EA Atlantis is bad

[Gono]

EA Atlantis is bad and feel unfinished

[Legowarrior]

This is not an argument I have heard before. How do you figure on of the best thug nations in the game is bad and unfinished?

[Mormacil]

Could you elaborate?

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally posted by Legowarrior:

This is not an argument I have heard before. How do you figure on of the best thug nations in the game is bad and unfinished?

I thought they were bad until I playtested and used them. The little bit of astral you get lets you remote search it/break into it reasonably (and point buff in some matchups). Nature is super common in that era so you can get sorcery going eventually.

What makes Atlantis decent as the game goes on is that they get very high path mages in both water and earth and good troops w/o sacreds (the sacred troops are bad), so they can print a LOT of elementals, cast all the big earth buffs, kill most SC builds with weapons of sharpness, thug extensively, and even use a fair few dangerous evos in the late game (including the acid stuff). They have respectable direct fire access too if you need to fire storm some undead away or just punish some no FR opponents with a few elementals.

They have flaws but as a water nation with solid troops that operate both above and below water effectively they have a few windows where they are dangerous to most of the land nations. Not just as a "raid your coasts" threat, but capable of actually wiping people out. Even before late game magic it's pretty hard to thug/SC through magic weapon SoG boosted warriors of the deep, especially if they have quickness too. Their cap only with body ethereal + luck + items can be pretty hard to handle too.

[Dast]

I like EA Atlantis. I think they are really cool. Whether or not they are strong in game Living Pillars are so cool, both in background and sprite. Similar for everything in EA Atlantis. Then their mage line-up is kind of weird gameplay wise too if I remember correctly: they get no small mages, but their medium and large ones are both great.

They are one of the older nations in the game. New nations tend to have a bit more bells and whistles, in the form of special mechanics, many national summons or similar. Maybe this could be why they feel "unfinished" to you.

[Big Dog]

Have you tried playing Pelagia yet?

[TheMeInTeam]

EA Pelagia is awful, in MA it's more passable.

[Dast]

EA Pelagia is (I think) also really cool. I love the theme and look. Although gameplay wise they certainly run into problems. Hypothetically in a game where 70% of the map was ocean and every nation was an UW nation (Altantis, Ry'leh, maybe Theredos) they would work great. When I tried it I thought they worked fine in a Disciples game as the UW teammate (that was actually MA, but probably carries across mostly). But in a free-for-all game with fairly normal map conditions (more land than water) they certainly struggle. At least they got that DOM4 update that lets them train some hoplite troops from coastal forts.

[TheMeInTeam]

MA variant of Pelagia has much better troops and mages than EA, relative to the rest of the age. Specifically MA Pelagia is a lot better at UW vs UW fighting than EA Pelagia (where it is barely better than other water nations at it, if at all. MA's land mages, while not great, are also more effective than EA because they have mystics, and all of its randoms make useful mages.

MA Pelagia isn't GOOD on land, it's just better than EA Pelagia on land by a lot...and much better UW. EA Pelagia is basically indy stuff with some pearl mages/pearl kings which are aquatic by default and thus tax you to take them above water (usually shambler skin).

I guess if you get to a couple tech 9's you can wish farm better than others, but good luck with that.

Atlantis, on the other hand, can straight up kill nations above and below water. It won't always succeed, but it has the tools to actually threaten land nations before the game is nearly over.

[Mount Nomad]

EA Pelagia can take the water effectively if there's enough of it together on a map. Can't win, but can stack up to Arcane Nexus / Armageddon spam faster than most others as it's unopposed in its territory.

[Primagen]

EA Atlantis is fun. You can do a lot with them. Against players you cannot base a strat on Living Pillars but against AI you can have an invincible army that you can cast acid storm and rain of stones on that will not really get hurt.

[Igigi]

Atlantis is probaly the only EA water nation that's actually quite strong on land as well but they need a good start on water. Too many tritons and you can basically call it in multiplayer. After they're establishes, they have really strong mages and thugs.

Not directly related to Atlantis but the mediocre acid spells could use a nudge, they're crosspath but are barely worth casting most of the time. Best thing about this crosspath (F/W) is the green lions. But otherwise, there's no surprise the two weakest paths in the game also make up the weakest crosspath.

[TheMeInTeam]

Can't buff acid too much, basically nothing resists it.

Atlantis has the best amphibious troops for sure, but people hate on EA R'lyeh too much. Slave mages can go above water with no strings attached, and slave guardians hit hard for how much they cost. Getting strength of giants + mass protection on them is attainable with native paths and hits only the bulkiest of thugs can avoid chip damage...most EA stuff just dies to it. Doesn't scale badly into late game either considering they can also do things like relief/will of fates/army of foo/weapons of sharpness in very late game, again using only slave mages. This nation can also spam mind hunt pretty far from the water and eventually will get aboleths twiceborn and/or amulet of the fish, but it's dangerous before that.

I do broadly agree that Atlantis is probably the best UW nation in EA though. Their magic weapons hit hard and they have excellent recruitable thugs, plus while water gets a bad rep it's different when you're routinely getting W3 or W4 and your standard mages can start doing things like niefel flames, murdering winter, 5x elemental living water, liquify (don't forget that in addition to boosting W path with items you can access all the pen gear natively), 18 or 20 damage frozen hearts, or 3-4 quickening per mage with maybe a 3 gem bracelet (since this nation gets hammers natively).

[Arcvasti]

EA Atlantis absolutely does feel unfinished, imo. They have a total of two mage commanders, no heroes, and what is probably the smallest pantheon of any nation. They're not that strong either since all their mages are overpriced for land warfare, which is what you need to be good at in order to win. Plus their sacreds are hilariously bad(nine encumbrance for only nine head protection, a defense score of one and terrible magic resistance).

[Gono]

Originally posted by Mac:

Atlantis is probaly the only EA water nation that's actually quite strong on land as well but they need a good start on water. Too many tritons and you can basically call it in multiplayer. After they're establishes, they have really strong mages and thugs.

Not directly related to Atlantis but the mediocre acid spells could use a nudge, they're crosspath but are barely worth casting most of the time. Best thing about this crosspath (F/W) is the green lions. But otherwise, there's no surprise the two weakest paths in the game also make up the weakest crosspath.

laughs in thero

[Dast]

In defense of those sacred troops, encumbrance from armor is halved underwater (buoyancy). So UW that basalt armour is less of a problem. This particular little niche of the way the sacreds work (better UW because their armor is too heavy on land) is a bit of flavor I love.

More heroes and more god options is always nice of course.

A flavour tweak that might also be fun is if the Deep-water Atlantians (the ones with resistances) could be recruited in gorges, even without a fort.