[Evilhomer]

Introduction

I have played R'lyeh in several mp games (currently playing them in discordia and perpetuality games) and after reading several guides by other players on other nations as well as seeing many posts asking for help when it comes to R'lyeh i decided to add this guide. I'm sure there are around older versions for dom2 since R'lyeh is pretty similar but what the hell this is my take on them.

Generally speaking for any nation when it comes to strategy and the build you pick the early game expansion must be considered. I would say that if your build cannot support an expansion rate of 10 provinces at turn 10, you have to start over. For R'lyeh this is even more crucial since they are heavily gold dependent.

In this guide i will not spend so much time going over the units instead trying to focus on the build as well as the in game strategies. I have mostly targeted a approach that will allow people to play and win multiplayer games. It will work in single player games as well of course, but you might want to experiment and go a bit more wild for the fun of it there.

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Units

slave troopers/guardians - I seldom build these, in a few rare cases you need fast flankers to attempt to take out commanders, or if you have excess resources (less than 30) you can build a few.

lobo guards - actually good units. They cannot kill anything decent but they have a very low recruiting cost and a high morale. These should form a large part of your army for early and mid game, especially as MA R'lyeh. The basic idea in using them is preventing your good units from being outnumbered as well as buying mage time in fights. Their main weakness is area damage and arrows, see later section on advice how to deal with this. As LA R'lyeh the basic "chaff" need that these units fill are not needed since you will receive a lot of freespawns.

meteorite guards - Excess resources are put here simply.

shambler trall - I seldom build these, at 25 gold pieces and with their low protection and a size 3 trampling (trampling gets better with size) they are a pretty bad unit, except for a few rare cases.

crab hybrid - 2 attacks, good armor and hp, simply a good unit for underwater fighting. Early on these are very efficient at expanding, and they last for alot more fights than an equivalent lobo army. Don't get carried away with hiring these if you are the only water nation (LA) or if you expect peace with your neighboors since they cannot be moved onto land.

illithid - Good at freezing tough opponents. They basically pay off over time, but at the same time they cost alot so do not go overboard hiring these guys. Especially early I would spend my money on other units.

illitid soldiers - worse ranged attack than the illithids, basically do not build these (better buy an illithid + meteorite guard instead). Also they have a strategic move of 1, which can be annoying when moving on land.

Independent troops when you get your feets/tentacles up on dry land you will probably want to add ind troops into your armies. You are mainly looking to add archers/crossbows for the ranged damage and armored troops (however you look at it most of your troops are weak and to have something to draw fire and be able to stand some beating is very decent).
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Commanders

scout - I tend to have more important commanders than these to build.

traitor prince - basically commanders that can serve as good thugs with slightly high encumberance, they can be useful but I seldom build these.

slave priest - basically a priest, nothing special about them.

slave mage - there are only one reason to build these basically, and thats the 25% chance to get N on them. They will unlock nature access and serve as clam forgers if needed. Using the other picks in battle: S - mainly cast stellar cascade or paralyse. E - Since slavemages grows feet when they come ashore, you can slap on a pair of earth boots, cast earth power and cast gifts from heaven with them. W - A w3 mage can cast a number of water spells, don't forget however that they get -1 water when they go onto dry land.

illithid lords - another commander that can serve as a thug (better encumberance even). It has a good ranged attack as well.

star childs - Build these if you cannot afford starspawns(mage). With good magic scales they are priceworthy researchers, and they can serve as assasins. Their main use in combat however are as communion slaves. If you decide to use them as assasins script body ethereal/astral shield before firing away.

starspawn(priest) - At some point you hire one and put it to "enter the void". For rare cases where you battle large armies of undead you might hire a few more, other than that they have few uses. Notice that they have a 5% chance per turn to get lost in space and time, while the national hero cthulgul has only 2% chance. I tend to wait until turn 10 before hiring one for the void (yes you can get nice things from the void but I simply need the gold for expansion instead). Early on give it 5 body guards and pray for luck, later on you want to give it some pearls (astral gems) and script it to cast "returning" (this might only work for the ones that has s2, someone knows for sure ?)

starspawn(mage) - Awesome mages simply. With a base magic of w1s3 and 2.1 random picks in WEDS they give rlyeh a large variety of spells, and combined with communion master/slave their late game potential is amazing. As LA R'lyeh im even more biased towards building these since all other commanders becomes insane pretty easily.
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A high gold/low resource nation

A normal turn in peace times (after all indies are conquered that is) i tend to hire 1 starspawn and 2 or so meteorite guards at each fortress, and thats it. The thing about a nation like R'lyeh (that has many decent 1 resource units) is that they can very quickly produce large armies if gold is available. For this reason there is simply no point in peace times to have large standing armies (especially costly units like illithids) eating up your money in the form of upkeep. When war becomes an issue, each fortress can easily produce 100+ units per turn without much problem. So instead of hiring alot of illithids and chaff like loboes in peace-time consider just saving the money, and keep it as a "switch to war time" reserve (if the saved money becomes to large consider adding more fortress/labs/temples however).

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My usual scales

order 3 - R'lyeh is very gold dependent, this is a very easy pick really.

sloth 3 - Another easy choice, all decent troops costs almost no resources.

cold 3 - The income of underwater provinces are not dependent by the temperature scale, and since the majority of your early expansion is going to be underwater the extra design points are worth this pick. The reason you want to go cold instead of heat is that many of rlyehs spells are cold based.

Growth 3 - This depends on the map size and other factors really. MA can afford to go both way while LA really needs the extra food to feed the huge freespawn armies - also the growth offsets some of the death from your dominion. I tend to stick with growth 3 either way since i usually go with misfortune (mixing misfortune and death unlocks some really nasty events).

Misfortune 2 - The number of bad events is capped, so later on the misfortune won't really matter, and since order decrease the number of events this is a good pick in average. You will be giving up on some decent heroes, but the extra 80 design points are simply worth it. I tend to not go with mis 3, but that might just be my own preference/paranoia. Also you still have a slight chance to get some of the heroes of R'lyeh (all great except the visitor in my opinion - yes he is decent as well, but he is clearly worst).

magic 1 - R'lyeh will be able to tech fast even with drain, but I tend to like magic. It decreases the magic encumberance as well as allowing for fast tech to unique summons/forgings.

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Pretender design - basic example

wyrm - dom 10 / earth 4, awake.
Rlyeh is best served with an awake pretender that allows for fast expansion as well as acting as a deterent for other nations. The wyrm is not the only choice, but with its fear, regen and amphibious nature it will be a good choice. Earth is my pick for many reasons. It will give extra protection from turn 1 to your wyrm (as well as protection spell like iron skin etc later). It will give rlyeh earth access above 2 (something that the starspawn has troubles with due to no feets), combined with the large earth income present in the water this is nice. It will allow the forgings of earth hammers as well as other good earth items. You could go with e3 and increase mis to only 1 in the design instead- then you will have a better chance of seeing some of the heroes as well as having fewer bad events.

My second and third favourite choices is the kraken - A good pick in large water masses where you expect to fight alot underwater - and the void lord - A powerful mid/late game SC with all slots as well as inbuilt life leach.
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Tips for the first few turns.

I have found that the majority of players hires 1 mage and a bunch of units for the first couple of turns. This is an error in my view and it results in a less than optimal expansion rate. Therefore I will give an suggestion on how to play early on.

turn 1 - Put taxes at 150, patrol with your illithid lord. Make your scout into a prophet, and research with your wyrm. This is the only way you can get a prophet (smite caster, his low hp wont matter much since there are no archers in the water), the extra gold from patrolling and research in the first turn. You could attack with the wyrm, it should win but I usually never want to risk it. Hire 20 lobo guards and put the rest of the money into crab hyrids and a few slave guards (the same version you start with). Yes this means no wasting of money on mages, your priority the first turns should not be to start researching, it should be aggresive expansion.

turn 2- Send the lord and the prophet out to take one province. Put everything at the back and to hold, use the prophet to smite and the lord to blast - have the crab hybrid placed so they will engage the brunt of the attack they are tough and wont go down easy. Have the rest of the troops placed so they will flank and support the crab hybrids and prevent them from being outnumbered. Sent he pretender out to take another province. In your fortress hire 15+ crab hybrids and put extra resources into slave guards. You might want to hire another scout, but dont blow money on mages.

turn 3 and later on - Continue expanding with your forces. Hire a lord and some additional troops at turn 3. At turn 4 you should have 3 forces capturing indies, continue adding more troops and an occasional lord - you might want to cut down on the crab hybrids depending on the map and the number of water provinces around you. Your basic goal for the first 5-8 turns is simply to get as many forces out there as possible capturing provinces. A rapid expansion and a large gold income is key in securing a good mid/late game position. When income allows start adding fortresses/labs and temples in positon of high income and/or strategic value. Also start hiring starspawns at all your fortresses in order to get research going.

So won't I get seriously behind on research ? Initially yes, but maximizing your gold income will lead to more fortresses, more labs and eventually more starspawns. This will mean you will actually win the research race in a longer perspective. To be behind on research can be a bit dangerous (in fact it is seldom so since underwater wars early is all about the number and quality of troops), but I would say that this approach pays off in 9/10 cases. I cannot stress enough how important it is for R'lyeh to secure a good gold income! (well this is true with many nations, but R'lyeh cannot fall back on low gold/high resource units basically, they need the gold to buy a constant supply of mages later on, since these tend to do all the killing).

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Turning a good start into a good mid game

So i have managed to survive the initial phase, I have alot of fortresses/labs and im adding several starspawns per turn, now what research should I aim for ?. Well initial two priorities needs to be considered, they are defense and gem income in that order. This is an example of how i usually research early on (if im using the suggested pretender design). Point 1 and 2 might be skipped all together if you feel confident about the defense issue.

1. Alteration 3. Notworthy spells for your awake pretender are stone skin at 2, and iron skin at 3. Another spell worth noticing is body ethereal with area 1. Simply put a starspawn/child close to your pretender and have him cast the spell on your wurm, it will add greatly to his performance.

2. Construction 4. Equip your wurm with a pendant of luck and a girdle of might (one alternative might be amu of antimagic if you fear mr attacks). Also give him helmets (horror helm if you lucked out and got a d2 starspawn). Other than that you might want to pick up a wavebreaker trident - gives the battlefield effect of 'friendly current', a level 5 enchantment spell at construction 4 is pretty nice and can be very useful in large underwater fights.

3. Conjuration 4. Spells worth mentioning are voice of tiamat ("the" site search spell for underwater nations), school of sharks (numbers do matter and they will distract the enemy), voice of apsu and dark knowledge. If you are desperate for added defense early on sea serpents are a good bet.

4. Evocation 2. Mainly for arcane probing. If you end up fighting a fire dependent nation like abyssia in mid/late game don't neglect the easily overlooked spell rain.

After this point the situation and your own playing style should determine what spells to research. If im at peace i tend to aim for conjuration 8 and construction 8 to snatch the elemental royals (that is the fire/earth kings and the air/water queens) and the unique items. Other reserach goals should be thaumaturgy (communion slave/master, teleport spells and paralyse/soul slay as well as LA unique spell dreams of R'lyeh), evoc 7 (netherdart) and alteration 6 (darkness).
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Branching into other magic paths

Oki, so I followed your guide and I ended up with alot of gems from voice of tiamat my pretender and mages cannot use, what now ? Well at some point you want to branch of and get access to other magic schools, therefore i have added a short section on how this can be done.

fire: really tricky for R'lyeh, better hope to find some indies. You will most likely have to empower 1 of your starspawns in fire twice. You will be wanting to forge rune breakers at one point, the rest of the fire gems from income can be spent on lightless lanterns.

air: fairy court and if you get lucky and need it you might get an air queen later on (just put a ring of wiz on the fairy queen and forge an air booster). See nature on how to get the fairy queen.

water: you will have access to w3 on many mages, forge the robe of the sea the water bracelet at lvl 6 and with a ring of wiz you will have water 6. If you need more you can summon up a water queen.

earth: You will most likely have e2 starspawns, with an ring of wiz you can get a troll court and then equip it with earth boots and possibly earth kings later on.

astral: you will likely get starspawns with s5 as base, enough said.

death: high death can be achieved for example through streams of hades and various death boosters (skull staff and skull face for example).

nature: slave mage to cast summon naiad. From there build various nature boosters (thistle mace then a treelords brance, and moonvine bracelet together with ring of sorc/wiz gives you very high nature)

blood: This should not be a priority.

With the exception of fire and blood R'lyeh has a very good chance of getting a large variety of magic at high levels and that is another reason why they are alot better of with an awake sc for expansion that a sleeping/imprisoned rainbow variation.

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