Hello,
I am still a Dom noob (but I have been playing strategy games for close to 20years now), and since reading the AARs around here – and the resulting discussions – has given me a lot of valueable ideas about this game I want to start an AAR of my own. This seems to be the best way to improve my gaming without actually jumping into the shark-pool of MP.
Since I am a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft I have decided to play R’lyeh for this AAR, despite the advice that R’lyeh is already one of the better analysed races in Dom.
I am not trying to develope a killer-strategy here, but am mainly looking for basic advice on how to improve my gaming/how to go about/improve implementing my strategy. So any advice is welcome
I am no great writer – even less in a language which is not my native one – and because of this I will keep the style of this AAR pretty straightforward.
Due to having some water and not being to large (and due to being somewhat familiar with it) I decided to take the Aran map with 9 additional (random) races for a fairly fast paced game.
Since having read more than once that the AI is having difficulties with playing against Ermor I decided to keep them inactive.
Since I am a noob I think that normal AI is challenging enough for me at the moment :
Indi-strenght will depend on the other races I am getting. E.g. if Atlantis is not in the game I will take an indi-setting of 9 in order to make me either having to fight very hard vs. all those flying Tritons in order to rule the seas of forcing me to head towards land fairly early.
Setup:
Pretender creation
First I had to decide what kind of pretender I want to play and since I like magic and want to have decent scales and dominion I decided on a Void Lurker whos main job should be helping with research, casting ritual spells and forging items for the decent mages of R’lyeh. The inherent research skill of 5 and the fairly cheap access to new magic path of the Void Lurker made him my main choice. The initial dominion of 2 is nothing to really brag about, but it could have been worse. I just had to name him Cthulhu, despite him being doomed to immobility in his Void Lurker body
Since R’lyeh seems to be fairly dependent on money I took Order-3 for 120 of my 500 points.
Due to the nice positive random event a Luck-scale of 3 might provide I chose to get this one for the next 120 points (money random events being the main reason, but gems, magic items and Last but not least the nice R’lyeh heroes being additional benefits).
Since I like magic and R’lyeh seems to be fairly strong in the field of magic I decided to take Magic-3 for 120 points as my next scale. This should enable me to climb the research tree fairly fast and utilise the powers of my pretender and my mages.
I still needed to raise my dominion to an acceptable level, but since I have already burned 360 of my 500 points I decided to pick a fortress next.
With R’lyeh just having 3 choices and the Kelp Fortress looking fairly weak/the Dark Citadel being fairly expensive to build in addition to taking 4 turns too build, I decided on spending the 80 points in order to get the Kelp Citadel with its fairly good values.
With just 60 points left and a lowly dominion of 2 I needed some more points to spend. I think that there are mainly 2 choices for negative scales with R’lyeh. Either Sloth due to not being overly dependant on production for the main units or the heat/cold scale since at least in the oceans there would be no negative effect form it.
Since I didn’t know if the Atlanteans would be in this fight, forcing me to head towards land provinces while I gather the strength to deal with them and due to me thinking that potentially wasted taxes/supplies on land are worse than reduced production I chose Sloth-1 which gave me 40 additional points to spend.
I decided against taking more than Sloth-1 or any Heat/Cold in addition to it since I want to be able to be change my strategy according to the needs without being too severely hampered my my setup decisions. To semi-quote Clausewitz here: “No plan survives the first contact with the enemy.”
100 points left with a dominion of 2 is nothing to really write home about, too, but since a new magic path costs 15 points each and I could get my dominion up to 6 by spending 70 points I decided to burn those points and only being able to pick 2 new paths. The rest would have to be gotten by empowering my pretender. Since my pretender and the R’lyeh mages all having 3 astral getting some decent gem income via Acashic Record will not be too hard once I am able to forge some Clams of Pearl.
Due to my mages already being skilled in astral and water and with the usefulness of nature rituals and earth being useful for forging items I decided to spend my Last 30 points in getting a fairly cheap start in those paths. This way I am not dependent on one of my mages randomly getting those paths, too.
I plan to set up a decent blood economy, too, but since I have a little bit more control about blood income than I have about gem income, I decided against getting a point in bllod during setup.
Death would have been nice, too since I mainly plan to rely on summons for my heavy hitters (due to low upkeep), but by the time I get enough death gems I hope to have at least one mage with a skill in death.
With all points spend it was time to set up the actual game.
The random races I got were:
Pythium, Ulm, Arcoscephale, Abysia, Pangaea, Marignon, Jotunheim, C’tis, Atlantis (argh, there goes my potential advantage of being the only water race) and Man.
Being unable to decide between an indi-setting of 5-7 I chose to randomize that one, too and got 6. The other settings were left unchanged.
With just my noob knowledge about the races I got I am not able to make a real strategic plan at this point since a lot will depend on my starting position and the proximity of the other races. Surely with Atlantis in the fray they will be my major concern.
My priorities at the moment are:
- trying to get some rich provinces for additional income
- fast research (still have not made up my mind in which direction, items/site-finding or battle support)
- setting up void summons ASAP
Ok, now it is time to take a look a my initial position and making up my mind about the research.
CharonJr
To be continued...
Noob\'s shot at an R\'lyeh AAR
Hybrid Mode
