Guide to EA R'Lyeh

[Belcarl]

When it comes to EA R'lyeh pretenders I always try to have atleast W1A1 on my pretender, so I know I can forge Amulet of the fish for my Mind Lords.

Since Mind lords gets the Enslave spell for free, I usually wait with researching Thaumaturgy. Instead I go for Conj 4 to get the Voice of tiamat spell ASAP. After that Const 4 to get Amulets for the Mind lords to secure the success of any land campaigns. This also gives you acess to Banes (asuming you have D2 on someone) and some decent Thug equipment.

For some reason I really like the Hidden in Snow spell (Ench 6) with EA r'lyeh. It branches out the nations magical paths and gives decent mindless chaff. It is however not a research priority.

Get A4 on your pretender and Const 6 to forge staff of storms to stop enemy fliers and missile troops. This usually works better for the other R'lyeh ages, since most of your missile troops uses mind blast on land. But since you lack any kind of Bowmen you might aswell stop enemy archers/flyers.

Late into the game you will want Gateway researched, since your logistics with Loboguards and Shamblers will be a pain otherwise.

[Salamander8]

All good points, I have to do magic paths still. It was after 2 AM when I noticed what time it was while writing this, and had to take a break.

[Salamander8]

Magic Paths:
Picking the paths your pretender will have is always an important step in your pretender creation process. One thing you must shoot for as EA R'Lyeh is so important I'll bold it below:

You need to be able to make Amulets of the Fish!

Without these items, your Mind Lords and Aboleths cannot leave the seas. Air 1/ Water 1 is the minimum needed for these. This is a critical aspect of your pretender design. None of our national mages can make these, so that leaves summons, luck on sites, or your pretender. I always take at least air 1 on my pretender, and always take water (and astral as well) as default as any R'Lyeh.

EA R'Lyeh does not lend itself to a bless strategy. We only have the prophet and 3 national sacred units total. 1 of these nationals is aquatic and immobile (Polypal Mothers), 1 is aquatic and capital only (Gibodai), and the last is the Slave Priest. I do not build my pretender around any sort of bless capabilities, although I tend to go fairly deep into water and astral and get a small bless by default. But do not build your pretender based on any sort of bless strategy.

Air:
As previously stated, you want at least 1 air on your pretender. Amulets of the fish are just too critical to not do so. Most of the pretenders we can choose from come with water, so it's not hard to be able to at least make these items. Taking more air levels will let you make other nice toys like amulets of missile protection. I try for 2-4 depending on the type of pretender I am making.

Astral:
R'Lyeh is heavy with astral magic in all ages. Our national mages are heavy with it, and some of our pretenders start with it, or can get it cheap. The SC pretenders may skip astral as they need water 1 and air 1 to make the amulets, but for a more magic-orientated pretender, astral is a good fit. I try for at least 4 astral on my heavy magic pretenders. If you get Astral 6 or more, you can make the expensive but powerful Rings of Wizardry.

Blood:
An important aspect of blood magic is that you cannot blood hunt underwater. I do not normally take blood magic on my pretender, although in some longer games, I did empower them with it and had a small blood economy running. But that was more to test it out for EA R'Lyeh than anything else. You probably could take some on your pretender and try for some decently sized population land provinces to get a blood magic economy rolling, but it's difficult for EA R'Lyeh to use as our main strength is below the waves where we cannot get blood slaves. I do not recommend you get too much blood magic on your pretender, but a little bit can give you access to some of the astral+blood spells and items.

For an excellent article on Blood Hunting (and Mictlan of course!) See Baalz's guide here:

Post#http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=503458&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1


Death:
Aboleths can have death 1 and Mind Lords can get up to death 2 (but that is quite rare as it requires the 100% pick to pick death and then get the 10% pick to give death as well). A little death on a pretender with many paths can certainly work well. I usually get some death, but not too deep into it. Death+water gives access to Streams from Hades which is a nice mixed magic summons, and also gives Hidden in Snow which is a rather good summons for us as they enhance our land forces. Death+astral gives the Ether Gate which is expensive, but I use them from time to time. All 3 of these spells only require 1 death magic, so even a a little death can give you some nice bonuses.

Earth:
Our various mages have some access to earth magic, and our home site makes 1 earth gem per turn. Earth magic gives the forge of the ancients and the dwarven hammers for cheaper magic items. Earth magic also gives some solid defensive and reinvigoration items with construction research. On a rainbow pretender, I try to get some earth.

Fire:
None of our national mages can get fire magic. Most fire spells don't even work underwater. If you are going for a rainbow pretender, fire magic can give you more items to choose from and some powerful spells for dealing with the surface dwellers, but it's not a priority for us normally.

Nature:
Only our Slave Mages can get nature from our national mages, and it's a random pick so not really common. I do tend to grab nature magic on my pretender along with water for the fact that I need nature magic (on top of water magic) to make Clam of Pearls. These items can really bolster your astral pearl economy and come highly recommended. Nature gives access to some nice reinvigoration and regeneration items and supply items as well. I try to take some on my pretenders whenever I can.

Water:
We live in the water, so taking some is an easy decision normally. Water works well with astral and you need water 1 (with air 1) to make amulets of the fish which we need badly. Water 3+ Nature 1 gives the pretender the ability to make clam of pearls too. Water 4 is my normal minimum as EA R'Lyeh, and I often take more.

Magic, Dominion, Wakefulness, Pretenders, and you:
A limited path SC pretender should shoot for air+water normally. You don't want to burn too many points on too many magic branches when the paths are costing you 40-50 each, but air and water access is critical. EA R'Lyeh needs a pretender with at least these 2 paths unless you want to gamble on finding air sites to empower or those rare indy mage sites, which I cannot recommend. Gambling can be fun, but if you don't get access to amulets of the fish, you can cripple yourself.

Awake SC pretenders have the advantage of aiding our expansion early, when we are somewhat weak. EA R'Lyeh is more of a late bloomer nation, but taking a low magic SC pretender hurts our magic item construction and magical capability as well.

On the other hand, magic-heavy pretenders (whether rainbow or simply deep into only a couple of paths), are not as effective early as the SC ones, but long-term they give us a lot of magical power in return.

Evilhomer recommends an SC for MA and LA R'Lyeh and this applies to EA R'Lyeh to a point as well, but I tend to take a Polypal Mother with heavy magic instead. If you get rushed in an MP game, you will want an SC, but if through geography or diplomacy you have some breathing room, a heavy magic pretender can work wonders in the longterm. The worst part of all this is that you won't really know which situation you will be in until you have already started the game!

The choice of an SC or a magic guru is largely personal choice. I tend to use my pretenders more for their ability to cast high path requirement spells than for expansion. I have tried both and an Ancient Kraken or Wyrm can really put some hurt on enemies. Which you prefer is up to your playstyle and the people you are playing against. SP games allow a lot more flexibility in pretender construction as the AI is not very 'threat aware' compared to other human players.

Awake, Dormant, or Imprisoned?
This is a very hard decision and I have to say that while I do not like waiting so long for my pretender to be usable, you get a ton of points with imprisoned, and a fair chunk if they are sleeping. If you take an SC, I would take awake for sure as early expansion is the main reason to have an SC. An immobile heavy magic type gives a nice amount of research early if awake, but you can eke out a lot of points if they are dormant or in jail.

As mentioned above, your decision here should be heavily influenced by the game you are playing and the personality of the other players. An awake SC may just be enough to keep that aggressive guy off you to let you build your strength, while having neighbors that are not so interested you lets you be a little more relaxed about this.

Dominion:
A very important part of god construction. Most of our choices here start fairly low, but it's a simple matter to bump it up. If you have really nasty scales, having a low dominion can let you sponge off other peoples better scales, but this makes you more vulnerable to being prayed out of existence. Taking a very high dominion can keep your scales in control and helps in the breeding of free Polypal Spawns. I try to get at least 5, and preferably more as I am pretty conservative on my scales so don't have too much damage from my own dominion. Getting 9 or 10 here can give an SC that extra edge with the Awe ability.

Pretender Summary:
EA R'Lyeh has very limited choices for our chasses, but we don't have any real problem ones like the Lord of Fertility either. Getting air 1+ water 1 is critical for us, but beyond that it's really up to your preferences. I always take water, astral, air, and nature on my heavy magic users. And dabble in the other paths most of the time.

Many of our pretenders can benefit from amulets of the fish to enter land based labs to cast land-only spells. A few of our pretenders do not need them to do so, and this increases their appeal. Pretender construction is an extremely interesting, critical, and fun part of the game.

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.

[Salamander8]

Magic:
EA R'Lyeh is a very heavy user of water and astral magic, less so in death and earth, and a rare small amount of nature.

We start with the Gorge of Ancient Cities, which produces the following gems:

3 astral
2 water
1 earth

Getting more sites quickly is always important. Starting research for us is usually Conjuration 4 for Voice of Tiamat. This was another of Evilhomer's recommendations that I fully endorse for EA R'Lyeh. It reveals all elemental sites in an underwater province that we control. This can give your gem economy a boost quickly. Conjuration 5 gives acashic Record, which some people love and others hate. If you like the spell, getting it right after Voice of Tiamat is not too hard of a decision. If you don't like acashic record, you can move to other branches after getting voice of tiamat. Conjuration gives some excellent summons, and we don't even mind the aquatic ones. Asp Turtles are downright nasty for example. And if you have enough death, you can get the ubiquitous Bane Lords or even tartarians if you squeeze out that much death.

As Belcarl pointed out, our Mind Lords normal ranged attack is enslave mind, so we don't need to push thaumaturgy right away, but it is a very important line of magic for us. All the Astral relocation spells (Teleport, Gateway, and Astral Travel) are from the thaumaturgy line. And the strategic mobility of these spells cannot be stressed enough. The threat of having 12 Mind Lords and their armies suddenly port almost anywhere can keep your neighbors honest.

Construction gives the essential amulet of the fish at construction 4, and no matter what paths you take, magic items are always things to hand out to important commanders (and not so important commanders if you have the time/gems available).

I normally leave blood for last. No blood hunting underwater is a major hindrance for fully exploiting this path. And we have no national mages that have access to it.

Spells I try to push for as EA R'Lyeh, depending on magic paths available:

Antimagic (Lobo Guards have lousy MR, and our other slave troops are below average as well)
Voice of Tiamat
Bane Lord
Gift of Health
Maelstrom
Arcane Nexus (Although I would be wary casting this in an MP game)
Teleport
Gateway
Astral Travel (Very deep in thaumaturgy, so hard to actually 'push')
Arrow Fend or Storm (depending on air available and what casters I have in the field that can cast these)
Communion Slave/Master
Returning
Personal Luck
Luck
Battle Fortune

We start with Twist Fate, and there are other spells I love to get, but take very heavy paths so I do not 'push' them so much (i.e. Call Abomination).

Amulets of the Fish are your land force bottleneck normally. Getting indy mages with air and water or empowering mages with one or the other can help cut this bottle neck down some. Normally only the pretender can make these and only if you have them available to do so. A lot of our pretenders and our 2 more powerful national mages lack hands so cannot benefit from dwarven hammers. Forge of the Ancients can mitigate that somewhat.

Nethgul is a ton of fun to give to a Slave Prince. He often gives his bearer etherealness though spells and does a large amount of horror marking, soul slaying, and mind enslaving at the enemy. I can't even remember the number of times I'll notice that I now have horror-marked troops that used to be enemies. If only he would mind enslave before horror-marking.

Mind Lords and Aboleths can only carry 2 misc items, and this will have you gnashing your teeth as they cannot not even don a simple astral cap! Being handless means they cannot use some of the excellent path boosting weapons. The first item to enable them to go landward is of course the amulet of the fish, but the second item is less cut and dried. Ring of wizardry is very nice, but extremely expensive. Amulets of missle protection aren't bad if you don't have any field commanders to cast arrow fend, or have a commander with hands (I know it sounds odd, doesn't it?) to hold a staff of storms. I'm loathe to hand them supply items if I need them as the 1 slot is just to valuable for such an item. I hand the +supply items to less important sub-commanders, like slave priests.

Clam of Pearls should be high on your magic item list for researchers. Getting a lot of these can really boost your astral income. It takes them awhile to pay for themselves, although less time is needed to 'break even' if you have access to dwarven hammers (Accursed hands! How you elude us!), access to sites that cut the construction cost of items down, and/or forge of the ancients. Even without all these, the clams are welcome.

Slave Princes are ok thugs but their MR is only 12 to start, making them less effective as SCs. A magic resistance amulet goes well here. I like to give 1 of them the Trident from Beyond and Nethgul. Then I empower him to water 1 (for the trident's water bonus) and customize his other items as I see fit. He can lead a fair chunk of non-magic troops by default and is amphibious (and he has hands!) so can lead raiding forces out of the water if you so desire. Shields are always highly recommended for any thugs/SCs, but wavebreakers are decent weapons and are very thematic. The aforementioned Trident from Beyond is another such weapon.

Once your conjuration is high enough, the ever-popular Bane Lords make for excellent SCs. You really can't go wrong with these guys. Just make sure to outfit them well from your item treasury.

Tartarians can be really nasty, and if you have Gift of Health up, they can slowly heal their afflictions and be real powerhouses.

Call Abomination is costly, but these monsters are well worth it. Being amphibious, regenerating, huge, and nasty. I have to try giving one Gift of Reason to see how that works out.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Very nice. Linked to it in my index.

[Salamander8]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Very nice. Linked to it in my index.

Thanks!

[Belcarl]

Very nice guide.

Personally I would add Claymen and Sea Kings Court to the spells to push for. Both gives quick needed reinforcement of throw away infantry on your far edge land borders. The Sea king can even be a decent battlemage or thug with a booster or two.

[Stryke11]

I usually prefer to play the heavy troop nations like Ulm, Pythium, LA Man, etc, and therefore almost always take full scales in growth, order, and prod.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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

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

[Salamander8]

I will try to address your concerns in detail when I have time tonight Stryke11, but I wanted to let you know that I read your post and that I had the exact same issues when I first tried 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!