[llamabeast]

Best to put this stuff in the CBM thread really, it's a bit confusing to have the discussion split here as well.

Tir na n'Og, Eriu and Vanheim were genuinely really weak under CB1.84. Did you try to play them? Vanheim in particular. TNN were powerful because of the Awe on Ris, but didn't have many other choices.

The gradual-death-on-land idea for R'lyeh is very interesting. R'lyeh's situation is an odd one. Purely aquatic giboleths are interesting in theory but don't make for good gameplay in practice. Once R'lyeh conquers the seas it has no choice but to abandon all its key national troops (giboleths and relatives) and rely almost entirely on indies and summons to conquer the land. Any giboleths etc left over from the wars for the sea become just upkeep-consuming dead weight. The trouble is that it's not just difficult to get them up onto land, but actually impossible.

They are not actually fish anyway. They are just monsters which spawned in the deeps.

I would have liked to go with a theme of the Mind Lords and Aboleths having such power that they were able to bring a bubble of water up with them onto the land by telekinesis. The trouble is that that doesn't actually solve the problem of the troops, and it's not credible that polypal spawn have enough psionic power to carry water with them. So instead the theme has to be just that they are straightforwardly amphibious.

But as I say the gradual-death-on-land idea is interesting. I might look into using something like that. The concern is that it would just generate infuriating micromanagement, trying to constantly cycle all the giboleths back into the sea every few turns. An alternative might be for all the giboleth things to be weaker on land, or have Exhaustion or something.