MP guide to MA/LA R'lyeh

[Sombre]

Seconded on tiamat - it's crazy for gem income.

[Aleph]

It's been a while since I played Rlyeh, and it was nice to see what someone who knows more about them does.

I found that, in late game with LA Rlyeh (which, at least in 3.4, was still killing its own people off faster than it could replace them with high Dominion and growth 3) that the vast majority of the new mages I was adding to my forces were Void Spectres. Once you get a clam economy in full swing, they're not at all pricey, and while their lack of magical diversity hurts they can do all the astral-brutalizing-at-range tasks you might possibly need without incurring additional upkeep (at least, I think so... it's kind of hard to track upkeep for LA Rlyeh).

[Zath]

I am a prototypical explorer type player and I recently decided to try my hand at LA R'lyeh since it seems like a very interesting nation. Due to an extreme aversion to the long term commitment of Dominion MP games however, my experience is restricted entirely to SP play, but some of it may be helpful in MP nonetheless. If I may chip in, using the format of the OP...

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Units

Illithid Soldiers - Despite the high resource cost, I found that these units made good decoys for enemies set to attack/fire largest/archers, which is an otherwise difficult role to fill. I would consider recruiting these instead of Meteroite Guards in LA due to the abundance of freespawn chaff.
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Commanders

Star Child - I think these are the only commanders worth recruiting on land, unless one needs Hybrid Lords to transport regular units. Although they could be used for research and communion, I think they can be better deployed as cheap battle mages. Stick them in the frontline within groups of chaff with orders to spam Body Ethereal or Luck can significantly delay the progress of enemy ground troops. They can also be paired up with SCs, thugs, or void spawns to provide these two very valuable buffs. Light of the Northern Star will allow these to spam Stellar Cascades too.

Starspawn Priest - These are the most efficient researchers available for R'lyeh at 1.25 upkeep/RP versus 1.89 for Star Children and 2.33 for Starspawn mages. They are my default underwater recruit unless I have other urgent needs, and they will never become obsolete since they are the best communion thugs in game.
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Scales

Dominion 10 - This will give abundant free spawns and drive enemy commanders insane. One important benefit of this is that your territory will be almost impossible to infiltrate with scouts, spies, or stealth troops. Having a full dominion of 10 is necessary since the chance of a temple check succeeding is still determined by the base dominion level of your pretender.

Order 3

Sloth 3

Heat/Cold 0 - I am not familiar with the quality of underwater provinces in MP maps, but I found most of my SP maps to have rather poor underwater provinces, and that land provinces have always constituted the majority of my income. A play-to-win strategy in MP should recognize that most provinces of the eventual winner are likely to be on land rather than underwater too. The suppply penalty for Heat/Cold scales is also brutal in LA due to all the freespawns and should be avoided.

Growth 3

Luck 3 - I have been convinced that the luck scale has a very large impact on R'lyeh. It definitely helps the Void Gate by improving the quality and frequency of void summons, reducing the number of attacks, and preventing your Starspawn priest from getting feebleminded or lost in time and space so often. Most importantly though, I found that Luck 3 dramatically increased the frequency and quality of LA free spawns to the point that one could keep pace with LA Ermor in terms of quantity.

Magic 1
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Pretender

In my comparison of the expansion rate for R'lyeh with or without an awake SC pretender, I have found the bottleneck to always be the number of Illithids I could hire, and once I did have enough Illithids (20 to 30 is sufficient to form one expansion army), it didn't really matter if the SC was present or not. As such, I generally go with an imprisoned and immobile pretender. The Monolith with a base dominion of 4 has served me well, since it will still have 133 points left over even after taking the scales above. I think these extra points are most useful in air magic, since that will give access to the Staff of Storms, which is a very important equalizer in land battles and difficult for R'lyeh to obtain early. Wrath of God and Dark Skies are nice globals that can take advantage of high dominion too. I prefer to avoid Earth magic since it is available on Starspawn mages, and the abundance of earth gems underwater allows me to easily empower one up to level 3, often times before I even need a Dwarven Hammer.
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Expansion

Turn 1 - Raise taxes, patrol, make scout prophet, and hire lobo guards seem like the standard. I would start hiring Starspawn priests and continue to do so for the first year or two at the capital however. Spare gold would go to Illithids as well.

Turn 2 - Put first Starspawn priest on research and send the Illithid Lord and prophet scout to take the first province. Hire more Starspawn priests, lobo guards, and Illithids.

Turn 3 - Send a Starspawn priest from the capital with troops to meet the Illithid Lord and prophet in another adjacent independent province. Once that province is conquered, that Starspawn priest can search the new province and then return to the capital for research. Try to use a Starspawn priest with a pick in Earth or Water for these transportation and search assignments. Repeat this process for all provinces adjacent to the capital. You should be able to assemble your first Illithid squad when all adjacent provinces are conquered and be ready to send out a second one in two turns.

Building up Illithid squads for expansion and hiring Starspawn priests will slow down your expansion for the first few turns, but Illithid squads can survive indefinitely in the field. That means you can continue to expand past the first year instead of having to stall a few turns and wait for resupplies. My opinion is that the long term benefit of this will outweigh the short term costs, though actual circumstances in game will probably be the deciding factor.
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Research Targets

Thaumaturgy 1 - The Returning spell gives safety to your 2S Starspawn priests in the Void Gate.

Alteration 3 - Body Ethereal

Conjuration 4 - Voice of Tiamat will boost gem income. Light of the Northern Star will allow Starspawn priests and Star Children to spam more spells.

Construction 4 - Endless Bag of Wine, Girdle of Might, and Frost Brand are what I usually forge at this level.

Alteration 4 - Luck

Alteration 5 - Invulnerability for communion thugs

Enchantment 3 - Astral Shield for communion thugs

Conjuration 5 - Contact Naiads gives access to nature magic. Slave Mages will need construction 6 for boosters, or construction 4 with empowerment to cast this though. Acashic Records is at this level too.

Evocation 5 - Stellar Cascades can be cast by all your Starspawn priests and Star Children with Light of the Northern Stars. Even without Illithid mind blasts you can often disable the entire enemy army before they enter melee range. Make sure to spread out your casters since they have a tendency to spam Stellar Cascades on the same units even when the target's fatigue has exceeded 100. Astral Geyser is useful for hit and run attacks on SCs or tough immobile pretenders.
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Communion Thugs

Communion thugs are units that can take advantage of personal buffs being shared between the communion master and his communion slaves. Based on previous posts on this topic, this tactic seems to be most popular with Pythium's Theurg Communicants combined with Phoenix Pyre. While Theurg Communicants are cheap to recruit, they are very frail and tend to have a hard time dealing damage consistently, and this weakness has relegated communion thugs to the fun but not practical category of tactics.

After some further experimentation however, I have found Starspawn priests to be extremely powerful communion thugs that can easily rival many late game SCs. This is due to the fact that they have a relatively high HP and strength, combined with their availability, moderate cost, and even lower upkeep. R'lyeh's diveristy of magic and abundance of Star Children also signficantly reduce the gem cost of items necessary to make this tactic work on the battlefield.

Below is an example of a cheap and accessible communion thug setup using the most common underwater gems (~40% of common underwater sites are earth or water):

Starspawn Priest
Weapon: Frost Brand (5 water gems)
Shield: Black Steel Tower Shield (5 earth gems)
Misc: Girdle of Might (5 earth gems)

Depending on what unit(s) leads the communion, you can pick and choose from these self buffs to put on the Starspawn priest thugs. The magic bonus from communion means your communion master will not need any boosters either. Path requirements in parenthesis:

Astral Shield (S)
Breath of Winter (W)
Cold Resistance (W)
Elemental Fortitude (N)
Holy Avenger (HH)
Invulnerability (EEE)
Personal Luck (S)
Personal Regeneration (NN)
Quicken Self (W)
Resist Fire (WE)
Resist Magic (S)
Resist Poison (N)
Soul Vortex (DDD)
Summon Earthpower (EE)
Twist Fate (S)

My preference is to use a Starspawn priest with an earth pick to lead the communion and script him with Communion Master, Summon Earthopwer, Invulnerability, Personal Luck, Astral Shield, Fire Rear. The reason for this choice is because communion slaves with an earth pick will receive extra fatigue when the master casts Invulnerability, so you might as well have the earth picked priests lead the communion instead. This is also why I try to avoid Soul Vortex; Invulnerability is generally more useful, and a death spell will make it more difficult for another quarter of my Starspawn priests to act as communion thugs.

In addition to the personal buffs received from communion, each size 4 Starspawn priest thug can be placed in the same square as a size 2 Star Child, who can then cast Body Ethereal on it. Get some free spawn priests to spread blesses around, and this communion thug will end up as:

HP 30
Protection 25
Damage 35 melee attack with AoE cold effect
Attack 15
Defense 16
Morale 11 (this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you can fix it with morale boosters or berserk spell/items if you are so inclined)
MR 18
Parry 9 (better than Air Shield)
Melee Encumberance 4
Reinvigoration +7
Ethereal
Lucky
Astral Shield

I forgot what fatigue level the communion thugs will end up with at the end of the buff sequence, but it will be low enough that they can spring into action immediately due to the +7 reinvigoration. Given the low cost (150 gold, 5 upkeep, 15 gems), high power level, and flexibility of this setup, I think it compares very favorably to popular SCs like Bane Lords. You can easily have dozens of these communion thugs running around before good summons are available to your opponents, and this gives the R'lyeh player another useful option in game.
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[Networkingguru]

Just a thanks: I have played a combination of both strategies presented here, and I have to say I like LA R'lyeh. It's a very hard nation to get a good handle on, but this guide has helped immensely. Thanks a ton for taking the time to write it.

[Zeldor]

I have tried taking misfortune in MP game and it worst the worst idea EVER.

[mathusalem]

misfortune 3 ?

[Evilhomer]

Thanks for the praise.

About misfortune:
Misfortune 2 is rather safe (though many new players fear this pick). If you ask around among experienced players you will see that the combo "order + misfortune" is very common.

[Networkingguru]

Evilhomer said:
Thanks for the praise.

About misfortune:
Misfortune 2 is rather safe (though many new players fear this pick). If you ask around among experienced players you will see that the combo "order + misfortune" is very common.

I have to say I tried things both ways (misfortune 2 and luck 3), and the misfortune wasn't as bad as I expected. However, I enjoyed the luck scale much more.

[Evilhomer]

Well, you do realise that luck comes with a price right ? Thats 5 scales, i.e 200 design points you are giving up. So the question should really not be if you think luck beats misfortune, but if you cannot find something better to put those 200 design points into. In my experience with R'lyeh in multiplayer games, misfortune has always proven to be a good pick (i.e I have always had something more worthwhile to invest those 200 design points into).

[Networkingguru]

Evilhomer said:
Well, you do realise that luck comes with a price right ? Thats 5 scales, i.e 200 design points you are giving up. So the question should really not be if you think luck beats misfortune, but if you cannot find something better to put those 200 design points into. In my experience with R'lyeh in multiplayer games, misfortune has always proven to be a good pick (i.e I have always had something more worthwhile to invest those 200 design points into).

I agree, and these are SP experiences from my side. However, using the scales/magic listed in the alternate strategy by Zath, along with taking an imprisoned pretender, but using your expansion strategies otherwise (with the exception of using Illithids as the bulk of my armies and not, of course, using a SC pretender), I had much better results in SP than with your strategy alone. I am not trying to discount what you are saying, just sharing my experiences with both strategies.