Suggestion for new Oceana units

[Gandalf Parker]

Deer kill more people in the US than bears, sharks, and rattlesnakes combined

[thejeff]

That's just cause there are more deer.

And the deer rarely come out of it well...

[HoneyBadger]

They're not deer, they're moose in disguise!

[Chris_Byler]

Gandalf Parker said:
I like the idea of Charybis (wandering whirlpool). Kindof like a water version of Eater of the Dead.

Global Warming spell?
All shore provinces become susceptable to hurricanes, flooding of inland water provinces, global food supplies go down, and maybe temperature shifts? National spell? global spell?

Wrath of the Sea (or for literal warming, Second Sun, but that's a fire spell for obvious reasons).

Riotous Reefs
Blocks all ship traffic. Seagoing Nations are docked, Mercs, equipment, etc. Also increases food supplies in water provinces.

Partially duplicates Sea of Ice.

Holy Water
Gives water a semi-blessing vs undead.
Not sure if this should be a global, national, or province or battlefield. The effect could be instant and major damage or something along the line of the thing in the game that keeps telling you that your undead units in a certain province have taken damage.

As a battlefield spell, it duplicates Cleansing Water; as a global it's a weaker version of Purgatory.

Coral Castle
Like the one creating the kelp castle but stronger

Why not just improve the kelp castle? For that matter, why does it matter how strong the castle is? It's not like most nations are going to try to challenge Oceania in the water unless they already have a massively superior position. Their major problem is being over-nerfed on land.

Humidity
(better name needed). Improves the abilities of amphibious while on land. Global? National? Battlefield?

What would be even better would be a reverse Thetis Blessing - allowing aquatic units to walk on land, and Oceanians to not transform to their weaker land forms. But either way, it'd probably be too high in the research tree to help at the stage of the game where you really need it. Awesome endgame spell for sea nations in general, though.

Grindylows
These water demons were first mentioned in British folktales in the county of Yorkshire. Parents told their children stories of grindylows to prevent them from getting in the cold water in the area. Grindylows supposedly had long fingers that would drag children into the deep.
Lowers population in coastal provinces? Could be Oceanias initial action to less the power of nations keeping it from getting onto shore.

Sounds more like a unit than a spell - as an enchantment it would duplicate Lure of the Deep anyway.

Part of the problem here is that many of the powerful world-altering water spells have very high research requirements and therefore don't help Oceania when it most needs it: at the time when they have finished taking over all or almost all seas reachable from their start location, but now need to expand onto land to compete with the land nations. You just don't have access to Thau 7 or Ench 8 spells in the midgame (it wouldn't be the midgame if you did).


I think the biggest help would be to make many of their national units/mages less useless on land. Losing some water power to gain another path (air for sirens, nature or earth for capricorns, etc.) is reasonable - losing *all* paths and gaining *nothing* is horribly crippling. Basalt kings and starspawns don't have to put up with that crap - which is a large part of why *those* nations can put up quite a decent fight on dry land.

When MA Oceania's units come out of the water they have to face MA military technology: longbows, crossbows, pikes, lances. They're just not up to it.

Maybe a smaller version of the Asp Turtle, that they could group-summon (like wolves, tigers, etc., and at a similar research level) - something like an amphibious cave drake, statwise. Turtles are slow, and without the Asp Turtle's trample they wouldn't have much firepower, but if their shells acted like natural shields against missiles, they could provide some cover against the ranged weapons so common on land, and at least let your other units get into hand-to-fin combat.

Another possibility would be making sea serpents amphibious (like asp turtle, they could only be summoned in the sea, but then could go on land). They're just big snakes, so why shouldn't they be able to slither up on land like other snakes... Sea serpents are scary, poisonous and low research, they'd be a very nasty addition to any sea nation's land army, if you could.

Asp turtles themselves are quite cool, but too high research to help at the crucial time.

All amphibious/poor amphibious summons should be castable underwater unless there's a *really* good reason why they aren't. The fact that this isn't already true is particularly annoying when your mages get weaker on land.

Since the quickness nerf, water mages aren't as useful on the battlefield as they used to be. Maybe other water spells could be re-examined in light of that fact? A water mage on land will never have access to a booster spell like Summon Earthpower or Phoenix Power - you can't bring the right conditions with you via item like Air can.

[JimMorrison]

Amphibious Sea Serpents ++

A global that allows all aquatics onto land ++

[HoneyBadger]

JimMorrison: That global isn't a bad idea. There's something a bit fatalistic towards the oceanic nations about a late game spell that allows all the land units to go into the water, but not the reverse.

[Tifone]

Yep, mainly because Thetis' Blessing is mainly castable by underwater units, as they have tons of water gems, but those are the nations that really DON'T want, in the vast majority of the cases, to find in their peaceful seas hordes of knights and elephants

[Wrana]

HoneyBadger:
To give you an example of how it works: An ostrich is a potentially more vicious and dangerous animal than a tarantula, but you don't see Machaka riding around on gigantic ostriches, do you?

Which is really a pity. But I keep hoping for EA or LA!

Amphibious Sea Serpents ++

Agree. And turtles, too. Though, as it was already seen, "it's just a weaker Cave Drake".
Also, I think that the fact that Atlantians don't lose paths when they crawl on land, while Oceanians do, was meant to be - the Oceania was initially pictured as "the most water of water nations". I don't really know whether they are actually stronger in water than, say, Atlantis of the same era, but it looks like that was initial concept. Maybe it would be better to work around it (with summons, e.g.) than drop it outright. Another possibility could be some transformation-type spell which would preclude Capricorns, etc. losing paths - or change these...

[rdonj]

I've seen reverse Thetis' Blessings talked about a lot on these forums, but I don't really get the feeling that it's ever likely to be added. Especially since people really want a version you could cast relatively early.

What if, as an alternative, we got something like:
Flood. Floods a province for 1+x turns, allowing aquatic creatures to enter the province and gives poor amphibian modifiers to non-amphibious creatures. Costs 5w, pay one extra water gem per turn to make it last longer.


It wouldn't be nearly as powerful as a reverse thetis' blessing so it could be castable fairly early, probably by a mage with no more than 3 water... evocation 4/5?

[Wrana]

Would be good, but I get a hunch that it's impossible to mod.