Suggestion: LE Ryleh - Dreamlands

TirAsleen · #1 March 25th, 2007, 10:22 AM

Disdvantages:
- Insane units preferable your own are affected as its based on your dominion
- Death dominion, usually requires growth3 scale also to feed your freespawns
- Upkeep for a lot of chaff

Advantages:
- Spawning void creatures where your dominion spreads
- Probably still good gem income in home province and powerful mages in LA, what is rare.
- Multiple Prophets

Why do i get the feeling i am still better off with MA Ryleh?

2 Changes would make them more playable and fun:

1. Freespawns should not cost upkeep. How should they use it? They are controlled by the void and insane, and it really hurts economy of Ryleh a lot, more so than just zealots for Ashen Empire through a luck event. Freespawns are very weak chaff too.

2. Starspawns and all ilithids should never get insane by the Dreamland dominion. Again, it does not make sense, they are not from this world and are more like void creatures themselves with a high mind.
Insaneness is more a disadvantage for Ryleh, it affects mainly you, cause it affects your dominion and that is if course in your lands not in the enemy land. Playing with low dominion is not a solution. When other nations can always have a high dominion to drive yours out. So, time to give them more advantages cause the disadvantages are clearly bigger right now. Insaneness just is a hassle and load of work -e.g. to put back some researchers on research- after they get insane, they cancel prior orders too.

I think at least those 2 changes should be quickly applied to them to make them more playable and fun.

Jazzepi · #2 March 25th, 2007, 10:29 AM

I remember someone noticing earlier that insane units can declare themselves prophet. Perhaps this command could be tied to luck somehow.

It'd be awesome to have a whole army of prophetic insane people spreading your awful dominion all over the map.

Jazzepi

TirAsleen · #3 March 25th, 2007, 10:57 AM

Yes, thanks for the hint, i did forget to mention that advantage. Thats definatly irritating to the other player at least. However more prophets do not acummulate more dominion points it seems. They truly spread more dominion? Never tested it precisely.

Still very annyoing to have many free spawns to pay for and they eat a lot too. Order3 and postive growth scales seems always to be required.

Maybe Devs can make it so that insane own commanders do not forget their prior orders after they get back their sanity, its a hassle to give them each other round all the same orders. Especially mean researchers here. Ryleh also needs a lot of bag of wines, meaning nature path and gems to feed their troops and ilithid army or they quickly starve. Problem here, they do not have any nature path mages, so you have to get them on a land province where they are common as recruits. Or use Slave mage, but they seem not to get often nature magic.

Still, the upkeep and supply demands for freespawns is somewhat depressing as they really cost and eat a lot as they spawn in huge numbers after a while.

Sombre · #4 March 25th, 2007, 11:19 AM

You can fix a lot of this via modding. Personally I think freespawns with very low upkeep would be somewhat overpowering, but each to their own.

TirAsleen · #5 March 25th, 2007, 11:53 AM

They still eat a lot hardly overpowered. You played with them? Ryleh freespawns are incredible weak, its not like with Ashen Empire where you get better freespawns with good morale. And a lot of aquatic freespawns won't help much, just drain upkeep. + no easy way to kill them off except pillaging a province and let them starve to death. The freespawn for Ryleh are just meat shields and are here to protect your Ilithid artillery. They do not work on their own. I play this game with a friend with indie strenght9 on 100+ provinces maps.

Meglobob · #6 March 25th, 2007, 11:59 AM

Quote:

TirAsleen said:
They still eat a lot not overpowered. And a lot of aquatic freespawns won't help much, just drain upkeep. + no easy way to kill them off except pillaging a province and let them starve to death.

I have never played Ryleh but could you not take misfortune 3 and then use up the freespawns on the rebellions you get or is misfortune a very bad idea with Ryleh?

TirAsleen · #7 March 25th, 2007, 12:04 PM

Missfortune seems always a bad idea, its really the least thing i pick. You don't get heroes and no gem events, your temples and laboratories are going to be razed by raze events. But i never tried missfortune3 with Ryleh, iam scarred by missfortune3.

The maps i play are not big and my dominion is usually high set. I do that with BF ulm theme where i can have fortunetellers, but rather prefere good events that give additional gold and gems.

Shovah32 · #8 March 25th, 2007, 03:11 PM

Taking misfortune is a bad idea when your going to end up with very small population...

Folket · #9 March 27th, 2007, 05:45 AM

I do not think LA R'lyeh are as terrible as you say. I have played them in one MP so far and I thought people would die off to fast for national armies to matter much, which was a terrible mistake.

R'lyeh dominion do kill off people but at a far slower rate then Ashen Empire. My test show that dominion kills about 0.1% per step. Each step on growth/death is 0.2%. So for the price of slowly killing your pop you get free chaff with very low upkeep. My test showed that upkeep is about 1 gold for each 20 free spawns. That is very low upkeep. Upkeep for most troops are 2 gold for 3 units, and 1 gold for 2 militia.

Also your illithids are resistant to insanity. They do get insane but not as much as other commanders. My tests also show that your god seem to be immune to insanity.

In general LA R'lyeh should be played like MA R'lyeh, just that later on you should stop building lobo guards when you have enough free spawns.

A build that could work for R'lyeh is
Wyrm E3
Dominion 10
order 3
sloth 3
cold 3
growth 3
misfortune 1
magic 1

growth 1/fortune 1 could also work. This build is to assure fast expansion. If there is plenty of water, then a dormant god with order 3, fortune 3 and lower dominion should work fine.

Edi · #10 March 27th, 2007, 06:21 AM

The Dreamlands freespawns have a gold cost of 1, some of them may have gold cost of 2. That means that in general every 15 freespawn costs 1 upkeep. It cannot get cheaper than that and still have upkeep.

Supply multipliers can be adjusted on a per game basis from the game options unless I remember wrong, and in any case it can be adjusted via mod so that you do not run out of supplies.

I do not see a need to alter LE R'lyeh in the manner suggested, because the request seems to stem from a particular type of game and the parameters probably do not apply universally.