Guide: MA Oceania - OMG, I think I've done it

[Baalz]

Well, here's the thing - nobody is arguing that MA Oceana is not crippled on land and that you've got a major uphill fight. The question is, do you 1) not use your national mages at all in combat 2) use them in their magically crippled form with ridiculous upkeep and very limited spells they can cast 3) transform them. To me, clearly #3 is the way to go despite its drawbacks, *particularly* because this also means you'll be fielding *many* more mages.

Look at it this way, when you transform 15 mages you've conceptually just forged a special soul contract which instead of generating demons spits out a capricorn every turn (with the upkeep cost you saved). Looking at it that way you can see why even if you do have a high attrition rate it's better to do it than not just for the upkeep benefit, not even considering the fact that your mages are vastly more powerful on land now. I also think that if you're clever the danger from having a very small MR is more a limitation to where and how you deploy your mages rather than that your mages die left and right. Instead of sneaking around and single handedly clearing PD you've got to keep your mages with a group of otherwise mostly useless animals and crossbreeds, but still a bunch of mages who move at the speed of the slowest dark vine is *much* better than no combat mages at all.

[WraithLord]

It sounds reasonable but I'd very much like to see how it holds up in a real MP game.

Had I faced MA O. that opted for mass transformation. I'd have probed all the castles with MH. Every castle that didn't have an astral mage or dome would immediately get MH raining down on it. I'd move a host of assassins with heart finder to its castles. I'd cast leprosy on the castles. Hell, I'd open the manual and look for all the MR check spells, attacks and weapons and I'd bring all that I can get to bear.

In battles I'd use any of a host of spells:
paralyze, mind burn, soul slay, enslave mind, master enslave, charm, sleep, nether darts, disintegrate, astral fires, petrify and I'm sure the list is way longer but my memory ain't.

As I see it, this saves gold (which is not even the main resource in late game dominions, which is of course gems) and opens a huge weakness, just waiting to be exploited.

Bottom line, I have a hard time believing this is viable. Some hard MP proof is required IMHO.

[JimMorrison]

The crux of the problem, is that you need to get to Transformation fairly early, or your economy will stall out. In order to justify the Transformation strat, and to expedite your UW conquest, it's my understanding you buy Capricorns from the get-go, as you can afford them. So in order to justify the bother of Transforming, you are committing yourself to that course of action.

The problem is, in order to even have then around at all, you are pretty reliant on mid-high level Death summons from Conj to protect from Mind Hunts, and to commit them to battle you are relying on Blood summons that you have no initial access to, which then have a collateral reliance on even more mid-high level Death summons.

I can see this working fairly well overall, should you actually drive straight for Well of Misery, and by some miracle get it up and keep it up. Otherwise, your Death summons, which are in fact the linchpin of the entire strategy, can hardly be numerous enough to fill all of the roles that you need them for. Too bad there's no pretender that auto creates Death gems, or that comes with a "Sickle Whose Crop is Pain" as default weapon.

< Heads off to work on a new concept, the "Screw Combat Magic, here comes the Capricorn Thug Squad" concept. > 9E and Shrouds? Hmmmmm. I'm just not sure these guys really can do anything well enough to scare anyone with any skill, after the second year of the game. >.>