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).