LA Atlantis is another nation which people tend to avoid touching with a 10 foot pole. Their only real mages are capital only and they’ve got trouble with magic diversity. Their units are resource intensive and struggle out of their own dominion due to the temperature. They got kicked out of the water by R'yleh who has only got meaner in the mean time. They’ve just generally got a funky lineup with few obvious synergies.
Well, those of you familiar with my guides know where I’m going with this…Atlantis can most definitely be a sleeper nation who clobbers the crap out of the popular ones if handled with a bit of finesse. Many of their strengths are not the standard ones, but they are wicked effective properly deployed and almost all of their stuff works so well together you’d think it was designed to. Let’s take a look at the cast.
Seal hunter – Pretty average as far as chaff goes but they do have a rather unique harpoon ranged attack. Just a single shot, but it does entangle the target so this can be very useful in getting high defense troops/SCs to hold still for a round so that your heavy hitters can clobber them – and you’ve got some nice heavy hitters.
Snow warriors – what passes for light infantry in LA Atlantis, though of course that’s a relative term. As with most of your infantry your armor scales with the cold scale so you’re gonna be quite a bit weaker on offense most of the time. These guys also don’t have any shields so watch out for crossbows. Still, you’ve got magic weapons with a good repel, good protection in a cold environment, partial darkvision, partial cold resistance, true amphibiousness, above average strength and hitpoints. Overall, not bad units at all. You generally want to go with the glaive guys, those are magic weapons and they pack enough punch to even give giants a pause. Note, your heavy infantry has a mapmove of 2, so really the only reason you’d want to go with Snow warriors is to get more feet on the ground for the resources you’ve got. Keep in mind that’s not a terrible strategy when fighting things like giants where the extra protection doesn’t really help, go with more glaives!
Ice warriors – Skip them, most roles are better filled with Snow warriors or Ice Guards
Ice Guards – Very nice heavy infantry, particularly in a cold environment. Everything said about Snow Warriors is more true about Ice Guards. They’ve got outstanding armor in the cold, good hitpoints, good stats in general, 75% cold resistance and a choice between a good shield or a clobbering ice glaive, with of course magic weapons. You’re pretty much never going to have much excuse to have leftover resource points at the end of your turn, always spend anything leftover on these guys. Finally, these guys have an unprecedented 2 mapmove for such heavy infantry, combined with their amphibiousness this is a significant strategic mobility advantage.
Mournful – These guys are pretty decent for the price, but the moral is a killer. Still, they’re the best choice for several situations. They’ve got relatively low resource costs compared to your other units, so if you need feet on the ground fast this is the way to go. They also don’t melt in the sun, so consider them when you’re pushing outside your dominion. Finally, with a star or two of experience and a sermon of courage the moral issue is greatly reduced, and you can also mix them into groups with your higher moral troops – Arssartuts are a good choice as they have the same movement speed so they’ll stick together and of course have outstanding moral.
Arssartut - Wow, these guys don’t immediately jump out at you but once you start playing around with them you’ll be amazed at how good they are. They’re cheap as far as sacreds go, have good hitpoints, good protection, good attack skill, good encumberance, good strength, good movement, cheap resource requirements, and that glorious, glorious bone glaive. Out of that list (with the possible exception of the bone glaive) nothing jumps out at you, but adding them all together you end up with an amazingly solid unit. They’ve got the toughness and encumbrance for staying power combined with a magic weapon which is extremely effective against everything from chaff to SCs. They also have great synergy with the Mournful in attacking outside your cold dominion, not dropping in power and moving at the same speed. I do want to make special note of their glaive, its magic, deals 22 damage with their strength, and has an addition weakness effect. The weakness effect means anybody tough enough to live through a couple hits of that 22 damage will have completely permanent damage done to their strength. This will of course pile up on any really tough guys to the point that they’re useless in melee - you’re guys are all cold resistant and your mages can cast Fire Ward, so you don’t even need to worry about frost/firebrands.
Now, before I move on to talking about the commanders I wanted to talk about the bless choices for your Arssartut. One of the big advantages in your corner is your truly amphibious nature – I mean you’re Atlantis for crying out loud. You should be able to dominate any land nation underwater, and even the other amphibious nations are significantly weaker than you there. Unfortunately, there’s a big old tentacled turd in that punchbowl. If they’re in the game *everybody* needs to plan from the beginning about dealing with LA R’yleh, but Atlantis more so than anybody else. Fortunately, you’ve got the tools to do it. It’s absolutely imperative that you carve out a solid chunk of water *and* land, several of your national strengths are tied to being the best amphibians around.
I like an S/E bless, with a minor N component if you can afford it. The twist fate helps a whole lot in several situations - letting your Arssartuts close under archer fire, blunting the heavy cavalry charge, ignoring the SC’s first strike so you can whack the crap out of him with your bone glaives. Contrary to most of the time people take an astral bless though, the more important component is the MR boost. With +3 MR you bring the Arssartuts up to a respectable 14, and with an astral pretender you can drop an anti-magic on top of that making you effectively immune to R’yleh’s strongest weapons for the early and mid parts of the game. (strong MR also adds shadow brands and many other heavy infantry counters to the list of things you don’t need to worry about) The earth bless not only brings you up to a very nice 16 protection, it also gives you a net 0 encumbrance. Those two factors, along with your length 4 uber damage bone glaive and small regen make you *perfect* chaff killers, thus neutering the second prong of R’yleh’s dominance. Finally, this kind of goes without saying, but you don’t need to worry about R’yleh’s final prong – being entrenched underwater.
So, with such a blessing and a couple good buffs there’s not much the Arssartuts can’t handle in style – from chaff to SCs. You go right ahead and carve out a chunk of the water, the inexperienced R’yleh player is going to take a little convincing, but never let anybody convince you you’re not the other LA water power.
For scales, cold-3 is obviously a no-brainer. Death -3 also is not only thematic, but offers a good synergy of making invading armies get the double supply whammie so there is a good chance they’ll have trouble with starvation, while your own armies are going to be on the smaller side (due to resource constraints), you won’t suffer from the cold, and you’ll have castles to help supply you at home. You’ve got no old age units, so that’s a good place to pick up the points for an expensive bless. Your other scales are up to you, but Magic-1 is a very good deal considering how weak your non-cap mages are.
Speaking of... Tungalik are your only non-captial mage, and they are admittedly a bit underwhelming at first glance. Thing is, they’re quite cheap and holy, which is not the worst thing in the world combined with high resource troops. You should end up with an above average number of castles, and an above average number of mages – though admittedly weaker than most. Mostly you’ll be recruiting them to be your research base, but there are some clever ways to use them effectively in combat particularly keeping in mind their strength - strength in numbers.
Frozen heart spam. This is the obvious choice, and what your opponent will be expecting. Still, it’s the obvious choice because it’s often quite effective, several Tungalik spamming this will be devastating to the unprepared opponent.
Ghost grip spam. A bit less common, but this is also an obvious choice, though a bit harder for your opponent to counter. It also works very well with some of the other fatigue strategies I’ll be getting into in a minute. If your opponent has high encumbrance in the cold and needs to whack all day at your uber armored infantry, a couple guys casting ghost grip is all it takes to be terribly effective – with an earth bless your guys can cast this 10 fatigue spell all day long.
Frighten spam. Don’t underestimate this. Marching into a cold-3/death-3 dominion gives a good chance of catching invaders partially starving, and half a dozen frighten spammers is surprisingly effective if those starving guys started out with average moral and are also in your dominion. Make sure you cut off their retreat using your map move 2 amphibious infantry and sailing! Note, this tactic is much more effective in combination with some of the stuff listed below.
Mini-thugs. Heh, seems kinda pointless to thug out, huh? Not so fast there. These guys are holy and you’ve got a nice bless. You’ve got a 21 protection with the cheap black steel plate, and of course other options are available depending on what you’ve got available. You’ve got reinvigoration, and can self buff with quickness and breath of winter, and hopefully even a little regeneration from your bless. Of course twist fate doesn’t hurt either, nor your quickened high defense (add water shield if you’re underwater). Mix them in with some ice guards or wights set to guard commander and dual wield frost brands….against the right type of opponent this is going to be devastating.
Being able to self buff quickness has another large advantage - ranged weapons. If you get lucky and land an A2 Angakok, bows of war and thunder bows are great on a quickened commander. Other fun things you can easily forge are vision’s foes, the black bows, and banefire xbows. Again, you’ve got to think about using these guys in decent sized groups – 6 quickened banefire xbows are pretty devastating to troops without long lifespans, 6 bows of war will have the effect of over 150 archers, and 12 black bow arrows per turn will give even the toughest SC with bodyguards pause. Not a bad switch when your opponent was expecting some frozen heart spam.
A few other things to remember to pull out when the situation merits it – spirit curse (as if the SCs didn’t already have enough disincentive to attack), dust to dust (very effective cast en-mass against that prince of death or tartarians giving you a hard time), slime (not the best spell in the world, but can be effective en mass combined with your heavy hitting infantry and cold auras). Also, once you get up to con-6, cheap water bracelets will pull these guys up into ice strike, cleansing water, numbness, and desiccation.
Now, onto the main event. Angakoks are the heart of LA Atlantis. They don’t have quite the versatility of the MA Atlantis Kings of the Deep, but what they do, they do well. You’ll obviously want to recruit one every turn as soon as you can afford to.
Thugin’:
They’re holy and you have a nice earth bless with small regen. Buffs range from soul vortex to ironskin to mistform with quicken self and breath of winter on the side. Pretty standard thug layouts apply, but make sure to leverage your sailing ability. Depending on the map layout this can be even better than flying. With reinvig and soul vortex it often works well to leave the thug Angakok to cast spells – he’ll throw out skellispam (great with his breath of winter, really adds to his staying power while soul vortex does its thing), cold blast, and many of the fun stuff listed in the next section. Hey, don’t forget to cast twiceborn so you don’t even risk that much, and now you’ve got some mages who can more easily leverage rigor mortis.
Combat Castin’:
You’ll want to get some indie S1 mages for several reasons, one of which is to forge penetration boosters for you. Look for lizard shamen, mercenaries, sages, or if nothing else use your pretender to crank out some void eyes and spell foci – kinda drudge work for a pretender, but you really need them to round out your arsenal. You also shouldn’t have too much trouble getting 50 fire for an empowering (more below), which gives you fire skulls and then rune smashers. Note, if nothing else turns up you can summon some specters to get you weak astral mages, but you’ll want to save your death gems for other uses if you can.
Well, falling frost is the obvious goto spell, but I don’t like to depend on it because it’s too easy to counter. Cold resistance, high defense or high protection will all seriously hamper this one, though it does scale in power with the water mage level so a Angakok with a water pick and a water bracelet with sea robe will throw down a pretty impressive barrage.
Shadow blast –Penetration boosted shadow blast is a great switchup to the water magic stuff you’re mainlining. Haha, you thought frost resistance would be enough?!?!
Sailor’s death – With a penetration boost this spell is n*a*s*t*y. AN, AOE1 and a range of 30, 3 or 4 guys spamming this will blast the crap out of many different things which would otherwise give you difficulty. And it’s only Thau-3!
Numbness, desiccation, breath of winter, grip of winter, rigor mortis, ghost grip, curse of stones (penetration boosted!), curse of the desert (penetration boosted!). Combine this with great heavy infantry that take a lot of beating to go down. Mix in wights, winter wolves, ghosts, and anything else with a cold aura. Add in the encumbrance penalty for a cold climate, and friendly currents/quagmire. It’s frightening how many things LA Atlantis can pile onto causing fatigue – in fact it’s usually more important to remember not to pile too many things up that your own units are merely resistant rather than immune to.
Terror – everything I said about frighten goes triple for terror. Combine with ghosts and leviathans and anybody even thinking about starving doesn’t stand much chance. Oh, if you’re feeling showy, you can throw Wailing Winds in as well.
But wait, there’s more! Freezing Mist – don’t be misled by its small damage number, this is a serious offensive spell which works wonderfully with the rest of your arsenal if given even a little time to work. It’s hard to tell for sure, but this spell seems to scale up in damage with the cold scale. Regardless, it will do amazing amounts of damage in a wide AOE to guys standing around inside it. It’s AN and AOE, so nobody who is not completely cold immune is spared – this is your goto spell for the guys who are outfitted to scoff at your falling frost. Note: your infantry doesn’t have 100% cold resistance by default, so make sure you buff them with winter ward, or use undead or other summons when using this spell, trust me that AN damage is nasty and you don’t want even your 75% resistant guys inside it. Bonus – it’ll freeze your victims, thus flowing perfectly into your fatigue strategy. This spells works awesomely with….
Skellispam – you may not be able to field the same numbers of undead as the undead specialists, but that doesn’t matter because they have such synergy with everything else you’re using so you don’t need an overwhelming mass. Think about it, you’re laying down cold, fatigue, fear, and drowning – all things to which your skellispam is immune. You don’t need overwhelming amounts because you don’t have to tie your opponent up as long, you’ve got too many things working against him.
Quickening – you thought those Arssartut’s were intimidating before? Try laying down a quickening on them. Oooooh I love those bone glaives!
Now, with a cold, fatigue and fear based primary strategies, the obvious hole is swarms of undead, and LA has some of the nastiest. Fortunately, you’ve got access to every one of the best anti-undead spells – dust to dust spam for the powerful undead, wither bones and cleansing waters for the large groups of chaff, and undead mastery (death random + skull staff + skull helm) or solar brilliance (pretender) for the really big masses. You’ve not only got the perfect counter for R’yleh, you’ve got the perfect counter for Ermor to!
Now, you’ll also not want to neglect earth and air spells. You should have several pairs of earth boots, so with summon earthpower E3 spells are in easy reach. I mentioned curse of stones above, which works great with the rest of what you’re doing, but don’t be afraid to lay down some of the classic earth spells. Strength of giants and legions of steel work extremely well with your Arssartuts (don’t forget to quicken them if you have it! Now *there's* some nasty crap.). Destruction is always a welcome addition, and blade wind plugs the hole that lack of archers leaves. Marble warriors is also great (be careful as it’ll remove your cold resistance), and with an elemental staff you get up into weapons of sharpness and army of lead range. Rust Mist can work well in a pinch to, though it’s a bit hard to leverage (think: tying your opponent up with a skellispam screen while the rust mist takes effect, then marching in with your real troops)
For air, you’re quite a bit more limited with no boosters or self buff spell, but don’t neglect the options you do have. With an elemental staff and some creativity cloud trapeze, thunder ward, and arrow fend all become accessible and very nice to have in the right situation. Also, don’t overlook having a mage dedicated to casting aim on your main artillery players, it can make quite a difference.
For the higher powered fights you’ll want to look into darkness, bone grinding, niefel flames, and living water (yeah ice elementals!)
Lab Castin’:
Here’s where your lack of magic diversity hurts the most, but the things you can easily cast are so frickin cool (if you’ll pardon the pun) that every water and death gem is going to be put to a very good use, and even your air and earth will be quite precious though more for forgings. You’ll have a powerful astral pretender and hopefully enough S1 casters to power arcane probing, and enough fire for what you need, leaving just blood and nature as your glaring holes. Hmmm, did I mention you should really try to put nature on your pretender? Ignore blood and between your pretender and the free nature sites common underwater you should be able to eventually scrape up 50 nature gems. With one empowering you can now summon niads using water gems, so this gets you into nature in a big way.
Voice of Tiamat. Now that you’ve got a good sized water section to your empire (you did read the first part of this guide right?) you definitely want to make good use of it. Voice of Tiamat is going to not only get you a good flow of water gems, it’s also going to get you a modest income of earth and fire. You should forge some earth boots with you pretender, then more with the guy you give the first set to, E2 mages are where the fun’s at. Fire gems will more than likely go into an empowering, as mentioned above, then in addition to rune smashers you can start making the elemental staffs I referenced above. Also, kinda goes without saying, but dark knowledge is in the same school so you’ll want to hit that hard as well.
Send Tupac…er Tupilak. This guy is a rather weak assassin spell, but it’s also cheap, easy to cast, and relatively low on the research tree. He’s not going to take out any thugs or really even bodyguards, but with his hitpoints he is quite capable of killing most unguarded mages. This is not a mainline spell as it’s easy to counter, but it is a very good kick below the belt whenever you see your opponent fielding mages he forgot to put bodyguards with. Particularly right before a big fight.
Spirit mastery – let see, immune to all the stuff you’re throwing down, ethereal, cheap, and pretty much tailor made to tie up the bad guys. Yep, these are a very good choice as blockers. These guys are perfect to pair with freezing mist.
Ghosts – Like dispossessed spirits, only they add fear and cold of their own, how much better could it get?
Leviathan – You know what the problem is with iron dragons? They’re level 9 summons, and by that time everybody has good counters. How about a level 7 summon that’s almost as good for almost half the price? A single Leviathan buffed with quickness and gift of flight (give one of your air Angakoks an air gem) will destroy any PD and a couple together will even do a number on real armies which are unprepared. They’ve got great protection, massive hitpoints, are mindless (hint – another great thing to throw at R’yleh), amphibious, cold & fear immune so you don’t need to worry about friendly fire, and in fact even have a fairly significant fear aura themselves! Not to mention, quickened, they absolutely smear size 2 guys without racking up all that unseemly fatigue – it’s frightening how much damage they cause each round. Heck, the gift of flight isn’t really even necessary most of the time, but boy is it fun to watch. For big fights, make sure to leverage those S1 mages you’ve been scouring the globe for to lay luck and body ethereal down on them before sending your flying doomcastles to attack rearmost. Trust me, your opponent won’t have the luxury of worrying about all the fatigue you’re laying down in the mean time.
Monster fish – In case your opponents don’t just cede the water to you, and you need something to supplement your leviathans, buffed monster fish are just awesome. I don’t want to repeat what I laid out in my MA Atlantis guide, but definitely check it out that section if you haven’t read it. Between monster fish, leviathans, shark attacks, true amphibious uber sacreds, underwater PD and top notch undead counters nobody but R’yleh should be able to rival you under the water, and you should be able to give even them a run for their money. Plus, KO mentioned he was planning some new underwater goodies for LA Atlantis in the next patch….
Catoblepas – Heck, who needs archers? Two words: death gaze. Oh wait, make that 3 words, quickened death gaze.
Winter wolves – anything with a cold aura works great. Bonus points for etherealness.
Hidden in the snow – a bit on the expensive side, but the troops work very well with your strategy and the mages can flesh out your earth magic a bit. Cold auras all around!
Specters – as mentioned above will get you into astral if you don’t have a better way. They’re also stealthy, so really useful as mind hunt deterrents. Make sure you boost them up to S3 to give a 100% chance of catching the mind hunters!
Wolven winter – you want to always be fighting in cold-3 if you can help it. With this spell you don’t have much excuse to not help it.
Murdering winter – in the unlikely event a non-cold immune army is successfully invading you, this spell is expensive but fearsome in cold-3.
Leprosy (penetration boosted!) – did I mention that there are some disincentives to attacking LA Atlantis?
Black death, tidal wave, wolven winter (again), blight – cut off the economy of the bad guys. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I pity the fool who attacks me.
Lure of the deep – this is the type of insidious global which is both unlikely to be dispelled, and also cumulates to significant casualties over time. You pretty much need to be in control of any coast you don’t want to be at war with, but it does add one more layer of disincentive in attacking you once you get entrenched around the coastline.
Maelstrom – great spell to shoot for, castable with 2 boosters and a water random.
Well of misery – likewise, two boosters and the right random.
Speaking of two boosters and the right random, lots of nastiness is available at D7. Legion of wights (great blockers considering what you’re throwing down), Ghost Riders, and a short jump to tartarians with the ring of sorcery your pretender forged.
Ice pebble staffs turn out to be rather useful to, they’d prove really, really nice with quickened Tungalik except they tend to spam skeletons and frighten once your script runs out, so instead leverage indie commanders and boots of quickness (once you have them). It’s surprising how fast 3 quickened numbness spammers can cover the majority of a good sized army, and how effective it is. In addition to the fatigue and all its side effects, the freezing immediately drops attack and defense by 3, add a few more minuses on as the troops gain some fatigue closing for melee and trust me it’s worthwhile even before the fatigue really mounts.
Of course all the classic undead nastiness works as well – bane lords, wraith lords, liches, etc.
Finally, I want to close with a mention about sailing. Atlantis has some rather unique strategic options related to their both having sailing and being amphibious. They can leave one water province, sail over the next one and land on a land province on the far side. Given the usual larger size of water provinces, this can lead to *huge* strategic freedom. It’s not unlikely that massing troops in a single province can leave dozens of places you can drop them in a single turn. Combine this with excellent raiding potential, solid thugs, excellent defensive entrenchment and you have the ability to dance all over anybody who wants to attack you, or to deliver a devastating sneak attack to anyone with a coastline.