[Baalz]

Yes I have a solution - stall. In theory R'yleh can be at your gates in 12 turns, in practice you'll often have a bit more time than that and can also buy yourself even more. The thing about mind blasters is they have to have critical mass and they're expensive, R'yleh has some built in inertia which makes them a bit slower out of the gate than, say Neifelheim. Even with an expansion pretender it's a pretty tough proposition to clear out indies and mass 50+ mind blasters at 40 gold a pop plus some chaff blockers (while recruiting expensive mages) by turn 8 or so in order to head towards your capital and get there on turn 12. So, assuming they pile everything they've got into one army and rush you you've got the 3-4 armies you were using to clear indies to counter-raid R'yleh while they can't really split up their expensive critical mass group very effectively. Dance around, feint, skirmish and fall back and you can buy your self more precious turns. If they bull rush to your capital cut into their territories with those troops they're ignoring and bleed them while stuffing your capital with some of those low resource high strength guys you've got and let the squids spend several turns sieging you while you pump out the research and forgings. All in all I can't really imagine you'll be forced into a decisive fight until turn 20 or so unless the stars are really just lined up against you.