Sea monster

Sea Monsters are one aspect of Atlantis outposts and come in three different varieties:

The 'double forward' maneuver of Triketos and Gorgonyx monsters differs from the similar move available to ordinary ships in two ways: firstly, it will push any ship type, even a grand frigate (or monsters of higher class including Archelons); and secondly, the monster will not take ram damage if it uses its double forward.

Of these, the sea monsters' strength alters from Scout, Light, Heavy, and Elite, which prefix the name of the monster. The difficulty of the monster can also be determined by the color on the monster's back: light blue(above) for Scout, dark blue for Light, red for Heavy and black for Elite. The farther into the board a ship ventures, the more intelligent the sea monsters become. Difficulty does not affect the damage required to kill a monster, but it affects or appears to affect move generation, AI level, repair rate and the number of dragoons dropped by a Gorgonyx or Archelon.

All sea monster encounters are sinking.

Approximate damage required to sink
Players may need to add a couple of shots to these values due to the monsters having healed slightly over time. Atlantis monsters heal fairly rapidly, faster as their rating (scout, light etc.) increases. To sink a trike in 1 turn it requires 6 shots. All bigger monsters require at least 2 turns to sink for a single War Frigate and as such their "health" is affected by repair rates.

History

 * Sea monsters were implemented on production oceans on September 4th, 2007.
 * Sea Monster names were changed from Narwhal, Nautilus and Turtle to Triketos, Gorgonyx and Archelon respectively with an ice release, on August 31st, 2007.
 * Implemented on the Ice Ocean on August 16th, 2007.
 * When Atlantis was first introduced, the sea monsters gave rise to the term "Sea Monster Hunt" or "SMH" as another name for a voyage to Atlantis. After the introduction of the Cursed Isles with, "SMH" instead was used to refer to Atlantis-like voyage types. This has since been extended to include trips to the Haunted Seas.