EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship

[Meglobob]

I ended up playing EA Atlantis in a MP, my first water nation I have ever played in Dom3 (or dominions full stop come to that), sometimes I love it, other times I hate it...

I like it because:-

1) You have more time to develop and are less likely to get jumped on early.
2) Land nations are reluctant to attack you.
3) You can observe the land nations and strike at a time of your choosing.
4) Voice of Tiamat makes site hunting a breeze.
5) The physically HUGE underwater creatures are impressive.
6) You can take cold 3 and it does not have a negative effect on you underwater.

I hate it because:-

1) No matter what map movement you have, you can only move 1 sea space a turn. It's soooo slooow.
2) No underwater missile units, if you cannot get a indie land province that produces archers you are at a major disadvantage, having no missile troops.
3) So many spells have NUW (Not Under Water) tag. So you have very few spells to use underwater, especially in combat.
4) If a land nation see's you take a land province near them they view it as a virtual declaration of war, ie...water nations should stay in the sea!
5) No independent underwater scouts, exactly the same as missile troops. If you do not capture a indie then your stuck.

Can anyone suggestion ways to workaround the bad points? So I can completely love playing EA Atlantis?

Do other water nations all have the same bad points?

[Shovah32]

Well:
1)Water provinces are generally fewer and larger than land provinces, moving through 1 water province is generally the same as moving multiple land provinces.
2)Strong battlemages, many common indy archers and the fact that only rlyeh has underwater missile units(if illithids can be counted as missile units) makes up for it. Most people dont have underwater missile units.
3)Everyone else suffers from this, why shouldnt you?
4)This is probably just the people your playing with, i havnt noticed any real problems with this.
5)Or you could build more castles which is what you should be doing. Also most maps have few water provinces so this shouldnt really be an issue.

So basically yes, apart from mind blasting rlyeh having missile troops(EA mind-blasters are aquatic, MA are quite expensive and LA are the same price but you have a death dominion) other nations have these weaknesses.

[Strages Sanctus]

I too love Atlantis EA

[HoneyBadger]

Atlantis EA is great. One of the things that really helps offset lack of archers are the basalt kings, which are able to cast bladewind and other powerful evocations once they do get on land. You are going to move slow though, which by itself is a disadvantage, however your living pillars get a bonus to defending castles, which means you can hold the territory you do grab. Also, just because you're underwater doesn't mean that spending points on a Pretender with high fire magic/flame blade bless is a waste. You can certainly conquer underwater areas better than any land-based nations, and with your living pillars equipped with flame blades, you can trash most land areas too, providing you can get enough living pillars (which isn't easy). It may not be the best bless strategy for Atlantis, but it's worth considering, and bless strategies should be considered for Living Pillars. You may not want to bother with extremely high blesses though, just make sure you can cast a lot of enhancing magic on them, like quicken, regeneration, berserk, luck, armor, etc. Anything that will help 1 living pillar take out about 12 of the enemy. Asp Turtles I believe are amphibious. If they are not, consider summoning them and then casting gift of reason on a bunch of them and equipping them with amulets of the fish. I hate to say it, but if used wrong, Atlantis can be a weak nation. They're the most similar of the three water nations to an "average" land-based nation, only they're slated towards small groups of tough soldiers. This can be a big disadvantage because it's very easy to get over-extended unless you use what resources you have wisely. Avoid attacking-or in general pissing off-land nations without a good reason, until you're firmly in control of the water and have many (atleast a dozen) castles up and running on the shore. You can grab a land-province if it's out of the way and has independent archers, but keep a strong force stationed there and buy troops on it every chance you get, especially archers. You won't have the luxury of province defence, but I think you can buy castles on land. If you can, do so, and keep a crack unit of living pillars and basalt queens on patrol.
Buy archers on land provinces like you've never bought archers before. Research flame arrows. Combined with batteries of bladewind basalt kings, you'll be able to hurt the enemy pretty good, and the more you hurt them, the better the rest of your guys can hurt them, because pound for pound, you're going to kick explitive against the average land-based soldier. You can even hold your own against Niefels, Helheim, and Abyssians, although they're still going to maintain an edge. If possible, make sure your living pillars go berserk at the beginning of battle. Equip a small squadron of Basalt Queens. You can use them as heavy shock troops against land-nations and then when you push in to enemy territory, have them all start preaching and watch the enemy's dominion crumble. You want to armor them heavily, with shields, and again, if possible, make sure they're berserk when they enter battle, even before they get hit. Don't throw your shock troops away though, only put them in battles where they'll make a big difference, and where you'll win or atleast cripple the enemy. Your basic troops are going to be the little guys with the coral spears and the little guys with the basalt spears, and you want massive amounts of them. Basalt Kings make fantastic-but expensive-tramplers. They're size 5 so they do lots of damage, their morale is way better than an elephant, you can armor them up, and you can use them as artillery platforms in the beginning of the battle. 5 scripted spell slots plus massive trampling. Just make sure you don't put them in risky situations. I think that's enough for now, I'm trying to cut down on the size of my posts. Hope it helps!

[Folket]

I prefer to get a hold on land as soon as possible when playing waternations and I have never found that to be a problem. You can start expanding on land long before land nations go down into the waves. But if you have waited to go onto land I think you have put yourself at a dissadvantage unless there is alot of sea provinces.

Underwater you have friendly currents which is a powerful spell.

[Shovah32]

E9n4 works very well on living pillars, making them a bit tougher and making them get very few afflictions. Ive also had lots of luck with an A3S3D3N3 kraken(sleeping, decent scales, can buff amazingly well) or awake archmage with decent spells(great research and forging). The strategy was to quickly research up to quicken self and ironskin(alt-3) and summon earthpower(conj-x) then a bit of conjuration, construction and evocation as requires. For expansion my starting army(commander prophetised) gets a few deep ones(spear+claw if i have resources, bite+claw if i have gold) and then goes off second turn, heading to land if there are no other sea nations(the army actually does better on land). If i get attacked fairly early, 2 basalt kings with quickness and ironskin equipped with enchanted swords, blacksteel kites and blacksteel plates(the cheaper plate) can take out conventional armies of 60 men and less(not including knights) fairly reliably. Add in a robe of shadows/ring of regen/lucky pendant/boots of the behemoth+summon earthpower and they become very nasty. Making them cast evocations in the time between buffing and attacking(providing they have reinvig) also greatly increases their power. Underwater coral guard possibly supported with living pillars is the way to go otherwise your poorly armoured troops will suffer major losses. Once i get researched up armies of sea trolls and coral guards with basalt kings casting bladewind/magma spells(with asp turtles/monster fish support underwater) are my main armies with smaller groups of basalt kings buffing with strongest prot boosting spell avaliable, quickness and summon earthpower(also fireshield/phoenix pyre if researched) with equipment: 2xswords of swiftness, horror helm, robe of shadows, flying shoes, ring of regen/amulet of resilience and lucky pendant/antimagic amulet/amulet of resilience are sent out to raid enemy provinces, generally buffing, flying in and sending off magma eruptions or immolations/buffing, blasting the enemy with artillery spells then flying in.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, I love the Ancient Kraken. Gotta be my favorite SC. If you want to expand onto land really quickly, take a Dom 10 Kraken with earth 3, nature 3, air 1, astral 1, and water 1. Research construction until you can get amulet of the fish and amulet of antimagic, then switch over to alteration until you hit invulnerability, then switch to enchantment and evocation. Forge the amulets and the poison touch/poison resistance ring for your Kraken-you'll want one because otherwise your kraken poisons himself, especially when Invulnerability is in effect. Script him to cast Body Etherial, Invulnerability, Personal Regeneration (never put this one first or second, there's a bug), Personal Luck, Quickness. You'll be able to take out most anything, on land or in the water (as much as 8 units at a time-18 ap damage plus poisonx8, plus area-effect poison cloud, and at Dom10, you'll have 690!!! hp. Regeneration is goooooood), and you'll hardly ever get hit (not that it's going to matter much). On land against archers, trade Personal Luck for Air Shield.

[alexti]

S3 or S1 on non-immortal SC pretender? It's just asking for opportunistic mage to teleport in and challenge him. It's not every day one gets a chance to slay 690hp SC so easy

[RonD]

HoneyBadger said:
Personal Regeneration (never put this one first or second, there's a bug)

What is the bug? A forum search didn't turn up any mention of this.

[Shovah32]

And scripting personal regen as my first or second spell(generally on cyclops or gorgon) has never failed me personally.