Guide: MA Oceania - OMG, I think I've done it

[Evilhomer]

A few things I do not agree about,

First of all nature pick on your pretender. You will be getting some n4 mages, and with a quick stop at construction 4 you will have nature5 access without having nature on your pretender(thistle mace). This might delay that mother oak strategy you were going for but you also get access to certain items that are valuable to your strategy like clams, wave breakers (gives friendly current - an enchantment lvl 5 spell that is nice for your heavy encumb troops).

While I agree with your basic point that Oceania needs a lab mage to be able to cast spells/forge, I found in my game with them that the most critical paths are astral and death. My personal choice was an immortal lich with S6, death at 5 and low level magic in a few other paths. The basic idea was for him to serve as a site searcher early and a summoner/forger later. Also he serves as protection in your own dominion against rlyeh (immortal +S6 mind duels). Late game his high astral and my clam forging makes him ideal to cast wish ("gems" mostly). Not that this is an optimal strategy by any means, but astral and death will be good to have.

My personal suggestion for research priorities are
- Thaum2 (haruspex, as you mentioned free forts are very nice)
- Conj for voice of tiamat, school of sharks (you want that gem income asap)
- Const 4 for wave breakers, thistle maces, other items of importance.

After that it really depends on your strategy/situation

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Evilhomer

A few things I do not agree about,

First of all nature pick on your pretender. You will be getting some n4 mages, and with a quick stop at construction 4 you will have nature5 access without having nature on your pretender(thistle mace). This might delay that mother oak strategy you were going for but you also get access to certain items that are valuable to your strategy like clams, wave breakers (gives friendly current - an enchantment lvl 5 spell that is nice for your heavy encumb troops).

While I agree with your basic point that Oceania needs a lab mage to be able to cast spells/forge, I found in my game with them that the most critical paths are astral and death. My personal choice was an immortal lich with S6, death at 5 and low level magic in a few other paths. The basic idea was for him to serve as a site searcher early and a summoner/forger later. Also he serves as protection in your own dominion against rlyeh (immortal +S6 mind duels). Late game his high astral and my clam forging makes him ideal to cast wish ("gems" mostly). Not that this is an optimal strategy by any means, but astral and death will be good to have.

My personal suggestion for research priorities are
- Thaum2 (haruspex, as you mentioned free forts are very nice)
- Conj for voice of tiamat, school of sharks (you want that gem income asap)
- Const 4 for wave breakers, thistle maces, other items of importance.

After that it really depends on your strategy/situation

Yeah, these are more or less the same points I would make. If you have R. you go with an immortal pretender with D/S. If R. isn't in the game, you don't need to pay the points for immortal although the various liches are still a pretty reasonable buy.

I also generally agree with the research order, except I believe dark knowledge is more important than voice of tiamat.

Due to my playing around with MA-Oceania a lot the last few weeks, my upcoming CCBM 1.48 has a few tweaks designed to help balance this race.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, you'll get N4 capricorns often enough, but to cast mother oak you have to have N5 - on land. Since you lose a level going on land that means N5 in the water plus a thistle mace. You've got less than a 1% chance on each capricorn to get N5, so essentially you're scrapping the mother oak early strategy. You're also scrapping the llamia queen farm, and by extension much of your death magic and all your blood magic. You can still squeeze into death using your pretender, but it's an immensely steeper slope to climb than using your nature gems (fueled by the mother oak) to summon mages, while you use your limited death gems to site search. If you're using your limited death gems to summon mages with your pretender this drastically slows how fast you can site search.

As I mention, N5 is an expensive thing to do, but I think what you get justifies the cost. You very likely get hundreds of nature gems from putting the mother oak probably before anyone else can cast it and well before anyone is likely to try and dispel it. You get very solid entry into death, and a respectable one into blood. The alternative suggestion is to go with astral, I just don't see it bringing nearly as much to the table.

As to going for constr-4 first I think this is an expensive thing to do. I look at it this way, for your first engagement you're unlikely to have two mid level things researched, so would you rather have constr-4 or alt-5? Alt-5 brings numbness, quickness, wooden warriors, bone melter, encase in ice (perfect if your opponent has a SC god underwater) and swarm (perfect if your opponent has a SC god on land). Constr-4 certainly does give you a couple nice things, I just think it's better to focus on what gives you the most bang for the buck.

[Evilhomer]

To ChrisP:

You seem to want to play the nation like LA ermor, this is not the best of ideas. First of all you dont have a starting income of death so you cannot cast dark knowledge. To add to this problem your only mage with death is your pretender (and if he is a rainbow with death - you move his fat *** out and site search manually). No forget about dark knowledge your pretender has better things to do, go for voice of tiamat, it will drastically increase your gem income.

Also pissing everyone off with BoT is not a good idea if you wish to make friends, the 3 steps of victory with this nation really is:

1. Secure the water (using those extra fort produce ichty soldiers (half the cost of mermidons and not 10 encumb!), and ichtycentaurs - expensive but good / Combine this with various battle spells like friendely current + school of sharks and do your best at taking the water. Easily said than done, but you should have a small edge against rlyeh or atlantis. Are they both in the game dont try to fight them both at once.

2. Build your strenght. Get gem income going with tiamat, haruspex and start clam production (earth on your pretender for hammers is good to consider). Make pacts and alliances and hope that MA oceania is not seen as a threat, and nibble up some provinces from dying nations.

3. Bust out with superior gem income and summon what you need to complement your armies for victory. Try to get the elemental summons like water queens if you are able. Use your high astral to wish for "gems" and if you feel like it you can get a few seraphs or something just for the fun of it.

I really feal your death, death, death! strategy will just turn everyone against you and violate "point 2". To add to this your heavy death dominion will kill off your pop and destroy your income. In my opinion Oceania really is a very late bloomer, and you need to make time your friend not your enemy in order to get the summons and gem income that can secure a win with this nation.

Also I dont think you need to mod oceania in any way, they are fully capable at winning even against good players (I have done so before) if you play them smart and are willing to slow play them a bit and build your strenght before getting into the action.

[Evilhomer]

To Baalz:

When fighting underwater I do feel the battlewide effects are so much potent than the aoe1 offensive spells that you suggest. Since the 5th level is so very expensive I can almost have const 4 + conj 4 by the time you reach alt5, basically giving me friendly current (really needed if you want to use encumb10 myrms) and school of scharks and to top that off I do get alot of gems to play with from tiamat.

If you are engaging big battles on land early I really feel you are doing something wrong. A competent player will win against your armies since you are basically fighting without decent battle magic so getting swarm is not a top priority for me.

You are right that nature-5 pretender is needed if you for some reason need the mother oak, but then you need to go for ench5 aswell. personally I would get low nature on my pretender in order to get the moonvine bracelets (sp?) at some point (also various items/summons that need nature in combo with other paths). Sure then I would not get the mother oak as soon but its not so criticall anyway, since you usually get 20 nature or so per turn anyway after all your haruspex casts.

Personally I invested heavily into conjuration when I played them last, you get spells that is just awesome in the water like shark attack, various good summons and later water queens and maelstorm global, and I find this path more needed than alt to be honest.

[vfb]

Thanks for another great guide Baalz!

Nitpick: Kokythiads are 'she' not 'he'. If you are going to cast Leviathan with them, see if you can do it at the Water Solstice, for 50% off. It's supposedly a rare site, but I've seen it pop up every time I've been in the water.

Transformation: IMO this spell is still teh suck. Every time I've tried it my mage has just died. Not that I tried it very much after the first few times. If there was just a chance of affliction, I could handle that, but instadeath? That just bites.

Merman Priest: Don't forget to site search with these, Ancient Temple of the Deep are frequent and H1 and give S1W1.

Bishop Fish: Can be used to smite MR5 Krakens and MR8 Sea Serpents.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Evilhomer

To ChrisP:

You seem to want to play the nation like LA ermor, this is not the best of ideas. First of all you dont have a starting income of death so you cannot cast dark knowledge. To add to this problem your only mage with death is your pretender (and if he is a rainbow with death - you move his fat *** out and site search manually). No forget about dark knowledge your pretender has better things to do, go for voice of tiamat, it will drastically increase your gem income.

Also pissing everyone off with BoT is not a good idea if you wish to make friends, the 3 steps of victory with this nation really is:

1. Secure the water (using those extra fort produce ichty soldiers (half the cost of mermidons and not 10 encumb!), and ichtycentaurs - expensive but good / Combine this with various battle spells like friendely current + school of sharks and do your best at taking the water. Easily said than done, but you should have a small edge against rlyeh or atlantis. Are they both in the game dont try to fight them both at once.

2. Build your strenght. Get gem income going with tiamat, haruspex and start clam production (earth on your pretender for hammers is good to consider). Make pacts and alliances and hope that MA oceania is not seen as a threat, and nibble up some provinces from dying nations.

3. Bust out with superior gem income and summon what you need to complement your armies for victory. Try to get the elemental summons like water queens if you are able. Use your high astral to wish for "gems" and if you feel like it you can get a few seraphs or something just for the fun of it.

I really feal your death, death, death! strategy will just turn everyone against you and violate "point 2". To add to this your heavy death dominion will kill off your pop and destroy your income. In my opinion Oceania really is a very late bloomer, and you need to make time your friend not your enemy in order to get the summons and gem income that can secure a win with this nation.

We agree on a lot of items. I definitely agree that your early site searching is done with your pretender. Definitely agree on fort production (in fact, I consider forts to victory to be one of 3-4 general strategies).

I can't see that MA Oceania ever has an edge against MA-Rylleh. R. out chaffs you, out elite you, has easier access to land, and better water mages (iirc). But for the same reason, I think a partial bless increasing your MR valuable for your expensive units.

I agree that Oceani is a late bloomer. I view gold as almost worthless in the late game.

But not everyone is going to be against a BoT. If you snag the agreement of ermor, or niefle or whomever....

The question about the income comes down to this: If Oceania has made it into the endgame - and everyone's population is dead - does it put Oceania at a competitive advantage. I think it does.

[Baalz]

Mother oak is alt-5, there's no need to go for ench early. I think merms are not a good way to go initially because of a number of factors regardless of if you get friendly currents. Even with production scales you're going to be horribly resource constrained as to how many you can recruit and their encumbrance makes them not terribly viable until you've got something that can lay out damage faster than their staggering fatigue mounts up.

To be sure there's different ways to play most nations and I wouldn't begin to try and convince you that what you're suggesting could not also be effective, but I think we've got two different philosophies. You're looking to play a slow methodical turtling strategy involving clamming and long term investments. This is rather a classical way to play MA Oceana and relies on having complete water domination to comfortably fortify. My outline is a much more hybrid-amphibious approach which plays on different strengths and sets you up to be a solid land power from the beginning as well as a water power.

I disagree that you can't be competitive on land very early using the strategies I outline here, particularly if you're smart about how you expand. Are you really going to declare war on me (Oceana) in order to snatch 3 provinces before you get to the coast and our defacto new border while setting yourself up for constant siren harassment and coastal raids by troops that have no problem at all wiping out your PD? It's also a bit of a strawman to attack my suggestion of swarm, that's obviously not what my priority was, it's a bonus you pick up when you get wooden warriors and mother oak which is very useful in some situations you'll run into early game. I understand you played an effective game focusing on conjuration, but there's more than one way to play effectively. Also, though I didn't spell it out it's obvious from the rest of what I wrote that conjuration is a close second after alteration.

I also don't think you're really seeing the big picture with the mother oak/llamia queen plan. Yes, you have a solid nature income without the mother oak, but I'm suggesting spending a massive ammount of nature gems to transform scores of mages, summon dozens of llamia queens, not to mention the fact that every fairy queen you can scrape up is pure gold. If you can't find a good use for every nature gem then I think you're doing something wrong.

[chrispedersen]

But Baalz,

Have you actually cast transformation much? Even with a Luck-3, I seem to end up dead about 10% of the time, and feebleminded about 20%. And there are even more circumstances in which you end up with rather useless forms. Thats a pretty high opportunity cost - plus the mage action, plus the gems - and frankly I don't think you can really afford a +3luck +3magic design.

[Dragar]

I'm looking forward to see how this goes in WildRed, although I can't but think Baalz will be altering this strategy for the game, its hard to believe he'd give the game away just as a MP game starts..