EA Atlantis - Bad*ss Battletoads

[Trumanator]

Oh, QM took him out IIRC. Though the living pillar spawn is pretty useful.

[Micah]

I thought the pillar hero was taken out in 1.6, are you looking at the latest version?

As far as the guide, I have to agree with the critique of it being a little over-optimistic. The suggestion that you can beat focused nations to Mother Oak and Well of Misery seem particularly far-fetched. You have no cap income of either path and have to rely on your pretender to turn up sites. Mother Oak is an early target for N-heavy nations and you're just asking for an overwrite if you try to throw it up, there's no way you can compete against a nation with capital income to cast a level-5 global. Same thing with Well, though you suggest burning gems to mentors on top of being reliant upon a single early site searcher. Maelstrom is a strong global and a much more reasonable one.

Also, voice of Tiamat is kind of terrible for Atlantis, as they are capable of searching for everything but A with the basalt kings...is a single mage turn to move around really worth 8 gems and having to wait for conjuration-4 instead of getting your gem income rolling as soon as you grab a king? A income is nice, certainly, but exceedingly rare in the water. If you're smart you dovetail your site searching kings in the direction you want them to go later so you have some more guys stationed closer to the front instead of sitting in your fort, so the time spent moving them around isn't even a sure waste.

Likewise, fire gems are really scarce in the water, and you really run the risk of not being able to run the lantern factory you were planning on if you're assuming you'll find a ton of them. That being said I'd probably drop luck to get magic over drain, especially with the coral priests making such an impact on atlantis' research prospects, which you totally trash with drain scales. This can change with trading though, but so many of my games have banned trading recently that I'm starting to think of it as a default.

Similarly, I question the ether lords, since an S mage of the deep can do most of what the ether lord can do with some boosters, which are a lot cheaper than an ether lord is to summon. Antimagic especially is a sucker move to use an ether lord for, as it's just asking for your 70-some gem investment to vanish in a puff of magic duel vapor. Much better to risk an S1 motd with a skullcap for those vital battles (antimagic is castable at S2 with an extra gem), or add a coin for teleporting support, still way cheaper than an ether lord (plus if you do duel-die and win the battle you have a decent shot at getting the items back, not so with the chassis.)

Anyhow, it was a long guide and there are plenty of great ideas, so I want to make sure that's recognized, but I think there's some room for improvement, or at least elaboration on why my concerns are unfounded.

[Trumanator]

Really, despite how much I love Luck I really think its not necessary. random tritons are much easier to kill than barbs, you only have one unique hero, and UW militia events are even worse than the above ground ones. Better to stick those points into something else methinks.

[Squirrelloid]

Immaculate: W4 permits Streams from Hades with D1, which is a great place to pick up good D mages (without spending D gems).

Baalz:
You missed one of the alt gems. Earth Meld absolutely destroys KotD. Combine with boil for some killing while your troops dish out some damage. Obviously lay out some other stuff too, but if you have a couple mages doing nothing but spamming earth meld they're going to pull their weight.

Beating Oceania requires leveraging significant mage resources. But it can be done.

[Baalz]

Hehe, I figured you'd have some input based on our recent conversations.

Coral priests: Doh! I completely missed that CBM change. I'm of mixed feelings on this one. Yes, that is a serious improvement in the cost per research point, but its also a big drop in the absolute research points so your research is going to be almost half as fast until such a time as the cost disparity translates into extra castles, labs and thence researchers which will take quite some time to catch up...time you're often not going to have with Oceana and R'lyeh breathing down your neck. Even if you double your castles due to cost savings your only making up 1 RP per turn by recruiting 2 of the coral priests vs 1 MotD. Also, using coral priests as your goto research recruitment is going to mean there's a lot less mages of the deep, which means a lot less of the specific random pick that you were wanting right this second at that fort. Coral priests are (mostly) solely research mages, while mages of the deep have a whole lot of combat/forging/summoning potential. I don't disagree magic-1 is a reasonably good choice, though order/luck tends to drop some very nice income events which I find often game changing when playing a nation with very low resource troops. My own preference would be to pick up death-3 if you wanted to go with magic-1. I will say though that part of my leaning towards drain was the near certainty that you'll have to fight R'yleh early on, but +1 MR isn't really that big and you're not gonna win the war in your dominion anyway.

My only refutation on several of your points is that they don't match with my anecdotal experience. I've gotten mother oak up using an underwater nation and niads more than once (I can think of 3 different MP games off the top of my head). It's not really a critical thing if you can't get it up, but its an opportunity to look for. Likewise, virtually every time I play an underwater nation I find myself sitting on a pile of fire gems from voice of tiamat. You don't have to have a huge income for it to pile up when you don't have squat to spend it on, and if you're (to pull some numbers out my arse) sitting on 80 fire gems with an income of +8 when you hit construction-6 you can crank out 5 lanterns per turn using hammers for 11 turns adding 275 research points per turn...and these numbers for fire gems are very low from my anecdotal experience assuming you've conquered one of your water neighbors by this point. Even if you don't have hammers to spare on lowly lanterns you can crank out 3 per turn over the same time which is still a significant contribution. Well of Misery also isn't critical, and also isn't out of the question so just watch for the opportunity. If, say, you're in a game with Helheim pulling hard for Tartarians then yeah you're not likely to get it, but its not out of the question that there is nobody pursuing that type of strategy so just watch for it since you've got the capability and it's in your research synergy.

Manually site searching with the Basalt Kings is a pretty good suggestion, though the opportunity cost is a bit higher than presented I think. As the cost is double the turns of a 500 gold guy vs a 200 gold guy, so its a factor of 5 on how much gold you're tying up, which is pretty damn significant in the early game. The other way to phrase that is if you've got 2 Basalt Kings out site searching you could instead have one mage of the deep casting voice of tiamat and another one leading 60 deep ones into battle. You have a point that you can heard them in the right direction so all that movement isn't wasted, but its a bit more of a complicated decision than just saving 8 gems. Also, you're probably hitting most of your searches with F1, which may be why you're of the opinion you don't get many fire gems. Finally, though I wouldn't use it to actually justify a strategy, it bugs me to think about that theoretic level 3/4 F/W/E site that's sitting there hidden and mocking me.

The etherlord, I'm surprised you're the first to complain on that, I figured that'd be a sticking point off the bat. No doubt he's not your goto guy for anti-magic, but there are certainly times when the risk of a magic duel is very low and you're teleporting him in there for something else, anti-magic is mostly just important if you're dropping soul drain on your 8 MR guys. Which is a good segue into my next point that having a guy who can air drop darkness is a big deal that none of your other guys (aside from your pretender) can manage. Soul drain (infinite reinvig) means this one guy can drop darkness and will of the fates and spam undead mastery or arcane domination or...well, with the right random and boosters even master enslave which is surely not something your opponent was planning to have to counter from Atlantis. If you grant an ether warrior is worth 2 pearls, and you need 21 gems of boosters for a mage of the deep to cover something a naked ether lord can do then the ether lord is only costing 19 gems. Then, of course, there's the things the ether lord can do for you that the MotD cannot. Gateway is huge, as is astral travel. If you use him right you shouldn't have too much trouble getting your money's worth.

[Micah]

There are no F2+ E4 or W4 sites in the water, so I'm not missing any F sites by searching at F1, so my fire gem opinion is well-enough informed based on my site distribution in games, not failed searches. Good try though ;-) Over a third of BKs come with E3/W3. And I'll reiterate that waiting for conj 4 to search outweighs the ability to use a motd over the kings.

I also haven't examined the discounts on the ether gate spell, what is it down to? If it's 60 or less that makes it competitive, 70 is pushing it though, IMO. MotD + cap/coin/ring can gateway, so that's not a great kicker...add a couple of command items to his hand slots to cover his command limit deficiency and he can gate in a respectable force.

While it's true that your ether lord can provide awesome mobile battle pain you're gambling a lot on your opponent not getting a successful duel off. Having your keystone support mage vaporized is a Problem, as darkness drops when he dies and your will of the fates never gets cast. Some spectres with flying boots can fill a similar niche (less awesomely, granted) with a lot less risk, with stealth and flight making up for the teleporting loss.

The ether lords and globals are all situationally useful, of course, but I don't think they merit inclusion in the guide without bringing up that caveat, since I think it's going to come up more often than not, and the risks might not be very evident to a newer player.

[Micah]

Oh, and if you're worried about QUICK research gaining 40% more RP off each motd and 25% off each BK is pretty telling as well, in the luck vs magic debate. Death scales are playable, but I don't like them them personally, and I think taking them with an UW nation is especially poor planning since you have a lot of nice hard-to-raid provinces, so keeping the population healthy is even more useful than normal, IMO. Also if you take death and luck you're gonna have to be mighty disciplined to not box yourself into a hole with upkeep after getting a few nice events and cranking out units while your income is shrinking.

[kianduatha]

That's about what I figured with Coral Priests. They're nice if you're tight on gold for a few rounds(and I'd rather get 3 coral priests and a King of the Deep than 3 Mages of the Deep), but can't be your main strategy.

You have also finally tempted me to see what wonders Order3 Luck3 can get me. Time to do some tests.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Micah

I also haven't examined the discounts on the ether gate spell, what is it down to? If it's 60 or less that makes it competitive, 70 is pushing it though, IMO. MotD + cap/coin/ring can gateway, so that's not a great kicker...add a couple of command items to his hand slots to cover his command limit deficiency and he can gate in a respectable force.

While it's true that your ether lord can provide awesome mobile battle pain you're gambling a lot on your opponent not getting a successful duel off. Having your keystone support mage vaporized is a Problem, as darkness drops when he dies and your will of the fates never gets cast. Some spectres with flying boots can fill a similar niche (less awesomely, granted) with a lot less risk, with stealth and flight making up for the teleporting loss.

The ether lords and globals are all situationally useful, of course, but I don't think they merit inclusion in the guide without bringing up that caveat, since I think it's going to come up more often than not, and the risks might not be very evident to a newer player.

Ether lord's at 70 right now, but I think it's fair to put 30 of that cost on the (15) ether warriors. If you're substituting in a MotD with a ring the MotD is more expensive than the lord unless you're not putting the warriors to good use. You're always gonna be looking for dudes with decent MR to plug that hole, and these are some of the better ones.

Oh, another thing your comment about the command items reminded me of was that a couple of low risk soul vortex drops will run that ether lord's experience stars and command rating right into the stratosphere, you should be able to do something similar with a MotD with some of that nastiness I mention above. Hmmm, do you gain experience for friendly kills?

[Micah]

Only 11 gems cheaper, which turns to 4 if you don't get an S random on that ether lord since he'll need a hat. You also need the booster rings eventually anyhow, so you can probably snag them for a turn for gateway duty without having to forge a whole new one for it. Coming up with another 70 spare pearls on top of breaking the ring barrier is a tall order. Still, I freely admit it could be incredibly situationally useful to pull one up, but again, somewhat...optimistic. =)