Water nations

[ajoin007]

i have problem with attacking oceania, i play as Ulm but i can't seem to find spells so i can take my whole army underwater. I did find an item so my champion/commander gets the water ability. What should i do or is it really impossible to attack them

[Gandalf Parker]

Recruit water-capable units from the independent provinces you take. Or summon them (undead or semi-aquatic units). Or create the magic items which let you take an army with you into the water.

[Edratman]

Gandalf, of course, is correct, but what he left unsaid is that water nations are a stout foe in the oceans. If you play a nation without water magic and you don't get independents with water magic available, water nations are pretty invulnerable in the water provinces, especially on a large map with 10 or more adjacent water provinces.

Even with independent water magic and one or two provinces of water-capable units, the water nations always seem to overwhelm my relatively meager forays with armies of 1000+ units accompanied by some powerful water magics. Additionally, they are constantly harassing the entire coast with invasions, tidal waves and the extremely painful global of "Sirens", which effortlessly kills off major quantities of significent units. If you run out of gems to dispel Sirens, you are in for a major challenge.

I've only found three successful strategies for combating water nations:
1. Choose your opponents and don't set up any water nations. (Most effective)
2. Hope you get water-capable mercanaries combined with a conquered water capable independent province in the first couple of turns and knock out the water nation very early. Or have a water capable pretender and set him up as a SC early and knock them out early. (Least effective)
3. Suffer until you can make several water capable SC's and then knock them out. (Painful, but effective)

[MaxWilson]

By "Sirens," do you mean Lure of the Deep? Since it only works in the caster's dominion, you don't have to dispel it. You can build temples and push your dominion instead.

I don't play MP, but at least in SP I agree to an extent about the difficulty of fighting water nations. (I still don't know how to fight LA R'lyeh.) Currently I'm playing LA Agartha and they have nice amphibious Umbrals, but otherwise (especially with NI maps/mods) it can be really hard to recruit decent underwater troops, and even if you have Barrels of Air, etc., your troops suffer the Poor Amphibian penalty underwater. On the other hand... underwater nations have equally large difficulties getting onto land (especially because there's no water equivalent to Barrel of Air that lets you bring aquatic armies on land), and there are always many more land provinces than water provinces. What this means is that you can concentrate on knocking out your land-based opponents and winning the economic race; by the time you get around to seriously tackling Oceania (instead of e.g. just raiding occasional weak provinces) you'll have magical superiority and many more units (Siege Golems, Iron Dragons, armies of Wraiths, etc.), and his underwater bonuses won't help him. Size matters.

Edit: yeah, yeah, obviously this won't work in MP because the aquatic nation will be busy e.g. clamhoarding. But then, in MP you can actually convince other players to *help* you attack the aquatics--since he'll border on lots of other players--instead of tackling him by yourself. AI passivity cuts both ways.

-Max

[Sandman]

I managed to prosecute a successful war against R'lyeh as T'ien Ch'i in the Faerun PBEM. Here's some tips.

1.) Construction is even more important than usual when fighting an underwater opponent. Getting your mages underwater is vital to win those decisive battles.

2.) Don't neglect getting your sneaky units underwater. Spies with breathing items can wreak havoc, and you'll need underwater scouts with gems to keep your underwater mages supplied.

3.) School of Sharks and Shark Attack (both Conjuration) will give you loads of free chaff.

4.) Set the taxes to 200% on every underwater province that you're not *certain* of holding (especially forts you're sieging). In the short term, you'll get more money, and in the long term the province will become useless for the enemy, again to your advantage. Similarly, don't be afraid to demolish underwater forts which come into your possession; remember that they're far more valuable for the underwater nations.

[Edratman]

Max: I didn't even realize the Lure of the Deep (or as I called it"Sirens") didn' work in my domain. I'm continually amazed at the quantity of layers of complexity in the game.

You are entirely correct that the water nations are very beatable in the long term and they pose little threat in winning a SP game because of the weaknesses you noted.

My comments were based on the fact that they all but impossible to take out until the end game and they are a painful thorn along your entire coast. I find them a constant distraction and I suspect that I make mistakes against land based foes because of the niggling attacks the water based nations make.

[Micah]

Given how hosed you'd be in a 2 on 1 war if you had 2 land-based opponents you should still be glad that your aquatic friend can't do more than raid you.