Getting EA Oceana out of the water...

[Endoperez]

Are you talking of EA or MA? It makes a difference. I understand EA R'lyeh is weaker than EA Oceania, and unlike Oceania, EA R'lyeh can't even make Amulets of the Fish.

[Meglobob]

EA Oceania WEAK? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!?!?! RIGHT?!?!

In Dawnstrike MP, EA Oceania has stomped all over EA R'lyeh and is now stomping all over me EA Atlantis. Underwater Oceania is AWESOME, I will repeat, it deserves repetition, UNDERWATER, OCEANIA IS AWESOME.

There knights of the deep even with a minor bless are unstoppable underwater. 21 def/21 pro, fast (30 move), 3 weapon attacks (1 magic) and on top of that they have recuperation...ARAAGH! On land I would just blow them up with AOE spells, but underwater...what can you do? Not alot, 40 of those will go through 100's of your best troops as if they were not there, I gathered 12 lvl 4+ water mages, summoned 200+ sharks, had a army of 100+, hit them with dozens of water strikes/sleep clouds/geysers. It did not stop them.

DON'T YOU DARE SAY EA OCEANIA IS WEAK!?!?!

Please note:- Due to the fact Oceania is currently beating me to a pulp, this post may be a tad extreme...

[Foodstamp]

Bah my stuff is relevant to MA, I missed the EA part. My apologies.

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, I second that EA Oceania is not at all weak, in SP as well as apparently MP. Hippocampi sacred calvalry are atleast as good as Helheim sacred calvalry, possibly better, since you can compare rejuvenation to glamour, and glamour may come out a little ahead, but then add on that you get the hippocampus back if your sacred rider gets killed-plus in the water you're not competing nearly as much sacred-to-sacred. I had half a dozen medium-blessed hippocampi calvalry annhilate atleast 12 independent provinces without any of them ever taking an affliction, let alone losing a rider. Even if one of them had, the affliction would quickly be healed, which enabled me to build them up to 3 stars with 0 afflictions very quickly. If Hippocampi-riders were amphibious, EA Oceanea would dominate the entire game since you'd have more time to build up a powerful sacred force and the enemy would have a lot harder time destroying your economy or raiding you.

Even so, you can equip your triton kings with air-breathing which gives you a minimum 4 water caster with lots of land-based spells, and you'll have lots and lots of them, because you've destroyed all independents everywhere, including the sea-trolls and the amber-clan guards and the krackens and the leviathons and the dragon-turtles, and everything else you might or might not encounter, independent-wise, and R'lyeh and Atlantis won't even look at you funny, they're too busy outfitting the cave-fortresses they have to live in now because you're out there and only getting closer. And your triton kings are going to be hella-tough when they get on land because you've got a bless strategy going for them as well. And that's when you start making amulets of air-breathing for your hippocampi-rider CAPTAINS.

It's a good nation.

[DeathDaemon]

I am having trouble as EA Oceana on land in a current game (AI and MP), even though I am leading the score charts in every category.

Playing Cradle, my strategy:
1. Hire land mercenaries whenever possible.
2. Take the port cities for money and blockading.
Lots of money for improvements and castles, and to spread around the map quickly before nations expand.
3. Build temples at every underwater province
I went with Cold 3, Sloth 3, and high dominion to spread those crap scales around)
4. Site search above and below water.
5. 15+ frozen heart casters per army with usually a 50% FR chest or similar protection.
6. Lots of enchantments and remote spells (not here yet)

My land combat is pathetic. I have hordes of archers and heavy infantry, with javelin light infantry mixed with my triton raiders. The armies do ok against independents, but even with my huge income bonus I can't keep up with 4-5 fronts of AIs, which is quite common on Cradle. The frozen heart spam is nice, but took a lot of research (not much useful in alteration) and lots of money and time (tons of castles to make mages). Unfortunately I don't have a large water gem income to consider Sea Trolls yet. I do have a tons of other gems, but no casters to use them other than my god and 2S2A indy mages. Of course I've started boosting and empowering my randoms, but I couldn't have done any of this w/o a good amount of luck. Maybe I've overextended a bit, but I'm not making much progress on land. Luckily most of the opponents are AI, or else I would have given all my indy land and my castles to them without a fight. What combat magic should I use, and how do you expand on land and keep it?

[Saxon]

Good, good, good, all very interesting. To bring the thread back to the original question, how do you lift EA Oceana out of the ocean, what is your mid and late game?

Folks have nicely summarized how they are strong underwater and some have argued that it should be hard to get out of the water. Fine, now what?

NT Jedi has pointed out, and I second, that there are few spells and items to allow water only creatures to go on land. There are a lot of ways for land units to get into the water. To get them, you need to have water or air magic and do a fair bit of research. I agree that this is an area that could be looked at by the devs, as even with research and the right magic paths, I have a tough time getting my troops out of the water. One poster has said that getting units out of the water is the same as getting them in, but I must disagree. Open up that manual and show me the spells and magic items. Really, I challenge you! Partly to prove my point and partly in the hope I missed something you can show me.

Find a good independent province, build a castle and build a new army. As Death Daemon points out, you can grab archers and heavy infantry. Now, those are not bad, but do they stand up against the troops you will find on land? Poison hydras, Vans, Magma Children? I have never seen a thread on �Building a killer strategy based on independent troops!� My point is that these troops are not enough, we need more.

Summons. This is where I think the answer may be, but would love to hear more. Sea trolls are good, but it is a challenge to get enough. Most of my magic is centered around water, so there is competition for those water gems. Clams take 15 to build, which takes time to pay off. Also in the water gem competition are the Kynaiads (spelled incorrectly) These are the 15 units for 30 gems summon that have awe. I find them to be very durable and useful in and out of the water. However, they don�t seem to kill much, so I tend to have them as the center of the army, with my mermen with amour and tridents on the sides.

National units. The mages have a tough time coming onto land, I have yet to find a way around this. The sacred cavalry can not come on land (if you know a way, please tell me!) This is why I argue that you should not use a bless strategy with this nation, as the points you spend will not directly help you in the later parts of the game.

What does come on land are the mermen. The cheap one has a net, which tends to nicely blunt the first enemy charge. However, they then die quickly. The heavy unit is good, no complaints. I buy as many of them as resources will permit, every turn.

Death. I think death magic might be the way forward. Get a pretender with some and get him summoning specters as soon as he can. This gives you a wide range of magic. You can search with the long range spells and then build up an army of the dead. My only worry about this is that it is not thematic! I still want to know how to get Oceana to take over the world, as a water magic and water based nation.

Nature. This one seems to be the second choice of magic that is natural to the nation. I have always used this as a good buff magic, but not a summoning or attack based school. Gift of Health is nice, if you have the dominion to go with it, but not a game winner. How can Oceana use this path to power up?

[HoneyBadger]

I don't know about death magic not being thematic to Oceanea, it all depends on what you view Oceanea capable of-if you want The Little Mermaid version then no, death magic probably isn't your style, but if you want something dark and cold and deep and chaotic, like the sea itself, then it works just fine. I think it's pretty spectacular to imagine Oceanea sending the corpses of hundreds of drowned sailors out to drag their former friends and neighbers beneath the waves. This could be extended into Unfrozen where the dead of a thousand cruel winters take their revenge on those whose blood still runs warm in their veins. There currently are quite a lot of independent amphibious types of unit in the oceans of Dom3 already though-shamblers, icthys, and the sea-trolls who were already mentioned, not to mention the occasional illithid, which as far as I know are usually found in the water. I do have to say that there should be some high level water spell which allows you to bring troops from the water on to land. I don't think the calvalry commanders are capital only, am I wrong? if not then just use large groups of them for calvalry, they'll be better than the standard anyway. Make sure you get ahold of the Queens of Elemental Water-one of them is already amphibious and she's not a bad target for empowering and prophetizing. It's wasteful but so is most empowering, and atleast she's a good chassis. Are asp turtles amphibious? I've yet to see one, but I think they are. Overall, I think empowering a powerful amphibious chassis and using it to summon land-based troops might be the best thing you can do to support your independents.

[PvK]

Chosing a pretender who can summon mages and/or units who are either good on land, and/or who can summon units who are good on land, are some options. There are some paths like that for even EA Oceania's natural mages.

In my massive EA Oceania SP game, I took my first land provinces using plain trident heavy infantry mixed with turtle warriors and other amphibious fodder. In mid game, I used some nice summons to supplement my natural troops and indy troops - there are some good ones available, especially if you summon from one mage type to the next. Getting into the later phases of the game, I've got strong mages and summons from water, nature, death, astral, air, earth... hmm, all except blood and fire.

I'm also toying with the idea of gifting and equipping some of the more impressive sea creatures with land capabilities... Flying Asp Turtle, anyone?

PvK

[Saxon]

Asp Turtle is amphibious?! Oh goodie, I will have to try that out.

In my SP game, I am using Specters to expand my range of magic and searching everything. I found a Crystal Castle, which gives nice E2S2 mages for 180. With the earth spell that boosts your level and optional boots, I have a nice E4 mage, which is good for buffing troops and destroying enemy armor. I can also Body Ethereal spam, though I plan to use the astral randoms on the Specters for that. Like PvK says, everything but blood and fire. What fire gems I had I spent on lightless lanterns, as I could not see much use for them, even though I have F1 mages in the capital.

Going back to the thematic issue, I agree that the drowned sailors idea has merit. I was just thinking that the mages in the nation seem to be largely water and nature, and death comes from my pretender, so the default theme seemed to be more Little Mermaid than The Black Pearl.

In any case, any other suggestions on getting this nation out of the water are welcome. I am also curious, does Atlantis have this problem? Unless Rhyelh has changed a lot since Dom II, I suspect they are ok.

[Zebion]

All of alantis are generally amphibious. Ea - LA