Legends of Faerun - Closed (Game started)

[Baalz]

I did a decent job with EA R'yleh, on Faerun coincidentally. This is a huge map, with a *lot* of water so you can spend a considerable amount of time staying wet. Going onto land is, yeah, a challenge, but assuming you don't need to do that until you are dominating the water you've got one really, really big advantage working for you - you can sit and wait for the perfect timing to attack. Nobody is going to attack you, so just wait until somebody along the long coast is committed to a grueling war, then make a deal with whoever they're fighting with and hit every coastal province and as many inland provinces as you've got amulets of fish (mind lords can solo thug quite well). Blast mercilessly with the artillery (mind hunts, vengeance of the dead) which you've been meticulously passing out void eyes and spell foci for - with the gem income from your large unassailable water empire you should be thinking along the lines of a dozen artillery attacks per turn indefinitely - it's not a high bar for R'yleh. When you do have to have to fight a real army you can likely dictate a lot of the terms of the fight because of your strategic flexibility (attacking out the water, lots of teleporting troops), and make sure you use the advantages you have. CBM gives you slave trolls which are a *huge* addition, use some of the tougher summons to round out your roster for roles other than chaff. Ring of sorcery + 1 30-gem empower gets you to D-3 which gets you mound fiends which lets you leverage that strongish D income you've been dark knowledging into some undead troops - plenty of which are amphibious. For combat magic very small two slave communions + power of the spheres opens up a whole lot of possibilities for all those single path randoms particularly after you pass out a couple boosters. Mass protection, regeneration & foul vapors are fairly easily doable, weapons of sharpness, strength of giants, legions of steel & later army of lead/gold should be staples and those undead/darkvision troops start looking pretty mean under darkness. Of course you've got top notch astral support as well, so will of the fates etc. are pretty easy. Aboleths have some very nasty linebacker communion potential - think quickened, lucky, ethereal, breath of winter, resist magic (ok, they could have done all that themselves which is why mind lords make good thugs) plus iron skin, resist elements, personal regeneration (helps prevent afflictions), soul vortex (surround them with some sacrificial chaff so they'll suck up the reinvig they need after being slaves to cast this expensive spell) - and toss down a strength of giants on them as well as it not only improves their offense, it increases the rate they're healing from their life drains.

Once you've got a good foothold on land, leverage your good astral income (you've been clamming, right? And you searched all the underwater provinces with a priest to get the extremely common underwater temples, right?) to aschric record every likely looking place which, this being EA, should give you a good spread of indie mages to get you the rest of what you need on land.

[Trumanator]

Originally Posted by Baalz

... mini EA R'lyeh guide ...

Maybe they should be your next guide, they certainly fit your M.O.

[Baalz]

Well, I've got no intention of spending a huge amount of effort in an attempt to balance everything, if you get a rough start you'll just have to roll with it and roleplay, hopefully everyone will have fun even if they lose messily.

Hmmm, the description for this map says there are 100 victory points on this map, mostly in the special (very well defended) provinces. Anybody know how that works with relation to the game settings if we use a victory point victory condition?

[Baalz]

PS - another distinct advantage EA R'yleh has on this map in particular is that there are two distinct large bodies of water and they're the only water nation with strong astral, which means you can take over one body of water, scry out the other, then blitz in and gateway in your troops while being completely immune from counterattack. Land nations still will almost never attack you in the water, even if they know you've just shipped 90% of your army off across the world....

By the way, aren't Agra Dis and Nehekhara MA nations or I miss smth.?

[Edi]

Some info on the Faerun map:

• 50 VPs is the max you can set for required victory.
• All start provinces have at least 5 non-special neighbors on land, but the ones with seven or more are nostarts because they give too much of an advantage. Water starts should have at least 4 water neighbors, though in some cases you may have three. If all water nations are in play, there is the possibility that two start in the Sea of Fallen Stars (the inner sea), leaving the third with unopposed free rein in the ocean unless Agartha starts on the coast and makes a quick play into water.
• Rather few provinces have populations set in the map file. The map does tend to produce a lot of high population provinces.
• The east has more chokepoints than the west, but tends to be poorer in terms of magic sites if site frequency is 40% or below. There are also fewer special provinces in the east, and the specials function as barriers and chokepoints for a fair while into the game. The bigger special provinces will require some careful planning unless you just want to throw troops at them until they die of attrition, but that's not viable when you need to fight other players at the same time.

Everyone should also redownload the map, because it was updated last week to fix a few map bugs, three rather important forests were plains in the older version.

[Edi]

With regard to start locations, there are a huge number of them, so this can result in a lot of players being clustered fairly close while others have more room to expand in peace. The deserts and swamps are nostarts, so anyone who starts next to the Anauroch desert can gain a lot of gem rich wastes fairly easily before running into neighbors.

Also, keep track of the VP markers on the map. If a province provides 3 or more VPs, traipsing in before scouting it out with something expendable is likely to hurt.

[Baalz]

Alright, sounds like it'll be fun to play with victory points enabled, particularly from a roleplaying POV. Does 50 for a victory sound like too many? Some of them are worth 3 points, but they've also got defenders that will give even an end game SC pause...

[Hadrian_II]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Alright, sounds like it'll be fun to play with victory points enabled, particularly from a roleplaying POV. Does 50 for a victory sound like too many? Some of them are worth 3 points, but they've also got defenders that will give even an end game SC pause...

I dont like VP victory, as games will end with someone airdropping to victory.

[Edi]

Originally Posted by Hadrian_II

I dont like VP victory, as games will end with someone airdropping to victory.

Take a look in the map file and how the VP's are spread out. If you can manage an airdrop on this map with 50 points the target, you'd win anyway.