Help a newbie play R'lyeh

[magnate]

Hmm. So it really is one void summon per turn, ever. (Note to Zen - they are all amphibious, except the Dweller In The Deep, but thanks for pointing out that some of them can't move - I hadn't spotted that!)

Well bollocks to blessing Riley then. If I want to spam mindless fodder backed up with a few mages I could play Ermor or something. I'll try my uber-bless strategy with Pan or Machaka or somebody more appreciative ...

Still, thanks for all the tips. If I ever do play Arleay I'll bear them all in mind.

CC

[Cainehill]

Note that some uberblessings aren't bad for R'lyeh, if that high magic path on the pretender fits into your plans.

Example : E9, for extra fatigue recovery on the sacred mages, and extra armor on those plus void summonings, while you also get to churn out lots of living statues with the pretender.

[Endoperez]

Water 9 Earth 4 would give the mages Blessing of Quickness, which works with the spell of the same name and helps the void monsters (often slow-ish), while Earth gives reinvigoration for your mages. And you are able to churn out lots of Claymen with the pretender.

I don't think any Earth-based underwater pretenders exist, so this would be cheaper, too. Of course, claymen don't compare to the statues, but I have grown fond of them.

[Oversway]

So it really is one void summon per turn, ever

Well one commander doing that action. But you can get more than one unit from the summoning.

[magnate]

Oversway said:

Well one commander doing that action. But you can get more than one unit from the summoning.

Oh that's interesting - how much "void summoning skill" does your mage need to get >1 beastie per turn?

CC

[Saxon]

The lower level summons can give you a handful per successful turn. The real "beauty" comes with the high level summons, some of which can smash large armies all on their own. Gift of Reason them and...

Run a search on summoning, I started a thread on this some time back (months ago) that has lots of juicy details. While it was pre patch, the summoning info is solid.

[Boron]

Ryleh is an awesome nation.
The Starspawns are probably the best combat mages that you can recruit.
It depends a bit on the mods but if you play Vanilla additionally to your good mages you can field golems.

Just give your Starspawns Spellfoci and if you can afford also Runesmashers. Field a Staff of Storms.
Your F-Starspawns cast Astral fires, your "normal ones" soul slay or enslave mind.
With Spell Foci the Astral fires destroy troops very quick and your Soul Slay Starspawns normally kill any enemy SCs or even better steal them.

If you can organize the Chalice or GoH for you then you can cheaply do Mind Hunt without any danger.

Your armies are very mobile, you can teleport them in everywhere.
If your enemy has Astral-SCs you can sacrifice a few Starspawns to mind duel them.

Then you can summon Abominations as Routblockers and thus completely avoid using other troops at all, so you can spend all your gold on mages.

Coatls fit well in your armies too, they can teleport around with your armies and cast relief.

Ryleh is excellent since it is one of the few nations that can attack everywhere.

[Agrajag]

R'lyeh... For some reason every single time I play R'lyeh I end up deleting the saves in a fury after <5 turns.
Last time I played I had an unrest event on the 2nd turn, then a province I conquered (and moved my troops from) had a revolt of triton, which then beat the crap out of the same army which conquered the province before (even though the province initial had ~70 tritons and after the revolt had only ~40 tritons. And above that there were some more annoying things, and I had a positive luck scale. That was so annoying!