More LA R'lyeh and spellcasting questions

[Corwin]

1. I've just made a shocking discovery while playing R'lyeh in SP. (well shocking for me at least )

It turns out that R'leyh free spawns actually cost money to maintain! Not much, but it can pile up over time, and R'leh have serious money problem with his death dominion as it is. I always thought they are free, like Ermor's free spawn.

Does anybody know how much money these free spawns mad ones, mad dreamer, triton dreamer, etc. cost? Do they all cost the same, or certain types of troops are more expensive to maintain than others?

And what about void beings - do they also cost money to maintain?

How about your free spawned commanders?

I am thinking now of drowning 9/10 of my army as soon as I can. Too bad I can't do the same with water only troops, and I am out of indep water provinces. (( I guess I am stuck with these suckers, am I ?

2. Does anybody knows if chances of success are the same for MindHunt (astral 4, cost 2 astrals) and Dreams of R'leh (astral 4, cost 4 astrals), assuming you know Soul Slay spell of course.

If so, then as long as you are 100% sure that the target province has no enemy astral mages, it doesn't make any sense to cast Dreams of R'leh, right? I mean, they both will result in the death of the enemy commander, but MindHunt is twice as cheap.

3. Do I understand correctly that when you are casting either MindHunt or Soulslay, each +1 penetration item on your commander increases the chances of success for your commander by the same amount as +2 astral items would?

4. Not R'leh related, but do I understand correctly than when casting dispel or global enchantment, +penetration items on the caster do not matter, and only magic level of the caster counts (each level +5 spell)?

5. In previous example, it includes magic levels that are result of the items worn by commander, correct? So Astral 3 mage with +3 astral items would count as +15 gems, same as "natural" astral 6 mage.

6. When casting Magic Duel, bonus from being communion master counts, right? So as long as you have enough communion slaves a single astral mage can whipe out the all enemy astral mages with little risk, unless they would use communion as well of course.

[Theonlystd]

duudeeee dont drown your army.


Drown an enemy under the blood of your armys.

[Nick_K]

I haven't played LA R'lyeh yet.. but as for penetration related questions:

3: It takes two extra levels of magic skill to get +1 penetration, yes. I'm not sure if it's +1 for every two levels, or +1 for every two levels above the required level for the spell.

4: There's no MR roll with global enchantments. I think only gems and magic skill have an effect.

5: Astral 3 + 3 path boosters should count the same as a natural astral 6 mage. Again, I'm not sure if the +5 is per level or per level above the spell requirement.

[Corwin]

Thank you.

And bump to the top - I really would like to get the answers for the remaining quistions.

[llamabeast]

1) I was horrified to discover recently that summons also cost money. Trolls cost a fortune! I guess freespawn is even more annoying though, since you didn't even choose to summon them.

You could drown your water troops by bringing them on land somehow perhaps? I don't know how easy that is, I've never played a water nation.

3) Yep, that's right.

4) Yep.

5) I think so.

6) I think in another thread, the conclusion was that communion doesn't help, and neither do items. You can't make a crazily good magic dueller (outside of a high astral pretender, or a mad amount of empowerment).

[Aleph]

Summons cost money? Really?

[Nick_K]

I suspect that the void monsters are free. It's probably the dreamers that need upkeep

[RonD]

The only summons that cost money are ones that can also be recruited in some way (so that they have a specific gold cost associated with them). Trolls are the main ones that come to mind, but there are probably a few others.

[danm]

SOME summons cost money.

Trolls being a primary offender.

The speculation, is that any summon that CAN be recruited for cash will cost upkeep when summoned. (edit: Like RonD said - hehe)

I love trolls on general principal, and was personally heartbroken that they turned out to be soo darn greedy (

[Corwin]

Nick_K said:
I suspect that the void monsters are free. It's probably the dreamers that need upkeep

No, at least some of the void summons cost money as well. For example that "Big Black Wave" void creature (whatever its name was) is quite expensive, similar in cost to troll creature.