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Other Player Quotes on Oceania
"Oceania is not as tough of a water nation to get on land as others like EA Pelagia (totally sucks), and EA R'lyeh (requires fish amulets to do much of anything on land).
Their downside is chaos dominion on land, and they are really limited to coastal forts, making it harder to push inland. They have very strong amphibious units and super strong Capricorn mages. They have Sirins that have change in aspect on land. They are sort of the underwater version of Pangea without the Maenids and blood.
Most obvious strat in SP games is to grab as many coastal provinces as you possibly can in the early game and fort as many of them as you can as quick as you can. Capricorns are capable of strong nature and water summons, and these will comprise the bulk of your armies inland backed up with the strong cav units others have mentioned. Similar strats that Pangea would use work here with the exception that you wont have powerful blood summons in late game.
Powerful summons to go for in mid game include Naiad Warriors. These are extremely powerful amphibious front line infantry with high protection and awe. Very capable front line holders allowing your cav to do the real damage. Way better front line infantry than the Vine Ogres Pangea typically uses in mid game.
Oceania actually does have some benefits to death crosspaths on your pretender. Namely, water/death summons, some of which are really powerful."
"Usual underwater nation stuff: Temperature scales hurt your underwater provinces a lot less than normal. Since all your national troops are amphibious taking heat scales can synergise with making rivers a pain for your neighbours. Also lamias are a great nature summon to use in later stages of a game and are cold-blooded.
Early age you can easily afford to take some sloth, middle age your armoured troops are really good so you'll probably want production (assuming rec points don't mess this up too much).
I really like the change in scales between coastal and non-coastal provinces for thematic reasons, it's just so flavourful. While I haven't checked how the new rec points system may change things, if nothing else getting a free +1 order in all your underwater provinces is really nice since they're the only provinces you can recruit your good troops in anyway. In dom4 I took neutral order scales and max luck so my water provinces could benefit from order/luck event types and my coastal ones from turmoil/luck event frequency. Again rec points may mess this up though. No idea about "viable" or not, between rec points and the new luck scaling.
Mages are all quite expensive. I feel like you need magic scales to make them a bit better value but research still isn't going to be your strong point compared to some other nations with cheaper spammier mages.
In terms of magic diversity they're kind of lacking. Nature and water of course. Capricorns can get to summoning troll kings on land with a pair of earth boots so they have earth covered that way. As said above W/D on your pretender can let you spend water gems on a good death mage with Streams from Hades. Alternatively forest troll shamans get death magic but you might be a while summoning them if you want to get one with D2 that way. It can be annoying finding a lot of underwater fire sites via Voice of Tiamat and having no way to use them so F on a pretender can at least let you summon flame spirits on land (F3, or F2D1 via a skull of fire) which can then lightless lantern spam to help you catch up research-wise on the other nations. With some chassis you're probably better off empowering if you find yourself in that position rather than planning for the possibility but still.
Their sacred's poison barbs are slightly better in dom5 than dom4 since more troop types have length 1 weapons now. Just an observation I remember seeing (AlguLoD?) make. Not saying you *should* build a strategy around that, but I might be saying that I *want* to ever since hearing it. =P (Especially if it means I get to disregard everything I just said and use the ancient kraken pretender instead)"