Some hints on MA R'yleh?

[Belcarl]

Some old threads shows some excellent R'lyeh tactics, but some good points for them are.

Main R'lyeh tactics is Meatwall + artillery. As long as your meatwall is expendable you will grasp the general idea for them. You got access to cheap fodder and nasty artillery. Shamblers to trample small stuff, Lobos to swarm big units. Only use Meteorit guards to guard your mages, they are to expensive to use as fodder.

Normal ilthids are usually more cost effective then their warrior counterpart.

Illthid mages are strong in astral, so spells like soulslay and enslave mind are great. But some evocation and alteration spells will work good depending on your random magic paths.

Traitor princes are a decent chasi for thugs with one or two forged items on him. 27 hp and a good armor before magic items is great. He is size 2 (or 3 can't remember) so can be trampled by elephants, but still swarmed by size 1 units. So don't send him off alone, somewhere along the line with your fodder should work most of the time.

For large important battles make sure flyers and flankers can't reach your artillery.

[Taqwus]

Aside from the cost, I seem to recall illithid soldiers having only mapmove 1 instead of the 2 that normal illithids have -- a fair disadvantage on landmasses with good terrain -- and have a slightly worse mindblast weapon.

With the Void Gate... use priestly starspawn, or perhaps Cthgul once he arrives -- he's supposed to have bonuses there (in D2, he had a reduced chance of going mad, for instance). As soon as you can, give pearls and a 'Returning' script to your summoner. Be aware that once a summoner's skill gets to be fairly high (15?), the chance to get a Vastness (consider GoR...) is actually cut; you'll get more Othernesses et al.

Oh, and get a source of Storms or Darkness. Storms and darkness don't inhibit your mindblasters at all; it's still precision-100.

[KissBlade]

Order3/Mis 1 (or 2 depending on how you need the points) is standard for all builds in base except for very few exceptions. Sloth3/Cold3 is also fairly standard practice for Ryleh. Growth 3 should also be considered for the vast lobo/illithid armies you'll probably be using. Try to splash earth/air onto your pretender since you won't generally have access to those. Some good picks are dormant Ghost Kings/Void Lord or awakened Wyrm/Kraken. (note if you're using kraken you must take air + water) You also want a decently high dom as Ryleh tends to have dom problems.

Lastly, your army should consist of meteorite guards/lobos/non armored illithids + starspawn mages. Be sure to make a bunch of underwater fort + labs as your uber mages are not cap only.

[Sandman]

Personally, I'd never take misfortune as R'lyeh. Their heroes are outstanding.

[Teraswaerto]

The heroes are great, but not that great. I would always take order as R'lyeh, they need the money too bad not to.

[KissBlade]

Sandman said:
Personally, I'd never take misfortune as R'lyeh. Their heroes are outstanding.

Ryleh and Tien Chi I do tend to be wary about taking misfortune. They do have some very nice heroes.

[moderation]

Which heros does R'yleh get? I recall only the one unit that have move 10.

[Amhazair]

LA gets a strong Aboleth mage (W4S4 iirc) I suppose MA does too, since he's an EA survivor. That's the only one I got in my game with them.

[chrispedersen]

If Ermor is in the game, go Heat 3.
Use as little chaff as possible. As another poster noted, use the unarmored version of the illithid.

I don't use a bless strategy, and I usually don't rely on star gate much. once he gets up to +10 or +11 I switch him out.

I personally don't remember - but does luck influence the void gate? If so reconsider misfortune.. you dont need scales much at all.

Blood Vengeance rock!

[JimMorrison]

I don't think R'lyeh's heroes justify taking a luck scale, in and of themselves. They get a gate summoner who is marginally better at first, then just becomes obsolete when he gets high skill anyways? They get an Aboleth with 4W/4S which is nice, but only 2 misc slots, so ultimately not that spectacular. And they get the Visitor who is 2A/4S or something. Yay, now you finally have an air mage.... with no water. He is pretty neat, but nothing to base a strat around a small random chance to possibly, maybe, eventually get him.

I'm a bit surprised by this Cold talk, it actually has NO effect underwater at all? No income loss or fatigue? Wouldn't 3 Cold somewhat hamper your land expansion though? And also, why do people prefer Cold over Heat in this manner? Inquiring minds want to know, I love R'lyeh, and some extra points would really strengthen my approach.

Also I really have to say, despite other scales, R'lyeh really needs 3 Order, they are so gold hungry (top mages non sacred, primary unit 50g apiece), and unless it's going to be a very fast game, at least 1 Growth to insure that even if you get some bad events, your overall income won't decline over time, but a steadily growing pop is very good for them, as upkeep will mount rapidly once you have your second castle pumping out mages.