In my opinion there's a more optimal strategy.

Take an awake Ghost King with F4 A4 W3 E3 D4 N2 dom 9. Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Cold 3, Death 3, Luck 3, Magic 0. Exact paths can be whatever really, take out some of the 4s and you can have S3. CBM 1.5 was used. (edit: a non-CBM Ghost King is identical)

Research one turn (thau) or possibly two turns (ench to 1) with your GK, then use him in an attack/search pattern. You can't attack on turn 1, becaues you have to stay away from Ichtyids and Shamblers and you want some friendly dominion out there first. Anything else is fair game, remember to script attack. If you did research buffs, you want Breath of Winter and eventually one prot buff. Call it an SC strategy if you like, but this GK does the exact same work as Squirrellord's sitesearching rainbow.

I haven't experimented greatly with possible recruits on turn 1, but so far it seems to me spending all 400 gold on Crab Hybrids keeps your starting army around for much longer.

I've tried a quick expansion test 3 times, once I had 10 provs by late winter, twice 12, each time I never missed a researcher recruitment or a pretender sitesearch except turn 1. Using this strat you get the sitesearching of a rainbow, you save some dominion cost thanks to starting dom of 2, and you jumpstart your otherwise lethargic expansion better than either of your builds.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Nice idea! I don't think you want S3 on a non-immortal god though, and it's guaranteed on every single starspawn mage, for complete UW S site-searching.

I'd be tempted to go Dom10 for the extra Awe (and also because every map I play on as a UW nation, it's tough to keep dominion up even with dom10), and F2A3W3E4D2N2, plus Magic-1. Think that would work?

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

No. Or rather thats not an accurate depiction of what happens. First, it will more likely be you will have 6 territories with luck 2.5, and I'll have 10 territories with luck 1.8. Over 10 turns you'd have 10 40% chances to increase luck.. or roughly 4 extra luck scales. And of course, over time it would converge to an equilibrium value depending on your dominion, and your neighbors.

In a luck-0 province you get good and bad events. And yes, various scales will unlock different events. For example turmoil(?) unlocks the barbarian attacks events.

We both are going to start with L+3 in our capital. You will have more or less a 40% chance to gain one scale increase in luck more than my build until my lurker awakes, each turn.

A 40% chance of increasing turmoil, sloth, etc.

So, while it is slightly positive for generating a luck event, it is more negative for generating income. Plus, as the luck scale will not propagate much - the strongly good events will only express in the +3 provinces.

Overall, there is a *lot* of scatter due to the nature of random.. But no, overall the number of provinces is going to be much more important than the the two extra candles of dominion per turn.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

That hasnt been demonstrated, at all. Run some numbers to the end of year 2. Getting 10 territories was not difficult with the build I announced.

Plus, I *like* the ghost king - but its awfully risky. Getting one bad event - such as the atlantean militia event - and you're toast. Likewise very susceptible to enemy action.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I tried the dom10 Ghost King and had a pretty horrible starting setup, the four provinces bordering my capitol had:

1 - 62 Triton Guards/Troopers
2 - 53 Ichtyid Warriors/Ichtyids
3 - ~50 Ichtyid Warriors/Ichtyids
4 - ~50 Tritons/Sea Trolls

But my GK took out #1 without any trouble. Though I lost most of my starting army and freespawn, my 10 crab warriors prevailed with no losses and finished off #2. And I got 400 gold and Cthugul in turn 2, making this SP game pretty irrelevant in terms of testing. Except I'm now a believer in the ability of the GK to solo. :)

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

So, after one year, using the GK god, I've got 19 provinces, including one extra fort, where I've built a lab. I can now Haruspex (and soon Tiamat) the oceans to the right of my capitol. I got a chest wound on the GK from Ichtyids, and weakened by a shambler, but my GK isn't needed for expanding now.

It took forever as usual for me to get an S2, but I finally did last month, and now I feel safe venturing into the Void Gate.

Indies were pretty rough, with three big troll provinces, lots of Ichtyids, and pretty big populations in the other indies. I managed to blow up most of my east crab army on some amber clan tritons right at the end of my expansion, and still take the province. Nice, since it was going to be a long walk home.

I researched Enchant-1, Alt-1, Thau-1, Conj, Thau-2 (when I found my fort and decided to build a lab), Conj.

On the turn I was going to get Alt-1, I took a chance and scripted:
(Breath of Winter, Cast a spell, hold *3, attack)

And very nicely the AI cast Barkskin, which was what I had hoped for.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

You don't use the Void Gate at all, until you've got Returning?

It's random of course, but I got some nice stuff out of it in several runs through the first year. Only lost a priest once.
Is the chance of losing a Starspawn priest such a high price to pay?

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I had one game where every single turn early on, my Void Gate mage got eaten. Since then I've refused to allow mages in without then having passed an 'S2' qualification exam. I usually get Returning way before I get an S2 mage. It's only Thau-1.

By keeping my Void Gate mages alive, they also build up better summoning skill. I guess I'm missing out on some early summons, but I'd have to sacrifice more early research for a commander to shuffle the summons about, in any case.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

VFB, why not Pots + returning even on a 1 s priest?

But usually, I'll just give him 5 body guards, and that will do the trick often enough to be worth the 150 gp until I can get him returning.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

If you wanted to pursue a Combat/Rainbow pretender, I'd consider a dom 9 Kraken. Using the GK scales, you can pull 5 paths at 3 and 1 path at 4. You lose slots and (temporarily) amphibious ability, but gain an amazing amount of combat potential. There's absolutely no indie that could possibly faze you and you retain some usefulness later with various buffs (see Baalz's MA Atlantis guide for Kraken nastiness).

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I actually agree with the last poster that the kraken is an absolutely great pretender for underwater expansion.

As I suspected, due to geography in milkshake, I was unable to get more than 15 provinces, year one with Ghost King.

Year 2, I actually ended up significantly behind my lurker build. I think a lot will actually depend on how likely it is that someone is going to attack you in the water; and whether there are remote water provinces or not.

With Death3 on the GK build, my capital had 10K pop at the end of year 1.

With Growth +1 (Lurker build) I had 21+K. Its not only a significant difference in income, but the difference in afflictions / old age on your slave mages is pretty significant.

Also, subjectively you get different luck events.

Also, with the GK: I prefer to prophetize the scout, and send the scout and the GK off on their merry way. However, he does tend to go crazy a bit by the end of year one.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

PoTS is Conj-3. If I don't have an S2 by then, it's a sign the RNG just absolutely hates me. Besides, if you go PoTS-Returning, you need to give the Void Gate dabbler 6 pearls, because you can get attacked in the Void Gate and also become lost all in the same turn. I'd prefer just to spend 4 keeping them alive.

Bodyguards in the Void Gate usually just means dead bodyguards for me.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I just ran an expansion test using a Dom 9 Kraken F2A3E3D3N3 with full negative scales except Luck 3 and Magic 3. 1st year ended with 16 provinces and 9 gems per turn. Kraken attacks a province a turn out of the gate, while your starting income goes to Meteorite Guards as resources permit and Shambler Thralls! Prophetize your starting commander and on turn 2, give him the guards and thralls and hit a land province. The Kraken continued to take provinces and I started recruiting Starspawn mages until I got 2 with picks I liked (2W) and sent them out searching behind the Kraken to snag the W and S sites it would miss. I kept cranking Meteorites and Shamblers for a couple turns until my prophet swung back home, grabbed them and took a few more land provinces.

I kept expanding until I ran out of indies and at end of year two I had: 27 provinces, 4 fort/lab/temple including my cap (none of which were sites). I was a little slow on gathering research (Conj 4, Evo 2, Cons. 6 and Thau 1) but was cranking out 335 RP a turn by the end of year two. Gem-wise, I only spent gems on site searching, an empowerment for clams (I had forged 1 clam by end of year 2) and a hammer. I had 238 gems in the bank and 31 gems per turn coming in. I supplemented the Kraken/Starspawn searching with Tiamats, Arcane Probing and Dark Knowledge. I also ended year two with 31 Starspawn mages and 11 Starspawn priests.


My conclusions from this test: Early expansion should not be done in a conquer/search/conquer/search pattern. My opinion is that the pretender should carve a straight line and then, lacking new lands to conquer, turn around and site search his own tracks. Taking provinces quickly means more money sooner which means more forts, labs, mages, research and troops sooner. I also think that your national troops are viable for, and should be made all throughout, your entire expansion. The combination of a handful of Meteorites to soak an initial rush and shamblers to dish damage (supplemented later with small amount of freespawn chaff) makes for rapid expansion on land and water both. The last consideration towards shambler thralls over crab hybrids is you can suicide the thralls in your first war to avoid paying the upkeep. That's much harder to do with aquatic hybrids.

I also think that the combination of Magic 3 and Luck 3 is invaluable for the boost in random gem income. Like the expansion test Chris posted earlier, I had no death gem income whatsoever from pretender searches and Tiamats, but I was able to blow the 30+ death gems I had gotten through events on Dark Knowledges until I rolled up a small death income.

Prophetizing your starting commander and heading immediately to land lets you snag a small chunk of land and firmly entrench your dominion in it. I don't expect the idea of starting an early shooting war with Ryleh over a few dominion-addled provinces rather than just focusing on checking their dominion is a good proposition. Unless everyone decides to obliterate you because you're Ryleh, but then hey .. what's a be-tentacled encephalophage to do?

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

After doing a few of these tests, I am convinced that one really does need a starting pretender - but not for the obvious reasons.
Fragility - or variability. Its simply not much fun to go through the hassle of setup and be completely nuked by aa luck event.

I'd also like to see LA-R get a little bit of mod love, if only for attention to pretenders.


Out of 10 tests, I got ruinous luck events in 4 games, even with Luck +3. Ruinous as in: destroy the lab in your capitol. Disease your pretender. Your prophet goes insane.

I'd like to propose that we standardize R. tests. I think the Milkshake map, with R starting location the middle of the eastern water is a good test.

I run with default difficulty, and 8 difficult AI's. Cap taxes at 100 except in capital.

I agree with you radio - that the god should be taking territories, *not* searching, until such time as taking territories is not feasible. Contrary to general play, I do like to go in a concentric circle with my pretender, as this does allow a ferry of troops, if necessary. It also lets you fight in dominion which keeps your hp higher.

But if you are going to do that, why not skip the elemental paths entirely and either follow him with a w3s3 or a w2n1. FFFFFSSSS allows you to claim more territory and backfll, wherease FsFs enhances gem production and is more efficient gem searching.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

With the default sites in the game, you just need to search these paths underwater:
F1A3E3W3S3D2N2H1. You might want to adjust your Kraken's paths to take this into account, if you can afford it. It's better to wait for a W3S3 rather than manually search with a W2, because then you can skip casting Tiamat on the province later.

The advantages of conquer/search/conquer/search are (1) it's more efficient than conquer/conquer/.../conquer/search/move/search/move/search, because you skip the 'moves'; (2) you find your UW forts much earlier; (3) you can get earlier gem income; (4) you buff your HP by sitting in higher dominion before venturing off; (5) your newly taken provinces have your positive luck scales. With horrible scales, most of your income will be from your capitol in any case.

I don't like Shambler Thralls much because I think you need a critical mass to steamroll opponents or they take too many losses, and you're not going to be able to take Shambler or Sea Troll provinces with them.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Duly noted on the underwater paths. That means you can put everything but astral on your pretender and remote search that with your starting astral income.

Conquer/search/conquer/search is certainly more efficient in the long run, but it limits you in the crucial early stages. The trade off is less early gem income vs. nearly doubling your early expansion rate. It's my opinion that the latter is the better option.

As for the shambler mass, you're right there as well. You'll find that the necessary mass is lessened considerably when the enemy AI is focused on whacking away at your Meteorites and chaff. As to the trolls in sea provinces, that's what you've got a Kraken for. ;)


I just ran a 1 year trial with Chris's settings and results are as follows: 20 (7 land, 13 water) provinces, 18 gems per turn, 134 gems stored. Research is slow at Thau 1 and Evo 2, Conj 1 with 55 RP generated. I did manage to make 2 castle/lab/temples through, bringing my total to 3 at the end of the year.

Expansion was firing off the Kraken at a province a turn. First turn was Meteorite guards and Shamblers - no commander. Subsequent recruitment was guards and shamblers with a starspawn mage per turn until Thau 1 was reached, at which point I recruited priests until I got a 2S. (I agree that void summoning without returning is a waste of resources). I ferried recruits from the cap out to my prophetized starting commander once to replace the inevitable shambler losses.

I've got a hunch that this was a lucky test and I'll see if I can run a few more in the near future to normalize the numbers a little.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Radio,

Would you consider trying something like a E3S3D3-5N4?

My thinking is as follows:

A. D3-5. D3 allows mound fiend boot strapping in death. D5 either gives you or improves your fear.
B. E3 Eliminates all the hassle of trying to get an E2 mage.
Allows dwarven hammer at con2 (FAST) for clams. Also summoning troll court.
C. e3s3 Allows crystal coins, crystal shields
D. S3 allows teleport. Downside: makes you vulnerable to mind duels. Don't get seen, domes?
E. N4 Useful for the bless, and for possibly getting globals.

Edit: Wish we could standardize magic sites to better compare variables

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Getting into death via pretender is possible, but at best you're saving yourself 30 death or 40 water gems to empower a mage or summon a naiad. The Kraken comes with fear 0 which is really enough for the early expansion that it specializes in. E3 is an absolute must, but I'm not sure how quickly you can conceivably get into clams. You'll need some sort of empowerment and that takes time. Taking astral on the pretender is mighty tempting for the forging coins but as you mention, the downside is significant.

Dom9 with full negative scales except luck and magic + all the paths for underwater sites (F1A3E3W3S3D2N2) leaves you with 2 remaining points. It's my gut feeling that if you try to take the Kraken away from its job (early expansion and site searching) you'll end up marginalizing it. That being said, I'll futz around with some higher death (forego air, maybe? how useful are air gems to ryleh?) and possibly astral builds.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Try playing with only the paths indicated. I view him as a vehicle for early expansion; after which searching; after which forging.

You get air on the visitor, you can empower although he will vanish. still, more generally useful, I think

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I like the GK idea. I really haven't played enough with the GK. In part, I've been a little uncomfortable with early game SCs (in general) because I don't have a good feel for just how much opposition they can take (and getting your pretender killed in the first couple months is never a good sign).

I dislike the kraken because new paths are so expensive, iirc. I think you really want to rainbow because you will find a use for just about every gem type, so you want to be able to find some of every gem type.

I also actively like Death 3 as R'lyeh because I want to make my lands as undesirable for prospective invaders as possible. Having population just means people want your lands more. (Edit: And that's why we took Luck 3 in the first place - so we had an income source that wasn't population dependent).

How important are air gems to R'lyeh? Quite important for the move to land in the long term. You'll want access to some protection from archer fire, which means Perpetual Storm is decent, or crafting some staves of storms. (You can't reliably expect to have an A capable mage for Arrow Fend or similar in combat, so finding ways to make your A work for you more remotely is the best you can probably do). With A3 you can Staff of elemental mastery or RoW into A4 and you're in business. And while you can rely on stoneskin/ironskin/army of gold to make your troops resistant to arrowfire, these measures will stack with that and affect the entire battlefield from the start.

A4 also unlocks the Bag of Winds, which is an item with a start of combat summons. Throw one of those, a bottle of living water, and a wraith crown on a starspawn mage and you can feel free to teleport into PD or even weak armies with no other gear. (W1S3D2 and W1E2S3 preferred). Air also allows you to craft the eyes of aiming, which will help your evocation mages hit their targets. (Not that you care if you hit your chaffe - but you'd rather have killed more stuff).

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I'm not completely opposed to death - but getting into water as a land nation is pretty difficult already. On the plus side, its points. On the negative side Death3 kills population as fast as your dreamlands it seems. And it costs you 9% compounded income.

The difference is really between year 2 and year 3.

I also don't like so many paths on a kraken;
D/S/N: in combination with VoT gives you a complete search.

More tests!

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Well, your dreamlands + Death 3 should be spreading to land with you as well. I agree, water shouldn't need so much extra discouragement, but discouraging your opponent from pushing you back into the sea is a plus in my book.

One note on Kraken vs. GK - GK is land capable out of the box, which, since crab hybrids appear to be better value for your money than just about any other normal troop, gives you early expansion capability on both land and sea.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Why are you so opposed to illithid?
8 Illithids will paralyze 3 usual troops every turn. You hang out in the back with all your troops - they ahve paralyzed 10 troops by the time combat is joined.

The same illithids, in combat will paralyze 3 - allowing your chaff troops (atk values 8) to *hit* them.

Additionally, your illithids ROCK against kraken, and are land capable.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Kraken paths are initially 40 and GK are 20 IIRC, -but- the Kraken's initial cost is zero. We'd do well establish the ideal paths for the pretender 1st and then establish which pretender can provide those paths with the best combat effectiveness

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

So, I've tried 9 games or so through year 2.

Gk with Air1-2 W6, D3-4 is fairly hardy.
Underwater defense of about 21, ethereal, awe, plus high defense.

To go above water, able to cast air shield - and he gains 3 defense, so usually at 25 after first star.
Ghost King has the additional advantage that he can sneak into a territory to improve dominion.

All that being said, I cannot reliably get more than 10 territories. An early lucky hit cripples the ghost king.

The kraken with E5 reliably gets 15 territories. However, has a much harder time expanding onto land *or* getting into the second waters. D5 much the same - however was lowered almost to death several times.

I'm tempted to try a e3s3 kraken.

I definitely do not like death3. With d3, my income is roughly 220 per turn - I am often not getting enough random luck events to build a mage.

With growth2, even without luckevents I have enough money.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

warning: major thread necromancy!

now that we're done with that, this is still the only real guide I've found for LA R'lyeh(as opposed to the MA/LA R'lyeh guide on wiki which Squirrelloid refers to) so I'm resurrecting this thread. now that CBM 1.6 has become the standard, thus clams are no longer an option, pearls aren't as easy to get as they used to be, which greatly effects your late game strategy Imho, as you can't get as many wishes and stuff as you've been used to. also you don't need all those nature mages for clam forging, only 1-2 for manual searching UW provinces for free forts.

a common thing in both your guide and chrispedersen's opinions is that you both agree that R'lyeh has a hard time expanding early on. to solve that I always an SC pretender seems like the best choice. now LA R'lyeh only as 3 solid SC Chastises that can expand safely right from the get go(even blindly on turn 1), those are the Wyrm, Octopus and Void Lord(not Lurker). out of these 3 only the Void Lurker starts with any magic, and unfortunately it's S+W which R'lyeh gets plenty of on its Starspawn Mages, however the other 2 lose their usefulness very very fast(basically once initial indy expansion is over). the Void Lord, while not having terribly useful paths, is still a solid SC and has all slots so he can be useful later on as well, and of course S is great for SCs, however it comes at a very high price of 125 DPs. fortunately for you, your build gives you plenty of DPs, even going with M3, so you can afford to put quite a bit of magic on an awake Void Lord with Dom9(10 is just overkill). with the Void Lord to help you expand, and to be a nice warning flag for potential invaders, you improve your early game by a lot while still keeping your pretender useful all the way to the late game, which in my book is worth the extra design points. but no, you won't have your rainbow pretender. I do have a unique alternative to it though, that will solve some(not all) of the problems which the rainbow pretender would have solved.

this guide does a good job of abusing your harmful dominion. I've been wondering about another way that could do it very well, and that I've never actually seen used before. I'm thinking of rushing to Evo6 before anything else, this opens up Mind Hunt very early on(but no Mind Burn/Soul Slay yet) but it also opens up a seemingly devastating global that you're in a perfect position to abuse. yes I'm talking about Strands of Arcane Power! assuming I understand its description perfectly(started a SP game with LA R'lyeh to test it in action, will report the results when I get to that point), it's easily achievable with S7(easily reachable on your Void Lord) and 40 pearls(easily achievable by just capital income, you probably won't get it in year 1, so you'll have the pearls). in return you get free site searching in all your provinces as well as free magic duels(I assume, as opposed to Mind Hunts) throughout your dominion, which your S7(or 8/9 to be extra safe) pretender should easily win against anything but an S9 Oracle... so you're basically delaying your gem income but once you get it(most probably somewhere in year 2) you'll get everything searched at once, and in the process saving the gems that would otherwise be used for remote searching or pretender turns(if rainbow) used for manual searching while using your pretender for much needed early expansion instead. also it means that there shouldn't be any opposing astral mages in your dominion unless it's an enemy S9 pretender, so you can safely Mind Hunt the remainder of his commanders without risk.

now, all this is under the assumption that Strands of Arcane Power actually works that way, both in terms of magic duels vs Mind Hunts as well as the site searching being all at once vs random provinces and that "mage power" refers to astral level, not level in each specific path. a lot of assumptions, which is why I'm wondering(and in the process of testing) about it, not claiming it's a fact, yet. almost sounds too good to be true and the fact that I haven't seen it used yet might mean I'm way too optimistic about it, on the other hand my MP career is very short so it could have been used successfully and I just don't know about it...

but anyway, great guide, and still the only guide for LA R'lyeh, good job on it Squirrelloid, and hopefully you'll update it a bit to take into account the changes CBM 1.6 brought. and heck, if Strands of Arcane Power actually works the way I think it does, than I think LA R'lyeh is the perfect nation to abuse it to the core ;)

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I'm not at all impressed by strands.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Tested it a short while ago, the site-searching function just relies on the paths the mage has (And searches up to level-3), so a 1AEFWDENB 9S pretender would be ideal to maximize strands. Hopefully saved you some time testing it

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

well, that sucks, makes this sort of strategy completely unreliable for site searching purposes, and will probably still require voice of tiamat, in which case a rainbow pretender would just be better...

still wondering about the offensive capabilities, cause feeblemind is usually the bane of mind hunters, but with magic duel it shouldn't cause feeblemind if you meet another astral mage, instead it should destroy him with your superior astral level. however, if it does function like mind hunt somehow, than it purely sucks...

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

From what I've heard it functions like a mind-hunt in the sense that it's MR-negates (Except it's worse then a mind-hunt due to penetration boosters not affecting it) but other then that it's a magic-duel with the penalty for losing is gaining the feeblemind affliction, assuming I'm understanding your question correctly.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

I assume that it specifically targets astral mages, so a magic duel can actually occur... and well, most regular astral mages don't have a huge MR, just standard, so I guess it's around a 50/50 shot, than with at least S7 you should win almost all magic duels. but ahhh, you don't actually kill the enemy mage, just feeblemind it heh? well, that totally sux... I guess it's still viable to open the door to mind hunts(no astral cover) but not much else, unless you're facing a strong astral nation, in which case you can put a major hurt on them.

also, at what frequency does it occur? once per turn, once per turn for each enemy province under your dominion, totally random, etc?

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

This would still more or less work, you'd just need to take either an arch mage instead, or a sleeping void lord. You'd miss the early expansion of course. But LA r'lyeh is the only native uw nation in LA, so it's not necessarily so bad. Anyway you can get 7+s and 2 of everything else easily enough with either of those two options, and 9+ dominion. Awake void lord is... rather less good, but still helpful for filling the gaps in your magic diversity. Whether it's a good strategy is debatable, but it would certainly be a funny one.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Ghost King is a perfectly plausible early SC. I used one in NvVIII and Water Total War (which I won) to good effect. They're especially good at SCing underwater because the usual bane of their existence early on is archers, and there are no archers UW. (As long as you avoid Hydromancer provinces, the GK has no problems UW and can ignore most afflictions he picks up).

Of course, combining the GK with enough S to want to cast Strands is a little rougher. I'm not convinced you actually want to cast Strands though. VoT covers 4/8, and you have enough S,D nationally to search those. That only leaves N really, where you might want N2 for remote searching. And B is a non-issue UW (although you'll want to search H1, but you get lots of H1 commanders just randomly). Basically, Rlyeh is already well-situated for site searching, making Strands much less appealing.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

yeah, I was thinking similarly to your EA Ermor guide in which you suggested going for that very underused Acashic Records spell. also since R'lyeh doesn't really need to get conj early, and Evo6 also opens up Mind Hunt, Wrath of God(if you put A+S on your pretender it might be worth it) and other goodies, and of course only +1 for Nether Darts. so rushing for it has other benefits besides the Strands, thus keeping up with the tempo which you discussed quite a lot in this guide. but I guess it's just too hard to pull off if you need a high S+rainbowish pretender to actually make it work like that.

otherwise, I think either a GK with S6D5N4 or Lich(not master, the regular) with S6D6N4 with Dom9 T3S3C3D3L3M1 is very affordable and leaves only 2 and 4 unused DPs respectively, so a very efficient build too. didn't try the Lich out as an SC too many times but each time I tried the GK UW I kept running into Hydromancers :( and it's not like they appear in scout reports so you can never know until you run into them, which is why I'd probably prefer the immortal Lich(also allows for D6 instead of D5 but it isn't such a big deal) as long as he can actually take on indies as well as the GK.

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

If you see krakens in a province, it has a hydromancer. Avoid it with your pretender. So you really can know beforehand =)

Re: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands
 

Just wanted to post an observation from an test game.
Tried to get an Slave Mage nature random as fast as possible, so I was recruiting only Slave Mages on turn 8 one of those got Insanity (8), the next 2 turns he did what he wanted not what I wanted...