LA Atlantis - frozen death from all directions

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Nikelaos

how about bogarus?

sounds like a bit of a david and goliath situation but done well.

think about it, Loads of high lvl priests, can natively acces undead slaying spells live solar brilliance, 5folds make exellent stealth preachers clearing the way in enemy dominion so troops don't starve, most major buffs accesible easily (this includes will of the fates, legions of steel, flaming arrows, fog wariors...etc), easily massed chaff (though they become more then chaff once you get some buffs down).

I think they might just be a great counter, the problem is offcourse they need time to prepare all these things and they aren't the best vs other non-ermor nations.

Your only recruitable holy-3 priest is capitol-only and extremly slow, and you have no native access to nature so your army will die from starvation as soon as you try to invade Ermor. It often does even against normal opponent because Bogarus' strength is in numbers.
Then again, Bogarus is likely to have a high dominion (because it needs an awake God for expansion) and a good national summon, Alkanost, flying bird-woman with holy 3. Now that is very good against Ermor indeed.

[vfb]

Stealth priests clearing dominion no longer help prevent starvation when you're invading Ermor. All the peasants will be long dead by the time you've hired enough FFAs to make any difference.

[Agema]

I'm running a LA Atlantis as well, and this guide has been very handy. I would like to add an extra bit about LA Atlantis in the sea.

I don't generally recommend building lots of castles underwater, for reasons I'll explain later, but some should crop up with site searching, especially with nature. And you can always build one (1000gold) if you really want. Admin is 40, so they'll provide plenty of Res and a reasonable gold boost if in a rich sea province.

Underwater castles provide the following:

Various low-grade basic Atlanteans:

Shieldbearers: Uberchaff. Cheap at 9 gold and 3 res, but unarmoured. The only good news is that the shields can pick up arrows. Atlantean Light Infantry: Chaff. They've got coral cuirasses for some protec, but no shield or helmet, and still only a spear. This means they function as very vulnerable infantry, and can't even deflect arrows. Atlantean Infantry: Just better than chaff. They've got coral cap & hauberk (11 prot.), shield and spear.

If you're throwing gold on any of these, you may as well take the Atlantean infantry, as at least they're likely to live for longer. All of these have 12HP, so they're a bit hardier than your average human, and 11 strength, which still won't get past good armour with only a spear. They've all got average Att, Def, MR and Mor: 10 or very close. Note that at least the coral spears will poison opponents a bit as well, but it's not adding that much.

Sleepless. At 40 gold and 26 res, these size 3 dudes are tanks. They're very similar to War Shamblers in earlier Atlantis, except they have 12 MR - a godsend against Rlyeh. 24HP and 15 protec makes them extremely hard to take down, 14 morale makes them very sturdy, and 15 strength with a 9 damage glaive means if they hit, it'll really hurt. Oh, and they have shields, so less arrow damage. The real downside is that Sleepless are heavily encumbered (8), very slow (1 map, 6 BF), and very expensive.

For the commanders you get the following:

Shambler Chief: An unarmoured shambler who can lead troops. Pretty expensive for what you want it to do at 45 gold, not even worth making a thug. On the other hand, it's faster than the Consort (see below) for stratmove, and you may want to build amphibious commanders in your sea forts because you might not want to be building mages every turn (see below).

Unsleeping Consort: Essentially they're Sleepless with slightly better stats and - haha - they're sacred and H1. That means they can self bless to make handy thugs. It also means they are actually more cost effective than the shambler chiefs in upkeep. MR is still lowish (13), but on the BF with your astral bless it should be a respectable 17. 27HP gives them lastability, although no Fear/Awe/etc perks. If you're a bit wary of sending expensive and rare Angakoks out, these guys will make decent replacements.

Merciful Mother: An H2 priest with about 20HP, and lacking the stats to be a thug. Not much else to say. Might be good to transfer bless work to these off your Angakoks and Tungaliks, but you could happily never buy any.

Forgiving Father: What was that about Atlantis' lack of magical diversity? These are about 20HP, and have W2S1 +100% EFSW. Okay, 1E/F is no great shakes, and they still leave you needing empowerment or boosters to start casting site searching spells and accessing more handy E/F spells. However, they've now got you firmly into astral, so no more need for indies. The downside? 250 gold to buy, and they aren't sacred. You WILL need these guys, but you'll want to leave research work to the far cheaper Tungaliks: with neutral magic scales the recruit cost per res is 20% more, upkeep three times more expensive for Forgiving Fathers. This cost disparity will be exacerbated by positive magic scales. Be wary of astral duels too: cheap S1-S2 mages could have a field day on FFs in terms of relative gold cost, and 250gp per communion slave looks really expensive - you might do better to utilise natural W2-3 instead.

* * *

In summary, getting water castles up is most vital for your magical diversity. However, they are poor research bases due to GP/res cost. The basic infantry are simply not any better than the basic stuff you can build on a land castle. What you most want out of them (Unsleeping, Forgiving Father) will put a massive drain on your treasury. If you build a lot of these and recruit a lot in them, you will not be making best use of your money. None of the underwater units have cold resistance either, so they may fail to synergise with cold tactics that might come naturally to the troops from the land castles, so if you combine troops from land and sea, you will be compromising tactical options available to you. Frustratingly, they also lack amphibious scouts, which are hard to come by.

[vfb]

1F on the Forgiving Fathers is very nice because it gives you Acid Rain with a water bracelet. In the water, Voice of Tiamat will probably give you F income and then they can craft Staffs of Corrosion.

[Agema]

Indeed.

You should view FFs as major battle mages. This is because Angakoks are limited to the capital so might not be available in large numbers, and 1D1W Tungaliks are simply pretty weak mages unless you're facing undead. You'll probably want to free up vital Angakok manpower by switching a lot of your water and earth summons, crafting and rituals to the FFs.

25% of your FFs will be W3S1; W3 obviously grants access to plenty of water's heavier hitting stuff. With gems and water's cheap and easy Con-4 and Con-6 boosters you can readily access lots of the really powerful W4 & W5 stuff and lay it on thick, with no Angakok needing to be in sight.

As you point out, your W2S1F1 can access acid spells, which are pretty nasty. It's a great way to catch out opponents who have prepared against lots of cold damage, and there's no such thing as acid resistance. Get one onto land, should be able (I've not tested) to cast Manifest Vitriol? Ethereal, acid-breathing, 25ish HP lions. They can be absolutely devastating.

The W2S2 give you major astral support: Antimagic is quite a defensive boon, especially if you've brought plenty of undead along, or if you're facing Rlyeh. Other obvious options are Paralyze, Stellar Cascades (which fits in with fatiguing tactics), and why not horror mark the odd SC/thug as well?

The W2S1E1 will be useful on the battlefield, although you won't normally be leaning on them. Everything Baalz said in the first edit about Angakoks and E magic applies here also. Where your Earth-capable FFs most come into their own (in my view, anyway) is crafting. The E/S crystal range (Coins, Shields, Matrices, etc.) are extremely powerful when used properly, and these guys will get you there.

[Baalz]

Well, I'm sure some would disagree with me, but a water bless is a bit of a double edged sword. In this situation it's primary benefit is to let you attack 1.5 times per turn, which is not inconsiderable with that awesome bone glaive. The drawback, however, is that you'll be racking up fatigue faster than your earth blessing will erase. This is a huge against several things you'll face even without R'yleh. Ermor is the obvious one, with a net 0 encumbrance small amounts of assartuts will essentially take on an unlimited number of longdead. Even aside from Ermor you can expect skellispam from a couple other nations, and you'll even start to struggle against simple swarms of units from the likes of Bogarus. You don't have to get up to 100 fatigue for it to make a difference, mounting fatigue will see a steady increase in critical hits which rapidly cut the effectiveness of your nice armor and modest regen. So, basically you hit harder, but have a lot less staying power. The way I look at it is the water bless gives you an easier time getting an overwhelming advantage, but it puts you in a significantly weaker position when you don't have that overwhelming advantage.

Additionally, the advantages of an astral bless are still quite strong without taking R'yleh into account. Think about this - you're facing a large group of assartuts, how do you counter them? The best thing that comes to my mind is archers and mages (unless they have a water bless, at which point tiring them out gets added to the list). Twist fate gives a substantial boost to resisting everything from xbow bolts to banefire. The MR boost falls in to cover another angle.

My opinion is the water bless improves what you're already good enough at while including a big drawback, while the astral bless bolsters you in an area you very well may need the help. Plus, end game high astral mages are very nice. You've already got the combat muscle, your pretender will do more for you by diversifying than by squishing things.

Originally Posted by Otherling

Baalz, I'd like to thank you for this guide. I used it, and to great effect, in my first MP game, which has just wrapped up. I decided to go all-out on the bless, with a E9S9N4 imprisoned monolith. The assartuts proved every bit as effective as advertised, and indeed were my primary troops for most of the game. Tore through almost everything. I can't speak too much to how effective the new underwater recruitables are, as the patch showed up well into the game, and I didn't get as much of a chance to use them.

I think the earth bless is definitely a must. I'd like your opinion, though: in a game without R'lyeh, what do you think of dropping the astral bless and going with a water bless instead? I was thinking an imprisoned Dagon with an E9W9 bless, and perhaps even a minor nature or fire bless. That would make for some nasty assartuts, and still leave you with a pretty strong combatant when it eventually woke up. Any thoughts?

[Agema]

I'd concur with Baalz. Assartuts are already massively lethal, they don't need to be that bit more lethal: you're better off covering vulnerabilities (arrows, magic). Twist fate doesn't save you so much in melee, but because arrows hit randomly, unless you're subjected to a real hail of missiles you're not that likely to take much damage.

With water bless, you've also whacked a vast number of design points into a magic path your recruitables are already superb at.

[Baalz]

Yes, I meant to do an update here with the new units and never got around to it. Getting a couple underwater castles is now a must for LA Atlantis, really for one reason alone. Forgiving fathers.

Some of this is a repeat of things people already said, but I wanted to put all my thoughts together.

Fire random - gives you rune smashers (look at the original guide for great things to do with a penetration boost), lightless lanterns (combine with skull mentors and pretender forged dwarven hammers for a substantial budget research boost), acid rain (armor destruction and no way to resist it!) and even better acid storm (best thing in the world for large armies with good resistances and armor like mechanical men, etc. It'll even do a number on most SCs without regen because it's armor piercing and non-resistable! Use this in conjunction with a leviathan to give the bad guys something to chase) Haven't played around with them yet myself, but Vitriols seem like they could be extremely nasty if properly leveraged. With a little bit of work you're up into elemental staffs.

Astral radom - wohoo! You've now got that oh so essential teleporting astral support. These guys can forge themselves a starshine cap and teleport in to keep mindhunts from tearing apart your sailing raiders. Or they can easily thug out sufficiently to clear unsupported PD in your opponents undefended back woods. Or- teleport in to drop the body ethereal, luck & quickness to change a leviathan into a real army squisher. Or add Will of the Fates to that army of assartuts. Also, this is a fairly cheap way to start cranking out abominations if you've leveraged your water income into a clam farm.

Earth random - awesome, this nicely rounds out your new astral support by giving you access to crystal coins. Crystal coin + starshine cap means these earth guys are teleport capable to. Toss in some earth boots, a crystal shield, and a summon earth power, and you've got a 4S 4E support juggernaught who can jump in to unexpectedly add weapons of sharpness or army of lead to the will of fates for a top tier late game army. Or, more modestly just stick earth boots on 'em and you've now added gifts from heaven to your arsenal - a not inconsiderable weapon in it's own right.

Water random - well, to be honest this guy doesn't add a whole lot to your capabilities, though he does give you plenty of the S1 mages I suggested were a huge boost in my original guide. Having one of these guys tag along to buff your leviathans (or whatever) astrally, then switch to falling frost offers a nice synergy and strongly discourages those mindhunts which are otherwise a problem. Mostly though these guys are just gonna do what your better mages could have done, freeing them up for the harder stuff.

The other underwater units add some nice flavor, and can be useful in a few niches (poison armor, good protection with shields that don't melt in the sun) but generally not much to hang a strategy on.

[chrispedersen]

Vitriols are absolutely ridiculous (good)

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Vitriols are absolutely ridiculous (good)

Shhhhh.

Everyone just needs to stop talking about my, er, those lions already.....

Nothing to see here!