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| What you should do is focus on establishing your underwater territories as rapidly as possible, but avoid taking many land provinces early on. The key to remember is the land nations will often see any move to land to be very aggressive on your part even if you¿re just attacking indies. You also give up your best defense, your water. In general, only take island provinces, or perhaps isolated land masses which you can defend from land attack by holding only a single province. Of course this is just a rule of thumb, so use your own judgment.
Fighting between the water nations is much like playing many other nations, and Homer has covered the basics (though I personally value the national troops a bit differently). As he mentions, having an awake SC pretender helps greatly (I¿m a fan of the ancient kraken), and having a good gold flow is essential. When I find it gets interesting is once you¿ve secured your watery kingdom, either through conquest or alliance and start eyeing your first major land campaign. At this point you should have a long shore border, a good gold and gem income (thanks to voice of tiamat) and several neighbors which you have no NAP with. Now is when the true beauty of R¿yleh begins to shine freedom. Watch for your opportunity which of your neighbors is on the losing side of a war? Watch the score graphs (if enabled), use astral windows (or it¿s not a bad idea to forge a couple stone spheres), watch the forums and bide your time. Remember, half your opportunity is going to be swooping in to aid somebody already in a war, so make sure you leverage this into the groundwork for future alliances and trading partners. Now, another great thing about R¿yleh is the abundance of fairly stout astral mages (even more so with EA R¿yleh¿but that would be another thread). This expands upon the freedom theme pairs of your starspawn can teleport anywhere and take out most PD with the right equipment and script (one idea is to give them bottles of water elementals, script body ethereal then falling frost X4, you get the idea). This can easily be followed up by the construction of a laboratory and the gatewaying in of your real armies. So, as you¿re looking for opportunities use your scrying and negotiation and don¿t confine yourself to nations bordering the water there is a lot of joy in attacking somebody who has no way to attack you back and the best they can hope for is to repulse your attack. Use intel from your newly found allies (who will be overjoyed to have you join them in a fight they¿re already bogged down in), and teleport into the rear, lightly held territories. Heck, you can likely even get some bribes to join the winning side of a war, or just rent out your Mind Hunter¿s services to the right bidder. [response: Why you want to pick a fight with someone that doesn't border you im unsure about. Basically rlyeh depends on a large number of mages and troops to be involved in a campaign, else the campaign will just fail - and you will have wasted alot of money and gems (meanwhile other nation elsewhere has grown stronger). If you wish to win such a campaign you usually need to involve a lot of starspawns (30+ maybe) and troops in the thousands (well at least as LA rlyeh), to gate and teleport that in will cost you alot of astral gems. And even if that succeds you have now efficiently separted your kingdom into 2 parts that cannot support each other, seldom a good idea. The only reason why you want to do this is if you are bribed (and then you are going in there to hurt the guy not really to keep any lands) or if someone is about to win the game and your hands are forced. In my opinion you should expand taking down weak opponents or those that are a threat to you (and then you might want an allie or two to help you), and you should try to expand in a manner that gives you as few fronts to guard as possible (this means setting up NAP with nations you aren't intending to expand into). ]
So, for me, playing R¿yleh is defined by two things 1) leveraging your underwater defensive advantage and 2) a handful of spells: voice of Tiamat, teleport, mind hunt/vengeance of the dead. It¿s all about freedom, mobility, and surprise because against an evenly skilled opponent you¿re likely not going to be able to hold your own on the ground in a straight fight. R¿yleh is a submarine, keep your opponents guessing as to where you¿re going to surface next. You should have a great gem income, very good research and a lot of magic versatility. [response: There are obviously different ways to play and enjoy rlyeh. You seem to employ a bit of hit and run tactics (nothing wrong in that) but I really would say that rlyeh can stand their ground against most land nations (when they get access to some nice magic). The key is communions and buff spells like darkness for your chaff backed up with large numbers of starspawns spamming magic in the form of for example nether darts. (on my handfull of spells i would put: voice of tiamat, nether darts, communion master/slave and darkness). ]
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Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat/Cold 0 - I am not familiar with the quality of underwater provinces in MP maps, but I found most of my SP maps to have rather poor underwater provinces, and that land provinces have always constituted the majority of my income. A play-to-win strategy in MP should recognize that most provinces of the eventual winner are likely to be on land rather than underwater too. The suppply penalty for Heat/Cold scales is also brutal in LA due to all the freespawns and should be avoided. Growth 3 Luck 3 - I have been convinced that the luck scale has a very large impact on R'lyeh. It definitely helps the Void Gate by improving the quality and frequency of void summons, reducing the number of attacks, and preventing your Starspawn priest from getting feebleminded or lost in time and space so often. Most importantly though, I found that Luck 3 dramatically increased the frequency and quality of LA free spawns to the point that one could keep pace with LA Ermor in terms of quantity. Magic 1 Pretender In my comparison of the expansion rate for R'lyeh with or without an awake SC pretender, I have found the bottleneck to always be the number of Illithids I could hire, and once I did have enough Illithids (20 to 30 is sufficient to form one expansion army), it didn't really matter if the SC was present or not. As such, I generally go with an imprisoned and immobile pretender. The Monolith with a base dominion of 4 has served me well, since it will still have 133 points left over even after taking the scales above. I think these extra points are most useful in air magic, since that will give access to the Staff of Storms, which is a very important equalizer in land battles and difficult for R'lyeh to obtain early. Wrath of God and Dark Skies are nice globals that can take advantage of high dominion too. I prefer to avoid Earth magic since it is available on Starspawn mages, and the abundance of earth gems underwater allows me to easily empower one up to level 3, often times before I even need a Dwarven Hammer. Expansion Turn 1 - Raise taxes, patrol, make scout prophet, and hire lobo guards seem like the standard. I would start hiring Starspawn priests and continue to do so for the first year or two at the capital however. Spare gold would go to Illithids as well. Turn 2 - Put first Starspawn priest on research and send the Illithid Lord and prophet scout to take the first province. Hire more Starspawn priests, lobo guards, and Illithids. Turn 3 - Send a Starspawn priest from the capital with troops to meet the Illithid Lord and prophet in another adjacent independent province. Once that province is conquered, that Starspawn priest can search the new province and then return to the capital for research. Try to use a Starspawn priest with a pick in Earth or Water for these transportation and search assignments. Repeat this process for all provinces adjacent to the capital. You should be able to assemble your first Illithid squad when all adjacent provinces are conquered and be ready to send out a second one in two turns. Building up Illithid squads for expansion and hiring Starspawn priests will slow down your expansion for the first few turns, but Illithid squads can survive indefinitely in the field. That means you can continue to expand past the first year instead of having to stall a few turns and wait for resupplies. My opinion is that the long term benefit of this will outweigh the short term costs, though actual circumstances in game will probably be the deciding factor. Research Targets Thaumaturgy 1 - The Returning spell gives safety to your 2S Starspawn priests in the Void Gate. Alteration 3 - Body Ethereal Conjuration 4 - Voice of Tiamat will boost gem income. Light of the Northern Star will allow Starspawn priests and Star Children to spam more spells. Construction 4 - Endless Bag of Wine, Girdle of Might, and Frost Brand are what I usually forge at this level. Alteration 4 - Luck Alteration 5 - Invulnerability for communion thugs Enchantment 3 - Astral Shield for communion thugs Conjuration 5 - Contact Naiads gives access to nature magic. Slave Mages will need construction 6 for boosters, or construction 4 with empowerment to cast this though. Acashic Records is at this level too. Evocation 5 - Stellar Cascades can be cast by all your Starspawn priests and Star Children with Light of the Northern Stars. Even without Illithid mind blasts you can often disable the entire enemy army before they enter melee range. Make sure to spread out your casters since they have a tendency to spam Stellar Cascades on the same units even when the target's fatigue has exceeded 100. Astral Geyser is useful for hit and run attacks on SCs or tough immobile pretenders. Communion Thugs Communion thugs are units that can take advantage of personal buffs being shared between the communion master and his communion slaves. Based on previous posts on this topic, this tactic seems to be most popular with Pythium's Theurg Communicants combined with Phoenix Pyre. While Theurg Communicants are cheap to recruit, they are very frail and tend to have a hard time dealing damage consistently, and this weakness has relegated communion thugs to the fun but not practical category of tactics. After some further experimentation however, I have found Starspawn priests to be extremely powerful communion thugs that can easily rival many late game SCs. This is due to the fact that they have a relatively high HP and strength, combined with their availability, moderate cost, and even lower upkeep. R'lyeh's diveristy of magic and abundance of Star Children also signficantly reduce the gem cost of items necessary to make this tactic work on the battlefield. Below is an example of a cheap and accessible communion thug setup using the most common underwater gems (~40% of common underwater sites are earth or water): Starspawn Priest Weapon: Frost Brand (5 water gems) Shield: Black Steel Tower Shield (5 earth gems) Misc: Girdle of Might (5 earth gems) Depending on what unit(s) leads the communion, you can pick and choose from these self buffs to put on the Starspawn priest thugs. The magic bonus from communion means your communion master will not need any boosters either. Path requirements in parenthesis: Astral Shield (S) Breath of Winter (W) Cold Resistance (W) Elemental Fortitude (N) Holy Avenger (HH) Invulnerability (EEE) Personal Luck (S) Personal Regeneration (NN) Quicken Self (W) Resist Fire (WE) Resist Magic (S) Resist Poison (N) Soul Vortex (DDD) Summon Earthpower (EE) Twist Fate (S)
Protection 25 Damage 35 melee attack with AoE cold effect Attack 15 Defense 16 Morale 11 (this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you can fix it with morale boosters or berserk spell/items if you are so inclined) MR 18 Parry 9 (better than Air Shield) Melee Encumberance 4 Reinvigoration +7 Ethereal Lucky
Astral Shield I forgot what fatigue level the communion thugs will end up with at the end of the buff sequence, but it will be low enough that they can spring into action immediately due to the +7 reinvigoration. Given the low cost (150 gold, 5 upkeep, 15 gems), high power level, and flexibility of this setup, I think it compares very favorably to popular SCs like Bane Lords. You can easily have dozens of these communion thugs running around before good summons are available to your opponents, and this gives the R'lyeh player another useful option in game. 8.30.2.2 Some hints on MA R'lyeh -> I prefer LA, myself - all the same units, but now it's crazy time. If you think it's hard trying to break into a water nation from land, now try doing it when you're insane. So a lot of this is derived from LA strats, and they may not work as well. 1. Basic underwater expansion strategy is a large mass of lobo guards (50-100, set to hold and attack) backed up with maybe 10-20 Illithids. You're the only party with ranged weapons under water, so you paralyze a good chunk of the enemy before your cheap disposable meatshields swarm all over it. You can vary the mix of Illithids/Lobos - a single Illithid costs the same as 10 Lobos, so fiddle with it and see how comfortable you are with Lobo losses vs. high commitment of gold. 2. Voice of Tiamat is a good early research priority, along with Haruspex and dark knowledge (water/earth/nature/death seem to be the most common underwater sites). You can use a Slave Mage with a couple boosters to cast Contact Naiad, and she can kick off a clam based economy for you. This is of vital importance for LA, when you need to fund the switch from Starspawn to Void Spectres as your people die off. However, I'm sure you can think of some good things to do with your pearls (late game, communion -> mass enslave is a nice gamewinner, but there's a lot of time to kill before you can do that). 3. Pretender design - I'm pretty bad at pretender design, and most of my experience with Rl'yeh comes in the late age where it's much more important to go Turmoil/Luck/Growth due to your dwindling population. It might also help to know what nations your opponents are playing, to know if you need massive Astral power just to be safe. I often just take massive Order/Growth/magic scales to be safe with most non-blood non-lethal domain nations. That said, a sleeping Void Lord with strong Astral (comes with the package, take at least 5-6 to be safe), Death (5), and Water (4) skills and dominion 9 makes a pretty tough contender due to his combo of life drain, fear (bonus from death gives him +10), awe, chill of winter, soul vortex, and astral shield. Hook him up with a Robe of Shadows, Luck Pendant, and a mix of resistance/regeneration/reinvigoration items (can never have too much) and he's a bad dude. You can pay for him with a variety of options. If there is a lot of water (and you'd best hope there will be) then Cold 3 is a nice pick, since it has no effect under water besides making your Chill of Winter more effective. Sloth 3 is also a good option, assuming you're going to go for lobo guards / shamblers with Illithid backup rather than Meteorite Guards. 4. Raid, raid, raid. The single most important advantage any underwater nation has is the ability to raid from relative safety. You'll have to vary land tactics, since you are not longer the only ranged unit out there, and you may want to invest in some moderately armored troops just for that purpose (or you could grab another big chunk of Illithids to blast enemy archers - again, LA strat, since LA has so many freespawn needing to die that I never buy any soliders save for Illithids). Where possible, make a special priority of raiding lands that allow for Shambler purchases - but then again, it's nice to have a predictable raiding pattern so you can break it. -> Some old threads shows some excellent R'lyeh tactics, but some good points for them are. Main R'lyeh tactics is Meatwall + artillery. As long as your meatwall is expendable you will grasp the general idea for them. You got access to cheap fodder and nasty artillery. Shamblers to trample small stuff, Lobos to swarm big units. Only use Meteorit guards to guard your mages, they are to expensive to use as fodder. Normal ilthids are usually more cost effective then their warrior counterpart. Illthid mages are strong in astral, so spells like soulslay and enslave mind are great. But some evocation and alteration spells will work good depending on your random magic paths. Traitor princes are a decent chasi for thugs with one or two forged items on him. 27 hp and a good armor before magic items is great. He is size 2 (or 3 can't remember) so can be trampled by elephants, but still swarmed by size 1 units. So don't send him off alone, somewhere along the line with your fodder should work most of the time. For large important battles make sure flyers and flankers can't reach your artillery. -> Aside from the cost, I seem to recall illithid soldiers having only mapmove 1 instead of the 2 that normal illithids have -- a fair disadvantage on landmasses with good terrain -- and have a slightly worse mindblast weapon. With the Void Gate... use priestly starspawn, or perhaps Cthgul once he arrives -- he's supposed to have bonuses there (in D2, he had a reduced chance of going mad, for instance). As soon as you can, give pearls and a 'Returning' script to your summoner. Be aware that once a summoner's skill gets to be fairly high (15?), the chance to get a Vastness (consider GoR...) is actually cut; you'll get more Othernesses et al. Oh, and get a source of Storms or Darkness. Storms and darkness don't inhibit your mindblasters at all; it's still precision-100. -> Order3/Mis 1 (or 2 depending on how you need the points) is standard for all builds in base except for very few exceptions. Sloth3/Cold3 is also fairly standard practice for Ryleh. Growth 3 should also be considered for the vast lobo/illithid armies you'll probably be using. Try to splash earth/air onto your pretender since you won't generally have access to those. Some good picks are dormant Ghost Kings/Void Lord or awakened Wyrm/Kraken. (note if you're using kraken you must take air + water) You also want a decently high dom as Ryleh tends to have dom problems. Lastly, your army should consist of meteorite guards/lobos/non armored illithids + starspawn mages. Be sure to make a bunch of underwater fort + labs as your uber mages are not cap only. -> 8.30.3 LA R'lyeh 8.30.3.1 R'lyeh Dreamlands and Void Summoning
8.30.3.2 Best way of fighting LA R'lyeh -> Problems to attacker, insanity domain and strong astral and mind burn/soul slay/enslave mind. -> Extremely high MR, unroutable thugs and SCs(golem with magebane, lead shield, skullcap and amulet of anti magic for example) are the way to go. Get a good mix of anti chaff and regular SCs/thugs. -> You might want to try out a bunch of Abominations and Tartarians, back them up with an Army of Lead to bump them up to 20+ prot and 22+ MR and maybe a mass regeneration. That will spread out the mind blasting and soul slaying among a lot more high MR targets than trying a lone SC, which tend to blow up on a bad roll, and are a much bigger investment. (And are susceptible to Vengeance of the Dead every turn if they do live through a significant battle, cast by all of the high-penetration mages in the capital). Have the leader avoid killing anything for just that reason, and have a stealthy astral mage follow the army around to stop mind hunts. Empower something stealthy if needed, since getting him in combat will get him magic duelled to death. I think giving him MR items will help keep him sane so you can keep everyone together. Tossing in an SC with magebane/lead shield/amon hotep/armor of souls (or rainbow armor if no blood)/amulet of antimagic will give you a 41 MR, buffed to 45 in combat, which might be a good idea as a lightning rod, since the chance of beating that even with 10 points of penetration is vanishingly small. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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