How is LA R'yleh overpowered?

[Aeshi]

I've never really bothered playing R'yleh until now.But now that I have I can't really see what makes them so feared since:

a)You can have trouble getting income due to domkill
b)Anything you CAN recruit will go insane in a few turns.

Your only hope seems to be going for low dominion and hoping you don't go against somebody with good priests.

[Micah]

They got nerfed a few patches back and the popkill was increased by a factor of 5 or 10, they're not really OP anymore.

[Omnirizon]

I'm not for sure, but I think the rationale is something like this:

R'yleh is considered unbalancing because they destroy population. a player who ends up facing off against LA R'yleh in MP will have little to show for it afterwards, while still needing to spend the same amount of gold/gems to keep the war going to the end.

Suppose there are four nations, and one is R'yleh. One nation goes to war with R'yleh, while the other two go to war. Once the dust settles, even if the player facing R'yleh wins, simply because the lands they have gained from R'yleh are now absent large portions of their original population, they will be much worse off then whoever won amongst the other two nations.

For that reason R'yleh isn't really permitted into too many MP games, it would simply be an unfair misfortune to have to go to war with them. Same thing for LA Ermor.

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

I'm not for sure, but I think the rationale is something like this:

R'yleh is considered unbalancing because they destroy population. a player who ends up facing off against LA R'yleh in MP will have little to show for it afterwards, while still needing to spend the same amount of gold/gems to keep the war going to the end.

I wouldn't agree with this. Before that patch Micah spoke about - which is when they were considered overpowered, so that's where we have to look to answer the question - their pop-kill was really manageable. Taking growth 3 (entirely possible considering what R'lyeh needs to get from a pretender - which is not very much) essentially meant your population remained almost stable. It might be (have been) a big part of why Ermor was shunned but R'lyeh... Well they just were awesomely, freakishly strong.

Things they have going for them:

* Water start. The only LA nation with one at that. There are no early game threats to your safety.
* Largely amphibious. Only one recruitable (albeit a very nice one) and some freespawn can't move freely on land.
* Freespawn, very decent low-resource heavyish recruitable blockers (those are the aquatic ones though) and quite possibly a combat pretender make for lightning-fast expansion.
* Mind blasters can deal with severl things you'd otherwise have trouble with. (Knight provinces never were so munchy before.)

Now, all this might look quite tasty, but actually, it's just setting the scene. The tools that allow you to build up a strong early position from which you can deploy your real strength. Magic. Big, beefy, high-astral mages and cheapish communion slaves. There's just about nothing they can't accomplish if they put their mind to it. Buffing that mass of previously crappy freespawn with army of lead? Mind-hunting the lands? Massive penetration soul-slayage anywhere you need it? Killing enemy golem thugs with mind duel? (And yawning while thinking of all the gems your opponents put into this horrible mistake) Teleport dropping on moderate PD without equipment and just 2 or 3 water gems? Cast multiple master enslaves in the first round of battle? Check, check, and double check, they can do it all. Hell, they can cast wish with unempowered, recruit everywhere mages. (And I'm not talking 10% randoms here. Just your average 1/16 S5 mage with boosters they can natively forge)

Unfortunately for them those mages all cost some serious money. And while pre-nerf they had a slightly reduced income from pop-kill, this was amply compensated by the fact that after initial expansion you never had to buy a trooper ever again since you had those freespawn working for you.

Now though... Well, to be honest I haven't actually played a late age game since that patch but it wasn't hard to guess the effects of severly reduced money, and Micah's post above sure confirms it.

[Hoplosternum]

There was and is the problem that attackers will also have a lot of mages/Thugs/SCs go insane to various degrees while bringing them down. This is a powerful defence as insanity has no cure in Dom 3 and seriously erodes the leaders use later.

Apart from making R'lyeh unattractive as an opponent it also makes using communions and the like when attacking them tricky. A master or two that decides to do something else can seriously mess up a script and hence the whole battle plan

The only things immune to R'lyehs insanity are their own starspawn priests and mages. Although I think the void gate itself when entered can drive either insane(?)

[Aeshi]

I've had my starspawn go insane without entering the void gate plenty of times.I'll admit that most of my experience of LA R'yleh is from older patches though

[Fantomen]

LA atlantis unsleeping underwater units are also immune iirc.

[Kuritza]

1) The only LA nation with an unerwater start. Some LA nations can get underwater, but hardly compete with LA RLyeh there.
2) Tons of free spawn, some of which isnt 'chaff'.
3) Mind blasters, even in PD.
4) Highest astral of all nations. Up to 5, actually.
5) Dreams of Rlyeh, one of the best assassination spells around.
6) Insanity domain. Hard to fight Rlyeh when half your commanders occasionally decide to dance around some tree chanting Rlyeh Fhtagn!
7) Mass prophets.

Rlyeh has domkill now, but all of the above is still true. Maybe not 'ridiculously OP' now, but still pretty much OP in my opinion.

[Squirrelloid]

Not at all overpowered. Making gains worth less is merely a national advantage, much like Abysia's ability to ignore growth scales (iirc), or Ulm's production bonus. At the same time, unlike these other nations they *pay* for that national advantage directly - it costs them gold every turn. Rlyeh has to expand or die - to defeat Rlyeh all you have to do is stop them from expanding - their dominion will do the rest.

Keep in mind that in addition to losing money because of decreasing population, they also pay upkeep on all those freespawn, about half of which are aquatic only, and the vast majority of which are chaff.

Also, no one ever won a game by controlling all the oceans. Sure, they might be hard to invade. So what?

[Zeldor]

1. R'lyeh mages are very expensive and not really immune to insanity.
2. Chaff eats gold, lots of chaff eats lots of gold.
3. You really notice the domkill.
4. Without research you can do nothing on land.
5. Even with research you need lots of mages.
6. No feet slots, no easy E boost.
7. You can have huge problems if both Mictlan and Atlantis try to rush you.