Dominions 3: The Awakening/Nations/R'lyeh, Time of Aboleths

Before the Great City fell and destroyed their capital, the Aboleths ruled the seas. While the bulk of R'lyeh's armies are still shambler and Atlantean slaves, their elite units and commanders are Aboleths of various ages. The oldest Aboleths are extremely skilled in both water and astral magic.

Units

 * Unit: Gold x, Resources y
 * Description

Commanders

 * Unit: Gold x, Resources y
 * Description

Heroes

 * Auluuhd the Mind Lord: W4S4 aquatic, magic being, darkvision(100); hp:99 prot:2 mor:13 MR:20 str:15 att:10 def:14 prc:10 mv:2/5 ldr:10

National Summons

 * Unit: Gems z
 * Description

Globals, Globals, Globals
Turtle-up underwater and push research everywhere to leverage your powerful magic asap. Take a pretender that can easily cast high-level global spells. Be aware that 4 of the following can only be cast on land: Since both Maelstrom and the Queens of Elemental Water NEED to be cast underwater, it is likely you will be able to get them as well. But they both require deep research into Evocation and Conjusration, respectively, that brings less synergies with it than Alteration or Enchantment.
 * Enchantment, Gift of Health, Stellar Focus, Earth Blood Deep Well, Haunted Forest, Arcane Nexus.
 * Alteration, Mother Oak, Sea of Ice (empower a Mind Lord), Utterdark and Wish.

Make Claymen once you have a strong E income and move onto land using Communions with your N amphibious mages, dominate in tough fights using Foul Vapours (this tactic doesn't work vs undead nations nor constructs, but against an unprepared opponent it can be quite deadly).

Scale Design
R'lyeh has many troop types that are expensive but light on production. Hence Order or Growth would be nice, with Sloth to pay for it. It's fairly easy for R'lyeh to turtle-up underwater and stabilize positive dominion in its territory using Polypal Mothers and Mer-Priests, thus Growth can pay off in the long haul. Cold 3 doesn't economically affect underwater provinces and our magi all have water magic to protect themselves from it's detrimental effects in battle. Magic 2 bestows both a research boost and -1 MR in battle, making it easier for our Mind-Blast/Paralysis attacks to succeed.


 * Cash Scales - Sloth 3, Cold 3, Growth or Order 3, Magic 1-2. These scales look towards a stable gold income, while providing a friendly environment for both research and combat casting.
 * Luck Scales - Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Cold 3, Luck 3, Magic 1-2. Bestows extra design points, but still aims to benefit on average from lucky gem and gold events. Take over the seas, then turtle up till research is improved and you have a healthy gem income. We actually like the occasional random Shambler or Sea Troll army invading our provinces, as it gives our Mind Lords a chance to mind-control free tanky units. It also gives us points to take an awake pretender with the high magic picks we need. If you prefer to take the pretender dormant, you can afford some Order/Growth.

Pretender Designs
Each pretender offers different strengths according to what globals are wanted:
 * Void Lurker, Awake: E6 S7 D2 N5 B2, Dom 7. Use Lucky scales awake or Cash scales dormant. Bless grants +2 MR, +3 Reinvig, 5% regen. Being immobile makes searching for gem sites less efficient till you have the remote spells. Astral allows it to teleport. With the right magic buffs, should make a pretty powerful defensive SC caster, and can even blood hunt a bit on land. Can cast most globals from the Enchantment school without requiring boosters. Only needs a Crystal Coin to be able to cast Wish or Arcane Nexus. Easy access to Dwarven Hammer, Blood Stones, Lamia Queens, etc. It's important to realize that with this pretender, you will want to empower a Slave-mage so as to be able to forge Amulets of the Fish (A1W1) or Rune Smashers (F2W2). This presents a fairly large hurdle to get into those items, but at least you can empower a mage with hands to get the Hammer's forge bonus.


 * Master Lich, Awake: F2 A1 W2 E3 S2 D8 N4, Dom 6. Use Lucky scales awake or Cash scales dormant. Mobile pretender for good researching / site-searching. Death bless can make itself felt if, say, a friendly mage wearing a shroud starts casting remote attacks. Immortality offers some insurance against path-loss if/when our pretender dies from some random snafu. The idea is to Research to Const-4 to pick up useful forging, then go straight up the Alt school to cast Utterdark, which shuts down everyone's gold economy, but our atlantean slave-troops have an advantage. Rainbow paths allows us to forge Amulet of the Fish, Rune Smasher, Dwarven Hammer without needing boosters and hands allows forging hammer bonus. Construction 4 gets us boosters enabling S3 for Crystal Shield, N5 for Mother Oak + Lamia Queens, and D9 for Utterdark. The only Const-4 item on our "nice-to-have" list we can't easily get without empowerment is Blood Stones (B3E2). Since we don't have a guaranteed D gem income, we will have to rely on lucky site-searching and alchemize the rest from pearls to put up a strong global.

Expansion
Take all underwater provinces and use your N randoms to search for free Kelp Fortresses. Between Voice of Tiamat and your D-random Aboleths, you should be able to find most magic sites underwater. Crank out slave mages for research, you need those E/N random picks for combat communions on land. Don't worry too much about getting onto land till you have the magic and summons to back you up, otherwise you are just going to waste resources and likely get pushed back into the sea by a land power. But even a single land province can offer a place to blood hunt for making Blood Stones and setting up a lab for diverse summons. You can get magic diversification through Lamia Queens/ Specters (both at Conj-6) and Hidden in Sand/ Snow (ench-6).

Research Order
Detour into other schools for low-hanging-fruit battle magic as needed.
 * Conjuration to level 4 for Voice of Tiamat.
 * Thaumaturgy 1 for Communion Master, Communion Slave.
 * Construction 2 for Dwarven Hammers, Crystal Shields.
 * Alteration 5 for combat buffs, Encase in Ice, Bone Melter and Mother Oak.
 * Construction 4 for Amulets of the Fish, Blood Stones, Crystal Coin, other boosters.
 * Enchantment 5 for Claymen, Foul Vapours, Gift of Health.
 * Enchantment 7 for Stellar Focus, Earth Blood Deep Well.
 * Enchantment 8 for Haunted Forest (if you are in a land war).
 * Enchantment 9 for Arcane Nexus, Gift of Natures Bounty (if you need it).
 * Alteration 9 for Wish.