EA R'lyeh

[dogtools60]

I send tons of lobo guards and slave mages to the surface, I make a few mind slaves, then what? I feel like I am missing an aspect of the nation

[TheMeInTeam]

Use your other units and magic.

[Big Dog]

Cast wish!

[TheMage1]

Well, let's ignore anything that doesn't have an impact above the sea, since the majority of the game happens above the sea in almost all cases.

I'd think that the toad slave guardians with the tridents and armor(with optional helmet) are good units to recruit(or at least not horrible). Lobo guard can be nice, as well as the shambler thralls, and the net mermen, but I'd think those are much more situational.

Androleths are mind blasters, and while they do have armor, they aren't really as good in melee as you want for their price tag. Still, mind blasters are very nice to have, because you can paralyze high defense units.

What you want to do with the slave mages is communion them up, and cast falling frost(Evocation 5).

Androdai have the potential for a death path, and you might be able to take advantage of that with Darkness(Alt 6, D4). They are priest who can communion up, which is a nice thing to take advantage of as well, with fanaticism(Holy 4). They also might be able to be thugs, with their life drain attack, but their low hp, and defense argue against that path. There might also be something to do with mind vessel, and getting high astral, and becoming mindless with that. Otherwise, I'd say just go with slave mages for your recruitment.

The other thing you can do with your mages is go down and utilize astral magic, but that is vulnerable to antimagic, which also shuts down mind blasters as well. While not everyone will have it, it's very hard for you to work around if you don't have something for your mages to do which isn't mr negates(aka falling frost).

Their aboleths are aquatic, and only have 2 miscellaneous slots. The only way to get them above water would be either an amulet of the fish or transform them somehow. You don't have native paths for the amulet of the fish, so you'd want to either have your pretender cast, or empower(presumably getting the gems from voice of Tiamat(conj 5)). As for transforming them, you could cast twiceborn(ench 4, D2), and kill them somehow, but it's not really cost effective to empower them to use the nature based transform spell(though if you do, force them to do it on land, because I've heard aquatic transformations are common).

The other thing you can do with your aboleth type creatures is cast globals and rituals with them, although I'm not sure how effective that is. Mind vessel to boost your Androdai, as well as casting things like vengeful water can be nice to have. There's also summons, but I'm not sure how effective those are as well, since I haven't really experimented with them

Even so, with everything that R'lyeh can do, they still don't really seem like they are really a full nation that can compete fairly with others.

[TheMeInTeam]

Quickness is often better than falling frost. Depending target, so is frozen heart. Water elementals are still good on land.

Your cap mages can mind hunt effectively. You can also twice born abodai with d2 and suicide them so they can go on land. Darkness is a very good spell for you, and bad for most other nations.

In MP you might want a high astral god for global cheesing, but also in case someone wants to make a ton of S1s with pearls scripted to mind hunt your slave mages to gem bait.

[No One]

I overlooked the fact that water elementals have armour-piercing damage.

[Maerlande]

Originally posted by TheMeInTeam:

Quickness is often better than falling frost. Depending target, so is frozen heart. Water elementals are still good on land.

Your cap mages can mind hunt effectively. You can also twice born abodai with d2 and suicide them so they can go on land. Darkness is a very good spell for you, and bad for most other nations.

In MP you might want a high astral god for global cheesing, but also in case someone wants to make a ton of S1s with pearls scripted to mind hunt your slave mages to gem bait.

My last EA R'lyeh game I used slave magi to mind hunt. They can use more penetration items if you empower a Mind Lord in fire (with wd as well) so you can forge runesmashers. I find you tend to have a fair bit of fire gems around from Voice of Tiamat.

[jojeck]

They are a difficult nation to conquer land provinces with but it can be done if you follow their national ability for enslave mind to capture land units and commanders. At the centre of all their land armies should be a communion with masters set up to cast Enslave mind and maybe other astral boosting spells, LotNS and Power of the sphere's and maybe Will of Fates, Doom and Timestop. I would take a dormant rainbow Pretender with an Arcane Finesse bless plus resistances and life/undying.

Slave Mages are fragile, low moral but have useful paths and are amphibious so they make up the basic mage corp often being the communion slaves. The Androdai are recruited from coastal forts and being sacred can use the bless (Use a Bishop Fish to Bless Battlefield). The National spell Mind Vessel is not very good or worth the trouble, just use most of the Androdai as communion masters (or slaves) with boosters giving more astral paths (Enslave mind is S4) and more magic penetration (Runesmasher and Eye of the Void being effective). If you set up a few communion based armies you can soon capture more troops than you lose each battle so reducing your dependency on lobo guards and water recruits. The Androleth units recruited from coasts are mind blasters and they help slow down enemy attacks and the paralysed enemy troops can even be captured later by Enslave Mind.

The Cap only mages can help on land but need an Amulet of the Fish or to be Twiceborned into a Necrodai (an undead Wight version of the Cap mage with only 2 misc slots but being amphibious and retaining many of the abilities of the original including its Enslave mind attack) I haven't used that ability so not sure how well it works on land but twiceborning a size 6 commander costs 30 D gems.

The basis of the land army is a large communion with enough troops to shield the mages and protect against flank attacks and flyers. Recruited troops and summons can add to those enemy converts as well as battle summons (elementals, swarm and skellie spam) generated in the battle.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally posted by Maerlande:

My last EA R'lyeh game I used slave magi to mind hunt. They can use more penetration items if you empower a Mind Lord in fire (with wd as well) so you can forge runesmashers. I find you tend to have a fair bit of fire gems around from Voice of Tiamat.

True, that would get you more pen, because slave mages can actually hold the rune smasher unlike aboleths or mind lords. I was thinking mind lords with misc pen items, but slave mage with rune smasher + eye of void would get more pen and you will suffer less if they catch you with surprise astral mage.

I think I would change my build a lot based on whether or not I'm the only UW nation. I'd want something to win the UW war if there is one, but if not I'd be tempted to take a dormant titan with physmoss/magic phase capability and make it more difficult for people to dislodge from coast. In the latter case, it might be worth buying a couple extra points of nature for recuperation, to benefit both the titan and to put crystal coins on abodai to mind hunt with recuperation available. In the former, you don't have that luxury and probably want to press for UW advantage.

[dogtools60]

@all Thanks for the help, I've been using an imprisoned first spawn with air 1 water 1 earth 4 astral 7 death 2 dom 7 order 2 heat 3 growth 3 luck 2 magic 3
The goal of my god is to make a strong astral 6 androdai and boost to astral 9 for wish if needed. Death 2 is for twiceborn so he can go to land. Air 1 for amulet of the fish for mind lords to visit the surface, and earth 4 for dwarven hammers.
Dwarven hammer opens up Ring of Regeneration.
Bless is Reinvigoration 2, Arcane Command 3, and Arcane Finesse.
It's been working quite fine and I think this will be fine for a long multiplayer game, if you have any suggested changes to this god I'd be glad to hear them.

Originally posted by THE FUN ENDS HERE:

Bless: Regeneration, Arcane Finesse, Superior Morale x4
Resists, MR, reinvig would be great too

The 2 (relevant) commanders who hold bless here are the abodai and androdai, at 12 and 15 mr, are they really that needy for morale?

Also whats penetration and tarpit?

[No One]

MR refers to magic resistance. Penetration is the opposing stat for magic resistance. You can find it on a spell focus (S1), eyes of the void, and rune smashers.*

A tarpit slows them down. A big pile of lobotomized soldiers doesn't cost very much but takes a very long time to wade through. Lets your casters cast with impunity, especially your high-astral little mans who can cast all day without falling asleep.

The morale appears to be for the shrouds of the battle saint. Slave mages have 7 morale.
Secondarily 50 HP is a bad ratio with 12 morale, especially with 6 combat speed and life drain. If your abodai are getting hit you have bigger problems, but you would still prefer they fight back instead of making a futile attempt to flee.

*(Also on stuff you don't really want to risk in battle: rings of sorcery and wizardry.)

[jojeck]

Mind Vessel is an expensive, weak spell with onerous micromanagement and wastes research time (or pearls teleporting) moving units around since it boosts the paths of the Androdai when in the same tile as the Aboleth. So you need to take your aboleth to the Coastal fort or the Androdai to the capital. When they are 3 underwater tiles apart this is significant time wasting of mage turns.

Then the commander with his new mind needs to get into action (we assume that will be on land) so to avoid backtracking through underwater provinces it makes sense to move the Aboleths with Amulet of the fish to the coastal fort and cast the spell there, then use both commanders in your communions / land armies.

In my Dom 4 game many years ago (last time I played this boring nation) I quickly came to the conclusion the pearls were better spent on items boosting the astral mages paths and magic penetration. As far as I can tell the only thing that has changed since then is the new twiceborn form of the Aboleths But that is also very expensive in D gems due to way Twiceborn cost increases with size. The best item to save communion fatigue and boost performance was Banner of the Northern star that boosts the Enslave Mind communions nicely.

[Rovsea]

Not heard it mentioned much, but your Slave Mages can also be communioned up for the big battlefield buff spells, which can be quite useful for your troops. Army of Gold/Lead, Mass Regen, Foul Vapors + Serpent's Blessing, throwing in additional Howl or even Grip of Winter with Frost Fend, these are all options. They're a pretty flexible mage overall.