The Gaming Den

Granted.

Thanks.

Eriu - I gave you a 24-hour extension, is that going to be sufficient for you to get your turn in?

I'm helping a friend move this weekend and will have very spotty internet access. Can We postpone the next turn to Monday night?

Eriu, did you need a time extension?

I'm feeling pretty thoroughly crushed here, and I'm having real world stuff happen. Can we set me to AI?

Sure thing. Life happens, man. Feel free to go AI.

Do note that you have to do that yourself by hitting go AI and mailing in the 2h file. I can't set you AI with admin commands.

R'yleh, you've staled 5 out of 23 turns. Do you need a longer hosting interval or access to the admin password or something?

Eriu, if you still want to go AI, can you please do that?

I just went AI.

Combination of business, loss of interest, and no real idea what to do.

If you guys want we could discuss where exactly I went wrong, I suspect my whole land invasion was a bad idea.

I think you overestimated the ability of your wyrm to fight against Mictlan's sacreds. I don't know what else you were doing, so I'm not sure what analysis to offer. I'd be totally willing to offer it if I had more information, though, because I've played a fair bit of R'yleh and think I have an okay handle on them.

Yeah, I will grant that.

For some reason I thought Jaguar Warriors did NOT arrive in MA. Then I just kinda sat around, researched stuff, and had no idea where to put forts or what to do with all the mages. The idea of having a massive teleport communion attack did occur to me, but I don't know how well that would have worked.

Lesson learned.

Jags are available in all 3 eras of Mictlan; MA is in fact the only era where they are cap-only (eagle warriors become build anywhere as compensation). Ultimately, my decision to contest that peninsula was based on the fact that I knew there was basically jack you could do to stop me. (I think that a giant and not cost-effective pile of illithids might have managed; if you hit a critical mass and paralyzed basically all my jags I would obviously lose.)

Honestly, my strat for MA R'yleh is claim sea provinces, claim land provinces if I think there's enough space between me and my opponents, hunker down and build forts/mass starspawn. You don't need much in the way of army dudes, you will win all underwater battles with a thug pretender and/or a critical mass of ~10 illithids. Research thaum 2, conj 4, evo 2. The last MP game I played them was CBM, so clams were out, which made construction less attractive. You could do construction 4 for skull mentors, but you're only going to get a handful of D2 starspawns. Pick some killer spell and climb the ladder. Thaumaturgy has tons of good stuff (logistics and single-target save or dies). Once you have soul slay, evocation is good (for mind hunt and eventually nether darts). Your late game is piles of magical artillery behind a wall of totally useless chaff, as every starspawn you get with a death random can spam nether darts all day and kill tons of dudes, and the ones that don't get death randoms can spam soul slay and kill dudes. Spell selection depends entirely on what kind of army composition you plan to face. You can communion up really, really easily for master enslave or something eventually, and you can teleport ambush people anywhere in the world.

You can do other stuff (enchantment has game-winner astral spells in it too, you can pretty much do awesome things with everything except conjuration...and water/death have you covered there if you really want, but you're going to need boosters). I think thaumaturgy offers R'yleh a lot more good stuff than alteration. The army luck spells are great, and so is frozen heart, but you are going to have huge blocks of chaff between you and your enemies, and I'm not sure the AoE 1 buffs are enough when you could just kill people.

tl,dr; you pretty much control when engagement happens unless people go to shit-lots of trouble to bring the fight to you, so you do nothing until you can march out with a psychic death artillery squad and then you crush people.

Yeah. Water nations tend to try and establish complete control over the water first. Once they establish naval superiority they are very hard to attack; and can thus pick and choose which wars to be involved in.

If there is no real target then you can turtle for one of the science fiction futures. Build forts + labs then pump out your most efficient researchers. Forge a few boosters if you have them.

Your long-term aim is to get Tarts, Blood Summons, Elemental Royalty, or Wish Economy. Given Ryleh's starting magics, Wish Economy + Water Royalty was probably your best bet.

R'leyh sits underwater, builds forts everywhere, and produces Starspawn. We're just now reaching the point in the game where R'leyh should have enough casting online for a serious surface offensive.

The thing is, attacking underwater is seriously tough. I said in a message that I would counter-attack if you came ashore, but that was largely a bluff. Sure, it's physically possible for Pythium to do that relatively early, but I'd be bringing 50-75 soldiers suffering from penalties with their ranged attacks shut down and no effective evocation support. It wasn't really a thing that would work.

Well that was a convenient time to have suddenly summoned up a bunch of terrible siege fodder.

I'm going to have to ask for a pause next turn, since I'll be at the beach for a week without my desktop or easy access to internet.

No problem. I postponed hosting for an extended period of time. Let me know when you return.

I'm back now.

This is probably late, but could you delay hosting for a bit?

Not at all. Enjoy an extra 24 hours of time.

I'm going to need another day, because I've just moved into Experiencing Technical Difficulties: The Apartment.