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EA Atlantis - The Basalt Kings; Update to dom 4 - work in progress
Topic Started: Sep 27 2013, 04:17 PM (15,083 Views)
Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
Atlantis is one of the nation who are relatively unchanged from dom3 to dom4. The EA incarnation is an ogre nation with some of the best battle mage of the game, the Basalt King and the Mage of the Deep.

What I mean by ogre nation ? Well, like the ogre summon and the nation of Ur, you have a lot of size 3 troop with loads of hp but low protection (well, high natural protection but no or weak armor), and higher gold cost.

As a side note, I have heavily drawn from the advice and opinion of other players, as well as dom3 guides.

Resources review

  • no useable sacred troop but amazing sacred mages
  • Troop with both big advantage and big drawbacks
  • Amazing cap-only mage (the basalt king) and a very solid Mage of the Deep
  • Only three main magic path : fire, water, earth, with a splash of Astral 1
  • Everything is very expensive
Pretender design

Sadly, underwater pretender selection was not as expanded as some other nation selection. Here I will give the general principle and need of an Atlante nation, so it will be very open.

Scale

The first thing is that you need Order 3 and Growth 3. Your troop are costly and have high attrition rate, your mage are costly and the main researcher is not sacred. You need a lot of income. As far as temp scale go, I advice you Cold 3. Cold scale does not affect sea province much, and cold 3 help the ice spell you can fling, as well as the Hidden in Snow summon who you may be interested in. Production should be between Prod 0 and Sloth 3. You still have a use for resource (to get shield on your army), but you can manage your expansion with only 1-ressource troop. Magic scale can go from Drain 3 to magic 3. Your mages are good researcher and a -3 research is not overly dramatic (beware of the gem vanishing event however). Still, because they are expensive, you certainly don't have a very fast research, so Magic 3 is not a bad idea either. It's mainly a question of strategy. I would advice to avoid drain in most case, because research is pretty important, but it's not mandatory. Lastly, don't go misfortune 3. It's painful. I would advice to not take misfortune at all, but some people do well with misfortune.

Magic diversity

  • Air : Voice of Tiamat will certainly net you some air gems, but not a lot of them. A1 allow you to use them by forging. You certainly want your pretender doing other thing than forging ring of tamed lightning however.
  • Astral : You only have access to Astral 1. S2 on your pretender will allow you to build both non-unique astral booster (the astral cap directly, and the crystal coin with a W2E1S1 mage of the deep with an astral cap and boot of earth). I would consider S2 as the minimum on a pretender, because it help make you into an half-decent astral power.
  • Death : Death give some very useful spell, my preferred one being Darkness, who get along well with 100% dark vision troops. You need at least D2, or D1 with either E3 or W3
  • Nature : It's a very useful path to have, both for battle buff and for summon. Avoid aquatic pretender with nature if possible, to make it easier to cast thing like Mother Oak, Forest Troll Tribe, or Faerie Queen as soon as possible, who all require to be on land.
You should aim for at least S2 with either N3 or D3 on your pretender as the bare minimum. If you get neither, be sure that's because of a specific strategy and that you will have a big lead quickly enough.

Bless

You should only care about your sacred mages, the Basalt Kings, who can serve as thug as well as battlemage. The one who can interest your Basalt King are E9 and N9 for thugging ability, and A4+ and E4+ for battlemagic. Don't underestimate the A bless for your Basalt king that start at 8 prec

Strategy in pretender construction

Right now, I highly advice a Ghost King. An E4S2D3N4 with O3S1C3G3L0M0 and dom6 is basic but efficient, searching for every site that Voice of Tiamat can't get and being able to summon more Nature and Death mage. Another option, less advised, would be an E9S2N9 imprisoned monolith, with dom7 and O3S3C3G2L0D1, to pimp out your Basalt King. A last option would be an awake Dagon with dom9, W2D1 and O3S2C3G3L0. It should be able to take UW province for you and cast Hidden in Snow with a booster.

Troop reviews

EA Atlantis actually have amazing troop... Once buffed. For expansion, your go-to guy should be the Atlantis Spearman, or the Reef Dweller once you have enough ressource. Both are cheap and have a long weapon ; they will die in drove but they will do their jobs.

The Deep one, Deep Spearman and Warrior of the Deep are very interesting with two thing : a Basalt Queen, so that they ignore repel attempt, and some buff, particularly Quickness. The Warrior of the Deep can be nightmarish, a square of Deep Warrior is already making 4 high strength attack vs 3 for the average elite infantry without buff, while with Quickness it's 8. It also help their rather poor survivability. Iron warrior and Wooden warrior can also help. The Darkvision 100% is also very helpful.

The other units are usually too weak to be considered. Note that deep one have 7-8 MR ; usually they are cheap enough to make MR attack not terribly efficient, but be wary of opponent who can cast Sleep Cloud. Use Reef Dweller or summoned troop in those cases.

Commander

Your capital provide you the two main attraction of the nation : the basalt king and queen. The Basalt King is particularly good, being good at both being a thug, launching magma at people, and buffing troop. The Basalt Queen can be thugged too but less easily, but most importantly she have +3 morale for her troops ; Atlantean start with high morale already, so it allow you to mostly ignore moral check for your troop. It mean you can ignore repel (there is a moral check), awe without fear, and avoid losses due to early routing. You cannot recruit too many of them because Basalt King are just better, but don't underestimate the power of 2 or 3 of them for your bigger armies.

The other commander of note is the Mage of the Deep. It's an amazing mage for its availability, being neither StR nor cap only. It's a tad bit expensive for research however. They cannot be thugged too well, but they will excel at being battlemage and troop buffer.

Expansion

You're likely to have less problem expanding on land than on water. Be very wary of shark tribe tritons and Amber clan tritons, they come in ginormous pack of elite infantry. On the opposite, Cave province should be easy for you to take, and can net you flying death shaman, which are very nice.

Try to build a land castle as soon as possible, to have a safe place from which summoning stuff. You cannot recruit mage from land castle sadly, so a third castle, in water, in the early year 2 is in order. Don't overbuild castles, since Mage of the Deep are expansive.

Research wise, you have two target : Conjuration 5 (Voice of Tiamat as well as numerous other useful spells), and Alteration (which have most good water spell as well as Darkness and Solar Eclipse). If you fear aggression, Alteration is the better option, mainly for Quickness and Earth Meld, to help your troop.

You're mainly at risk of UW rush, since you are a late UW power. Alteration and the judicious use of Basalt queen-lead Deep one/warrior of the deep are your best bet. Given your low production cost and high gold cost, try to get attrition as high as possible, and research Quickness as soon as possible to buff your units. A slightly more desesperate option is to rush Conjuration 6 to get Monstruous Fish ; in big enough number they can wreck any rush, but they came online pretty late, and are likely to happen too late to help you.

As far as searching go, an early Voice of Tiamat is perfect, but not alway doable. If you can't (because you're too hard pressed and focus on alteration), you may want to use a F2W2E3 Basalt King as a first pass, to have gem as soon as possible (and because Voice of Tiamat exist, begin with land province where it does not work anyway). But you will want to voice of tiamat everything as soon as possible. The benefit of both the lvl3 search and air site cannot be overstated in my opinion. Another important thing is to use a H1 or more priest to search sea province as soon as you can, because the odds of finding some Temple of the Deep is reasonably high and it's 2 gem per turn.

Middle game

Magic wise, you will have to start to diversify. Alteration, Construction, and Evocation are important, and Conjuration or Enchantment can be too depending on how you want to diversify.

Your main goal outside of military victories is to start to work your magic diversity. For Death, Hidden in Snow/Sand/Underneath, as well as Stream of Hades are very good to get more good death magi, and don't require death gems to begin with. You can use them to sitesearch or cast Darkness. A Basalt King only need a single Death empowerment to cast those spells, so it's doable (but harder) even without your pretender.

For Astral, you mainly need to get a first Astral booster to be able to build more with your S Mage of the deep. You should also be able to build Communion matrices, which are rarely worth it but can surprise your opponent. It's a lot more worth it if you find S indy like the always useful lizard shamans.

For Nature, Contact Naiad net your a mage good enough for sitesearching. Like for D magic, you can empower a Basalt king one time in N to cast the spell, who don't require more nature gems. Beware, she take 10% max hp in damage every turn outside of her home, so it's not very practical to send with your armies. Your best choice to have high N caster to buff your army are Ivy King, Forest Troll Tribe (which can give you D access too), and Faerie Court (who net you someone to build bow out of your A gems).

As far as military is concerned, usually you should spend your gem to thug your Basalt king and buff your troop. Eclipse is at Alteration 5, and can be cast by a 1F2W1S mage of the deep with 4 gem : the first two to cast Phoenix Power, then two to cast Eclipse. It's -3 att/def/prec for all non darkvision troop, and it's immensely useful. Darkness is even better, but require death mage and death gems.

If you want/need to summon more troop, trolls and undead are your best bets, because they have darkvision like your troops. Demon can be an option too, but making a blood eco work with Atlantis in a real game is very, very hard, hard enough for me to not advice you to try. Against high astral opponent, be wary of using undead and darkness, and switch to your summon of choice and thugs, because he will research Solar Brillance, and that counter both. The national summon, Monster Fish, are useless against size 6 opponent, but extremely powerful against anything smaller than, especially thug and SC ; a single Monstrous fish can completely eat and digest a SC archdevil or heliophagus. Niefel Jarl, Ba'al, and Melquart are size 5 too, so if they are too cocky and go in the water you can send them in the stomach of your giants fishes.

Your opponent are very likely to launch undead and demon at you, because they are 100% darkvision, and undead are amphibious. Cleansing Water, W3 and Evo6, is the best way to put an end to that.

Your Basalt King have an amazing list of castable buff : Fire Shield, Liquid Body, Quicken Self, Breath of Winter, Summon Earthpower, ... They have a decent protection and fear to begin with, so focus on thunder resistance and offensive power. A Shield of Gleaming Gold is also pretty marvelous for them, given that they already have fear.

Note that you can build Rune Smasher easily. It's hard to find a use for them before Alteration 8, but you can trade them to other players. Staff of Corrosion is another option, but you cannot use quicken to cast multiple time with an item, so it's less good than it was in dom3.

For direct offensive spell, Maw of the Earth (and Earth meld) is a marvellous spell. Prefer Magma and acid spell to their single-element counterpart for most occasions. Frozen heart is likely to not be the best use out of your expensive magi, unlike for most W nations.

Late Game

Alteration 8 provide you Liquefy. With construction to build Water Bracelet, Eye of the Void, and Rune Smasher, and your numerous W3 and W4 mage, this spell is mightily nasty. Even SC buffed to 22MR can dread this spell, simply because you can cast 50 liquify on him in a single battle, and you only need one bad roll to destroy him. Another nasty option that work especially well with EA Atlantis is Acid Storm. Your mage have high HP so they tend to survive it quite better than your opponent. It work especially well to destroy communions, but only SC or very high hp thugs can really resist it. Apart from that, well, it's past the point where personal experience and knowing how to exploit how the game have evolved are both a lot more important than any nation guides.
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amuys
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Yay, the Living Pillars and Deep Ones no longer have invisible spears.
Also, watch out for those shark tribe tritons! Reef warriors and Atlantian soldiers in line formation are the best solution when you're doing early expansion against them.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
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Shatner
*Spicy* Crew
Looking forward to more from this guide. Atlantis is a fun nation in every era, but it can be an unwieldy one, so a guide for this brave new Dom4 world is much appreciated.
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
Finished (and trimmed) it. Well, as much finished as it can be in a world where there is no metagame yet for dominions 4.
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amuys
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Er, I'm not so sure about using Voice of Tiamat of all things.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
amuys,Nov 28 2013
10:33 PM
Er, I'm not so sure about using Voice of Tiamat of all things.

Could you develop ? Voice of Tiamat is extremely effective and net you air gem in addition of your three main magic path, all faster than manual research. For once, the price is rather low for remote search.
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Umsolfunolanis
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Interesting guide. Thanks for writing this up.

I'm also not too sure about voice of tiamat. At least with the standard amount of magic sites it seems to be a waste of gems better spent otherwise.

Any equipment suggestions for the basalt kings?

About the Dagon. I would take him without death. It's too expensive to add a magic path to the Dagon. Better take an additional scale, more water magic or dom10 maybe.
Luck, being lucky or trading might give enough death gems to empower the Dagon later on. More efficient overall I think.
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
New path cost 50 on a Dagon, it's a reasonable cost for diversity, and Hidden in Snow is really handy for death access. I don't trust too much trade for death gem as EA Atlantis, partly because nobody want the guy with 100% infravision to cast darkness.

For Basalt king, the standard is firebrand/shield of gleaming gold for me. And quite often just thoses two items and buffs against AI or PD, because they don't really need more to slaughter anything not build to counter them. And starshine skullcap for the head, especially given the low MR of kings for their price. After that, it depend a lot on the situation and diversity. Nature provide ring of regen and boot of the messenger (since Basalt King can use Summon Earthpower, reinv 2 is enough usually), Air Storm Spool and Copper plate (both avoiding your kings to be fried by pesky air mage). A LOT of item can be useful, but I find it's too context sensitive to make a "regular" pack.

(Voice of Tiamat is faster in mage turn than regular searching, and not very costly to boot. The standard amount of site is largely enough to justify the quick research, not to mention you convert water gem to more useful type by discovering the site earlier than with site search. Also, air gems from Voice of Tiamat are very handy since you will want LR stuff, and air is the best way to forge them)
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amuys
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Well there is the "resist lightning" alteration level 2 spell. It needs only E1 to cast and is 10 fatigue. I don't see much point in looking for air gems unless you want to cast Rain of Stones.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
amuys,Nov 29 2013
06:13 PM
Well there is the "resist lightning" alteration level 2 spell. It needs only E1 to cast and is 10 fatigue. I don't see much point in looking for air gems unless you want to cast Rain of Stones.

Because the spell is not enough and don't work the first turn if you attack. And because you alway need all gems you can on the long run.

(there is a lot of *other* thing to do in air forging. Scutata Volturnus, mirror armor, rainbow armor, flying boot if you have access to A2, thunder bow and the various other bow, shield of valor , eye of aiming ... refusing a free diversity is quite strange in my opinion)
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amuys
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Yes, but that's a massive and rather unreliable investment, especially considering the fact that Air doesn't have so many easy boosters and it requires 50 air gems to just empower to level 1. Just to get the paths for forge Rainbow Armor as well would require 50 air and 50 nature gems.
Thunder Bow and Flying Boots both need A2, which would need a Staff of Elemental Mastery which would have to be forged by an F4W4 mage as well. I personally think that going into Death and Astral would be better, as Atlantis has very good paths for building gear for undead thugs.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
Massive ? It cost nearly nothing in practice to get the air income. Indy A mage are nearly non existent, but empowering one basalt king is not very expensive when you have air site, and then you have more than enough to 90% need. (the A2 and AN item tend to be build by Faerie Court usually)

Don't forget you can search your entire territory in about one turn with Voice of Tiamat. It's massively faster than doing it the regular way, and it reimburse the price of the spell quite handily. Especially since W items aren't too good for you until pretty late ; it's one of the reason for which Hidden in Snow is so useful for Atlantis, since you don't have a lot of use for W gem anyway. Voice of Tiamat is another very good way to spend your gem, basically exchanging your W income for more F and E, which are significantly more precious.

Beware of relying too much on Death, since Solar Brillance is already a good counter to Atlantis anyway. And with Basalt King the need for undead thug is quite low, wraith lord and bane are not bad but just don't compare to Basalt King. But more importantly, diversifying in D don't mean you cannot do the same for A and N at the same time.
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amuys
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I guess, but Voice is rather high up there in Conjurgation and that's assuming you have the entire ocean to yourself.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my words. You think you can get away with saying shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
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sum1won
Dom 5 Beta Team
VoT isn't very helpful for a nation that can easily search 3 of the 4 paths up to 2 with any one of their capital mages. The only thing VoT is good for is air income, and 8 gems/province is an expensive way to search for it. Having two basalt kings searching is the same speed as a VoT caster, and much gem-cheaper.
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
Except VoT is still quicker (since you research everything as soon as you have the spell) and one element you don't have is quite a big deal. Also, you gain a bit research (1 mage turn economized per province since you don't have to move, and you use the lesser mage instead of Basalt king to cast it) in addition to the gem from searching faster.

I am firmly convinced it's an error to not use Voice of Tiamat every time possible, and I believe you overestimate the value of economizing a few water gem. Feel free to do otherwise if you want, but I am convinced it's an error.
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