Give me good reasons why R'lyeh is a balanced nation.

[Wendigo]

Originally posted by Taqwus:

Protecting territory of decent size on land thus depends on independent units, which may have trouble dealing with the better nationals from other nations e.g. hoplites, Emerald Guard, massed xbows + Flaming Arrows et al.

I would say that a network of well placed labs helps R'lyeh quite a bit here. It might take the Spawns a couple turns to react, but when done, it's done in force.

The magical nature of their units also makes them highly vulnerable to non-astral leader-killing tactics, because without mages most of their units will rout or even dissolve, and many indy provinces can't produce mages even with a lab. Risky.

Not so much of a problem as you make it sound. Spending just 1 gold in province defense gives R'lyeh an Illithid Lord with magical leadership that can sustain an horde of mindless magical critters, even if all recruited commanders were to die (which is also unlikely IMO, the Starspawns are extremely resistant to both physical & magical assasination).

[ February 09, 2004, 10:01: Message edited by: Wendigo ]