Getting EA Oceana out of the water...

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, I second that EA Oceania is not at all weak, in SP as well as apparently MP. Hippocampi sacred calvalry are atleast as good as Helheim sacred calvalry, possibly better, since you can compare rejuvenation to glamour, and glamour may come out a little ahead, but then add on that you get the hippocampus back if your sacred rider gets killed-plus in the water you're not competing nearly as much sacred-to-sacred. I had half a dozen medium-blessed hippocampi calvalry annhilate atleast 12 independent provinces without any of them ever taking an affliction, let alone losing a rider. Even if one of them had, the affliction would quickly be healed, which enabled me to build them up to 3 stars with 0 afflictions very quickly. If Hippocampi-riders were amphibious, EA Oceanea would dominate the entire game since you'd have more time to build up a powerful sacred force and the enemy would have a lot harder time destroying your economy or raiding you.

Even so, you can equip your triton kings with air-breathing which gives you a minimum 4 water caster with lots of land-based spells, and you'll have lots and lots of them, because you've destroyed all independents everywhere, including the sea-trolls and the amber-clan guards and the krackens and the leviathons and the dragon-turtles, and everything else you might or might not encounter, independent-wise, and R'lyeh and Atlantis won't even look at you funny, they're too busy outfitting the cave-fortresses they have to live in now because you're out there and only getting closer. And your triton kings are going to be hella-tough when they get on land because you've got a bless strategy going for them as well. And that's when you start making amulets of air-breathing for your hippocampi-rider CAPTAINS.

It's a good nation.

[DeathDaemon]

I am having trouble as EA Oceana on land in a current game (AI and MP), even though I am leading the score charts in every category.

Playing Cradle, my strategy:
1. Hire land mercenaries whenever possible.
2. Take the port cities for money and blockading.
Lots of money for improvements and castles, and to spread around the map quickly before nations expand.
3. Build temples at every underwater province
I went with Cold 3, Sloth 3, and high dominion to spread those crap scales around)
4. Site search above and below water.
5. 15+ frozen heart casters per army with usually a 50% FR chest or similar protection.
6. Lots of enchantments and remote spells (not here yet)

My land combat is pathetic. I have hordes of archers and heavy infantry, with javelin light infantry mixed with my triton raiders. The armies do ok against independents, but even with my huge income bonus I can't keep up with 4-5 fronts of AIs, which is quite common on Cradle. The frozen heart spam is nice, but took a lot of research (not much useful in alteration) and lots of money and time (tons of castles to make mages). Unfortunately I don't have a large water gem income to consider Sea Trolls yet. I do have a tons of other gems, but no casters to use them other than my god and 2S2A indy mages. Of course I've started boosting and empowering my randoms, but I couldn't have done any of this w/o a good amount of luck. Maybe I've overextended a bit, but I'm not making much progress on land. Luckily most of the opponents are AI, or else I would have given all my indy land and my castles to them without a fight. What combat magic should I use, and how do you expand on land and keep it?

[Saxon]

Leviation is fun. The Asp Turtle dies and you summon it as an undead critter, so same flying saucer of doom, but no morale issues...

[HoneyBadger]

How does one summon up (undead) a specific creature of yours that has died? I haven't figured that out yet.

[HoneyBadger]

By the way, providing you've got mages who can create the shells, Oceania and R'lyeh are both great shell-spamming nations. You can use all those extra pearls to pave the way to landfall in whatever sneaky, diabolical way you see fit.

[mivayan]

HoneyBadger said:
How does one summon up (undead) a specific creature of yours that has died? I haven't figured that out yet.

You cant. But there's this other spell:

Leviathan. Ench7, D3W1, 15 death gems. Summons an undead asp turtle. Must be summoned underwater, but it's amphbious so you can bring it on land. mindless. hp 143, prot 19, mr 13. 10 action points compared to the asp turtles 14, so it probably tramples slightly less times per round.


It looks *really* neat, especially if you can somehow cast regeneration on it (it's not lifeless). But I haven't used it enough to say if it's worth the gems.

[Endoperez]

Ritual of Rebirth summons one of your dead commanders that is in the Hall of Fame.

Raise Skeletons et all reanimate different undead based on resource costs of the dead guys. So if you kill group of Ulmish guys, you'll get soulless with boradswords and mail.