More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

1. I've just made a shocking discovery while playing R'lyeh in SP. (well shocking for me at least )

It turns out that R'leyh free spawns actually cost money to maintain! Not much, but it can pile up over time, and R'leh have serious money problem with his death dominion as it is. I always thought they are free, like Ermor's free spawn.

Does anybody know how much money these free spawns mad ones, mad dreamer, triton dreamer, etc. cost? Do they all cost the same, or certain types of troops are more expensive to maintain than others?

And what about void beings - do they also cost money to maintain?

How about your free spawned commanders?

I am thinking now of drowning 9/10 of my army as soon as I can. Too bad I can't do the same with water only troops, and I am out of indep water provinces. (( I guess I am stuck with these suckers, am I ?

2. Does anybody knows if chances of success are the same for MindHunt (astral 4, cost 2 astrals) and Dreams of R'leh (astral 4, cost 4 astrals), assuming you know Soul Slay spell of course.

If so, then as long as you are 100% sure that the target province has no enemy astral mages, it doesn't make any sense to cast Dreams of R'leh, right? I mean, they both will result in the death of the enemy commander, but MindHunt is twice as cheap.

3. Do I understand correctly that when you are casting either MindHunt or Soulslay, each +1 penetration item on your commander increases the chances of success for your commander by the same amount as +2 astral items would?

4. Not R'leh related, but do I understand correctly than when casting dispel or global enchantment, +penetration items on the caster do not matter, and only magic level of the caster counts (each level +5 spell)?

5. In previous example, it includes magic levels that are result of the items worn by commander, correct? So Astral 3 mage with +3 astral items would count as +15 gems, same as "natural" astral 6 mage.

6. When casting Magic Duel, bonus from being communion master counts, right? So as long as you have enough communion slaves a single astral mage can whipe out the all enemy astral mages with little risk, unless they would use communion as well of course.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

duudeeee dont drown your army.


Drown an enemy under the blood of your armys.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

I haven't played LA R'lyeh yet.. but as for penetration related questions:

3: It takes two extra levels of magic skill to get +1 penetration, yes. I'm not sure if it's +1 for every two levels, or +1 for every two levels above the required level for the spell.

4: There's no MR roll with global enchantments. I think only gems and magic skill have an effect.

5: Astral 3 + 3 path boosters should count the same as a natural astral 6 mage. Again, I'm not sure if the +5 is per level or per level above the spell requirement.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

Thank you.

And bump to the top - I really would like to get the answers for the remaining quistions.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

1) I was horrified to discover recently that summons also cost money. Trolls cost a fortune! I guess freespawn is even more annoying though, since you didn't even choose to summon them.

You could drown your water troops by bringing them on land somehow perhaps? I don't know how easy that is, I've never played a water nation.

3) Yep, that's right.

4) Yep.

5) I think so.

6) I think in another thread, the conclusion was that communion doesn't help, and neither do items. You can't make a crazily good magic dueller (outside of a high astral pretender, or a mad amount of empowerment).

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

Summons cost money? Really?

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

I suspect that the void monsters are free. It's probably the dreamers that need upkeep

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

The only summons that cost money are ones that can also be recruited in some way (so that they have a specific gold cost associated with them). Trolls are the main ones that come to mind, but there are probably a few others.

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

SOME summons cost money.

Trolls being a primary offender.

The speculation, is that any summon that CAN be recruited for cash will cost upkeep when summoned. (edit: Like RonD said - hehe)

I love trolls on general principal, and was personally heartbroken that they turned out to be soo darn greedy (

Re: More LA R\'lyeh and spellcasting questions
 

No, at least some of the void summons cost money as well. For example that "Big Black Wave" void creature (whatever its name was) is quite expensive, similar in cost to troll creature.

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.