Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

You can get around putting astral on your pretender if your nation has astral mages. Just put a slave mage (for instance) behind the Kraken and script him to cast luck, body ethereal, etc. You lose the astral shield, but it's worth it.

You could also use one of those new-fangled communion stones to grant buffs from all your other casters to your magically-challenged SCs (as long as they have at least 1 path).

Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

I can't see the point in putting any magic on the Ancient Kraken, or going with any bless at all for EA Atlantis. Give the Kraken Dom 10, and let rip. He can take out any underwater indies by himself, and just about anything else he runs into underwater. Equip him later on for tougher opponents, or for going on land (3 misc. slots). You can have great scales this way.

Almost all of their units, including the very tough ones, are amphibious. I've taken to the land very easily with them. And the Basalt Kings are extremely good mages. Of course, the living pillars become pretty useless under this strategy, so only build them for defending castles.

Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

The bug mentioned above is that fact that if you script Personal Regeneration as one of your first few spells, it will be skipped, for no reason whatsoever.

Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

Magic can make the kraken much more powerful, particularly earth for boosting protection(25 protection ancient krakens are fun) and nature for regeneration(with the ancient krakens health he heals alot).
A bless can be useful on basalt kings; i once tried an E9 bless and ended up with groups of basalt kings with a few defensive items and huge reinvigoration casting summon earthpower and phoenix pyre. They just exploded all over the place and never got tired.
A bless isnt the best idea with EA Atlantis but it can be fun.

Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

There is one reason to get a solid bless on EA Atlantis: ALL BASALT KINGS, ALL THE TIME. They make fantastic thugs; 16+ protection before armor, 50 HP, 17 MR, and fully equippable. They can cast quicken self, invulnerability, and fire shield. On top of that they're all sacred, and that's where your bless is going to give you truly brutal mileage.

Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

You forgot phoenix pyre, possibly the best buff these guys can cast. With it cast(and sufficent reinvigoration) their battles should go like this.

1)Buff
2)Kick several kinds of ***
3)Eventually get killed
4)Explode upon death, killing many enemies
5)Reappear on battlefield with full health and some fatigue
6)Let reinvigoration remove fatigue
7)Repeat steps 2-6 as required

Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

Ah, yes. I'd forgotten the Basalt Kings are blessed. I can see that strategy now. It would be a very different strategy, using them as thugs, but they would kind of resemble a Niefel Jarl in power with a good E/N bless.

Re: EA Atlantis a love/hate relationship
 

Except they have better magic and can also be used as amazing battle mages with magma and such http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif