Thoughts on balancing MA Oceania

[Ming]

Cleveland,

I am shocked and surprised that you consider my comments to be "borderline insulting". There is nothing further from my intentions and to misrepresent it as such is not helpful. I have prefaced my comments by saying that I could be completely wrong and that my conclusion was "... MAY have nothing to do with Oceania being hopeless weak." and only "IF" my reasoning was right. In fact, my conclusion is only a logical conclusion IF my reasoning is correct. It is completely neutral and has no implied disrespect, much less insult.

I have no doubt that Baalz is an excellent player - his excellent guides provide ample testimony to that. However, that is not to say that one is not allowed to offer a different opinion on specific matters. If you belief that daring to disagree with such an excellent player is "borderline insulting", then I have nothing further to say.

As to your point of Astral bless for EA Oceania, I have considered the possibility but feel that an EA Oceania player is unlikely to take an astral bless as other blesses - water obviously, but even fire and nature - are more beneficial.

As to your comment on the effectiveness of smite on EA Oceania knights, please see my reply to Baalz's post.

[Ming]

Baalz,

Given that my previous comment seems to be misinterpreted as being "borderline insulting", I would like to first apologise if it has offended you.

On your point of the effectiveness of the bishop fish, I agree that they would not be effective ON THEIR OWN. However, I am assuming that they would be supported by your own sacred knights. With P2 you should be able to recruit 3 per turn and have 30 or so by the end of the first year since they are unlikely to suffer losses against indies. While they cannot match the EA Oceania knights in a long fight, they should hold up reasonably well in a short fight - certainly more than 2-3 turns even with only a weak bless (say W4E4). This should give the bishop fish time to work their smite. Bear in mind that a EA Oceania knight damaged by smite has a good likelihood of being finish off by your own knights.

Since you had the time to achieve a commanding lead and EA Oceania has the time to accumulate 40+ knights (even though theirs can be recruited anywhere) I imagine that the battle was fought no earlier than sometime in year two. Given your economic strength you probably have 3 or more castles. As battle magic is less important underwater, you should be able to devote at least one if not two castles to recruiting bishop fish exclusively (BTW, IMHO MA Oceania MUST devote his first new castle, and sometimes at his home castle too, to producing bishop fish when in, or anticipate, war). So an advantage of 10 or more bishop fish is not out of the question. In terms of cost one bishop fish is roughly 150% that of an EA Oceania knight (and much less resource). Adjusting for his heavy bless it is not unreasonable to equate them as 1:1. Similarly, 40 of your knights is roughly equivalent to 30 of his after using, say, a 50% adjustment for his heavy bless. So 10 bishop fish, 40 Ma Oceania knights, plus PD against 40 EA Oceania knights is a fair fight under the circumstances - and not taking into account of your superior economic position over and above the adjustment needed to compensate for his heavy bless. I have not tested to see if such a match-up is hopeless on your side but I suspect not. However, this is not the point and one can argue that the 50% figure I am using is purely arbitrary.

You are talking about a 2:1 advantage in economy. If I assume that it is before taking into account EA Oceania's heavy bless, it would still transfer into about 14 bishop fish and 55 knights against 40 EA Oceania knights. Again I have not tested such a match-up, but I would be very surprised if you do not win, especially since you are likely to have first strike (having PD's to screen their first strike).

Your excellent guides (which I have benefitted from and would like to thank you regarding them) have shown that some seemingly weak nations require thinking "outside of the box" to be competitive. I think MA Oceania falls into the same catagory. It has a fast start against indies and this needs to be turned into a lasting economic advantage (I find P3 to be necessary). You might even be able to rush your underwater neighbour if he is not being careful. However, you need to rely on Bishop fish against other players (so growth scale is important). At 120g for H3 it is competitive even against heavily blessed sacreds. Sacrifice you research to get them if you are in a war. Hopefully you economic advantage means that you can do both under normal circumstances. On land you have to rely on Bishop fish even more, but at 120G plus 5A and 5W gems (If you have lots of clams, invest in a dwarven hammer with 30S gems and each amulet would be 6S and 3W) its cost is still reasonable. I am sure that if you stop and think about it, you would probably come up with even better strategies or variations.

Please let me know if I have erred in my reasoning.

[JimMorrison]

I'd just like to point out that -sometimes- the math can be deceiving. Playing Bandar Log now with an S9 bless, Mictlan invaded me with 16 casters in support of their army. Of course, most of them are H3, and I can confirm that mass Smite can perform quite admirably even against hardened (high MR) targets.

[atul]

Bandar Log isn't the best example, their sacreds' pitiful base MR of 11 and 10 hit points make White Ones a prime Smite targets. Were you fielding Tiger Riders, well, that is probably the best bang for buck anyone gets from Smite.

[Sombre]

Black Knights and Black Templars are also prime targets for a smiting.

[Baalz]

Oh no Ming, I wasn't insulted. I wouldn't be posting here if I wasn't inviting people to try and poke holes in my arguments.

Well, I did the test you suggested, and though I have to admit it was more even than I expected, MA Oceana was still crushed.

Setup:
MA Oceana
40 knights - 4000 gold
11 bishop fish - 1380 gold
40 Oceana Tritons - 400 gold
11 PD - freeby
1 troop herder commander (not factored)
total - 5780 gold

EA Oceana
1 bishop fish - 180 gold
40 knights (with an E/W bless) - 3400 gold
1 troop herder commander (not factored)
30 Oceana tritons - 300 gold
total - 3880 gold

Losses -
MA Oceana 1/12 commanders 71/80 troops
EA Oceana 0/2 commanders 29/70 troops (mostly tritons)


Test 1 - Despite everybody being evenly spread out EA Oceana managed to get 3 knights to flank around and kill all the bishop fish due to their amazing amount of movement point. Uuuugly.

Test 2 - I scripted everyone to attack closest so that wouldn't happen again.
Losses -
MA Oceana 1/11 commanders 71/80 troops
EA Oceana 0/2 commanders 29/70 troops (mostly tritons)


MA Oceana got off 7 volleys of smite. As the math suggested generally 1-2 knights were killed by smite per turn when they were targeted, though it often hit tritons decoys because it had more chance of doing HPs of damage. Nothing else caused significant damage to the EA Knights who sported fashionable 22 defense and 21 protection.

Now, on to my reservations.
1) I don't feel like the MA Oceana sacreds are cost effective though they did surprisingly well in this particular setup. Dumping gold into them would have slowed my initial expansion quite a bit. Massing capital only sacreds is a slow process which can't be done after my initial expansion in time to meet my first fight. I also shudder to think how this setup (which takes almost a year to mass up the troops and commanders for) would fare against R'yleh chaff and mindblasters if I'd ended up fighting them.
2) Recruiting a significant number of non-mages in the early part of the game is crippling to research. Granted, one of my bones about MA Oceana is that there is hardly anything worth researching, but still 10 bishop fish is costing on top of the gold 70 research points per turn - *forever* even after they die. Does anyone think landing an extra 14 lightless lanterns in year one might be significant?
3) The idea of landing a significant number of fish amulets to get a dozen bishop fish out of the water, with practically no air income and..well, crippled research from massing bishop fish seems prohibitive. This seems completely infeasible out the water in an early enough time frame to be relevant.
4) I've seen W/S on EA Oceana several times, astral has a good synergy with a water bless on high defense units and Oceana is obviously planning on fighting R'yleh at some point. This would go even worse under that scenario.
5) This tactic has steadily diminishing effectiveness as research progresses. Even if you can somehow manage to leverage bishop fish into an effective initial force, what do you suppose you'll do once shark attacks (smite will almost always target the high HP low MR sharks) and shadow blasts start being cast, vengeance of the dead is being spammed at you, and thugged out high MR kings of the deep start teleporting in? Not to mention fighting above the water once real evocation spells start throwing down massively more damage than our smite can (assuming you get the priests up there in the first place).

[DonCorazon]

Off topic but curious: what is the quickest way to test these types of situations? Is there a mod somewhere? Everyone seems to do it so quickly I am wondering what I am missing. Thanks

[Zeldor]

DEBUG mod, gives you all research and Wish and GoR for 1S gem.

[Ming]

Baalz,

Thank you for taking the trouble to test my suggested scenario. Adding the Oceana Tritons does seem to swing the result decidedly to EA Oceana's favour for the reason you stated.

Even though I do expect MA Oceania to lose on a fair fight (since their knights are amphibious and has steath underwater while KotD are water only - otherwise MA Oceania would be too strong) I expected the results to be closer. Did the MA Oceania knights have weak EW blesses in your test? They do need E4W4 to be effective - at least to stay alive if not to kill the KotD.

Also, were the MA troops killed in combat or while routing? If it were the latter scripting one bishop fish to cast sermon of courage from turn4 might change the result somewhat.

Another factor that would make the fight more even would be to have a few mages casting tangled vine (I believe it works underwater but correct me if I am wrong). Both sides can do this but it has a more adverse effect on KotD.

BTW, the situation on Test1 can be avoided if half of the bishop fish are placed on the perimeter of the other priests scripted to cast holy avenger on turn one (at the cost of reducing 5-6 smite attempts)

Ultimately I think the conclusion depends on the result of the tests. If EA Oceania still wins hansomely (and consistantly) after taking the above into account, then I accept your position.

As to your reservations, I shall address them in the same order you wrote them:

1. I cannot comment directly on relative cost effectiveness as I do not know how exactly you planned your expansion. In my experience 4-5 knights (one turn's recruitment based on O3P3 scale) with W4E4 bless is sufficient to take over most indie provinces with no loss - although I usually go for a little overkill/insurance in case the scouting report is inaccurate. This compares favourably with most other nations, especially those without a heavy bless. I have found that having the early knights survive and gain three or four stars is a noticable asset, contributing to their cost effectiveness. Against R'lyeh I would simply add a large number of chaff, strategically placed, so that regardless of their script few mindblasts actually target the knights or key commanders. Even when they do, if I win the battle the knights usually survive(I only play SP so maybe you can highlight any nasty surprise that I am not aware of).

2. I agree that it is a major handicap for MA Oceania, but not necessary a crippling one given its advantage in early expansion and clamming ability. I tend to think in terms of having one castle less than what you really have. Since the chance of getting free castles under water seems much higher than on land, it is not too bad. Look at it another way, if MA Oceania can achieve battlefield equality without such a handicap, then it would be too strong.

3. I had assume that all water nations would have trouble expanding on land, except for raiding, until late in the game - certainly well into middle game. If one waits until Maelstrom is up, then the gem cost is no problem at all. Bear in mind that you get your H3 for only 120G, so even 120G and 10 gems is still reasonable cost compared with most other nations. I have always though that water nations cannot (and should not) win on land in an equal fight. they need to cripple their opponent's econonmy and then win on superior numbers. Please let me know if I am missing your point.

4. I have never played MP (or indeed any game across era's) and can only accept your statement. Against a WS KotD strategy one do need to adjust and maybe counter with mermage spamming tangle vine. This reservation should not on its own make MA Oceania unplayable.

5. I agree wholeheartedly that bishop fish is an early to mid game strategy (However, they are not wasted later on as they ensure you have high dominon spread and can still be an effective support force). Early to mid game is the key to a successful MA Oceania strategy. MA Oceania need to leverage on its good start and be aggressive early to conquer the sea (and even some land) before its opponents have enough research for effective battle mages. Having stealth under water is an important advantage for its main fighting forces as it is easier for you pick your fights where you want them.

I confess I do not have much experience with end game strategy with MA Oceania because against the AI it is one of the easiest nation to play and I usually win long before the end game - so boring that I stop playing them. I guess they can rely on the typical water nation raiding strategy so aptly described in you Atlantian guide (or a variation of it) to go on land. It is true that they have nothing as effective as the Atlantian Kings. They are not completely helpless though and can get access to Niefel Flames through Sea Kings and Water Queens and boosters. However, MA Oceania should have superiority in gold and gem income and so can compensate for quality with quantity. If the enemy concentrates its forces, spead yours out and attack where they are not and destroy their economy. If they spread theirs, concentrate yours and hit them one by one - but I am sure you know about all these.

[JimMorrison]

Also might bear in mind that the game was not made with the intent of cross-era warring, and expecting balance along those lines may be far fetched.

What I mean is that the exact details, or the potential options in an EA Oceania vs MA Oceania matchup may be irrelevant. This is not to say that the original tack, pinpointing the effectiveness of the mages specifically lacked merit. Moreso, it's to say that it might be a more reasonable and fruitful point to pursue.

(Oh and sorry about bringing up the White Ones, I could have sworn their base was 13, doh.)