R'yleh? - edited

[Tex Pete]

Anyone got any good ideas? I think I like the R'yleh concept the best, but I'm having trouble putting together a victory strategy. Please pick your brain for any tips you might have!

[ January 12, 2004, 03:54: Message edited by: Tex Pete ]

[Hana]

As far as battle strategies go using a combination of illithids (I prefer the cheaper ones that are less resource intensive and only use mind bLasts) and shambler thralls and/or lobo guards seems to work wonders on most armies. Just be sure to protect the illithids with other (preferably mindless) units.

If you plan on using the void gate frequently then be sure to use Starspawn priests to do the summonings. Since they sometimes get attacked (by both the monsters they may summon and an occassional horror) you may want to arm them with a few items, or better yet set their battle orders to retreat, though I'm not sure if you can retreat from a botched void gate summoning. A magically strong pretender might be in order as well, since most if not all of the void gate summons I've seen are sacred troops. I'd also recommend periodically assigning a different priest to void gate duty. That way if one goes insane or dies from an attack you'll have another priest with a decent summoning skill.

Choose a Wyrm to use to expand early (immune to poison, high hp, regenerates and most of the indeps in the sea are tritons) without magic and pick primarily scales.

You can get an early foothold on the land using Illithids, get and take a few provinces on land while your wyrm beats down the seas.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Tex Pete:
Anyone got any good ideas? I think I like the R'yleh concept the best, but I'm having trouble putting together a victory strategy. Please pick your brain for any tips you might have!

There's several different pretender designs I use for R'Yleh, but every one of them involves order 34, luck 3, and at least magic 2. Sloth 3 is workable, as your Illithids are gold limited, not resource limited. I take luck 3, as I believe that it helps with the void gate summons, and because R'Yleh's national heroes are extremely powerful mages.

Your armies require lots of fodder at the front to give your mindflayers time to paralyze as many troops as possible, this requires a combination of both lobo guards and other warriors to get the most out of the leadership abilities of your Illithid Lords.

For my pretender, I've tried many things, from an Astral 6, water 3 void lord, to an astral 4 void lurker, to a wyrm with no magic at all. Starspawn mages are very powerful and ave 2 random picks, which gives you access to a great deal of spells.

To start I usually recruit a starspawn priest, and as many illithids as I can in the first turn. On the next turn, I place the Illithids as far back as possible, with the cannon fodder as far forward as possible. This makes the tritons go for the infantry first. Your infantry will take losses from the poison, but they are easily replaced. I also tend to send my pretender out to either help with the attacks if a Wyrm, or to cast mind burn from the back row if an astral mage.

You can quickly take most weaker independents under water, and then move onto land, where you can probably move your fodder back towards the back to decrease the accuracy of enemy archers and give more time for paralyzing to happen.

From there just see how the battle goes and try to keep your enemies from pushing out your dominion.

Order 34?!

I must have missed that option. That really makes Order imbalanced

If you are new to R'lyeh do a few tests before you go throat deep into it. And remember on land you will more than likely be using a mix of normal and your R'lyeh forces, so look for things that work well with land units and combine them

[Humer]

Get Water-9, Order-3, Luck-3, Magic>=2
Research Alt-2(3), Con-4(6), Thau-5
Script them 'Quickness' as first spell. Your mages now double their actions.
Get your Starspawn Mages 'Shrouded (at Con-2). This provides them w/ additional Quickness(50) and def +4.
At Con-4 forge them boots of quickness...
At Con-6 forge them Spell Focus each and a Banner of Northern Star.
At Thau-5 script them to 'Quickness, Soul slayx4'.
Wreak some serious havoc.

And script one mage to cast 'Light of the Nortern Star' to get that +1 Astral...

Oh, at some point make them reinvigoration items.
Oh, and DO protect them and don't let them near mindless hordes.

- Humer