Is LA Atlantis bad?

[J.A.M.]

I played it, didn't find anything outstanding about it, especially compared to the heavy armour of Man and the endless swarms of Lemuria

[Eldritch Gentleman]

LA Atlantis is very, very good. Their Tungalik are reasonably priced research mages that are also capable of leading and blessing expansion parties, and are also sacred, reducing their upkeep significantly.

On top of that, the angakoks are a pretty decent mage with which to cast some signature spells. Hidden In Snow, Stygian Rains, etc. Their Earth and Air randoms may appear relatively useless, but I'm getting to that.

Their infantry are also nothing to scoff at either- the Ice Guard are superb infantry provided you're fighting inside cold scales (Meaning that you generally want to avoid combat in the summer if at all possible), and have magic weapons as well, making them a common counter to Lemuria.

LA Atlantis gets really good once they get underwater. The Unsleeping are excellent heavy infantry, and the Forgiving Fathers are able to craft Crystal Matrixes, and form communions, not to mention adding fire magic to your arsenal.

I'm assuming you're a new player, so let me explain why that's so good.

A communion gives +X to a communion master's magic paths for every 2^X slaves. So, let's say you want to cast Undead Mastery, because this is a late-game fight, and someone like, say, Lemuria has an army of two thousand ghosts on your border.

We get an Angakok with Death 3 (D3), give him a skull staff to bring him up to D4, and a crystal matrix. We send in 8 Forgiving fathers along with the rest of the army, and we tell them to cast communion slave. Once battle is joined, the Angakok will get +3 to all magical paths once the forgiving fathers cast communion slave, bringing him up to D7, which is enough to cast Undead Mastery, and enslave a large chunk of your foe's army.

But now, let's compare that to Man. Man has the same armour as your medium infantry in neutral temperature, with cold/heat scales skewing it to either side. Now, you see, Atlantis has a trick to double their armour in any fight. The Stygian rains spell will grant invulnerability (15) to all units, giving them an effective extra 15 protection against non-magical attacks. And guess what every unit you have has? Magical weapons. It turns those armoured crossbow batteries you worry about into a light rain, although you still have to worry about lightning bolts. But hey, there's an earth spell you can cast with the help of communions to help deal with that.

[Twogun]

try being an average player and playing against LA atlantis when they have a decent player. you'll learn how good they are.

i certainly did. and am about to again!

[✏pencils✏]

It's not really late game LA unless Atlantis has at least 60% of the provinces.

[applenta]

How would Atlantis deal with Rigor Mortis?

[Eldritch Gentleman]

Originally posted by applenta:

How would Atlantis deal with Rigor Mortis?

There's really no counter to rigor mortis aside from being undead. The way to deal with rigor mortis is to have as many skeletons as possible on the field to continue fighting as living units start to lose their effectiveness, which they can do, to a degree.

[Red_Rob]

The same way any nation deals with Rigor Mortis: Lie down and cry Plug a Lizard Shaman into a Communion and cast Relief, hope your superior troops can carry the day. The most likely culprit for casting Rigor in the Late Age is Lemuria, and with all your troops having magic weapons you are very well equipped to deal with their hordes of ghosts before Rigor neuters you.

On the other hand as a Death nation you are actually likely to be quite well equipped to fight Rigor Mortis, or even to be using it yourself. All your summoned undead will be immune to it, so with a few Spectral Mages and Mound Fiends you can fairly quickly have a force that can be continually Skelespamming under Rigor until the enemy fatigues out.