mr is well worth it when you are facing astral races. I like growth for the income longterm. If you are worried about survival in short term, you may want to scrap the 3 growth and take production, higher starting dom(more sacreds per turn), maybe a bigger regen bless.

[Dedas]

Those warlobsters are pretty cool. When the rider dies you have a lobster with 20 protection, 34 hp and trample, killing everything (including friends). Expendable yes, but they sure do some damage first.

[quantum_mechani]

Xietor said:
I have said they are a terrible race along with ma ulm. The 2 worst mp races in the MA imho.

In the one MP game I am playing them in, I am leading most the graphs, and that's sharing the water with ME Oceania.

Also, the sphinx is absolutely awful. Normally I'd also say the order 0 is a total waste, but given that the scale bug often takes away positive order/growth/prod it is worth considering. If you are betting on this happening, however, you don't want growth either.

[Evilhomer]

Scale bugg is rather uncommon, and it didn't occur in the other mega game (that had x2 the players). I would not bet on hit happening.

[quantum_mechani]

It seems to be map related, on some maps it can happen almost 50% of the time.