R'lyeh Strategies

[JaydedOne]

I prefer to go to land in the midgame at the earliest, unless there's a small patch/peninsula that's largely surrounded by water and can thereby be easily protected by a fortress. Aside from Atlantis or possibly Ermor, there's no competition for water resources early in the game and you should therefore snatch them up as quickly as possible and mine them thoroughly with Voice of Tiamat/Akashic Record (depending on your preferences in research.)

The advantages of land (hybrid spawning, greater variety in magic sites) aren't overwhelming initially and the biggest problem I find with them is that, due to R'lyeh's generally slow speed, it's difficult to send reinforcements to land provinces given that your best units are recruitable only in water. I prefer to bide my time, build forts near the coastal provinces that I want to start my aggression outwards at, and even let my opponents conquer indy provinces first, as they'll often move their forces elsewhere, leaving only PD behind. PD, in most cases, is easier to crush than indies on a high setting. This way you have solid reinforcements coming from the water directly next to your landing point. After that, you might consider consolidating your land presence with a quick fort+lab build, as nobody loves to see squids on shore. The lab will be a huge plus as you'll now have Gateway potential to speed up reinforcements to land AND you'll now have access to all the land-only summons you've hopefully been hoarding gems for.

[tinkthank]

Thanks very much.

You mention something that I also have a question about: Tiamat/Acashic.

I have never used these spells. It just seems I never have the gems for them, I use them for forging and whatnot. Are they worth it? I tend to send my Mage starspawns out searching with the pretender. How viable / stupid is that?
I should say: I have NEVER used a gem-search-spell, ever, with any race, because I usually search. (I play quite a bit of Tien S&A, which has natural searchers.) Is this newbie-ness from me?
thanks very much

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
I have never used these spells. It just seems I never have the gems for them, I use them for forging and whatnot.

Voice of Tiamat is very cheap, and very useful, since it gives you all elemental sites in a province.

I should say: I have NEVER used a gem-search-spell, ever, with any race, because I usually search. (I play quite a bit of Tien S&A, which has natural searchers.) Is this newbie-ness from me?

Given standard game settings, your mages can search about twice as effectively by using the searching spells as by moving to a province, then searching.

[tinkthank]

OK. I guess I tended to search with the mages who had a lot of different paths, and those "auspex"-type spells which only find 1 type of gem seemed like a waste: I would need to cast that 4x or so to find all of those of one type. And by the time I have enough gems for Acashic, I already needed to search everywhere (the prerequisite for getting the gems to cast it in the first place).
But Tiamat I suppose is different....
thanks much

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by tinkthank:
I have never used these spells. It just seems I never have the gems for them, I use them for forging and whatnot.

Voice of Tiamat is very cheap, and very useful, since it gives you all elemental sites in a province.

I should say: I have NEVER used a gem-search-spell, ever, with any race, because I usually search. (I play quite a bit of Tien S&A, which has natural searchers.) Is this newbie-ness from me?

Given standard game settings, your mages can search about twice as effectively by using the searching spells as by moving to a province, then searching.

---

It depends very much on what mages you have. A mage who has most of his power in one path (like Anathemant Salamanders) is better off casting search spells, if you can afford the gem cost; it really does double his effectiveness. A Master of Five Elements searches five paths at once if he goes and searches on the ground, but only one per search spell. The M5E won't find high level sites; but high level sites are rare (but also more powerful). A Celestial Master will find some high level sites and a lot of low level sites, but his time may be too valuable to spend on searching. Other mages fall somewhere in between. A Mystic will find most astral sites and some elemental sites if he goes and looks, but will find all astral sites and no elemental sites if he casts Arcane Probing; but you can Probe twice as many provinces per 2 months, if you can spare the gems for it.

It's very much a tradeoff, especially if you get few other benefits from the Thaumaturgy research required for most search spells. I tend to favor ground searching until I have a pretty healthy gem income to support a "divination squad" while still doing other things. But since the original poster specified he played Spring & Autumn T'ien Ch'i - I'm not sure it's ever worthwhile for them to switch to search spells (except the Masters of the Dead and possibly of the Way). Their magical breadth makes searching on the ground more efficient - at least for the low level sites that you can actually find that way.

Also, don't search (by *any* means) provinces that you don't think you can hold. It just gives more gem income and possibly recruitment options to whoever takes it away from you, unless you get really lucky and get a free fortress.

[tinkthank]

Hm.

I have also noticed that some of the higher level sites arent even particularly great (give 1 gem).

I have also noticed that some site listed as requiring lvl-2 to find (according to that spreadsheet) I have found with lvl-1 mages....

Well it's food for thought. Thanks, I'll try this all out.

[Yossar]

When do you folks head for land?

Before the patch it was good to go to land early. Land independents were in general much easier to deal with than tritons. Now with paralysis nerfed, I'm not so sure. There's rarely a whole lot of competition for ocean provinces (if Atlantis and to a lesser degree Ermor aren't in the game) but if you wait long enough people will start taking them.

Originally posted by tinkthank:
I have also noticed that some of the higher level sites arent even particularly great (give 1 gem).

The level 4 sites are all really good. There are some mediocre level 3 sites, but most of the really good sites are at least level 2.

[Saxon]

The consensus of opinion is that the luck scale has no influence on summoning from the void gate. While the developers have not spoken in their deep, Moses-like voice, only two people have noticed better summonings with high luck. Notable is that one player has found that even with luck –3, they still get the big summons. If this has changed since the patch or has been discussed while I have been focusing on work instead of reading the forums, please point me to the link so I can catch up.

Check out the “Stop the Insanity” thread, it has some good information. The easy way to find it is a search for luck void

Speaking of which, this thread seems pretty focused on how to fight without getting many summons. I think that you should plan for just this outcome and treat any goodies that come your way as a nice sideshow. The gate is too unpredictable for my taste and planning a strategy around it can burn you. I avoid taking a bless strategy with this race, as you get relatively few holy units and have little control over how many you do get. Of course, if you do get good summons, you can change your plan, and, if you planned for not getting them, you have a solid foundation to build on.

[AhhhFresh]

I always go ashore early with R'lyeh.

The main reason being that 90% of all summons can only be done above water... and I don't think you can wait until mid-game, when all the idies are gone, to set up an above water lab.

It's probably better to merely establish a "beach head" (as has been noted: it's hard to reinforce your above water troops- until Gateway)... with a few provinces, before going back and consolidating the sea ones. The best is if you can snag a forest with Amazons(best) or Druids(good) you can pretty quickly get a Vine Ogre factory up and running... which are definately superb meat(er vine) shields for Illithid.

[Cheezeninja]

I must say that while i have not gotten any more or extra creatures with luck + void gate, i do seem to get alot LESS lobotomized summoners with high luck. In point of fact i have NEVER had a summoner get feebleminded with 3 luck, while it invariably seems to happen before i get my summon skill above 10 with no scale bonus. While this doesnt equate to a thorough study by any means, i believe luck does in fact help your summons, just by keeping your summoners un-enfeebled.