EA R'lyeh considerations for a successful MP strat

[Belcarl]

So, I have been toying around some with EA R'lyeh in singleplayer, and been thinking about trying it out in a MP game. In my opinion it is one of the weaker nations in its era because R'lyehs defining strength in mindblasting artillery is mainly restricted to underwater. That said, underwater they are a powerhouse. With a lot of free spawning chaff from their H3 immobile priests. So, what would your general strategy in MP with this early era nation be?

The only way to get the aboleth commanders above water that I know of is to equipt them with an amulet of the fish (W1A1, const 4). Unfortunately, none of your national mages have access to Air magic. So empowerment, or a pretender dedicated to amulet forging is required to use Aboleths on the surface.

The traitor prince is an excellent Thug chasis. The lack of fire and air mages kind of limits it to mostly melee thugs though. The herald lance against undeads and the black bow are the artillery options I can see in a resonable reach for mass production of traitor artilery thugs.

For battlefield magic I feel restricted to either "Fall of frost" w3 evocation, or the higher level Soul slay, enslave mind from the Thaumaturgy school. The Aboleths gain enslave mind and mindblasts for free, so I usually wait with Thaumaturgy research.

I have been using a w1a2 giant kraken pretender with order 3 and luck 3 scales as a base with some variations with the other scales and magic paths. Main use is as a SC and Amulet of the fish forger.

The research paths I have considered for MP are Const 4 to forge the fish amulet. And then either Enchantment 6 for Leviathan and Hidden beneath the snow(sp?), Conjuration 6 for Sea and Troll kings, or go the Evocation route to get falling frost, gift from heavens etc.

I tend to empower atleast one slave mage with Earth 2(3 with boots) or Death 2(3 with staff). Is this a waste of gems? I do feel in need of either the earth summon spells or the Water-Death combinations.

So basically my own idea was Aboleths backed up by a few traitor thugs, with a screen of underwater recruitable mindless chaff beefed up with some Conjuration or Enchantment summons (mainly Trolls, Leviathans and living statues).

[Shovah32]

Well for a start using order AND luck is wasteful since order reduces the amount of events you get. If you like making thugs and SC's try this build:
Archmage
Awake
Dom6
Order 3
Sloth 3
Cold 1
Magic 1
Misfortune 2
Lvl 3 in all paths but blood

WIth boosters (which you can easily forge) you can make practically any non blood item and you can summon various units (aswell as using recruitables) to equip. Being awake and having order 3 magic 1 means your research should be swift, once you start conquering provinces get your pretender to search them finding lots of sites and quite possibly a second fortress.

[Graeme Dice]

I agree that early age R'Lyeh has some major problems above water, but that's particularly fitting with the theme of the nation. What I'd suggest for a pretender is probably either the ancient Kraken if there are other water nations to worry about, or the wyrm if you want to expand onto land quickly.

For this nation, I'd probably take order 3 and sloth 3, since none of your troops are particularly resource intensive. You can take cold 3 without it affecting you too badly, as the heat/cold scale does not affect income underwater. Magic 3 is a good choice because it helps your research, reduces the magic resistance that your mindblasts and other spells have to deal with, and reduces the fatigue cost of spells by 30%. A dominion strength of 6 is good to keep you from being dominion killed early on.

These scales leaves 258 points for the Wyrm, and 280 points for the kraken. Your national mages have access to every magic path other than air and fire, and fire gems are quite rare underwater, so I'd consider putting air magic on your pretender. This has the advantage of giving you mistform for combat purposes with your monstrous pretender. Thus, I'd probably pick a wyrm with air 3, water 2, and earth 3. This gives you quickness, mistform, summon earthpower, and invulnerability, which is a very powerful combo for a regenerating monster like the wyrm.

Your national mages can find every underwater elemental site through voice of tiamat. Dark knowledge and arcane probing find the death and astral sites, while you'll need to send a slave mage with nature magic around to find some nature sites. That leaves only blood sites, which are rare above water, and non-existent below water.

Your early expansion underwater will probably be from giboleths and gibodai mindblasting while protected by lobo guards and slave troopers. You don't have any non-mage commanders with magical leadership, so slave mages and aboleths are necessary to command the majority of your troops.

Your wyrm should probably go above water as soon as possible to grab the land provinces and establish a beachead before somebody else does.

Edit: Confused sorcery and astral.

[KissBlade]

I agree with most of Graeme's posts so no need to repeat anything. I should point out though, I would probably gun up conjuration for voice and then construction right away. Mind Lords effectively are battle mages right off the bat thanks to Enslave Mind so you can actually avoid thaumaturgy for awhile. I would almost dare say you MUST take an amphibious pretender though.

[Belcarl]

thanks for all the answers.

Showah32, the order 3 is very needed because R'lyehs troops requires a lot of gold. Their "chaff" tend to get slaughtered pretty darn quick too, so until you can get some stable summons, you will need to reinforce your army pretty constantly.

The Luck 3 scale could be traded for more dominion or magic paths on the pretender. But I feel that the Aboleths have a higher need of alchemising gems then other nations, so every little extra I can get helps.

I will try out a Wyrm pretender in my next game. I have been going with a w1a1 Kraken. But going to try a W1A1N4 Wyrm, with my eyes on some heavy Naiad warriors summoning once I get Conjuration 5. I believe that with a slight N4 bless they might be more cost effective in an MP game then the Sea trolls. That is ofcourse highly situational

As you pointed out, the conjuration tree gives both Tiamat and Dark knowledge spells. And compared to the Enchantment line lvl 5 conjuration gives a few useful summons within Rylehs reach, where enchantment starts to pay off first at lvl 5 with hidden in snow. Unless one considers the claymen worthy to summon.

Thaum can as noted earlier be avoided because of Mind Lord abilities. Evocation starts to shine first at lvl 5 with Falling frost. Since cold bolt/blast are the only other easy options on the way.

So I'll try Conjuration 5, Construction 4, Evocation 5 in that order. Time to actually play some MP. I will most likely get slaughtered

[Graeme Dice]

Belcarl said:
But going to try a W1A1N4 Wyrm, with my eyes on some heavy Naiad warriors summoning once I get Conjuration 5. I believe that with a slight N4 bless they might be more cost effective in an MP game then the Sea trolls. That is ofcourse highly situational

Naiad warriors are not summoned in greater numbers by a more skilled mage, so you'd probably be best off summoning them with a slave mage, not your pretender. Naiad warriors are also not sacred.

Putting N4 on your wyrm thus doesn't provide you with very much benefit besides earlier access to a thistle mace as the wyrm already has regeneration and lacks protection. You also don't leave yourself with any cushion should he get killed when you only have W1 and A1. He also misses out on mistform which is very useful for him, while mirror images are not particularly good for a low defense unit. Without reinvigoration items and at the minimum skills to cast buffs he gets fatigued very quickly. The benefit of earth magic is that he can forge earth boots for a land-dwelling slave mage, has earthpower so that you only need one reinvigoration item to keep him fighting indefinitely while quickened, and can cast protection spells so that he rarely takes large hits.

[KissBlade]

Claymen are worthy summons.