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

[Tex Pete]

thanks everyone, I'm going to try these ideas out. I've been having some trouble the flying tritons but hopefully moving my leaders back will protect them. I'll let you know.

Actually; a better option that doesn't fatigue (unless you like carrying gems, or scripting it) is a Banner of the Northern Star, that provides the +1 Astral to astral Users effect. Also you might play with other spells than Soul Slay. Which while nice, a few paralyzes, star fires, stellar cascades are all very nice.

In dealing with tritons, just mass your units around your leaders (leave them in a massive stack on top of them). Illithids are poor choices to use for fighting tritons since they are costly and cannot use their mind bLast to full effect. Try using a bunch of lobos or alternatively the trampling shamblers.

[ January 12, 2004, 08:06: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Taqwus]

On extreme indy strength e.g. 9, try your hand at land before water. 90+ tritons can really, really chew up an undersea army quickly. Star Children can help a lot with indies; set way back, on 'fire'. You'll lose some to bodyguards or strong mages, especially if you try against non-indies, but they're cheap and can be produced on land at coastal castles.
I'd also make a fairly high dominion strength a priority, but it may be less important if you push onto land quickly and build numerous temples.
Astral/water gets you spell foci, starshine helmets, water bracelets (cheap +1 water; 2 water gets you astral clams), some nifty stuff all in all. Astral is powerful; precision attack spells, teleport, gateway, interesting remote summons...
A nature-3 mage will help a lot (nature 2 + thistle mace or moonvine bracelet, say), because that allows Cauldrons of Broth and illithids eat a lot. Nature 5, and cast Gift of Health, which will heal your feebleminded (Void Gate failure) starspawn priests. Also, your most powerful void summons, a Vastness, could benefit from a Gift of Reason because you have no commanders which can match its extreme mobility.
Remember that mind bLast always hits even in storms, or when it's dark, or even when you're blind! It's very long-range too; stay back, use Storms to shut down most flyers and hamper archery if possible, use your free hybrid troops to block and buy time if need be.

[Saxon]

As a point of interest, one of the developers states that the higher your summoning skill, the better the summons you get. As such, rotating your unit in the void gate may make sure you have two units with some skill, but you will miss out on the chance of getting the really big summons. Check out the “Stop the Insanity” thread for more on summons.

Another tactic with your armies is to put everyone as far back as possible with the infantry on hold and attack. This increases the number of mind bLasts hitting the enemy before you have to grapple with them. I particularly like defeating an invasion force with this race, as the paralyzing effect ensures that most attackers are killed, rather than running away to fight another day.