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

[chrispedersen]

I'm not completely opposed to death - but getting into water as a land nation is pretty difficult already. On the plus side, its points. On the negative side Death3 kills population as fast as your dreamlands it seems. And it costs you 9% compounded income.

The difference is really between year 2 and year 3.

I also don't like so many paths on a kraken;
D/S/N: in combination with VoT gives you a complete search.

More tests!

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

I'm not completely opposed to death - but getting into water as a land nation is pretty difficult already. On the plus side, its points. On the negative side Death3 kills population as fast as your dreamlands it seems. And it costs you 9% compounded income.

The difference is really between year 2 and year 3.

I also don't like so many paths on a kraken;
D/S/N: in combination with VoT gives you a complete search.

More tests!

Well, your dreamlands + Death 3 should be spreading to land with you as well. I agree, water shouldn't need so much extra discouragement, but discouraging your opponent from pushing you back into the sea is a plus in my book.

One note on Kraken vs. GK - GK is land capable out of the box, which, since crab hybrids appear to be better value for your money than just about any other normal troop, gives you early expansion capability on both land and sea.

[chrispedersen]

Why are you so opposed to illithid?
8 Illithids will paralyze 3 usual troops every turn. You hang out in the back with all your troops - they ahve paralyzed 10 troops by the time combat is joined.

The same illithids, in combat will paralyze 3 - allowing your chaff troops (atk values 8) to *hit* them.

Additionally, your illithids ROCK against kraken, and are land capable.

[Radio_Star]

Kraken paths are initially 40 and GK are 20 IIRC, -but- the Kraken's initial cost is zero. We'd do well establish the ideal paths for the pretender 1st and then establish which pretender can provide those paths with the best combat effectiveness

[chrispedersen]

So, I've tried 9 games or so through year 2.

Gk with Air1-2 W6, D3-4 is fairly hardy.
Underwater defense of about 21, ethereal, awe, plus high defense.

To go above water, able to cast air shield - and he gains 3 defense, so usually at 25 after first star.
Ghost King has the additional advantage that he can sneak into a territory to improve dominion.

All that being said, I cannot reliably get more than 10 territories. An early lucky hit cripples the ghost king.

The kraken with E5 reliably gets 15 territories. However, has a much harder time expanding onto land *or* getting into the second waters. D5 much the same - however was lowered almost to death several times.

I'm tempted to try a e3s3 kraken.

I definitely do not like death3. With d3, my income is roughly 220 per turn - I am often not getting enough random luck events to build a mage.

With growth2, even without luckevents I have enough money.

[13lackGu4rd]

warning: major thread necromancy!

now that we're done with that, this is still the only real guide I've found for LA R'lyeh(as opposed to the MA/LA R'lyeh guide on wiki which Squirrelloid refers to) so I'm resurrecting this thread. now that CBM 1.6 has become the standard, thus clams are no longer an option, pearls aren't as easy to get as they used to be, which greatly effects your late game strategy Imho, as you can't get as many wishes and stuff as you've been used to. also you don't need all those nature mages for clam forging, only 1-2 for manual searching UW provinces for free forts.

a common thing in both your guide and chrispedersen's opinions is that you both agree that R'lyeh has a hard time expanding early on. to solve that I always an SC pretender seems like the best choice. now LA R'lyeh only as 3 solid SC Chastises that can expand safely right from the get go(even blindly on turn 1), those are the Wyrm, Octopus and Void Lord(not Lurker). out of these 3 only the Void Lurker starts with any magic, and unfortunately it's S+W which R'lyeh gets plenty of on its Starspawn Mages, however the other 2 lose their usefulness very very fast(basically once initial indy expansion is over). the Void Lord, while not having terribly useful paths, is still a solid SC and has all slots so he can be useful later on as well, and of course S is great for SCs, however it comes at a very high price of 125 DPs. fortunately for you, your build gives you plenty of DPs, even going with M3, so you can afford to put quite a bit of magic on an awake Void Lord with Dom9(10 is just overkill). with the Void Lord to help you expand, and to be a nice warning flag for potential invaders, you improve your early game by a lot while still keeping your pretender useful all the way to the late game, which in my book is worth the extra design points. but no, you won't have your rainbow pretender. I do have a unique alternative to it though, that will solve some(not all) of the problems which the rainbow pretender would have solved.

this guide does a good job of abusing your harmful dominion. I've been wondering about another way that could do it very well, and that I've never actually seen used before. I'm thinking of rushing to Evo6 before anything else, this opens up Mind Hunt very early on(but no Mind Burn/Soul Slay yet) but it also opens up a seemingly devastating global that you're in a perfect position to abuse. yes I'm talking about Strands of Arcane Power! assuming I understand its description perfectly(started a SP game with LA R'lyeh to test it in action, will report the results when I get to that point), it's easily achievable with S7(easily reachable on your Void Lord) and 40 pearls(easily achievable by just capital income, you probably won't get it in year 1, so you'll have the pearls). in return you get free site searching in all your provinces as well as free magic duels(I assume, as opposed to Mind Hunts) throughout your dominion, which your S7(or 8/9 to be extra safe) pretender should easily win against anything but an S9 Oracle... so you're basically delaying your gem income but once you get it(most probably somewhere in year 2) you'll get everything searched at once, and in the process saving the gems that would otherwise be used for remote searching or pretender turns(if rainbow) used for manual searching while using your pretender for much needed early expansion instead. also it means that there shouldn't be any opposing astral mages in your dominion unless it's an enemy S9 pretender, so you can safely Mind Hunt the remainder of his commanders without risk.

now, all this is under the assumption that Strands of Arcane Power actually works that way, both in terms of magic duels vs Mind Hunts as well as the site searching being all at once vs random provinces and that "mage power" refers to astral level, not level in each specific path. a lot of assumptions, which is why I'm wondering(and in the process of testing) about it, not claiming it's a fact, yet. almost sounds too good to be true and the fact that I haven't seen it used yet might mean I'm way too optimistic about it, on the other hand my MP career is very short so it could have been used successfully and I just don't know about it...

but anyway, great guide, and still the only guide for LA R'lyeh, good job on it Squirrelloid, and hopefully you'll update it a bit to take into account the changes CBM 1.6 brought. and heck, if Strands of Arcane Power actually works the way I think it does, than I think LA R'lyeh is the perfect nation to abuse it to the core

[chrispedersen]

I'm not at all impressed by strands.

[BlanketThief]

Originally Posted by 13lackGu4rd

...
now, all this is under the assumption that Strands of Arcane Power actually works that way, both in terms of magic duels vs Mind Hunts as well as the site searching being all at once vs random provinces and that "mage power" refers to astral level, not level in each specific path. a lot of assumptions, which is why I'm wondering(and in the process of testing) about it, not claiming it's a fact, yet. almost sounds too good to be true and the fact that I haven't seen it used yet might mean I'm way too optimistic about it, on the other hand my MP career is very short so it could have been used successfully and I just don't know about it...

...

Tested it a short while ago, the site-searching function just relies on the paths the mage has (And searches up to level-3), so a 1AEFWDENB 9S pretender would be ideal to maximize strands. Hopefully saved you some time testing it

[13lackGu4rd]

well, that sucks, makes this sort of strategy completely unreliable for site searching purposes, and will probably still require voice of tiamat, in which case a rainbow pretender would just be better...

still wondering about the offensive capabilities, cause feeblemind is usually the bane of mind hunters, but with magic duel it shouldn't cause feeblemind if you meet another astral mage, instead it should destroy him with your superior astral level. however, if it does function like mind hunt somehow, than it purely sucks...

[BlanketThief]

Originally Posted by 13lackGu4rd

well, that sucks, makes this sort of strategy completely unreliable for site searching purposes, and will probably still require voice of tiamat, in which case a rainbow pretender would just be better...

still wondering about the offensive capabilities, cause feeblemind is usually the bane of mind hunters, but with magic duel it shouldn't cause feeblemind if you meet another astral mage, instead it should destroy him with your superior astral level. however, if it does function like mind hunt somehow, than it purely sucks...

From what I've heard it functions like a mind-hunt in the sense that it's MR-negates (Except it's worse then a mind-hunt due to penetration boosters not affecting it) but other then that it's a magic-duel with the penalty for losing is gaining the feeblemind affliction, assuming I'm understanding your question correctly.