First off, this guide is heavily inspired by, draws from, and is meant to act as a suppliment to Baalz's
Frozen Death in All Directions guide. If you haven't read it yet, you really should. The primary reason for this document is to provide info and strategies concerning all the new and exciting stuff that has opened up for LA Atlantis after Baalz wrote "Frozen Death".
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LA Atlantis - Mobility, Infantry, Liquidity
In many respects, Atlantians are the master size-2 race. They have slightly better than average strength, slightly better than average hit points (which makes a huge difference in aggregate), an extremely long life span (500 years), darkvision 50, and are fully amphibious. Furthermore, all the national land troops for LA Atlantis have 50-75% cold resistance. And all this comes with no disadvantages except lower than average precision... but seeing as they lack national archers, this matters less than you'd think. This racial advantage is all the more stark in the Late Age when most of the fantastical demon/lava/giant/monster people have died off and been replaced with boring old humans.
Previous ages of Atlantis were all about the elite royalty (Basalt Kings and Queens in EA, Kings of the Deep and Coral Queens in MA) backed up by an otherwise uninspiring Atlantian proletariat. In EA and MA atlantis, your average recruit's main job was to act as a speed bump for their super-expensive, magically powerful rulers. Late Age Atlantis instead relies on the common Atlantian, decked out in superior armor and weaponry, to carve out an empire. Once the commanders of Atlantis have gotten these troops to the fight and dropped a few buffs, their main job is to stay in the back and not get killed.
However, as soon as LA Atlantis makes it under the water they'll find the remnants of the flabby nobility of ages past. LA Atlantis is a nation divided between the cheap, elite, icy atlantians of the land and the expensive, coral-armed atlantians of the sea. In the ocean you'll be able to recruit from a slightly watered down version of MA Atlantis' roster. This adds a lot of diversity to LA Atlantis but most of what you get is some combination of slow, expensive and unsynergistic with your main forces; it can be a little surprising just how little an aquatic race actually wants to recruit from the sea.
Now that we have acknowledged this divide, let's discuss the two halves of LA Atlantis.
Atlantis on Land
This is the side of Atlantis we're going to care about the most. If Sarah Palin were a lovecraftian fish monster (and I'm not denying the possibility), she would describe these as the "Real Atlantians". Baalz pretty much said it all here so I have very little to add about the Atlantian infantry save for a few observations:
The
Ice Guard with shields should be your default recruit. They are super heavy infantry with magical swords, excellent shields, an incredible map move-2 and a protection value in low to mid 20s when fighting in the cold (their protection is +/- 2 per step on the cold/heat scale). While the glaive guys are better at hacking giants and cavalry apart, the shields really add a lot more survivability to the unit and, with their high strength, these guys will hurt anything they meet in melee anyway. They don't fear arrows or crossbow bolts. They don't fear cavalry or enemy infantry. They don't fear darkness or cold. They don't fear ethereal or mistform enemies. They fear nothing but massed tramplers and heavy magical bombardment (fireball, acid rain, thunderstrike, etc.). They take a long time to mass so you want to recruit them every chance you get; their upkeep is marginal anyway and they will always be useful.
Arssartuts are every bit as excellent as they're made out to be in other guides. They are so cheap for their quality that you'll want to recruit them even if you don't have a strong bless for them. Just be sure to keep them out of arrow fire by employing them slightly behind your squads of Ice Guard and/or arrow screens. Baalz recommends a serious E9S9N4 bless and his reasoning is solid; it's a good bless for your troops and many sacred commanders, especially if you are looking at facing LA R'lyeh and/or LA Ermor. However, if you aren't facing either of those terrors of the Late Age then you can do quite well with the more modestly priced W9N4. W9 makes Arssartuts fast, lethal and very robust in melee, turning those bone glaives into whirling cuisinarts that hack through heavy infantry, cavalry, elephants, giants or mobs of chaff with equal ease. Regardless of what bless you choose, I strongly recommend it include N4. The minor regen cuts WAY down on afflictions (which your front line troops will accumulate even in the best of times) and massively improves the survivability of your Arssartuts. Since the bulk of your infantry has good armor and is size-2, a regen of 1hp/round will often be enough to keep a full square of Arssartuts on their feet even in a protracted battle. Also, invading underwater inevitably means facing weak coral poisoning which the nature bless effectively negates; there's nothing stupider than having your elite infantry keel over after routing a bunch of naked tritons.
Tungalik are the only recruit-anywhere mages you have on land. Magically, they are underwhelming but surprisingly versitile. As LA Atlantis, you will have to work very, very hard to keep up with everyone else's research because your rank-and-file mage generates 4rp a turn, requires a lab AND a temple to recruit and isn't super cheap like T'ien Ch'i's Master of the Way or Mictlan's Priest. You should seriously consider taking Magic-1 to help prop up your research. However, Tungaliks are hardier than your normal lab-jockey, can lead 30 undead, can self-bless, self-buff, spam a few key spells and lead 40 troops in and out of the water. They are incredibly versatile commanders compared their peers from other nations. Here are good uses for your Tungaliks:
1) Leading expansion parties of Arssartuts and Ice Guard
2) Repeatedly casting Dark Knowledge
3) Forging cheap water/death items (water ring, staff of numbness, banefire crossbow, etc.)
4) Spamming frozen heart, slime, banishment, ghost grip, frighten, cleansing water (with water ring), quickness (with ring), ice strike (with ring) or crushing pressure (underwater)
5) Casting Quicken Self and then item spamming or arrow spamming (staff of numbness, staff of corrosion, herald lance, banfire crossbow, bow of war, thunder bow)
Angakok are Tungalik writ-large. Everything a Tungalik can do (except for not be expensive) they can do better. Magic-wise you get solid water and death as well as minor access to air and earth. These guys are big (size 4), beefy, can lead 80 troops, can sail and can bring 10 human-sized troops underwater (this last one is often overlooked). The W4 ones will magic armies across the world's waterways and cast the really high-end water spells. The D3 ones will cast darkness and do all of your heavy lifting in the lab casting death rituals and forging death items. The A1s can forge the various bows that Atlantis loves so much (more on that later). The E1s can, with a pair of earth boots and/or a crystal shield drop some of the big earth buffs that make the Elite Atlantian infantry into the stuff of nightmares (legions of steel, strength of giants, weapons of sharpness).
One thing which continues to surprise me is just how low LA Atlantis' upkeep usually is. All their primary mages are sacred, their primary researcher is sacred and fairly inexpensive, their sacred troops are cheap yet durable and their elite infantry are cheaper still. Atlantis really does have a quality over quantity motif, where they can recruit one infantry for 16 gold which kicks as much butt as troops that cost several times as much. This allows them to get by on small, cheap armies while hiring low upkeep researchers and throwing up a whole lot of very nice, high admin forts. Low upkeep and high admin forts combined with their capacity for rapid expansion means that Atlantis can become very wealthy, very fast (which is further compounded if they took production and order).
Atlantis under the Water
The remnants of MA Atlantis still linger under the water waiting for LA Atlantis to build a fort for them to gather in. Unlike their land-based relatives, these guys have much higher gold-to-worth ratios but lower resource-to-worth ratios. Most of them are map-move 1, none of them have cold resistance and you will, for the most part, ignore them. The two worth noting are the Shield Bearers and the Unsleeping, but even their uses are pretty marginal.
Atlantian Shield Bearers can make decent chaff since they have shields, are slightly cheaper than seal hunters and have map move-2. Their low resource massability and strength of 11 also makes them slightly better than average for tearing down walls.
If you are facing LA R'lyeh, the
Unsleeping, along with all the underwater commanders (save the Shambler Chief), have void sanity which can help hold the line underwater in R'lyeh's insanity-inducing dominion. And... that's about it for the underwater troops.
The reason you build an underwater fort is to recruit
Forgiving Fathers. At 250 gold and 4 paths (2W1S + 1EFSW), they are painfully expensive in terms of upkeep (costing almost as much per turn as 4 Tungaliks) but you'll buy them anyway. The reason is because you really want an S2 caster (forging astral items), an S1E1 caster (forging crystal items) and a W2F1 caster (forging staffs of corrosion, lightless lanterns and casting manifest vitriol). The W3 variety is less useful but can still be used to spam water evocations or astral buffs. When they're not sitting in an underwater lab forging, summoning or casting voice of apsu/tiamat, they can offer all the fun support that S1 mages offer on the battlefield (body ethereal, luck, communions, paralyze).
Unsleeping Consorts are actually a decent thug chassis which, unlike your Angakoks, are recruit-anywhere and cheap. They can self bless so the better the bless you have, the less gear they'll need (to a minimum of a frost brand). However, they are map move-1 so unless you have the means of producing winged boots they will be slow to move around. Stick one or two with herald lances (which act as a standard) in among your Ice Guards if your opponent is using fear spam/wailing wind. They make excellent item spammers because they are tough enough to be put near the front lines where you need an accurate lightning-shooter or want your herald lance holder to actually stand close enough to your troops to benefit from it's moral boosting standard effect. Bonus points if you have a W9 bless, allowing them to cast through their items 1.5 times a turn.
Scales
Atlantis is a pretty forgiving nation when it comes to scales. You already want Cold-3 by default; it's a non-decision. On top of that, none of your troops are anywhere close to being old so you can take death-3 without condemning your mages to death by disease. While you still suffer the income hit (both direct and from pop-death), you should expand quickly enough to more than counteract that. You will also suffer a supply hit but your armies tend to be smallish forces of elite, size-2 infantry so your need for supplies is vanishingly small. Also, Atlantis tends to build a lot of forts, so they have those supplies to rely on locally, whereas your enemies will enter your dominion starving with -75% supplies. So that's 240 design points right there. You really want Magic-1 to help prop up your Tungalik-based research. Beyond that, I'm a big fan of Production-3 for LA Atlantis because it lets you churn out a couple dozen cheap, icy super-soldiers each turn; having a good standing army of Ice Guard will keep your empire large, strong and fearsome. Plus, this brings in +12% income in CBM 1.92 which is a very welcomed addition. Use your own judgement concerning the right mixture of Order and Luck that works for you. Atlantis' upkeep is shockingly low for most of the game so you can get by on surprisingly little money in the early game (a point in favor of Turmoil+Luck) but I personally like having the extra cash for building castles to cement my early gains, snapping up crucial mercenaries when they come or using excess gold for diplomatic leverage with other nations.
Since your dominion is pretty toxic to your rivals, since you really want to be fighting in the cold and since your sacred troops are mighty nice, having a a strong dominion (7+) is definitely a good idea. I try for a Dom-8 if I can hit it because it spreads your dom well without being too expensive. Plus, "8 Arssartuts with a decent bless and some chaff" seems to be the magic recipe for "will slaughter most indies without meaningful losses" expansion parties.
Pretender
You don't need an awake pretender to expand; you should be able to recruit an expansion party every 1-2 turns (depending on bless). As such, the god you pick is going to be dormant or imprisoned and you're not going to sacrifice your bless and/or scales to get them. I see three main options: a moderate bless dormant-Titan, a dormant-rainbow pretender or an imprisoned heavy-bless immobile. For all the designs below, Cold-3 and Death-3 is assumed.
For the first option, I like the Lord of Storms. He is a dirt cheap titan-chassis at 25 points and comes with A2W1 to start with. You can make him an A2W9N4 with Dom-8 and still afford Order-1, Production-3 and Magic-1. Aside from the benefits of the blessing, this pretender can lay down some crucial self-buffs and cloud trapeze where needed once he wakes up and picks up some decent equipment. Air-2 gives your someone who can forge winged boots, N4 opens a lot of helpful summons and rituals and W9 allows for some awe-inspiring falling frost and quickening spam (since the area and damage of those spells scale with the water mage's skill).
For the second option, you can have a Master Lich with D5N4S4W4F4 and Dom-8 for a really solid smattering of bonuses for your sacred units attached to an amazing researcher, site-searcher and ritual caster who is immortal. You can squeeze in another minor bless and an extra scale or two if you downgrade the lich to a crone and drop to Dom-7 but you lose the security of having an immortal pretender; may the buyer beware.
For the last option, you can have a dormant Monolith with the E9S9N5 bless with Dom-8 if you take one additional negative scale. If you go this route, I'd actually recommend going with Sloth since your Arssartuts are going to be AMAZING and can carry a battle with far less support than they'd otherwise need. This design also makes your many sacred commanders very cheap to thug out as all they really need is a frost brand and a round to bless themselves.
Research Goals
Early on you really want to research Conjuration-4. It contains all the site searching spells your land mages can actually cast (dark knowledge, voice of apsu, voice of tiamat). After that, you'll want to snap up Evocation 2 so your forgiving fathers can cast arcane probing. From there it gets a little tricky.
Alteration one through six is the holy grail for LA Atlantis; I can't think of another nation that has so MANY highly desired spells in one branch. Quicken Self, Luck, Body Ethereal, Wolven Winter, Darkness, Frozen Heart, Soul Vortex and Manifest Vitriol are just the ones you can cast without involving summons or your pretender. Wolven Winter and Darkness are both enormous boons to Atlantis. The former allows your infantry to always fight with super-heavy armor while fatiguing the enemy (especially if that enemy is cold-blooded). The latter offers a big debuff to the enemy (your forces all have darkvision 50 so it affects them less) and wrecks the accuracy of enemy missiles and spells. Atlantis slaughters things in the day but at night it's just embarrassing how lopsided it gets.
However, you are going to want construction-4 (and eventually 6) to put your Voice of Tiamat-driven gem income to good use. You really want crystal shields, robes of the sea, frost brands, various magical bows and (if you have particularly good death income) skull mentors. You are also going to want Thaum-2 for Ride the Currents (a new CBM 1.92 spell) and eventually Thaum-5 for Traverse the Sea. I'll go into those last two a bit later. Of course, Evocation unlocks some fun ones like falling frost, cleansing water and an assortment of acid spells all of which I like to call the "Better Killing through Water Magic" collection. And Conjuration 5 and 6 unlocks some really nice summons like the Naiad and the Monster fish. How you balance your ascent to Alt-6, Constr-6, Thaum-5 and Evoc-5 is something you have to decide based on circumstances but if you can't make up your mind, you could do worse than throwing everything into Alteration after you reach conjuration 4.
More Mobile than Thou
Mobility is the crowning achievement of LA Atlantis. Moreso than any nation (except maybe Caelum and even then it depends on the map), Atlantis can project force rapidly across the map. This is ultimately from four sources: map move-2 heavy infantry, 100% amphibious, sailing and solid access to the new CBM1.92 water teleport spells. Unlike most nations, you can quickly march your most elite troops across the map. Because of the sheer size of most water provinces, you can cover a lot of ground moving through them even though they restrict you to map move-1. Also, when raiding the coastline, it's wonderful to always be able to retreat into the ocean if your encounter a setback. Sailing is already excellent but being able to march two provinces into the ocean and then sail across another water province and attack a land province YOU WEREN'T ADJACENT TO offers you ample chances for surpise as well as the ability to traverse a huge distance in almost no time. It will frustrate the heck out of your opponents.
However, all of this has been there since Dominions 3 was released. CBM 1.92 adds two new modes for rapid, Atlantian transit: Ride the Currents and Traverse the Sea. Ride the Currents (Thaum-2, W3, 1 gem, must be cast underwater) allows any Angakok to teleport from one underwater province with a lab to any other friendly underwater province (the destination doesn't need a lab). Traverse the Sea (Thaum-5, W5, 7 gems, must be cast underwater) acts like an underwater Gateway spell, taking all the commander's troops along for the ride. These spells are especially helpful since 1) the Angakok and the Arssartut are both capital-only but very important to your war effort and 2) your capital will always start adjacent to a water province. What you do is conquer that water province and build a lab in it. You constantly mass troops in your capital and then give a W4 Angakok a robe of the sea. That Angakok can command 80 conventional troops, 60 undead and (with the robe) 25 magical beings so that's a large force to begin with. However, you can hand them a crown of command (+50 leadership, +25 magical leadership, costs 5S) and a Scepter of Authority (+25 leadership, costs 5F) to pack more troops onto the magical underwater teleporter. Once you reach construction 6 you can forge water rings, allowing any W3 mage to teleport troops and allowing any W1 mage to teleport themselves across the oceans. Using teleport spells to move crucial units and using labs to shuttle around items will give your forces incredible flexibility, allowing you fight across the map and offering you many different vectors of attack (or, if needed, retreat).
Imagine this: you're across the map when Atlantis declares war on you, which leaves you more confused than scared. Unbeknownst to you, two water provinces out to sea he has chased off the indies there and built a lab. 4 Angakoks, 150 elite infantry and dozens of undead and magical beings teleport in beyond your field of vision (or, at least, beyond your ability to do anything about it). This costs Atlantis 10 water gems (1xTtS + 3xRtC). The next turn the W4 Angakok 'ports back to the staging area by the Atlantis capital for 1 water gem, ready to receive the next two turns of troops. Meanwhile, two Angakoks come sailing in from beyond the horizon and lay siege to your coastal capital while the third conquers the adjacent sea province. Even if you do manage to drive Atlantis off, they can always retreat beneath the water and regroup. Plus, more mages and troops are teleporting in every turn. No matter what, you can't even begin to think of retaliating against them because for you the ocean is a big, wet barrier. For them, however, it's a highway which makes your capital three moves away from their capital. Also, for some reason, it's snowing very heavily in every province you fight those guys in. Weird.
LA Atlantis - Mobility, Infantry, Liquidity
Linear Mode
