EA Atlantis - Bad*ss Battletoads

[thejeff]

I couldn't get the Sea Trolls approach to work against R'lyeh.
The mindblasters targeted the trolls happily enough, but after a round or two all the trolls were paralyzed and they moved on to destroy my (now closer) regular troops.
The mindblasters were scripted to fire closest, not largest, which is what I would expect from a player trying to counter this tactic. It seemed that once the trolls were paralyzed the targeting changed to the next squad.

[Swan]

i think you have to use HUGE numbers of trolls

[thejeff]

Well, Baalz suggests 5 to keep 40+ mindblasters busy. I tried 4 against 15 or so and got slaughtered. Probably if I'd used 20 it would have worked, but that's quite a few gems, that you need to fuel VoT and a lot of mage time.

[Baalz]

Well, maybe I was a bit overenthusiastic in implying that sea trolls would win against R’yleh no matter what you did, once one side starts using more advanced tactics you’ve got to do the same with the other side. Let’s see what perhaps a typical very early fight might look like with comparable resources on both sides. I do assume (as suggested) that Atlantis spends a small amount of water gems and conjuration research. R’yleh doesn’t have any real magic support – I’m not interested in playing counter vs counter vs counter vs this deployment vs that deployment, but rather to illustrate that mind blasters can be effectively countered by sea trolls and good tactics.

40 Giboleths – 1600 gold
30 lobo gaurds – 300 gold
Aboleth – 200 gold

Total 2100 gold

Basalt Queen – 160
2 Mages of the deep – 400
150 deep ones – 1500 gold
10 Sea trolls

Total 2060 gold

Setup:
Atlantis – Sea trolls out front all the way forward, flanking groups of deep ones.
R’yleh – set all the way back with lobo guards in front. Giboleths scripted to fire closest.

Turn one:
Atlantis: school of sharks X2, sermon of courage, advances
R’yleh: blasts 100% sharks

Turn two:
Atlantis: school of sharks X2, sermon of courage, advances
R’yleh: blasts 100% sharks

Turn three:
Atlantis: sermon of courage (mages of the deep don’t do anything else productive, assuming no more research), advances
R’yleh: blasts 100% sharks (sharks mostly dead now)

Turn four:
Atlantis – Sea trolls make it into melee, do light damage. Deep ones still advancing
R’yleh – blasts the last of the sharks and mostly hits sea trolls. Paralyzes 5 out of the 10 sea trolls…but those guys are already in melee (close). Also happened to paralyze one deep one

Turn five:
Atlantis – sea trolls don’t do much damage being largely paralyzed. Deep ones close to *almost* melee range but don’t really do anything
R’yleh – blasts sea trolls and manages to kill a few of them with lobo guards. A second random deep one is paralyzed

Turn six:
Atlantis – Lobo guards evaporate in the face of a wave of deep ones
R’yleh – blasts some sea trolls (they’re still front and center of the battle lines), but manages to paralyze about 15 deep ones

Turn seven:
Atlantis – starts chewing on the front line of giboleth
R’yleh – targeting exclusively deep ones at this point, paralyzes another 15 or so

Turns eight - ten – giboleths are shredded.

Final casualties: 2 sea trolls, 23 deep ones vs….haha, not kidding: everything but 2 giboleths and the aboleth.


Now, to be sure, R’yleh could try some different moves, Atlantis could try to counter those, and so on, but I think this clearly illustrates my proof of concept. Also, with a bit more research this would have been even more lopsided. Consider if Atlantis had dropped anti-magic & haste (courtesy of their pretender) plus friendly currents. Sure, he could be magic dueled, but he could also teleport in unexpectedly for the pivotal fight, and magic dueling an S4 immortal gets expensive real fast (H3 coral queens can likely push your dominion around, R'yleh doesn't typically have a strong one either)

[thejeff]

Ok, that's more reasonable than "Just bringing 5 or so of these trolls (1 W gem apiece) along with all your low MR deep ones will keep 40+ giboleths (1600 gold) occupied easily long enough for you to swim over and rip their tentacles off with the rest of your troops. Sure, your trolls will be good and paralyzed, but that won’t stop them from being continually targeted, and they take an incredible amount of mind blasts to kill."

School of Sharks seems to be the real key, not the trolls. They let the trolls get close enough to still qualify as closest after getting paralyzed. It sounds like the trolls soaked up about 2 rounds of blasting, so the closing might not even be important. I may have to play around with that scenario without the trolls. Maybe an extra Mage for more sharks instead.

In my MP EA Atlantis game, I still haven't had the chance to fight R'lyeh, but my early plan was to rely on Kings & Mages using Iron Will to boost themselves and as many tougher troops as possible. Also bringing in common uw indies with higher mr. Amber Clan tritons are 14 and Triton Knights are 12 IIRC.

[Agema]

Against Rlyeh, you don't need sea trolls, if you're attacked earlier.

You can send in a Basalt King or three with some form of priest. Bless them, and even just a modest N/S bless takes the sting off the torrent of mind blasts. The basalt kings are not really there to do anything but soak up the mind blasts, but they don't half save the rest of your army. Oh, and they cast Iron Will as well (if you're defending at least - chances are you'll get paralysed first when attacking). 40 mind blasts a turn will undoubtedly paralyse and start damaging your 20+ MR basalt kings rapidly, but you'll take pain sufficiently sparingly that even a gentle HP regeneration from N bless makes them unlikely to die.

You can give the basalt king amulets of MR, or even - think about it - lead shields. After all, who cares about taking massive fatigue from spellcasting and fighting when your basalt king is there to do neither?

[thejeff]

I tried again using School of Sharks. I think that, not Sea Troll, is the go to spell for fighting mindblasters. Lots of easy to hurt targets, nice and close.

Unless R'lyeh's scripted his blasters to fire large monsters, which would be stupid, I suspect the Kings would have the same problem Sea Trolls have. They get paralyzed then ignored while your troops get decimated.

In the early game, I'd probably just use more Mages instead of Kings, depending on what you've got available. More SoS, while any E random mages start by casting Iron Will on themselves and your tougher troops.

Kings have 17 MR, 18 with an S blessing, 21 with Amulet or Iron Will, 25 with both. An S blessing isn't worth it, though having S on your pretender is very nice for Atlantis anyway.

[Baalz]

Well, "forcing" R'yleh to fire closest isn't as worthless as it might seem. Otherwise, "fire large monsters" (assuming you're using deep ones) will blast your commanders/mages. Trying to fight mind blasters with any of your units who are big enough to shield your mages is a suckers game, you'll be fielding 1/2 to 1/3rd as many troops with either worse MR (!) or worse attack. Sure, you can eventually get Basalt Kings buffed up enough to be pretty resilient, but that's a hell of a lot more expensive in gold, gems and research than popping out some trolls. As far as using them early with no buffing/items...it seems a bit silly to use a 500 gold cap only mage where a 1 gem summon does as good a job.

[thejeff]

True, that's a good point.
I think it depends on stage of the game, though.
Early on you're just trying to get enough of your troops close enough to slaughter his. Other than a couple of SoS, your mages aren't going to do much for you. It would hurt to lose them of course. You'll probably be using indy commanders (Triton lords or whatever) to bring your troops in, so they won't be targeted by Fire Large.

With more research, keeping your mages active will be more important, but you'll have more gems & spells to work with.

I'll try it with Fire Large and see how the results change.

[DonCorazon]

I haven't read the guide yet other than to search for 'Acid Storm', and I see its mentioned. I would emphasize that Acid Storm is an absolutely brutal spell, especially in conjunction with N-blessed BKs. While there may be some counters that smarter guys than me can think of, this combo is utterly devastating to most human nations.