Why not play Kronos?

[The Layup Legend]

I'm trying to move into atlantean play online and it seems like, just looking at the gods, kronos has to be the best for both aggressive and defensive playstyles. Free extra myths on age up, better build speeds near manors, valor giving you better econ from free villager heroes or better rush with healed and hero'd military early, time shift to keep safe or stay aggressive, and deconstruct to stop your opponent from aging early or to get rid of defenses mid and late.

Given all of this, I don't see much oranos and gaia bring to the table to beat him in either rushing or booming playstyles. Can anyone help me out there?

[Antpile]

I've been maining Gaia. Starts with two hero civs for an early eco boost. Cheaper hero civs to keep em coming all game. Gaia forests give you a further wood income boon on top of all the hero civs you'll have. You can also use Gaia forests to map edit and create choke points or wall off certain areas.

Lush auto heals all units and buildings within it for 1hp a second, so harassing her is a lot harder because all your civs keep healing back up. She has a pretty cheap tech that makes all of your units move 15% faster on the lush, so you can more easily respond to raids.

All of her eco upgrades are 30% cheaper and available an age earlier. The 30% cheaper is pretty big, but the age earlier I haven't gotten a whole lot of use out of so far. I guess it does allow you to get villager survival gear in age 2, making your civilians even harder to raid. But, I dunno.

If only she had access to prometheus for stolen fire. Then all those hero civs would REALLY be cooking. But, that'd probably make her hands down the strongest atlantean.

[The Layup Legend]

Ah I didn't know about the age earlier and cheaper for eco, that would make sense as to why she's the turtle up and outscale pick. How have caladrias been working out? They looked buffed to me and I'm considering she might be a very potent early skirmisher if she has those mobile healers with the army, but not sure if they're just fodder for hades archers or not