Tips for A newbie Playing as R'lyeh

[Arker]

The biggest problem I keep running into playing R'lyeh is that they suck supplies like nothing else. My armies always seem to start starving as soon as they go two provinces from a castle. With other races, I'll throw in a few nature priests when that's a problem, but the illithids don't get any nature priests. Unless I make a pretender with nature, I can't even forge endless buckets of slop and wineskins either, at least not until I find and conquer a land province with druids/amazons/lizards. I just did that in my present game, and I have some lizards up on one end and amazon sorceresses in que on the other, but I've pretty much lost one entire army to starvation induced disease getting to the lizards, and the second army is starving to death on the other as well. Seems a bit of a pain. I could make a nature based pretender, but that seems rather odd for R'lyeh, and even so, I've done it before, but it doesn't help much until later it seems. Takes a lot of time to develop much of a nature gem income with R'lyeh...

It's a good race, overall, just wish I could figure out some way to avoid so much starvation while getting established. Without having found a way, the best I can say is use those cheap lobo guards as cannon fodder, at least when they get diseased, crippled and worthless from starvation it doesn't hurt so bad. And keep a sharp eye peeled for neutrals with nature magic. The jade sorceresses are particularly nice, since they get water too, so they aren't stuck on one coastal area but can travel underwater with the rest of your troops. Druids are good for forging slop buckets and wineskin, if you can find the gems for them to do it with, but they're stuck on land without special measures. And the lizards can't forge much without empowerment, can't swim either, but at least they do give a supply bonus, and healing light is helpful.