Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

I keep drowning those annoying triton dreamers, after seas are mine of course, by Gateway (S4 10gems Thau-5) to a land province. Be sure to equip your mage with leadership-boosters for maximum transport ability. Human-freespawns (mad and dreamers) drown nicely on the way back to sea lab.

Gateway stone (sp? artifact) should work too.

Ferrying all those spawns is really a major PITA when your dominion (and province count) gets high.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

Void summons are free. Freespawn hybrids cost 9 or 11 gold per unit, hybrid troopers 14 and hybrid soldiers are more expensive. Mad priests, madmen otehr similar are 1 gold per unit, so every 15 cost 1 upkeep.

As an aside, Mictlan slaves cost 1, most crossbreeding foul spawns cost 1 and BF Ulm thralls cost 2.

Trolls cost 60, sea trolls 50, war trolls 80 and troll moose knights ~80. I don't have the unit DB (or Open Office, so it's a moot point) at work or I could check most of those numbers for accuracy. You'll get to see them once I get done, which won't be all that long anymore since #1-1475 are already done as are a good chunk of the remaining ones. Couple of weeks tops and the Unit DB should be ready.

Edi

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

Hmmm, that's strange. Are you absolutely sure that all void summons are free? I am asking because I did several experiments back then when I was looking at that "free" R'leyh stuff really costs, and found out it actually costs upkeep. You are right about 1 gold per unit price for most "mad" troops.

But I could have swear that the "big black wave" void summons costed about 60gp each. Because on the turn when I got 3 of these things and nothing else, my upkeep jumped by 6gp. That means 2gp per unit, that means they should cost around 60gp each (since they are sacred). I only kept one provice for my experiments, so nothing could have spawned outside my capital.

I suppose there is a small possibility that somehow I've overlooked something during that turn. But are you sure about what you said about all void summons being free?

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

As indicated by Edi and the rest, it's not actually true that the only summons that cost money are the ones that can be recruited in some way. It seems that actually quite a lot of summons cost money. As I understand it, the main ones that don't are mindless things like undead, vine ogres, mechanical men and so on - is that right Edi? How about demons other than foul spawns?

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

The only demon that costs upkeep is Buer the Goat Sun. He has a cost of 100 which translates to an upkeep of ~6-7.

I have not seen ANY void summon that costs gold. Of the foul spawns/crossbred creatures, Ettin sosts 20 and the four-clawed big humanoid spawn is 15. Trolls, as mentioned above of course. Almost everything else is 0 goldcost.

What might be throwing people off is that lots of national heroes have a gold cost and therefore also cost upkeep money. E.g. Shadul Ummush the Traitor King has a gold cost of 290 like the normal Atlantean Deep Kings, so he hits the pocket book for about 19 and change per turn. All of these are going into the bug list once I'm done.

Edi

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

Returning to the original post, and taking a cue from another post on the top page.

2. Dreams of Rl'yeh has special uses against an enemy pretender, for when killing him just isn't enough (again, especially against immortal pretenders who aren't all that impressed by getting killed). You can use spells that age, curse, horror mark, or disease your opponent. Granted, you'll want your script to be something like "Horror Mark, Soul Slay" so that if you get a non-pretender you'll off them relatively quickly, but you can inflict severe nastiness on a pretender through Dreams. Remember too, that although Dreams allows an MR check to resist, once you're in it your MR is halved, so that horror mark is pretty much guaranteed to stick.

As you mention, it's also a much safer spell if they have astral mages. And, hey, if you know they don't have astral mages, then you also know they won't be casting Returning or Soul Slay on you while in Dreams, so you've got yourself a captive audience.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

I disagree with this strategy. I did about 100 experiments on Astal assasination spells few days ago as a R'leyh in a test game, gathering statistic when it makes sense to use it and wehn it doesn't. That included casting spells on pretenders.

The thing is, once you lured pretender god into your dream, killing him with soul slay is a piece of cake, since his MR is halved. Why would you want to horrormark or curse him or whatever, when you can just kill him quickly?

With even basic +4 penetration items R'lyeh's Astral 5 or astral 6 StarSpawn mage can kill anything with one, or very rarely 2 soul slay casted, once thier MR is halved. With bottle of water to distract opponent or to distract his summons, it is a pretty much bullet proof strategy, even aginst pretenders who carry gems to do battle summons.

Now luring pretender into the dream is a very difficult task. Most of pretenders have 20-ish, sometimes high 20-ish MR, which makes it extremely hard to beat even with +penetration items. If, on top of it, they add a single MR amulet on his pretender, it would make casting astral assasin spells on him a complete waste of gems.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

Why use it instead of Soul Slay? Because I specifically stipulated using the strategy against immortals. If they are horror marked enough, their life will become 1. Take 1 step away from capital 2. Get killed by horror, increase horror marking. 3. Wake up in capital. 4. Repeat with larger horror.

I'll admit, it's hard to do. But the OP was asking about when Dreams is better than Mind Hunt IF you know your opponent doesn't have astral mages (quick aside - if you know your opponent doesn't have astral mages, you can also be pretty such he doesn't have an antimagic amulet). This is one such situation.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

In Dom2 most pretenders had MR18, with a few (Rl'yeh ones IIRC) with 20. Pretenders MR varies with dominions strength. If a pretender is in enemy dominion he is much more vulnerable to spells that are MR-resistable.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

True, but when pretender is in his own dominion, his MR increases, making him much harder to kill with these assasin astral spells. And in competitive MP games you will see enemy pretenders fighting/travelling in their own dominion most of the time, since they became much easer to kill even in the small enemy dominion due to big drop in hitpoints and worse physical stats. Not to mention high enemy dominion.