Dominions 3: The Awakening/Nations/Oceania, Triton Kings

The Early Age of Oceania is still under control of the Triton Kings.

Overview
EA Oceana hasn't gotten much love in the game forums, even though some consider it the strongest under water nation. It has a tough time mid-game "breaking out" of the sea and it is easy to lose focus on setting up a strong end-game. For those wanting a challenge (or perhaps playing against opponents significantly less experienced) this does provide an opportunity for some fun or to play a handicap match.
 * Underwater nation.
 * Powerful aquatic troops and commanders, mediocre amphibious troops and commanders.
 * Expensive cap-only thug-able Triton King magi attract free Hippocampi units.
 * Powerful aquatic water magi, also with strong nature magic and splashes of air, earth and fire.
 * Amphibious magi less powerful on land.
 * Lots of magic, but it's hard to boost A/E/F without help from the pretender.
 * Powerful but expensive sacred non-cap aquatic cavalry unit and thug-able commanders.
 * Some commanders come equipped with magic weapons, Hippocampi have magical gore attack.
 * Powerful non-cap aquatic H3 priests.
 * Easy access to gem-generator clams and fever fetish.
 * On land, using indies and summons is likely key to a successful strategy.

National Features
One of the downsides of Oceana is their units and commanders are only available in underwater provinces with a fort. On dry land only indie troops and commanders are available to hire, with the exception of Turtle Warriors and Turtle Chiefs available inside coastal forts.

Units

 * Oceaniac Triton: Gold 10, Resources 1
 * HP:15 Sz:2 Att:11 Def:10 Str:12 Prot:1 Prec:10	MR:12 Mor:11 Enc:3 Move:1 AP:20
 * Underwater-only chaff trooper with a spear. Look closely, this is not the same unit as the indy tritons anyone can recruit. This guy has 50% more hp, 20% more strength and 1 more MR plus higher attack and morale. That’s a pretty decent increase for a chaff unit at the same price. With the right buffs these guys start looking like real good chaff.


 * Oceanic Soldier: Gold 10, Resources 20
 * HP:15 Sz:2 Att:11 Def:12 Str:12 Prot:15 Prec:10 MR:12 Mor:11 Enc:7 Move:1 AP:16
 * Basically a heavily armed and armored version of the Oceaniac Triton. Wields trident and shield. It happens to be your slowest unit.


 * Amber Clan Guard: Gold 12, Resources 34
 * HP:16 Sz:2 Att:12 Def:12 Str:13 Prot:16 Prec:10 MR:12 Mor:12 Enc:7 Move:1 AP:18
 * Not much of an improvement over the Oceaniac Soldier, but substantially higher resource cost. Wields trident and shield.


 * Merman: Gold 10, Resources 1
 * HP:10 Sz:2 Att:10 Def:10 Str:10 Prot:1 Prec:10 MR:12 Mor:10 Enc:3 Move:1 AP:22
 * Amphibious unarmored chaff that entangles its target for its first attack. Wields spear and net. 'Nuff said.


 * Turtle Warrior: Gold 11, Resources 9
 * HP:10 Sz:2 Att:10 Def:11 Str:10 Prot:8 Prec:10 MR:12 Mor:11 Enc:5 Move:1 AP:20
 * Amphibious medium shield troops. Wields spear, javelin and a shield. Use these in your amphibious armies if you expect to go up against lots of archers.


 * Wave Warrior: Gold 13, Resources 19
 * HP:10 Sz:2 Att:11 Def:10 Str:10 Prot:15 Prec:10 MR:12 Mor:12 Enc:6 Move:1 AP:19
 * Amphibious heavy trooper. Wields a 2-handed trident. A much higher protection and damage output for a corresponding raise in production cost. The biggest down-side is the lack of shield, which makes them vulnerable to arrow fire on land.


 * Knight of the Deep: Gold 85, Resources 25
 * HP:16 Sz:2 Att:12 Def:17 Str:13 Prot:17 Prec:10 MR:14 Mor:15 Enc:4 Move:1 AP:30
 * Underwater-only sacred cavalry with Recuperation! Wields spear, lance, shield and a magical horn attack! These guys rock, but are quite expensive. In melee they are excellent. Just about any minor bless makes their already awesome stats even better. That said, their spear is disappointing and they are as just vulnerable to magma, frost and lightning as the next guy, so buff them properly vs enemy magic.


 * Hippocampus: Gold 0(special), Resources n/a
 * HP:25 Sz:2 Att:10 Def:10 Str:15 Prot:3 Prec:5 MR:13 Mor:13 Enc:2 Move:1 AP:30
 * Underwater-only "free" animal "summons" with a heavy-hitting magical weapon. Similar to Pangaea's Pans and Maenads, your Triton Kings are hard-coded to automatically randomly attract a single Hippocampi each turn (maybe 10% chance per turn?).

Commanders

 * Merman Scout: Gold 25, Resources 3, Leadership 0
 * Amphibious scout with a magic spear and net. Map-move of one. Otherwise functions like any indy scout. While on dry land it gains a feet slot.


 * Oceanian Captain: Gold 30, Resources 20, Leadership 40
 * Aquatic commander version of the Oceanic Soldier. Armed with a magic trident and shield, no feet slot.


 * Turtle Chief: Gold 40, Resources 10, Leadership 40
 * Amphibious commander version of the Turtle Warrior. Armed with a normal spear, net and shield. While on dry land they gain a feet slot.


 * Wave Lord: Gold 45, Resources 19, Leadership 80
 * Amphibious commander version of the Wave Warrior. Armed with a magic trident. While on dry land they gain a feet slot.


 * Triton Prince: Gold 125, Resources 25, Leadership 80
 * Aquatic commander version of the Knight of the Deeps. Armed with a normal lance, spear and shield and a magical gore attack. These sacred commanders can be summoned at any underwater fortress containing a temple. Similar to the KotD, these guys make excellent underwater thugs with any minor bless. Their Recuperation ability means they stay in good health, even after many battles. With an Amulet of the Fish (Const-4 A1W1), they can go on land as well.


 * Amber Clan Priest: Gold 45, Resources 2, Leadership 10
 * Aquatic H1 sacred priest. Armed with a mace, no feet slot. Has superior HP and MR compared to indy versions.


 * Merman Priest: Gold 65, Resources 1, Leadership 10
 * Amphibious H1 priest. Armed with a magical staff. Has superior MR, but otherwise similar to normal indy priests. While on dry land they gain a feet slot.


 * Bishop Fish: Gold 120, Resources 1, Leadership 40
 * Aquatic H3 priest with Darkvision, no feet slot. Has superior HP and MR, but the downside is Old Age and all other stats are sub-par. With a few boosters, your Amber Clan Mages might be able to furnish them with Elixir's of Life (Const-6 N2F2), otherwise your Bishop Fish's career is likely to be a disease-ridden short-lived one. They have excellent preacher skills for keeping positive candles in your border provinces, and they offer the possibility for high-level battlefield holy-magic spam.


 * Amber Clan Mage: Gold 160, Resources 1, Leadership 45, Research 6
 * Aquatic F1W2N1 mage. As with Oceana's soldiers, these triton magi display higher HP, fighting abilities and superior MR, no feet slot. As the cheapest mage on the roster, the high leadership skill and decent research comes as a nice bonus. Their combination of fire and water magic opens up some interesting possibilities, like Geyser at Alt-1, Manifest Vitriol at Alt-6 or Fever Fetish farms.


 * Mermage: Gold 175, Resources 1, Leadership 10, Research 6
 * Amphibious W2N1?(A/W/E/N 100%) mage. Armed with a magic staff, they possess excellent MR and Defense skill. Their random picks offer a lot of nice magic diversity. While on dry land they lose 1 point of water magic, but they gain a feet slot.


 * Triton King: Gold 300, Resources 5, Leadership 120, Research 7
 * Aquatic and Capital-only sacred W4?(A/E/N 100% + A/W/E/N 10%) mage. Armed with a trident, no feet slot. While the random magic picks are quite useful, the chances of seeing a A2W4 or E2W4 are very small, so I wouldn't build a strategy around those. Their high hp, excellent combat stats and self buffing ability makes them by very definition a thug. In spite of their high purchase cost, they in fact require no more maintenance than the other two mage types (10 gold/turn). Each Triton King has a small (~10%) chance of automatically attracting a "free" Hippocampus unit each turn. Thus large groups of Triton Kings tend to amass large swarms of Hippocampi followers that eat up a lot of maintenance costs. They only way to prevent this is to leave the sea using Amulet of the Fish or the Transformation (Alt-7 N3) spell.

Heroes
None.

Starting Sites

 * Palace of Pearls:Enables recruitment of Triton King. Produces 4W, 2N gems/turn.

National Spells
None

National Summons
None. (See Hippocampus in the unit section)

Strategy A
Your tritons provide a sturdy ocean-only expansion force with 15+ hitpoints and good protection. Things get a lot harder when you want to crawl ashore, as you well then need to use merfolk (with only 10 hitpoints and either unimpressive defense or unimpressive protection). You may want an amphibian combat pretender to help with early expansion (which is often slow given the limited options underwater) and with coming ashore.

Given your difficulties getting on land, the game is likely to be a long haul for you. Your success will mostly be determined by your starting position. If you're in a large ocean with good magic sites, you can conquer the ocean, turtle up, start your own clam and fever-fetish economies, and have some chance at keeping up with your terrestrial competition. If you're in a smaller ocean, you'll need to establish a defensible land footprint soon, or you'll be in big trouble. Even if you do establish a footprint, your terrestrial troops are unimpressive, so expansion will likely be a challenge.

Scale Design
You're likely to be in it for the long haul, so a death scale is probably inadvisable, and growth may even be advisable. You probably want one magic, to keep research going. Order and productivity are both good to have.

It may be reasonable to start with a relatively weak dominion (4-5 candles), and count on your bishop fishes (120 gold for an aquatic 3-holy) to preach your territories into white candles. A bishop preaching in a temple will keep your candles in a territory high, even in the face of strong encroaching dominion.

Pretender Design
You can take a dormant sacred statue for strong economic scales.

For a super-combatant you probably want the Wyrm, the Ghost King, or an amphibian titan. It's hard to say which is worse: the woeful economy you get having your SC awake, or the risk of missing a crucial window for terrestrial expansion you face if your SC sleeps through the first year.

Since your sacred troops are aquatic only, a bless-strategy is inadvisable.