Guide to EA R'Lyeh

[Salamander8]

Ok let address your concerns now.

SO, I decided to try EA R'Lyeh and I figured from what I read that it's ok to have neutral scales (not bad, just neutral). Boy was I in for a shock. I'm playing SP, and basically I'm lucky I'm the only sea power, because it has taken me an obscene amount of time to get situated.

I tried prophetizing my first slave prince and I loaded him up with atlantians and the atlantians with armor. I could barely recruit any of these guys and their morale is so bad expanding was tough business. I had a sleeping Polypal Queen. I got so far away from home with my expanding armies that I supplemented with tritons, merman, whatever neutrals I could muster. How do people play with bad scales? Also, the Mind Lords cost so much income was a real issue until the entire sea was mine. Looking back on it, I suppose a mind lord with tons of lobos would have been the best option. Is that what people do? The armored troops have suck morale.

The morale of our slave troops is poor as I pointed out in the units section:

Slave Troopers and Slave Guardians:
These each come in 3 flavors. All have lackluster morale (8).

I do use mostly Lobo Guards with some triton slave troops to expand in my early underwater period, backed up by Gibodai or Giboleth artillery parks. When fighting underwater vs indies, you can script your mind blasters to fire closest. This can really break up the attacking units force cohesion and have them arrive in dribs and drabs rather than a large force. This way your melee blocks can overwhelm and defeat the enemy armies piecemeal. I tend to use hold and attack on my melee so that the mind blasters get a couple turns of blasting on the hapless enemy before they engage in melee.

I normally build the Triton versions for early underwater expansion. They are not as cheap as the Lobo Guards but are far better at actually killing enemies. I do not build many of the Merman usually as The Atlantians do not get the poor amphibian attribute when they fight on land. Even then, I do not build many of these troops once I have sufficient numbers of summons/special troops. For fodder, I use Lobo Guards (see below). For more solid non-aquatic melee forces, I use summons and/or the more useful indy troops (ex:Jade Amazons).

I have some screenshots to link here later on, but I still fully recommend sloth3. The gold loss can be paid for in other ways. Mind Lords are very expensive I admit, but once you get rolling you should be fine with sloth3. I like sloth3 with growth3 the most so far. The longer your game, the better growth is as it compounds upon itself.

I haven't even attempted any d-day operations on land. That will come soon though, as the sea is all mine. Luckily, in EA there are few non aquatic amphibian nations (like, say LA Ermor) nations, and so I haven't had any incursions, though there is a lot of coastline and they land boys are throwing a lot of troops around. I don't know how I will be able to compete. Any land attack tips not mentioned above? All Lobos? Sea Trolls? I dig Naiad Warriors and I'll have many of those, though my water gems aren't coming in that fast (I have Tiamatted everything but all my underwater sites seem to be earth related).

Mind lords with Amulets of the Fish with good spell research are actually your main attack power. I use lots of Lobo Guards backed up with solid summons and the better indy troops. If you can get some decent sites that let you recruit useful troops (the Crater is fantastic for EA R'Lyeh as it lets you recruit Ilithids that can mind blast and are amphibious instead of aquatic as an example). Slave Princes can lead decent amounts of standard troops.

Few random things: Do undersea castles draw resources from friendly land provinces? This may be the problem, as my capital only had two sea neighbors and like 4 land neighbors.

This I honestly do not know for sure. I believe that the surrounding provinces do count regardless of land or sea, but I am not 100% sure of that.

How do I kill polypal spawn once the oceans are mine. I have a polypal queen pretender and have had two polypal elder mother heroes materialize, and in foolishness I produced a regular mother at the beginning. These little suckers won't STOP. There really should be a way to turn this off to ease my processor burden, and my sanity (I am OCD with troops, and so in general freespawn annoy me, gathering them and all).

This is really common and easy to do.

Some solutions from the sections above:

I like having a couple here and there to bulk up my aquatic forces with freespawns (I'll go into the Polypal Spawn more later), but I don't advise building too many of these girls. They really are not that bad at helping defend your provinces if you are getting attacked underwater, but their immobility is a major limitation. You normally do not want that many Polypal spawns either.

You can't build these little things, but the Polypal Mothers and the Queen can spawn them for free in any water province where you have positive dominion. Another aquatic-only unit, they are not very strong and their low hit points hamper them, but they have decent combat skills, are size 1 which helps with the supply issue when you have many of them, they have decent protection, and their MR is slightly above average. Having some can be very useful for fighting in the waves, but I do not feel you would be best served by having too many. You really do not want to go overboard with the Polypal Mothers.

I freely admit to a strong bias to the Polypal Queen. She just fits as the nation's goddess so well, and I like strong magic pretenders. The freespawns are a little extra. If they get out of control, I can always have her grab an amulet of the fish from the lab and port to a friendly land lab. This lets me halt freespawn production if it's getting too large and I can cast some of those land-only spells to boot.

I have some rather crowded screenshots to show just how crazy these freespawns can get, but they are so low overhead that they should not really hurt your economy that badly. The easiest way to stop these guys is to hand your poypal queen an amulet of the fish and gate her to land. The mothers are harder as they don't have astral magic built-in, but if you only have a couple it should not get out of hand, or you can always empower them to astral 2, give them an amulet of the fish and an astral booster (ring of sorcery or wizardry and then hand it around to each mother in succession if you don't want them to keep the ring) to get them to astral 3 or more and then teleport them to a land lab to stop the freespawn production. If you keep your mother production and spawning under control, you can just ignore the freespawns usually.

I love the enslave thing the mindlords do, but it seems I need to mass them to make it a tide turner in battles.

It's very nice, but is more of a sideshow unless you have a lot of Mind Lords. And due to their high cost, you won't have many for some time.

I love how it's fun to experiment with a nation that's completely different than what I'm used to, but man I SUCK at EA R'Lyeh

As I said at the start of the guide:

EA R'Lyeh is very different from it's later cousins. It is often considered weak or difficult to use well, but the concept and style of the nation are quite interesting and can be very fun to play. It can frustrate newer players as it is not the most straight-forward nation and is hampered with getting good, solid forces on land. EA R'Lyeh is quite strong underwater, and it's mages are very effective. In many respects, EA R'Lyeh is the opposite of many land nations. Instead of having a hard time massing forces underwater, it has a hard time doing so on land.

EA R'Lyeh is one of the least straight-forward nations in Dom3. It is a lot of fun, but my first several times playing it were very frustrating. I still remember my first time trying to deal with EA Ermor on land and the game of"musical provinces" we played for several turns before I just threw in the towel.

Now for the screenshots:



The heat is from the summer weather, I took sloth3 and growth3. Any one here listed as defend had cast a spell or made an item last turn. I actually have all the research done, just don't have all my ex-researchers things to do....yet. My Clam farm is actually in a different sea fort, although you can see a few of them here.

The main thing here is notice my income and the number of people I have here. My goddess was imprisoned to start and has been free for some time here.

For the next pic note my supply usage from the previous pic and see how many troops I have here:



A lot of freespawn! I could gate out my poypal queen and my elder poypal mother heroine right now, and with a little work my poypal mother I have here too, but I actually want to see how many of these buggers I get eventually!

My main underwater force that is preparing to go on land soon (after dropping the aquatics):



The best part is that all those krakens are from enslave mind. I never summoned a single kraken. Many of the merfolk and icthyid troops are also from enslave mind. You should notice I do not have that many Gibodai. I have enough to matter, but not too many since they can't leave the sea.

And finally, my main field army I am using to squash my enemies on land:



The main force is my Mind Lord leaders backed up with some slave priests to carry supply and utility items with lots of lobo guards to soak damage. I was able to find the Crater underwater and that is why I have a lot of ilithids in this picture.

The shots are not to say:Look at what I can do! They are to show you what can be done with them once you get used to their very different playstyle and to encourage you to keep giving EA R'Lyeh a chance!