Water

Water is one of the eight paths of magic, and one of the four elemental paths alongside Earth, Fire and Air.

A lot of water magic is either stronger or only available in underwater provinces, making many of its applications fairly niche. It's also closely associated to cold, with effects like chill and cold damage.

• Winning underwater fights
  • A lot of magic derived from other paths, such as throwing fireballs around, doesn't work under water. That by itself makes Water magic the default best way to support underwater armies.
  • Elementals are useful in general, but Summon Water Elemental and Summon Lesser Water Elemental are especially strong in underwater battles, where the Water Elemental gains bonus regeneration.
  • Shark Attack is an effective underwater-only Howl that will pile on more and more sharks as battles drag on.

• Attacking fatigue
  • Association with coldness and dehydration gives Water a focus on trying to fatigue out your opponents, through spells like Desiccation or Grip of Winter.

• Speed
  • Water has many spells for altering Combat Speed and the capabilities of units; Quickness is the standout example, but there are also slowing spells such as Slow, Slime, and Quagmire. Most of these also impact combat prowess.

• Sending demons back home
  • Water has a number of tools to counter demon and undead, from crafting Demon Bane, throwing some Cleansing Water at them, or casting Demon Cleansing to make them take extra damage.

• Turning stuff into Water
  • Water can even turn units into Liquid. This capability is used defensively in Liquid Body and Wave Warriors, making units weaker (in terms of Strength) but better at taking melee hits, and offensively to melt foes from the legs up with Liquify.

• Water items
  • Crafting items such as Ring of Water Breathing or Sea King's Goblet will give otherwise landlocked nations options to conquer and contest underwater provinces.
  • Frost Brand is a quintessential thug item: a cheap weapon with an area of effect attack that allows a single combattant to dispatch large amount of chaff quickly.
  • Coral Blade is a rare way of raising the health points of any commander, possibly making them safe from things like Flames from the Skies.
  • A Bottle of Living Water will give its carrier a free big Water Elemental at the start of every fight. Generally powerful, they're a particularly good way of winning assassination battles, as a victim or perpetrator.

• Diversification of gem economy
  • Voice of Tiamat is a rare way to remotely site search for multiple paths, with a faster return on investment than other similar spells, but it's restricted to underwater provinces.
  • Similarly, Maelstrom, the gem-generating Water global enchantment, will give you a little bit of everything for your gem economy.

• At 3, Summon Bishop Fish will get you a 3 priest, the only generic way of obtaining one. The Bishop Fish is able to claim thrones and can be used as part of a throne rush, or to bless your entire army at once through Divine Blessing.

Water has a fair amount of variety with how it can hurt foes; it can drown them with Sailors' Death, ice them with Frozen Heart and other Cold spells, cut them on shards of ice with Ice Strike, and even turn them into goo with Liquify. Each of these spells has either limited scope or more than one rather-hard counter, however; for example, many of the direct-damaging ice spells can be reduced or even ignored with simple Protection, while the non-ice spells are blocked by Magic Resistance and certain traits. The spells with multiple counters tend to have higher areas-of-effect (AOEs) than comparable spells of other paths, probably to make up for this.

Water does possess a significant attack Ritual, with Murdering Winter tending to hit a higher percentage of units in its target province than any of the others; its performance scales with the Temperature of that province.