How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

I've never really bothered playing R'yleh until now.But now that I have I can't really see what makes them so feared since:

a)You can have trouble getting income due to domkill
b)Anything you CAN recruit will go insane in a few turns.

Your only hope seems to be going for low dominion and hoping you don't go against somebody with good priests.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

They got nerfed a few patches back and the popkill was increased by a factor of 5 or 10, they're not really OP anymore.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

I'm not for sure, but I think the rationale is something like this:

R'yleh is considered unbalancing because they destroy population. a player who ends up facing off against LA R'yleh in MP will have little to show for it afterwards, while still needing to spend the same amount of gold/gems to keep the war going to the end.

Suppose there are four nations, and one is R'yleh. One nation goes to war with R'yleh, while the other two go to war. Once the dust settles, even if the player facing R'yleh wins, simply because the lands they have gained from R'yleh are now absent large portions of their original population, they will be much worse off then whoever won amongst the other two nations.

For that reason R'yleh isn't really permitted into too many MP games, it would simply be an unfair misfortune to have to go to war with them. Same thing for LA Ermor.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

I wouldn't agree with this. Before that patch Micah spoke about - which is when they were considered overpowered, so that's where we have to look to answer the question - their pop-kill was really manageable. Taking growth 3 (entirely possible considering what R'lyeh needs to get from a pretender - which is not very much) essentially meant your population remained almost stable. It might be (have been) a big part of why Ermor was shunned but R'lyeh... Well they just were awesomely, freakishly strong.

Things they have going for them:

* Water start. The only LA nation with one at that. There are no early game threats to your safety.
* Largely amphibious. Only one recruitable (albeit a very nice one) and some freespawn can't move freely on land.
* Freespawn, very decent low-resource heavyish recruitable blockers (those are the aquatic ones though) and quite possibly a combat pretender make for lightning-fast expansion.
* Mind blasters can deal with severl things you'd otherwise have trouble with. (Knight provinces never were so munchy before.)

Now, all this might look quite tasty, but actually, it's just setting the scene. The tools that allow you to build up a strong early position from which you can deploy your real strength. Magic. Big, beefy, high-astral mages and cheapish communion slaves. There's just about nothing they can't accomplish if they put their mind to it. Buffing that mass of previously crappy freespawn with army of lead? Mind-hunting the lands? Massive penetration soul-slayage anywhere you need it? Killing enemy golem thugs with mind duel? (And yawning while thinking of all the gems your opponents put into this horrible mistake) Teleport dropping on moderate PD without equipment and just 2 or 3 water gems? Cast multiple master enslaves in the first round of battle? Check, check, and double check, they can do it all. Hell, they can cast wish with unempowered, recruit everywhere mages. (And I'm not talking 10% randoms here. Just your average 1/16 S5 mage with boosters they can natively forge)

Unfortunately for them those mages all cost some serious money. And while pre-nerf they had a slightly reduced income from pop-kill, this was amply compensated by the fact that after initial expansion you never had to buy a trooper ever again since you had those freespawn working for you.

Now though... Well, to be honest I haven't actually played a late age game since that patch but it wasn't hard to guess the effects of severly reduced money, and Micah's post above sure confirms it. :)

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

There was and is the problem that attackers will also have a lot of mages/Thugs/SCs go insane to various degrees while bringing them down. This is a powerful defence as insanity has no cure in Dom 3 and seriously erodes the leaders use later.

Apart from making R'lyeh unattractive as an opponent it also makes using communions and the like when attacking them tricky. A master or two that decides to do something else can seriously mess up a script and hence the whole battle plan :)

The only things immune to R'lyehs insanity are their own starspawn priests and mages. Although I think the void gate itself when entered can drive either insane(?)

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

I've had my starspawn go insane without entering the void gate plenty of times.I'll admit that most of my experience of LA R'yleh is from older patches though

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

LA atlantis unsleeping underwater units are also immune iirc.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

1) The only LA nation with an unerwater start. Some LA nations can get underwater, but hardly compete with LA RLyeh there.
2) Tons of free spawn, some of which isnt 'chaff'.
3) Mind blasters, even in PD.
4) Highest astral of all nations. Up to 5, actually.
5) Dreams of Rlyeh, one of the best assassination spells around.
6) Insanity domain. Hard to fight Rlyeh when half your commanders occasionally decide to dance around some tree chanting Rlyeh Fhtagn!
7) Mass prophets.

Rlyeh has domkill now, but all of the above is still true. Maybe not 'ridiculously OP' now, but still pretty much OP in my opinion. :)

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Not at all overpowered. Making gains worth less is merely a national advantage, much like Abysia's ability to ignore growth scales (iirc), or Ulm's production bonus. At the same time, unlike these other nations they *pay* for that national advantage directly - it costs them gold every turn. Rlyeh has to expand or die - to defeat Rlyeh all you have to do is stop them from expanding - their dominion will do the rest.

Keep in mind that in addition to losing money because of decreasing population, they also pay upkeep on all those freespawn, about half of which are aquatic only, and the vast majority of which are chaff.

Also, no one ever won a game by controlling all the oceans. Sure, they might be hard to invade. So what?

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

1. R'lyeh mages are very expensive and not really immune to insanity.
2. Chaff eats gold, lots of chaff eats lots of gold.
3. You really notice the domkill.
4. Without research you can do nothing on land.
5. Even with research you need lots of mages.
6. No feet slots, no easy E boost.
7. You can have huge problems if both Mictlan and Atlantis try to rush you.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

1) 280 gold, sacred? I've seen more expensive mages. Especially with a nation that doesnt have to recruit anything but mages most of the time.
2) Send them to die, then. Free chaff that kills enemy and dies costs gold to your enemy, not to you.
3) Well, no one is perfect. :)
4) Nothing is an overstatement. I have been rushed by hordes of Rlyeh chaff recently; all I can say is 'HURTS LIKE HELL'. Tramplers, void spawns, paralyzing illithyds... my quickened SC God couldnt kill all the spawn due to turn limit and had to flee, again and again. Twice, he failed MR roll with magic resistance of around 30 and racked some afflictments as well. I was able to hold Rlyeh long enough, with my God and tons of archers, so he lost that game eventually (not before I did, though). But it was a nightmare.
I dont believe he used any spells in that game. Maybe some unscripted casters to lead the troops, but thats all.
5) Who doesnt? Mictlan maybe?
6) Who needs legs anyway. :) Communion ftw.
7) Yea, and LA Ermor on top of it. :) Zeldor... seriously... I think I know at least one game where 'nation that has to be ganged' concept didnt work. :) 'Both Mictlan and Atlantis rush you' is a very unlikely condition.
6)

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

1) They are not sacred. 280 gold is not much, but you will have to get them with 1/10 of the others income (after upkeep), so you are always outnumbered magewise. You can take very good scales to offset your domkill to a point but I get the feeling these are wasted points.
6) Same thing - besides your communion slaves go insane.
4) Yeah, but it illustrates the weakness of the chaff quite well. They can't kill anything with a good prot - even if it's are paralyzed. So they are really just there to die in droves while someone else does the job, and it's almost a weakness that they turn up (since if they didn't you had the gold to recruit better stuff). Sending them to die is a chore, 1 province water movement, lack of sane commanders, etc.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

LA Rlyeh's sea domination may be much overstated.

Jomon has some pretty brutal underwater units, well capable of giving Rlyeh a bloody nose. LA Ermor could at least make Rlyeh pay by fielding its own vast armies of freespawn chaff, even if they are a little feeble underwater. Mictlan should be able to field some brutal thugs and sacreds.

However, there is absolutely no way LA Atlantis can't take out Rlyeh underwater if they want. In fact, if the LA Atlantean player is in a game with LA Rlyeh, I expect he will have prepared a bless specifically against Rlyeh.

The key are Assartuts - add an S bless to make mind blast not very effective, an E bless so they can kill all day without tiring (their armour is low encumbrance), and an N bless just so they're really hard to kill. They are astoundingly destructive.

Nearly all the Atlantean troops massively outclass Rlyeh's freespawn. Ice Guard (also low encumbrance for the protection) will make mincemeat out of them, the others less so, although you will run into fatigue problems if you're that badly outnumbered. What's even better, Atlantis gets reasonable astral mages underwater, which means Antimagic for even less worry from mind blast. Besides, just cart around an Angakok with +MR and put him at the front, to be overtaken by the army - let's see all that mind blasting wasted on a regenerating unit with high natural MR (plus Amulet of magic resistance, astral bless, iron will) Finally, think Angakok thugs - you can do a lot with a few of them.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Agema's point about LA-Atlantis is spot on; I would say it is understated. LA-Atlantis ever since the patch can absolutely destroy Rlyeh.

Why do you think they are never sleeping mages....Dreams don't work on them.....

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

My God didnt only have high protection btw. He was ethereal, lucky and mirror imaged. And even then, he was lucky to flee the battlefield alive when some void-things broke through mirror image.
Angakok wont last nearly as long. Though as a mind-blast magnet, it might be a very good idea indeed.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

You wouldn't take on whole armies with single or dual Angakok thugs: just beat PD and small batches of freespawn lying around. Fewer provinces = less freespawn and less money.

To take on a whole Rlyeh army, you'd need quite a few Angakoks, but it wouldn't be that hard via bless, items and spells to get each Angakok Quickened, lucky, 20 or more protec, 25 or more MR, reinvigorating, regenerating, 20 Defence. Add AoE weapon, useful shield (vine/eye/charcoal/awe). Then extras depending on the Angakok's magic paths like Soul Vortex, Mistform, Iron/stoneskin, etc.

Set half a dozen such Angakoks loose with a couple of Assartut each on guard commander orders to draw a few attacks (but not so many as to cause a rout if they die). Or just mix a few into a small army.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Even before the increase to popkill, I thought that LA R'yleh was a weaker version of MA R'yleh. A lot of new players just have problems dealing with hordes of units initially I think, even if those units are just trash.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Weaker version of MA Rlyeh? :)

Kekek. Thats why LA Rlyeh is second only to LA Ermor in the hall of fame. Did you ever play against a good LA RLyeh by the way?

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Those stats were massed before the nerf.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

The Hall of Fame, like the graphs of any game, are easily skewed. For example, a belief that a nation is stronger then another increases its popularity, thus increasing the number of times its picked to be played, which in turn increases its chances to win more often. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think one of the actual reasons why LA R'yleh has more wins is because everyone wants to be play the only water nation within an age because they'll get less competition. Weather that's true or not is another story.

In the end. LA R'yleh is essentially the same nation as MA R'yleh (Same recruits, summons, gem income) except they get weighed down with loads of chaff and population death. This means they can afford fewer mages, quality soldiers, and fortifications. Insanity is the only thing that gives LA R'yleh any real advantage over MA, and even that is a double edged sword.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

When was the last time LA R'lyeh got a win anyway?

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Quite a long time ago. :) I didnt see 'pro' players pick RLyeh lately, though. And that nightmarish game where I barely contained Rlyeh with my poor Jomon was pre-nerf.
Maybe Rlyeh nerf and buffs to LA Atlantis and Jomon (uw castles I mean) were enough to bring him in check.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Hmmm I think Ano in Highlander, that was a spring 09?

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

The more relevant question might be 'when did that game start', rather than end, since version could be effected by that.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

well, I just think its pretty well balanced. I had excellent chances in a game till staling cost me a capitol. And I subbed into another game, that when I left Rlyeh was definitely one of the top seeds around turn 55 or so.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

R'lyeh won the recent Aardwark game.


EDIT: But that was MA, so please ignore... Don't know where my brain is again...

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Yes, I won with R'lyeh once but it was May '08. A full 4 month-long late-age game. Actually though there were some pretty good players, all was decided rather fast and yes, I could say then that R'lyeh is fantastic nation that should be dealt with early on or it becomes unstoppable in hands of a good player. That was particularly true for a water nation, of course.
But despite it was tremendously strong there were some problems, of course, and the main one was money. Your chaff does cost upkeep and your mages are very pricey. But with G3 population died really slow and everything was quite manageable. But now I consider R'lyeh the most hopeless nation in LA and I would never pick it unless it was given to me by some cruel random... Actually, if someone wins a competitive game with LA R'lyeh now I will be very surprised.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Now thats a challenge that might be fun..
but its really not that bad ano...
Turmoil and luck...

Works pretty well.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

With turmoil/luck, you run into negative income/upkeep balance even faster, dont you.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Yepp!
And Order/Luck is just as good as Tumoril/Luck when you have a sizeable nation.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

You run a negative income/upkeep balance faster, but since you're population is a dying anyway your order income still drops to nothing and the luck income does not drop off. It doesn't scale with nation size though.
Running order with a popkill dominion seems counterproductive.

Order/Luck is just as good as Turmoil/Luck, if you ignore the extra 240 pts it costs.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

And get dominion into 50+ provs to make it work :)

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

I should have said "it's a lot better" 50% higher income...
I didn't intend to say that it's the better choice for R'lyeh, but Luck+Order can have good payoff with many other nations. The choice shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Of course, the power of R'lyeh depends on the availability of clams in the actual mod played. R'lyeh should not have problems casting Maelstrom, for example.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

I'm a little late to the discussion here, as the last post to this topic was about a month ago, but a friend and I were just having a discussion to this same end. It would be nice if there was at least an item that could prevent insanity, if not cure it. I jokingly suggested the "tinfoil hat", which earth mages could produce. The insanity affect of the LA R'lyeh dominion is horribly rough to fight.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Don't fight the insanity, embrace it.

More seriously, don't fight the insanity, domkill Rlyeh. it worked for me =)

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Domkill Rlyeh?

Eh... looks like Squirreloid spent too much time in Rlyeh's domain. :) Against an unprepared and unexperienced player it might work, but if Rlyeh knows what he is doing, trying to domkill is futile.
Overall, I'd say that LA Rlyeh is one of the hardest nations to fight against. He may not be so powerful in offensive as before, but still hard as hell.

Not to mention the damn Dreams of Rlyeh...

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

To be fair, I was playing a dom10 pretender with a blood sac nation and H3 priests. 5 H3 priests with jade daggers blood saccing every turn generates 25 100% temple checks. That's an impressive amount of dompush. But you have to know you want to do it when you design your pretender =)

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

I have seen that trick performed by MA Abyssia. When I have noticed that half my lands have many red candles in them, I've started recruiting priests and preaching my own dominion in my own temples, so domkill failed despite my meager Dominion 6. This is one of the reasons I dont believe in domkills anymore.
But of course, I had many provinces; with a smaller nation, one might notice too late.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Domkills can still work or still be a valuable tool.
At the very least by causing your opponent to divert money and resources away from military and research.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

In high-speed tests I find that the problem with LA Rlyeh is that they tend to own the oceans. The rock-paper-scissors balance takes too long to kick in. LA Ermor seems to be the balancing answer against Rlyeh. The problem (on large games) tends to be that Rlyeh takes out Atlantis and there is no Oceania. And the other land nations tend to take out Ermor before Rlyeh bursts forth from the oceans.

Id rather see an LA Oceania, maybe a stronger Atlantis. Maybe they could have some natural immunities to aid them against Rlyeh.

Altho the way that the many small-map blitz games tend to be played, and games with CBM, would not be helped by that so some sort of nerf might best be done by CBM for those players.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

A LA Oceania would be nice.

LA Atlantis should actually be able to do pretty well against R'lyeh and does have some natural immunities in it's underwater recruitables. I suspect that the AI just doesn't play to it's strengths. The AI is also much worse than any players at getting into the water, so it's natural that R'lyeh would do better.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

The question is can R'lyeh really afford to spam temples (considering it does make you open to raiding you almost need a castle as well, or some guards)? You can of course make Juggernaughts but at their cost a blood nation still outdoes you easily.

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Building at least some castles with temples is a good idea in any game, for any nation. And LA Rlyeh is perhaps the hardest nation to raid, except maybe LA Ermor (because it builds castles in all provinces anyway).

Re: How is LA R'yleh overpowered?
 

Well, I'd even go so far to build a temple in every castle, but that's still maybe 15 temples against 20 temples +20 bloodsacs. So your dominion can certainly be pushed back (while I still think that a real domkill is impossible since you have a big bunch of free h3 priests - if you are desperate put 10 into your cap and set them to preach - noone can force that much enemy dominion on it).