Guide: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands

[TheDemon]

In my opinion there's a more optimal strategy.

Take an awake Ghost King with F4 A4 W3 E3 D4 N2 dom 9. Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Cold 3, Death 3, Luck 3, Magic 0. Exact paths can be whatever really, take out some of the 4s and you can have S3. CBM 1.5 was used. (edit: a non-CBM Ghost King is identical)

Research one turn (thau) or possibly two turns (ench to 1) with your GK, then use him in an attack/search pattern. You can't attack on turn 1, becaues you have to stay away from Ichtyids and Shamblers and you want some friendly dominion out there first. Anything else is fair game, remember to script attack. If you did research buffs, you want Breath of Winter and eventually one prot buff. Call it an SC strategy if you like, but this GK does the exact same work as Squirrellord's sitesearching rainbow.

I haven't experimented greatly with possible recruits on turn 1, but so far it seems to me spending all 400 gold on Crab Hybrids keeps your starting army around for much longer.

I've tried a quick expansion test 3 times, once I had 10 provs by late winter, twice 12, each time I never missed a researcher recruitment or a pretender sitesearch except turn 1. Using this strat you get the sitesearching of a rainbow, you save some dominion cost thanks to starting dom of 2, and you jumpstart your otherwise lethargic expansion better than either of your builds.