R'lyeh suggestions.

[PrinzMegaherz]

I have been playing R'lyeh for a while, but somehow I got the feeling that there should be some changes in order to make it more "Lovecraftian".

1. Why do I have to establish a fortification on a coast province to build crab hybrids? If you read the books, creatures like them just appear in coastal areas and live there undetected to do whatever they do. My suggestion would be, that, if its possible to code it, hybrids should gain stealth ability and just spawn in coastal provinces in your dominion.

2. Of course R'lyeh would need a stealth commander to actually make use of them. At least star children should have the means to travel undetected trough human areas, so give them stealth too.

3. The protagonists in Lovecrafts stories sometimes meet even more powerful creatures, which disguise themselves as humans. My suggestion would be to give Illithids a "change" command like e.G. the Carrion Dragon which allows them to change between a stealthy Star Child and limited magic abilities or his normal Appereance.

What do you think about it?
Would these changes make R'lyeh too strong?
Maybe you got some Ideas how to counterbalance them.

[Wauthan]

R'lyeh would indeed be too strong with these changes. It's already a very powerful nation.

You get one of those wierd hybrid units for free every turn in any coastal fortress you have. This might be seen as scattered forces from small villages making their way to their masters stronghold to be trained into soldiers.

Stealthy units is already the Pangean speciality. And they don't have the advantage of attacking from sea provinces. I'm not sure why R'lyeh needs this ability or how they would justify it in a fantasy setting?

A "change" command would be pretty interesting but not that needed for the basic units. Perhaps one or two of the void creatures could be given this ability to increase their usefulness. There's no real reason for R'lyeh to invest magic into changing shapes though. In Dominions 2 they are a fulldledged nation of freakish monster in a world full of magic and mythical beats. I doubt their ordinary appearance would cause much alarm amongst the common inhabitants of the world.

I really like Lovecrafts stories but its pretty hard to make R'lyeh anything close to his original vision without turning them into something else. If the game was about fighting them in particular they could be bestowed with all the fearsome powers of the elder gods. Perhaps this might serve as an insperation for a scenario?

[ March 10, 2004, 13:33: Message edited by: Wauthan ]

[Taqwus]

Um... the R'lyeh Star Child is *already* a stealthy commander. In fact, he's an assassin in addition to a good candidate for communion.