MP guide to MA/LA R'lyeh

[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.

[MaxWilson]

Heh. I virtually always take Misfortune 2 or 3, since Order is such a great gold boost and Luck feels like a waste when combined with Order. Rarely get more than 3 (slightly-inconvenient, rarely even troublesome) bad events per turn. So a bandit nest shows up, big deal.

But I wouldn't be doing that if I also took Death scales.

-Max

[Evilhomer]

I have added several new sections, feel free to tell me how they turned out and what you think about them.

[Shovah32]

Salamander, i was refering to the fact that the generic 50 gold priest is all the sacredness MA Ulm gets other than indies.

[General_Jah]

MaxWilson said:
Heh. I virtually always take Misfortune 2 or 3, since Order is such a great gold boost and Luck feels like a waste when combined with Order. Rarely get more than 3 (slightly-inconvenient, rarely even troublesome) bad events per turn. So a bandit nest shows up, big deal.

But I wouldn't be doing that if I also took Death scales.

-Max

Could someone elaborate on this please? I'm playing a rlyeh middle age game right now and for some reason my units are getting diseased and afflications for no reason I can figure out??? Any ideas? Also what do you mean by referring to the death scales.

[Shovah32]

Diseased units is probably either due to a lack of supplies or an undiscovered disease spreading magic site.
The reference to death scales could be due to the fact that death+misfortune can have some pretty bad events(oh look, i just lost 50% of my capitols population on turn 3).