Noob's shot at an R'lyeh AAR

[CharonJr]

Hello,

I am still a Dom noob (but I have been playing strategy games for close to 20years now), and since reading the AARs around here – and the resulting discussions – has given me a lot of valueable ideas about this game I want to start an AAR of my own. This seems to be the best way to improve my gaming without actually jumping into the shark-pool of MP.

Since I am a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft I have decided to play R’lyeh for this AAR, despite the advice that R’lyeh is already one of the better analysed races in Dom.

I am not trying to develope a killer-strategy here, but am mainly looking for basic advice on how to improve my gaming/how to go about/improve implementing my strategy. So any advice is welcome

I am no great writer – even less in a language which is not my native one – and because of this I will keep the style of this AAR pretty straightforward.

Due to having some water and not being to large (and due to being somewhat familiar with it) I decided to take the Aran map with 9 additional (random) races for a fairly fast paced game.

Since having read more than once that the AI is having difficulties with playing against Ermor I decided to keep them inactive.

Since I am a noob I think that normal AI is challenging enough for me at the moment :

Indi-strenght will depend on the other races I am getting. E.g. if Atlantis is not in the game I will take an indi-setting of 9 in order to make me either having to fight very hard vs. all those flying Tritons in order to rule the seas of forcing me to head towards land fairly early.

Setup:

Pretender creation

First I had to decide what kind of pretender I want to play and since I like magic and want to have decent scales and dominion I decided on a Void Lurker whos main job should be helping with research, casting ritual spells and forging items for the decent mages of R’lyeh. The inherent research skill of 5 and the fairly cheap access to new magic path of the Void Lurker made him my main choice. The initial dominion of 2 is nothing to really brag about, but it could have been worse. I just had to name him Cthulhu, despite him being doomed to immobility in his Void Lurker body

Since R’lyeh seems to be fairly dependent on money I took Order-3 for 120 of my 500 points.

Due to the nice positive random event a Luck-scale of 3 might provide I chose to get this one for the next 120 points (money random events being the main reason, but gems, magic items and Last but not least the nice R’lyeh heroes being additional benefits).

Since I like magic and R’lyeh seems to be fairly strong in the field of magic I decided to take Magic-3 for 120 points as my next scale. This should enable me to climb the research tree fairly fast and utilise the powers of my pretender and my mages.

I still needed to raise my dominion to an acceptable level, but since I have already burned 360 of my 500 points I decided to pick a fortress next.

With R’lyeh just having 3 choices and the Kelp Fortress looking fairly weak/the Dark Citadel being fairly expensive to build in addition to taking 4 turns too build, I decided on spending the 80 points in order to get the Kelp Citadel with its fairly good values.

With just 60 points left and a lowly dominion of 2 I needed some more points to spend. I think that there are mainly 2 choices for negative scales with R’lyeh. Either Sloth due to not being overly dependant on production for the main units or the heat/cold scale since at least in the oceans there would be no negative effect form it.

Since I didn’t know if the Atlanteans would be in this fight, forcing me to head towards land provinces while I gather the strength to deal with them and due to me thinking that potentially wasted taxes/supplies on land are worse than reduced production I chose Sloth-1 which gave me 40 additional points to spend.

I decided against taking more than Sloth-1 or any Heat/Cold in addition to it since I want to be able to be change my strategy according to the needs without being too severely hampered my my setup decisions. To semi-quote Clausewitz here: “No plan survives the first contact with the enemy.”

100 points left with a dominion of 2 is nothing to really write home about, too, but since a new magic path costs 15 points each and I could get my dominion up to 6 by spending 70 points I decided to burn those points and only being able to pick 2 new paths. The rest would have to be gotten by empowering my pretender. Since my pretender and the R’lyeh mages all having 3 astral getting some decent gem income via Acashic Record will not be too hard once I am able to forge some Clams of Pearl.

Due to my mages already being skilled in astral and water and with the usefulness of nature rituals and earth being useful for forging items I decided to spend my Last 30 points in getting a fairly cheap start in those paths. This way I am not dependent on one of my mages randomly getting those paths, too.

I plan to set up a decent blood economy, too, but since I have a little bit more control about blood income than I have about gem income, I decided against getting a point in bllod during setup.

Death would have been nice, too since I mainly plan to rely on summons for my heavy hitters (due to low upkeep), but by the time I get enough death gems I hope to have at least one mage with a skill in death.

With all points spend it was time to set up the actual game.

The random races I got were:

Pythium, Ulm, Arcoscephale, Abysia, Pangaea, Marignon, Jotunheim, C’tis, Atlantis (argh, there goes my potential advantage of being the only water race) and Man.

Being unable to decide between an indi-setting of 5-7 I chose to randomize that one, too and got 6. The other settings were left unchanged.


With just my noob knowledge about the races I got I am not able to make a real strategic plan at this point since a lot will depend on my starting position and the proximity of the other races. Surely with Atlantis in the fray they will be my major concern.

My priorities at the moment are:

- trying to get some rich provinces for additional income
- fast research (still have not made up my mind in which direction, items/site-finding or battle support)
- setting up void summons ASAP

Ok, now it is time to take a look a my initial position and making up my mind about the research.

CharonJr

To be continued...

[IKerensky]

Well Sloth 1 could be a bit tricky, as the better Version of the illithid are definitely the armored one and your low administration underwater castle just never seems able to field enough.

Anyway good luck on your AAR, have a great game.

[fahdiz]

CharonJr, I'm excited to read your AAR and I'm sure it will give me some good insight for when I finally receive my copy of the game (Friday of this week ). Will you be going one-post-per-turn? Or will you be consolidating?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by IKerensky:
Well Sloth 1 could be a bit tricky, as the better Version of the illithid are definitely the armored one

I disagree that the armored ones are best. R'lyeh has resource issues no matter what scales you take, and the armored ones aren't, IMO, worth the expense. Plus their limited strategic movement will hurt you later on. The strategy for keeping illithids alive is not in using armored ones but in finding magical means to defend them on the battlefield, and in putting other (disposable) troops between them and the enemy.

Thus the arguments over R'lyeh begin ...

[ February 11, 2004, 22:36: Message edited by: Arryn ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by IKerensky:
Well Sloth 1 could be a bit tricky, as the better Version of the illithid are definitely the armored one and your low administration underwater castle just never seems able to field enough.

The armored Illithids suffer from being strategic move 1, however, which almost makes them not worth it, because it'll be that much more difficult to get them to the front lines. Also, I think their mindbLast attack is actually weaker, doing only 10 instead of 12, IIRC.

[gibson]

I'd imagine that luck 3 scale will come in handy with void summoning as well. I know at least in a game I played with Ry'leh with a misfortune scale, I never saw anything useful from that gate, so I imagine they are correlated somehow.

Also, how do you randomize your opponents/settings? I'm too indecisive to choose and usually just click a bunch semi-randomly, but thats a pain when I just want a "quick-start" option to try out a strategy idea.

[CharonJr]

Turn 1

Treasury: 400
Income: 212
Upkeep: 23
Resources: 72

Water gems: 2 (+2)
Astral gems: 3 (+3)

My starting position is province #10 – being the most SE water province on the Aran map this presents me with a tough choice to make:

Should I try to grab the sweet looking farmlands of Gol Phalas (26) right to the NE or Dunheim (28) to the north without waiting for any intel about it in order to try to get a headstart, send my scout there or wait one turn for the standard intel while sending my scout westwards into the only neighbouring sea-province of Devourer (6) in order to see if Atlantis is starting close to me.

For the moment I decide to play it safe, send my scout to the west and build up my army one more turn while I get some rough intel about the farmlands.

Since I want to get my summon-program up and running as fast as possible I decide to recruit a Starspawn for 150 gold in order to send him to the void gate on the next turn.

Due to not (or always, depending on point of view) being short on resources, but short on money I decide to get 3 Illithid Soldiers for my future expeditionary forces/summoner guards and 2 Shambler Thralls instead of the better Crab Hybrids since I don’t know if I will stay in the water or head for land next. This leaves me with 30 gold.

In order to protect my summoner I decide to research Thaumaturgy first (level 1 in Thaum will give me the ability to cast Returning if my summoner gets attacked from the Void).

CharonJr

To be continued...

[CharonJr]

Fahdiz,

mainly I will try to post once for each turn, maybe I will consolidate some turns later on if there should be a lull in the game, but mainly I want to give a step by step account of what I am doing and why I am doing it.

This way I have the best possibilities to get some detailed feedback about what I am doing.


Concerning the Illithids,

I will switch between both actually. I will try to keep the unarmored ones (which I mainly plan on using) out of fights with fliers and recruit the armored ones when I got excess ressources.

The point about the unarmored ones having potentially a better mind-bLast is very interesting, too and might push me even further towards them.

Mainly I plan to use the armored ones at first while I research the magic I need to protect the unarmored ones later on.

IMO the better strategic movement will get more important in the later stages of the game than it is at the beginning.


Gibson,

I think I read in some threads that there seems to be no correlation between luck-scales and summons - just pure luck - but having luck-3 surely can't hurt summoning

I randomized using the randomize function in Excel configured for the maximum number of wanted results. But throwing dice should work nicely, too. AFAIK there is no means to randomly choose a certain number of opponents in the game itself.

Thank you for the feedback

CharonJr

[AStott]

Originally posted by gibson:
Also, how do you randomize your opponents/settings? I'm too indecisive to choose and usually just click a bunch semi-randomly, but thats a pain when I just want a "quick-start" option to try out a strategy idea.

I do it by grabbing a number of six sided dice equal to how many opponents I want. Then I throw them all at once. Then I order them from top to bottom, left to right (similar to how provinces are numbered). Then I count down a number of races from the top equal to the first die. That's my first computer opponent. Then I continue counting from there for the second die, etc. I (of course) skip over races that have already been picked, and when I hit the bottom of the list, I skip back to the top and keep counting. It works pretty well, but an in-game random selection would sure be nice...

[CharonJr]

Turn 2

I only got 2 Messages on this turn. Ulm declaring its commander prophet and Jotunheim declaring its herse as a prophet.

Treasury: 199
Income: 176
Upkeep: 43
Resources: 72

Water gems: 4 (+2)
Astral gems: 6 (+3)

Hmm, interesting, I have not noticed this one before. Is it normal that my actual income is going down without havning unrest between turns 1 and 2 ? On turn 1 I still had 212, now I am down to 176 without any special events that I am aware of.

I don’t really like what I see on the map when I get to it. I have received no intel at all about the potential income of the surrounding provinces, but I can see a black candle in one of them.

Concerning the surrounding provinces I have the following informations about potential troop strengths (from west to east):

Devourer (6) – 40 Trition Troopers and Triton Guards – Sea - Scout report
Tiash (15) – 40 Militias and Heavy Infantries – Forest/Swamp – general intel – Heat 2
Dershid (20) – 50 Tribal Warriors and Tribal Archers – Plains – general intel
Dunheim (28) – 30 Light and Heavy Infantries – Farm Lands – general intel
Gol Phalas (26) – 50 Militias, Longbowman and Knights – Farm Lands – general intel
Vepitre (14) – 80 Tribal Warriors and Tribal Archers – Plains – general intel – Black Candle1, Order1, Magic1
Kolermegor (5) – 50 Crossbowman, Militias and Heavy Infantry – Forest – general intel

I decide to modify my army a little bit. Since the leadership of my commander is just at 25, but I currently have 30 troops I swamp some of the initial slave troopers for the newly bought Illithid Soldiers and Shambler Thralls.

The 5 slave troopers are going to guard my summoner. With some lucky hits they might even be able to offer him a little bit of protection, but I will not count on it.

The 3 Illithid Soldiers are etting their own squad and are put at the leftmost end of the battlefield, together with the commander.

The 2 Shambler Thralls are set up together with the 20 slave guards for now. I hope they might be able to bolster the guards moral a little bit this way. This squad is put on hold and attack closest. They are set up as a screen in front of the commander and his little mindbLaster squad.

Due to the setup I should be able to get some turns of mindbLasting in vs. Slower opponents before my own troops are getting into melee range.

Due to the low protection (2) of the slave troopers and their long weapons (length 4) they are mainly useful as a kind of “one shot troops”. If the ememy is not routing after the initial assault I will likely lose a lot of my troopers and might rout myself due to moral.

I need a slow enemy with small troopers and short weapons fairly small numbers in order to maximise the effect of my mindbLasts, tramplers and my own troopers.

The Tritons look like a fairly bad enemy at this stage, their speed being the main concern here, but the length of their weapons is another thing to take into account.

This is forcing me to focus on the land provinces.

Since generating new income is one of my main goals I first consider the 2 farm land provinces. My intel about them is not very reliable, but the 30 light infantry in Dunheim are surely sounding MUCH better than 50 militias, longbowmen (yuck) and knights (yuck, too) in Gol Phalas.

On the other hand Gol Phalas is right next Vepitre, the province with the enemy dominion, so maybe I will see enemy troops around there soon. But since I seriously doubt that I am able to take Gol Phalas and there are some chances that the AI might fail to take it, too, I decide to send my army for Dunheim at the moment. In addition there are 2 more farm lands a little bit north of Dunheim, which would be a nice addition for my empire.

I would have prefered to be able to wait a bit more before attacking, but with a fairly crowded map speed of expansion is looking even more important now than it normally is.

The summoner (having 1 random skill in blood) is send to the Void Gate despite his bodyguards most likely not being strong enough to defend him if he gets attacked, but I have decided that I will try to take my chances here in order to get a fast start in summoing.

My pretender is continuing his research in R’lyeh and I should get Thaum 1 at the beginning of the next turn.

Due to potential routing of my attacking army and wanting to climb the research tree as fast as possible I decide on recruiting a Star Child and 2 more Illithid Soldiers before I run out of gold (14 left, 27 production).

Mercenaries are no option at the moment – simple right now, because I am still confinded to the ocean – but I am not sure if I will try to enlist some in the future, due to the AI not bidding aggressively enough for them they seem to be a fairly huge advantage for a human player. I think I will decide on using them by the level of my desperation

CharonJr

To be continued...

Edit: Forgot to mention that I send my scout to Tiash in order to get additional information about the troops there since the oceans are fairly blocked to me at the moment due to the tritons.

[ February 12, 2004, 07:15: Message edited by: CharonJr ]