Yeah, that was really nasty.
When I saw R'lyeh bordering me, I was 1st in most graphs I think and Oceania was close after. I hoped they'd be in the easter waters and I could rush R'lyeh to get a very strong position.
Turned out I was wrong and R'lyeh was exactly in the middle of our quite similar empires (both had a kraken sc pretender, equal number of provinces and conjuration and alteration well researched). Interestingly this led to some kind of cold war situation. Whoever controled R'lyeh would be the stronger one and I for one didn't trust him to let me live then (well, maybe that's just cause I won't do it
). On the other hand R'lyeh had a very tough defense and even if you defeated them you'd be very vulnerable to a third party attack.
So I was just sitting next to R'lyeh and waiting for him to make the first move while the upkeep was eating me up and I was falling behind in research.
Luckily he did it and with the unhonorable move of attacking the guy who is just trying to kill my worst enemy, I got the better position.
(But to make matters worse in my noobieness I put the monster fishes into the first line when storming the castle. They get paralyzed at the gates and block the way for the other soldiers who are killed one by one through far strike and mind blast...
)
Well, I guess I have learned quite a bit from the game.