MP guide to MA/LA R'lyeh

[Evilhomer]

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Specific spells for LA rlyeh

Contact void spectre: (conjuration 6, needs s3 to cast cost is 25s. See manual for specific stats.) I can add that he spreads insanity fast in the enemy provinces he is visiting. This in combination with stealth(+25) enables some fun strats where you sneak him into enemy armies/mage centres. Also, he has the summon +5 at start for the void gate. He can also be used as a raider with some decent gear and scripted to cast luck + twist fate + attack.

Dreams of R'lyeh: (Thaum 6, needs s4 to cast cost is 4s.) Haven't been able to play around with this much, but it seems to give an mr check, after which an assasination atempt occurs (with attack/defense/mr halfed for the target).
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Clams

Early on all water gems should be saved to be used for voice of tiamat plus the occasional voice of apsu (unless you are about to fight someone underwater then you want too summon with them). Later on if there are no immidiate threat to your position investing your water gems in clams is a nice idea. use slave mages with the nature pick and equip them with forge hammers.

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Ritual attack spells and other benefits of high astral

R'lyehs high astral combined with their easy access to astral gems makes spells like mind hunt, vengence of the dead as well as their own LA spell - Dream of R'lyeh excellent spells to target pesky enemy commanders. Note that the success of these spells are greatly improved by penetration items such as spell focus, rune smasher and the eye of the void.

Other benefits of high astral is the fast mobility. Lone mages can be quiclkly teleported to the front lines (perhaps carrying valuable gems to help in the war effort), also forts under siege can quickly be boostered by gating in armies. It is worth it to read Baalz excellent post later on where he suggest an rather unorthodox warfare technique that involves heavy use of these spells.
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Fighting on land

How to deal with pesky archers : Basically MA/LA r'lyeh will field huge armies of low protection units, i.e they die fast to massed archers. There are several good answer to this. The first answer before magic can take care of the situation is to use screens. This means that small sized group are put ahead of the larger armies, the point being that archers put to "fire closest" will only fire at them and miss the majority of the arrows.

Later on you might want to get your hand on a staff of storms (through trade) that will also shut down fliers or get access to air magic of your own (fairy queen, with equipment it can also do storm, arrow fend, fog warriors - very potent spell for your masses!). In the late game communions casting army of lead/gold will also take care of archers (and also make your lobos pretty great actually). Another answer is darkness;

Darkness: Many players new to r'lyeh doesn't realise the potential of having 100% DV on all their units (this is not true for some of the LA freespawns but darkness is great for LA anyway) and combining this with darkness. Darkness cuts your opponents attack and defence values in half and precision by 75% (both archers and opposing mages will be greatly hampered by this spell).

Other buff spells for the endgame Through communion a lot of spells are available to cast. Do not feel limited to experiment on your own but some of my favourites include army of lead/gold, antimagic, darkness and will of fates. Not only will they greatly improve your fighting, they will make fights look pretty

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/2310/bild1gn0.jpg
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5774/bild2iq5.jpg

Spells to kill with This really depends on what you are up against. For the standard armies, I tend to use the starspawn that has death on them to do the fighting (should be around 50% that has death). I script them to cast nether darths, a spell they can cast almost endlessly. For tougher foes, paralyse/soul slay/enslave mind or against groups of heavy foes i tend to use starspawns with some earth and cast communion + summon earth power + gifts from heaven. What spells to use really depends on what you are up against and what spells you can cast at that point.

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Underwater fighting

Underwater fighting is not so much about offensive spells, instead the outcome tend to be heavily influenced by the quality and quantitity of troops. Specific underwater spells to aim for if you fear an attack by atlantis/oceania are school of sharks, shark attack, friendly current and water ward as well as any other buff spell you can get your hands on. Equiping your mages with water gems and spamming out some water elementals can make a difference in how well the fight ends up as well.

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More info if you are playing MA/LA rlyeh

http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/rlyeh.html

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All ideas, feedback, question, flames or general thoughts on new sections that would make for interesting reading in this guide feel free to post them here

[Salamander8]

Thanks for taking the time to post this Evilhomer. I appreciated our discussion on R'Lyeh the other day in the IRC channel, and have been trying some of what we discussed in a MA R'Lyeh SP game I just started as well.

I have some questions/comments to add:

cold 3 - The income of underwater provinces are not dependent by the temperature scale, and since the majority of your early expansion is going to be underwater the extra design points are worth this pick. The reason you want to go cold instead of heat is that many of rlyehs spells are cold based.

I never knew this. And in fact in the megagame, in which I am MA R'Lyeh, I had a 1 heat index on my home province for some time and it reported a loss of gold and supplies when I checked the scales. Does it still report that as a default, but water is not affected anyway?

illitid soldiers - worse ranged attack than the illithids, basically do not build these.

I'd also add that they only have a strat move of 1. This becomes more important as you spread on land as it limits the mobility of your forces.

illithid lords - another commander that can serve as a thug
(better encumberance even). It has a good ranged attack as well.

Other good points about these guys. While they have the plate armor of the Illithid soldiers, they retain a strat move of 2. Another nice advantage is that they can lead both normal troops (40) and magical troops (also 40) right out of the gate. Some nations have problems with reconciling magic and normal troops under leaders, so this is a nice plus. R'Lyeh tends to be thick with magic troops, but we also get use of normal ones as well. They also have better morale than our starspawn leaders.

death: high death can be achieved for example through streams of hades and various death boosters.

The 280/1 Starspawns can also get some death by luck of the draw. I have at least 1 Starspawn in my new SP game that has 2 death out of the box. I immediately set him out to search for magic sites. This can add a little death bonus for you early if you get lucky on the draw.

Pretender choice is one of my favorite decision-making parts of the game. I use a sleeping or imprisoned Void Lurker with heavy magic quite often, but like to experiment with other types as well. In my new SP game I tried an awake Ancient Kraken with a small amount of magic to try to rush some of the nearby water provinces.

The prophet strategy you list you had mentioned before. I used to make my starting lord the prophet, now I tend to use a 280/1 starspawn I build early to do so. I now also have the lord take all the starting forces to patrol the capital with higher taxes on the first turn or 2 as you have outlined here.

I am very curious as to your bless strategy for R'Lyeh. On the one hand, we only have the 150/1 Starspawns for troops we can build that are sacred. However, everything that comes out of the void gate is also sacred, and some of those things are already effective, even before being blessed. I usually have high water/astral myself as MA R'Lyeh. Some of the void summons are just insane with good blessings, but hard to mass them before able to teleport or gate around.

I'm not sure how useful the hybrid forts (coastal R'Lyeh forts in friendly dominion that make free spawns and allow hybrids to be hired) are to LA R'Lyeh, with your freespawns and all. For MA R'Lyeh, they are fairly decent. The Hybrids you get from these are not stellar, but neither are they actually bad. They have decent morale and are amphibious as well which makes them pretty handy to have. I do not build the hybrids via normal production instead I rely on the free ones to supplement my forces.

[Shovah32]

VERY nice guide homer, i think you covered all the basics and some extras. The only think i can think of that could be added is how to use the magic(ie useful spells and late game strategies) but a very nice guide all the same.

5/5

[Evilhomer]

Response to salamander:

I never knew this. And in fact in the megagame, in which I am MA R'Lyeh, I had a 1 heat index on my home province for some time and it reported a loss of gold and supplies when I checked the scales. Does it still report that as a default, but water is not affected anyway?

The scales show a loss of income, but if you check the income itself it doesn't matter (try setting up a game with cold 3 and another game with no temperature scale and compare the listed province income. Your supplies will take a hit as listed however.

I'd also add that they only have a strat move of 1. This becomes more important as you spread on land as it limits the mobility of your forces.

I will add this, they are simply not a good unit in comparison.

Other good points about these guys. While they have the plate armor of the Illithid soldiers, they retain a strat move of 2. Another nice advantage is that they can lead both normal troops (40) and magical troops (also 40) right out of the gate. Some nations have problems with reconciling magic and normal troops under leaders, so this is a nice plus. R'Lyeh tends to be thick with magic troops, but we also get use of normal ones as well. They also have better morale than our starspawn leaders.

You are right indeed, as I said initially I was a bit to lazy to cover the units in detail, but its a good point.

The 280/1 Starspawns can also get some death by luck of the draw. I have at least 1 Starspawn in my new SP game that has 2 death out of the box. I immediately set him out to search for magic sites. This can add a little death bonus for you early if you get lucky on the draw.

That section was mostly on how to reach high level death without empowering. The kokythos (sp?) has death 3 and you only need w4d1 to summon it, from there you can add skullstaff and skullface and a ring of sorc and voila, you have a tartarian factory.

Pretender choice is one of my favorite decision-making parts of the game. I use a sleeping or imprisoned Void Lurker with heavy magic quite often, but like to experiment with other types as well. In my new SP game I tried an awake Ancient Kraken with a small amount of magic to try to rush some of the nearby water provinces.

Experiment away, most crucial part is to have fun with your build and the game. In a strategic point of view though i really belive the awake pretender is the best choice for rlyeh.

I am very curious as to your bless strategy for R'Lyeh. On the one hand, we only have the 150/1 Starspawns for troops we can build that are sacred. However, everything that comes out of the void gate is also sacred, and some of those things are already effective, even before being blessed.

Could be somewhat funny to atempt. Point remains though Rlyeh cannot mass sacred troops so they are not a good bless nation (in fact they are as crappy as it gets if you are looking for a bless nation).

I'm not sure how useful the hybrid forts (coastal R'Lyeh forts in friendly dominion that make free spawns and allow hybrids to be hired) are to LA R'Lyeh, with your freespawns and all. For MA R'Lyeh, they are fairly decent. The Hybrids you get from these are not stellar, but neither are they actually bad. They have decent morale and are amphibious as well which makes them pretty handy to have. I do not build the hybrids via normal production instead I rely on the free ones to supplement my forces.

You cannot build the starspawns in these forts however, which means they are alot worse than the underwater variant. I only add fortresses above water if its a strategic site i need to protect.

[Evilhomer]

To shovah:
Thank you very much for the praise. I will add more sections when I have the time and can think of something good.

[Shovah32]

You think rlyeh is a worse bless nation than MA Ulm? Do you fear my all powerful generic 50 gold priests of doom?

[DrPraetorious]

You should note that in LA, Growth-3 stabilizes your population against the effect of your dominion. Cancelling population loss is a bigger deal than increasing population growth .

I've never noticed a difference for the two turns less of paralyze damage, and have found Illithid Soldiers to be quite effective troops.

Note that LA R'lyeh can also recruit units on land.

The various lesser hybrids - are dreadful. You'd rather have independent infantry.

OTOH, the hybrid assassin *is* a nice unit, and since you can't recruit real illithid on land, you might as well grab them.

Void cultists are at least cheap, and can help lead piles of freespawn around.

Have you checked MA R'lyeh on land? Do they get land units?

[Salamander8]

The various lesser hybrids - are dreadful. You'd rather have independent infantry.

I would never build the Hybrid Troopers. But I found the freespawns to be handy. They are at least amphibious and have decent morale.

Have you checked MA R'lyeh on land? Do they get land units?

Coastal forts net you Hybrid Troopers, Hybrid Soldiers, Starchildren, and Hybrid Lords. I believe that is it. Land-locked forts don't net you any nationals if I recall correctly.

You think rlyeh is a worse bless nation than MA Ulm? Do you fear my all powerful generic 50 gold priests of doom?

I think Evilhomer is referencing employing the sacreds more than getting them blessed. I find Yomi and EA R'Lyeh to be worse nations for using masses of blessed troops though, at least among the nations I have played. The void gate creatures are all sacred and some of them are really deadly even before being blessed. A W9/S9 cluster of Greater Othernesses is scary. On the other hand, massing blessed troops as MA or LA R'Lyeh is difficult thanks to the randomness of the gate, which I believe is your main point here Evilhomer? Some of them are immobile or aquatic, which makes massing the little beauties even harder.

Great guide Evilhomer. The scale settings I found especially informative, although taking misfortune makes me shiver.

[ologm]

Evilhomer said:
Dreams of R'lyeh: (Thaum 6, needs s4 to cast cost is 4s.) Haven't been able to play around with this much, but baically it works like a mind hunt with no risk of getting feebleminded and with increased cost to cast.

It acts as an assassination attempt in the void. In the void non void creatures get halfed attack, defense and resistance.
Not much can stand up one-on-one against a 9 astral void lurker with its resistance halfed.