Guide: LA R'lyeh or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Dreamlands

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by vfb

S is nice on your pretender because you can script it for returning when you are out site-searching.

Why don't you get rid of the B4 and take N4 instead? You get regen for your sacreds, regen on anyone you give a shroud to, and you get to find those forts. You won't find any blood sites underwater in any case.

You can wish for blood slaves to get into blood. With luck-3 you'll get Cthugul the Stargazer by the time you want to wish, and he's S5 with 3 misc slots (and a head, of course ).

Because i'm not (aggressively) manual site searching, remember? I suppose N would let me cast Haruspex at least. Eh, the first year is already sufficiently worse that I'm not sure it matters.

And S might be nice, but its also a liability when someone decides to pimp a mage and go mage dueling for you. Not having S makes you immune to mage duel, and when every other mage you ever build will have S...

[thejeff]

Wow, I'd forgotten how lousy the early game with R'lyeh is. And those scales make it even worse. 6 provinces is better than I did.

With those scales my biggest question is how could you afford a Mage a turn? I made do with Priest and maybe an illithid.

Am I doing something wrong for expansion? There's no point in mage support without anything researched and besides you're trying for a research lead so you don't want to pull mages away from that. Do you just wait for critical mass of the freespawn chaff & Void summons?

What about an expansion pretender? You really don't need a lot of magic on him to diversify.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Wow, I'd forgotten how lousy the early game with R'lyeh is. And those scales make it even worse. 6 provinces is better than I did.

With those scales my biggest question is how could you afford a Mage a turn? I made do with Priest and maybe an illithid.

Am I doing something wrong for expansion? There's no point in mage support without anything researched and besides you're trying for a research lead so you don't want to pull mages away from that. Do you just wait for critical mass of the freespawn chaff & Void summons?

What about an expansion pretender? You really don't need a lot of magic on him to diversify.

Ok, here's what I did in the archmage game from page 2 of the thread:

First turn: Buy: Starspawn Mage, 2 crab hybrids, 2 slave atlantians, 2 resource 13 atlantians (i had the resources...), 1 lobo.

Second turn: Buy: Starspawn Priest; Military: capture province

Third turn: Buy: nothing; Military: capture province; Pretender: move

Fourth turn: Buy: Starspawn Mage; Military: capture province; Pretender: Search

Fifth turn: Buy: Starspawn Mage; Military: Die against independents (commander escaped, i thought i could squeeze out a marginal victory but the independents increased their military by a factor of 2 before the attack, and i was too far away to resupply easily); Pretender: Move

I had a decent set of gold events at least one of turns 4-5 (can't remember) (5-600 total gold)

Sixth turn: Buy: Starspawn Mage; Military: Summon Sea Serpent x2, move commander; Pretender: Search (Fortress!)

Seventh turn: Buy:Starspawn Mage; Military: Summon Sea Serpent x2, pick up freespawn and move commander home; Pretender: Build Lab

Note also at this time that i'd seen another 500+ gold in events and had 3 provinces with 6+ dominion (and therefore full luck scales) due to the pretender dominion spread. My prophet was in the last province searching i believe.

Eigth turn: Buy: 2x Starspawn Mage; Military: pick up capitol freespawn/4x sea serpent, capture province; Pretender: Move

I also saw the 3k gold event here.

Ninth turn: repeat 8th except pretender searches, I also see a 1k gold event.

So i ramp out the mages by getting a second fortress early, and getting my luck scales spread fast enough i get good luck-based income.

I also think buying no one was a mistake in turn 3 - i should probably buy a priest... but maybe not.

Also, every mage was put on research for year 1 from the moment i bought them, with the exception of casting Sea Serpents. The aboleth hero showed up by month 6.

I finished year 1 with ~4k unspent gold as well, because i wasn't interested in buying anything but mages.

Edit: 'Commander' is starting Illithid lord, might be off by a turn on some of that.

[Micah]

Illithids are suck, crabs are rawk. (troop-wise, the starspawn mages are also rawk)

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Micah

Illithids are suck, crabs are rawk. (troop-wise, the starspawn mages are also rawk)

Word. My empirical testing seems to support that.

[vfb]

Slave Mages: If you are hiring slave mages to do your N searching, you need to get really lucky during hiring. I've wasted a lot of time and cash as R'lyeh waiting for an N slave mage. I have enough trouble getting an S2 starspawn for being able to cast Returning and escape void gate disasters.

Why crabs are good even though they have 8 attack: They have two attacks, with a 30% and 46% chance of hitting respectively. Morale 14 makes them 75% immune to repel, so against def 10 indies they've got about a 60% chance of scoring a hit. Strength 17 pretty much guarantees a one-hit kill against normal UW indies except shamblers. Protection-14 on the crabs is excellent too, considering what they are up against. They're not going to take much damage from strength-10 spears or even strength-15 dam-0 shambler claws. Add in their nice HP, great morale, and low encumbrance, you've got a great unit.

[TheDemon]

In my opinion there's a more optimal strategy.

Take an awake Ghost King with F4 A4 W3 E3 D4 N2 dom 9. Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Cold 3, Death 3, Luck 3, Magic 0. Exact paths can be whatever really, take out some of the 4s and you can have S3. CBM 1.5 was used. (edit: a non-CBM Ghost King is identical)

Research one turn (thau) or possibly two turns (ench to 1) with your GK, then use him in an attack/search pattern. You can't attack on turn 1, becaues you have to stay away from Ichtyids and Shamblers and you want some friendly dominion out there first. Anything else is fair game, remember to script attack. If you did research buffs, you want Breath of Winter and eventually one prot buff. Call it an SC strategy if you like, but this GK does the exact same work as Squirrellord's sitesearching rainbow.

I haven't experimented greatly with possible recruits on turn 1, but so far it seems to me spending all 400 gold on Crab Hybrids keeps your starting army around for much longer.

I've tried a quick expansion test 3 times, once I had 10 provs by late winter, twice 12, each time I never missed a researcher recruitment or a pretender sitesearch except turn 1. Using this strat you get the sitesearching of a rainbow, you save some dominion cost thanks to starting dom of 2, and you jumpstart your otherwise lethargic expansion better than either of your builds.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by TheDemon

In my opinion there's a more optimal strategy.
Using this strat you get the sitesearching of a rainbow, you save some dominion cost thanks to starting dom of 2, and you jumpstart your otherwise lethargic expansion better than either of your builds.

That hasnt been demonstrated, at all. Run some numbers to the end of year 2. Getting 10 territories was not difficult with the build I announced.

Plus, I *like* the ghost king - but its awfully risky. Getting one bad event - such as the atlantean militia event - and you're toast. Likewise very susceptible to enemy action.

[vfb]

Nice idea! I don't think you want S3 on a non-immortal god though, and it's guaranteed on every single starspawn mage, for complete UW S site-searching.

I'd be tempted to go Dom10 for the extra Awe (and also because every map I play on as a UW nation, it's tough to keep dominion up even with dom10), and F2A3W3E4D2N2, plus Magic-1. Think that would work?

[vfb]

I tried the dom10 Ghost King and had a pretty horrible starting setup, the four provinces bordering my capitol had:

1 - 62 Triton Guards/Troopers
2 - 53 Ichtyid Warriors/Ichtyids
3 - ~50 Ichtyid Warriors/Ichtyids
4 - ~50 Tritons/Sea Trolls

But my GK took out #1 without any trouble. Though I lost most of my starting army and freespawn, my 10 crab warriors prevailed with no losses and finished off #2. And I got 400 gold and Cthugul in turn 2, making this SP game pretty irrelevant in terms of testing. Except I'm now a believer in the ability of the GK to solo.