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

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So, after one year, using the GK god, I've got 19 provinces, including one extra fort, where I've built a lab. I can now Haruspex (and soon Tiamat) the oceans to the right of my capitol. I got a chest wound on the GK from Ichtyids, and weakened by a shambler, but my GK isn't needed for expanding now.

It took forever as usual for me to get an S2, but I finally did last month, and now I feel safe venturing into the Void Gate.

Indies were pretty rough, with three big troll provinces, lots of Ichtyids, and pretty big populations in the other indies. I managed to blow up most of my east crab army on some amber clan tritons right at the end of my expansion, and still take the province. Nice, since it was going to be a long walk home.

I researched Enchant-1, Alt-1, Thau-1, Conj, Thau-2 (when I found my fort and decided to build a lab), Conj.

On the turn I was going to get Alt-1, I took a chance and scripted:
(Breath of Winter, Cast a spell, hold *3, attack)

And very nicely the AI cast Barkskin, which was what I had hoped for.

[thejeff]

You don't use the Void Gate at all, until you've got Returning?

It's random of course, but I got some nice stuff out of it in several runs through the first year. Only lost a priest once.
Is the chance of losing a Starspawn priest such a high price to pay?

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I had one game where every single turn early on, my Void Gate mage got eaten. Since then I've refused to allow mages in without then having passed an 'S2' qualification exam. I usually get Returning way before I get an S2 mage. It's only Thau-1.

By keeping my Void Gate mages alive, they also build up better summoning skill. I guess I'm missing out on some early summons, but I'd have to sacrifice more early research for a commander to shuffle the summons about, in any case.

[chrispedersen]

VFB, why not Pots + returning even on a 1 s priest?

But usually, I'll just give him 5 body guards, and that will do the trick often enough to be worth the 150 gp until I can get him returning.

[Radio_Star]

If you wanted to pursue a Combat/Rainbow pretender, I'd consider a dom 9 Kraken. Using the GK scales, you can pull 5 paths at 3 and 1 path at 4. You lose slots and (temporarily) amphibious ability, but gain an amazing amount of combat potential. There's absolutely no indie that could possibly faze you and you retain some usefulness later with various buffs (see Baalz's MA Atlantis guide for Kraken nastiness).

[chrispedersen]

I actually agree with the last poster that the kraken is an absolutely great pretender for underwater expansion.

As I suspected, due to geography in milkshake, I was unable to get more than 15 provinces, year one with Ghost King.

Year 2, I actually ended up significantly behind my lurker build. I think a lot will actually depend on how likely it is that someone is going to attack you in the water; and whether there are remote water provinces or not.

With Death3 on the GK build, my capital had 10K pop at the end of year 1.

With Growth +1 (Lurker build) I had 21+K. Its not only a significant difference in income, but the difference in afflictions / old age on your slave mages is pretty significant.

Also, subjectively you get different luck events.

Also, with the GK: I prefer to prophetize the scout, and send the scout and the GK off on their merry way. However, he does tend to go crazy a bit by the end of year one.

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Originally Posted by chrispedersen

VFB, why not Pots + returning even on a 1 s priest?

But usually, I'll just give him 5 body guards, and that will do the trick often enough to be worth the 150 gp until I can get him returning.

PoTS is Conj-3. If I don't have an S2 by then, it's a sign the RNG just absolutely hates me. Besides, if you go PoTS-Returning, you need to give the Void Gate dabbler 6 pearls, because you can get attacked in the Void Gate and also become lost all in the same turn. I'd prefer just to spend 4 keeping them alive.

Bodyguards in the Void Gate usually just means dead bodyguards for me.

[Radio_Star]

I just ran an expansion test using a Dom 9 Kraken F2A3E3D3N3 with full negative scales except Luck 3 and Magic 3. 1st year ended with 16 provinces and 9 gems per turn. Kraken attacks a province a turn out of the gate, while your starting income goes to Meteorite Guards as resources permit and Shambler Thralls! Prophetize your starting commander and on turn 2, give him the guards and thralls and hit a land province. The Kraken continued to take provinces and I started recruiting Starspawn mages until I got 2 with picks I liked (2W) and sent them out searching behind the Kraken to snag the W and S sites it would miss. I kept cranking Meteorites and Shamblers for a couple turns until my prophet swung back home, grabbed them and took a few more land provinces.

I kept expanding until I ran out of indies and at end of year two I had: 27 provinces, 4 fort/lab/temple including my cap (none of which were sites). I was a little slow on gathering research (Conj 4, Evo 2, Cons. 6 and Thau 1) but was cranking out 335 RP a turn by the end of year two. Gem-wise, I only spent gems on site searching, an empowerment for clams (I had forged 1 clam by end of year 2) and a hammer. I had 238 gems in the bank and 31 gems per turn coming in. I supplemented the Kraken/Starspawn searching with Tiamats, Arcane Probing and Dark Knowledge. I also ended year two with 31 Starspawn mages and 11 Starspawn priests.


My conclusions from this test: Early expansion should not be done in a conquer/search/conquer/search pattern. My opinion is that the pretender should carve a straight line and then, lacking new lands to conquer, turn around and site search his own tracks. Taking provinces quickly means more money sooner which means more forts, labs, mages, research and troops sooner. I also think that your national troops are viable for, and should be made all throughout, your entire expansion. The combination of a handful of Meteorites to soak an initial rush and shamblers to dish damage (supplemented later with small amount of freespawn chaff) makes for rapid expansion on land and water both. The last consideration towards shambler thralls over crab hybrids is you can suicide the thralls in your first war to avoid paying the upkeep. That's much harder to do with aquatic hybrids.

I also think that the combination of Magic 3 and Luck 3 is invaluable for the boost in random gem income. Like the expansion test Chris posted earlier, I had no death gem income whatsoever from pretender searches and Tiamats, but I was able to blow the 30+ death gems I had gotten through events on Dark Knowledges until I rolled up a small death income.

Prophetizing your starting commander and heading immediately to land lets you snag a small chunk of land and firmly entrench your dominion in it. I don't expect the idea of starting an early shooting war with Ryleh over a few dominion-addled provinces rather than just focusing on checking their dominion is a good proposition. Unless everyone decides to obliterate you because you're Ryleh, but then hey .. what's a be-tentacled encephalophage to do?

[chrispedersen]

After doing a few of these tests, I am convinced that one really does need a starting pretender - but not for the obvious reasons.
Fragility - or variability. Its simply not much fun to go through the hassle of setup and be completely nuked by aa luck event.

I'd also like to see LA-R get a little bit of mod love, if only for attention to pretenders.


Out of 10 tests, I got ruinous luck events in 4 games, even with Luck +3. Ruinous as in: destroy the lab in your capitol. Disease your pretender. Your prophet goes insane.

I'd like to propose that we standardize R. tests. I think the Milkshake map, with R starting location the middle of the eastern water is a good test.

I run with default difficulty, and 8 difficult AI's. Cap taxes at 100 except in capital.

I agree with you radio - that the god should be taking territories, *not* searching, until such time as taking territories is not feasible. Contrary to general play, I do like to go in a concentric circle with my pretender, as this does allow a ferry of troops, if necessary. It also lets you fight in dominion which keeps your hp higher.

But if you are going to do that, why not skip the elemental paths entirely and either follow him with a w3s3 or a w2n1. FFFFFSSSS allows you to claim more territory and backfll, wherease FsFs enhances gem production and is more efficient gem searching.

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With the default sites in the game, you just need to search these paths underwater:
F1A3E3W3S3D2N2H1. You might want to adjust your Kraken's paths to take this into account, if you can afford it. It's better to wait for a W3S3 rather than manually search with a W2, because then you can skip casting Tiamat on the province later.

The advantages of conquer/search/conquer/search are (1) it's more efficient than conquer/conquer/.../conquer/search/move/search/move/search, because you skip the 'moves'; (2) you find your UW forts much earlier; (3) you can get earlier gem income; (4) you buff your HP by sitting in higher dominion before venturing off; (5) your newly taken provinces have your positive luck scales. With horrible scales, most of your income will be from your capitol in any case.

I don't like Shambler Thralls much because I think you need a critical mass to steamroll opponents or they take too many losses, and you're not going to be able to take Shambler or Sea Troll provinces with them.