[Squirrelloid]

Maybe I have a very different idea of what LA R'lyeh is doing, but I think you are actively wrong on a number of points. I've tried to cover what I consider the vital differences of opinion below.

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

No, no no no no!

Take a void lurker with W2+N4+S7+D3+. Only positive scale to consider: Luck +3. Magic +3.

I really dislike a pretender who is immobile for this. Manual site searching will net more gem income and not waste gems doing so, and the only way remote site searching can even compare to a rainbow pretender manually searching is by casting Acashic Record, which requires a whopping 25 astral gems and researching Conj 5.

Which isn't to say you can't make a Void Lurker work for you, but its hardly optimal.

Edit: What the heck does your pretender need S7 for anyway? You can get S9 on a W1S5 Starspawn mage with boosters (coin, RoW, cap to S8, Blood allows Robe of the Magi and there are also artifacts you could use). Its not like your pretender needs to make up for an astral deficiency. Astral is probably your pretenders *least* important magical path.

You will get tons o free spawn mages. Useful in communion or researchers with +2 magic.

Is that an effect of scales? So magic 3 improves the number of free spawn mages you get? I'm pretty sure this is actively untrue.

I did a little more looking at the freespawn commanders. They are either Cultist or Mad Cultist (Mad Cultists have S1). Based on the purchaseable variety, that's just a flat 20% chance. Now, someone else has already provided a more plausible argument for taking better magic scales (better chance at the 3000 gold + magic item + gems event), and a more relevant one, since your caster freespawn are actually less useful than your non-caster freespawn. The reason is that freespawn units come in magical and non-magical varieties, and you already have a lot of magical leadership in your starspawn mages, so what you are short on is normal leadership. Mad Cultists only have 10 leadership, Cultists have 40. The difference between picking up 10 and 40 is huge for your micromanagement woes, and while you can forge scepters of authority if your pretender has fire... he honestly has better things to be doing.

Research priorities: Conjuration, (voice of tiamat). Thaumaturgy (teleport, gateway, telistic animation, ritual of returning).
Construction: Whip of command, Sceptre of authority, crown of command. CLAMS. Starshine skullcaps.
Evocation: Astral projection to scout. If you're the cautious type.

Make your start build all mindblasters. Last troops you will ever buy.

This is incredibly stupid for LA R'lyeh. You cannot afford the upkeep on them. Would you rather have 5.5 illithid troops or another starspawn mage? I'd rather have the starspawn mage - he'll be far better in combat than 5.5 illithids. And that's the real trade off, both in terms of initial purchase and in terms of upkeep. And that starspawn mage can be forging or researching while he's not off providing tactical casting support - what are those illithid troops doing other than eating your money when they aren't fighting?

Forget sea serpents. You need your water gems for water boosters (to let your slaves make clams), clams, shark attack.

Voice + tiamat + your pretender search will let you find any mage sites.

Ok, first I just have to point out that it's hilarious you're against a few sea serpents in year 1 or early 2 at 8 water gems each, but you're in favor of many many castings of Tiamat's instead of manual site searching, also at 8 water gems each. Trust me, 4-5 sea serpents (40 water gems for 5) isn't going to restrict your forging capability nearly as much as 80-160 water gems burnt on site searching.

Second, that water booster requires Construction *6*. How soon do you expect to have that online? Better to empower someone so they can start making clams at construction 2, and can summon a Naiad (also possible earlier than Conj 6) who can summon more naiads and make clams herself. By the time you actually get those water boosters online you'll have so many water gems in my proposed method of doing things that you could spend 100 in a turn and not even notice.

Finally, your pretender search? Didn't you just advocate a Void Lurker? You know, immobile. Will need to build a lab to cast teleport. Pain in the *** and will cost you 500 cash every 3rd turn? And will cost you gems to move. I've even tried this. It sucked. A lot. I can't believe anyone advocating this has actually tried it in practice.

(snipped teleporting stuff)

Remote attacking is good. I left that as an exercise to the reader. (Or you could just read Baalz wonderful post in the other guide on the subject).

get one foot on land fairly soon. Cast a couple of black servents. Soon they will go crazy and prophetize themselves. Use them to raise undead - which your dominion is going to be killing off like crazy.

While utilizing insane commanders for troop ferrying is a necessity (just because so much ferrying needs to be done, and insane commanders are there and might as well do something), having strategies which involve getting to actively use insane commanders leads to disappointment. This will become a theme below.

Body guard an S2 void summoner until you get returning.

Alternative: Get returning month 2 (your pretender is doing research for the first two months - get Thaum 1 right away). Then buy your starspawn priest. Problem solved.

You will also want nature items to make cauldrons etc to prevent starvation. Huge double bonus- makes your underwater provinces even more difficult for your opponents to storm.

Cauldrons are nice, but at some point I just stopped caring. Who cares if they starve? You're just going to get them massacred by the thousands. Starving will not make them notably worse in combat. And every cauldron you make is a clam you didn't make. I'm going to side with Marie Antoinette on this one: "Laissez-les mange le gateau."

Regarding mages: you fairly quickly have to make some choices.
Go with the priests that are 150ish with 6 rp, or the go with the pure mages that are around 280 for 8 rp.

With the +2 rp from magic scale, your $/rp upkeep is WAY lower on your sacreds. They are your go to guys for research.

But your mages recruitable everywhere are your goto guys for D2. Plus your S4, S5 etc.

Sure, rp/$ is way lower. Until you realize that *only* the starspawn mages are immune to insanity. So eventually your starspawn priests go insane and start losing research turns. Eventually they become so insane you never get to give them an order again. So their average rp/$ is actually worse than the starspawn mages. And that's just considering their value for research.

Starspawn mages are also far better for combat and crafting purposes. So if you go with the priestly starspawn you'll have to build all your mages for those other purposes from scratch whereas you'll have a ready pool of workers who can be diversified into all your vital projects. Acquiring a mage task force early will also start generating various magic path combinations on your mages so you'll have the mages you want on-hand for particular crafting or combat applications. Basically, you pay more for them, but you get a lot more out of them and will have the capabilities you need as soon as you need them, not 5 months down the road.

Starspawn priests are a trap. Just get two for playing in the void gate and then forget about them.

Another reason for land: Your slave mages have feet. Soooo you can give em earth boots for a dwarf hammer.

I don't understand how this helps. At best a slave mage has E1. Boots -> E2, Hammer requires E3. Your Starspawn mages can have E2. Both will need empowering to make a hammer. Your starspawn mage won't ever go insane. Winner: Starspawn.

The only use for a slave mage is the Nature pick, and even then its pretty marginal because you're buying a commander who can go insane. Despite the lower likelihood, trying for a W3S3 starspawn and empowering to N1 is probably better for you. Especially since you're going to buy a lot of starspawns anyway.

I can't emphasize enough how bad commanders other than the starspawn mages are for you. It won't seem bad early on, but as they get increasingly insane you'll find yourself losing months of time waiting for them to become sane again. Making your research dependent on characters who could all decide to start calling god instead of researching is a recipe for disaster.

I *never* search with an intial prophet unless he *truly* has nothing to do. (hard to imagine). You have crazy guys that will holy search, without your input. let em.

What does your prophet have to do in the early game again? Oh right, nothing. He should join a main army with a good number of void summons so he can divine bless them with whatever rainbow bless benefits you have.

Star children: Some of the *best* assassins in the game. What are you going to do: Mind hunt them?

Star children are *also* prone to insanity. And Every ~3 of them could have been another starspawn mage. That starspawn mage can simply mindhunt or dreams of r'lyeh a province (with higher success rate against more targets) without having to move there first, making a single starspawn mage vastly more effective at killing enemy commanders than three star children at the cost of a pittance of astral pearls. They have a niche use as slaves in communions, nothing more (and i'm even starting to regret buying some for that in my current game).

Summary:
Your conception lacks understanding of some basic principles.

Tempo. You realize you can get something eventually, but you never think about how long it will take you to get it. Getting things early is important.

Relative gem throughput. You criticize ~40 gems spent in the first 2 years on summons, and advocate spending 4x as many in that period on remote site searching.

Insanity. Only one (living) commander unit type is immune - the Starspawn mage. This is such an advantage over every other option that it trumps virtually any considerations of efficiency, because insanity is a hidden efficiency cost of those other options. And he does absolutely everything you need a commander to do, including lead large numbers of troops (higher than Illithid Lords out of the box, admittedly biased strongly towards magical troops). Basically, the Starspawn mage is hugely efficient by any metric except gold cost, and once you figure insanity into the equation, he's at least equal in efficiency with the other options.