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
All of R'lyeh's slave troops suffer from low morale. Sermon of Courage or a Horn of Valor are needed to keep them steady in tough fights. All slave types mirror Oceanian or Atlantian counterparts, and come in "light" and "heavy " versions.

R'lyeh's lobo-troops, mindblasters and freespawns all require magical leadership, making large army organization require special attention throughout the early game lest your research stumbles.

Light Slave Troops

 * Slave Trooper (Triton): Gold 9, Resources 2, Spear
 * Unarmored aquatic-only chaff trooper. They have 50% more hp and better combat stats than their indie counterparts, and you can buy them in droves. When stacked with mages in a communion casting Mass Protection and Strength of Giants they make decent UW chaff. One of the biggest problems I have with aquatic-only troops is they become an economic liability once the underwater conquest is complete, being unable to ever leave the water.


 * Slave Trooper (Merman): Gold 9, Resources 3, Spear, Net
 * Net-wielding unarmored amphibious chaff trooper, otherwise nothing remarkable. They are your quickest troops and tend to arrive just ahead of other mermen or triton forces. On land, they fight as poor amphibians... a huge disadvantage. They are quite squishy and run away easily, but their net attack can disable an enemy for a round while heavier troops land hits, thus mixing a few of these guys in with a stack of Triton Guards can sometimes work ok. I've also seen a swarm of these guys mob an SC (underwater) and bring it down while taking only minimum losses due to their nets. They form a major part of your PD both above and below the waves, so you might as well try and use that to your tactical advantage.


 * Slave Trooper (Atlantean): Gold 9, Resources 3, Trident, Darkvision
 * Unarmored amphibious chaff trooper. Slightly less hp and combat stats than the triton slaves and twice as slow, but they are armed with a trident, can leave the sea and fight equally well both above and below the waves. Slow can sometimes be a tactical asset, as these guys tend to engage the flanks or rear once battle has been joined. Much like the triton slave trooper, they work best once buffed with magic. Their darkvision offers some interesting possibilities in battle with a Darkness spell.

Heavy Slave Troops

 * Slave Guardian (Triton): Gold 9, Resources 13, Trident, Shell Armor, Iron Cap
 * These are your best heavy troops, but are aquatic-only. In that role, they perform admirably. The only downsides are poor morale as mentioned previously and being unable to leave the sea.


 * Slave Guardian (Merman): Gold 9, Resources 12, Spear, Shell Armor, Iron Cap
 * Less hp and weaker combat stats than your tritons, plus only armed with a spear. Poor amphibians on land. I honestly have never found a use for these guys for any reason.


 * Slave Guardian (Atlantean): Gold 9, Resources 13, Trident, Shell Armor, Iron Cap, Darkvision
 * Slightly less stats than the triton guardian and much slower, but they are amphibious. Their trident attack + 12 str enables pretty decent damage-output as compared to most other size-2 land troops. On land they get mapmove-2 which classes them as medium infantry in my book. Primary weaknesses are low morale, slow movement (slower than indie HI) and no shield, making them vulnerable to missile fire without magic protection. Once the oceans are secure, these troops tend to become the de-facto mainstay of R'lyeh's armies. Darkvision offers some interesting combat potential.

Lobotomized Troops

 * Lobo Guard: Gold 5, Resource 1, Claw, Magic Being, Amphibian, Mindless, Darkvision
 * Being extremely cheap and low resource, these represent an interesting alternative as chaff troops. R'lyeh can muster dozens of these each turn when necessary, but being magical they need a mage to lead them into battle. They never run away and fight to the death, which is likely since they go into battle stark naked. On land, they are also vulnerable to archers. That said, their 12 strength means the claw attack does almost as much damage as a spear-wielding merman. Use magic to improve their strength and defense, and you have the makings of reliable, if squishy, light infantry. Especially when fighting under a darkness spell.


 * Shambler Thrall: Gold 25, Resource 1, Claw, Magic Being, Amphibian, Mindless, Trample, Darkvision
 * Like the lobo guard, these guys require magic leadership and fight to the death. 5x more expensive than lobos, but much higher hp, better prot and the trample ability. They are only size 3, so trampling makes them tire quickly. But groups of your S magi can turn a few dozen of these guys ethereal, which makes them very tough to kill. Darkvision offers some interesting possibilities in battle under a Darkness spell.

Mind Blaster Troops

 * Giboleth: Gold 40, Resource 1, Tentacle x2, Mind Blast, Aquatic, Magic Being, Darkvision
 * Recruit-able in any fort, the role of these large fish is to hang back in battle, thinning-out enemy forces with their paralyzing mind blast while your other troops do the killing. One frustrating aspect of this is there is no guarantee they won't choose a target that isn't already paralyzed, hence used in large numbers there tends to be diminishing returns. Their combat stats are not stellar and they are size-3, so once their 10 mind blast charges run out, they slowly crawl into melee and tend to get into trouble. That said, they prove very useful even against undead armies, since they ignore the mindless chaff units and target the commanders instead! Magic 2-3 scales lower enemy MR vs mind blast. They can never leave the sea.


 * Gibodai: Gold 60, Resource 1, Life Drain, Mind Blast, Aquatic, Magic Being, Darkvision, Sacred
 * A sacred cap-only version of a Giboleth, which limits the number you can recruit per turn in spite of their low-resource cost. Although more expensive that Giboleths, they cost less upkeep, and pay for themselves after about 2 years. The life drain attack steals health, so combined with the right bless, they can prove to be much more durable in melee than their giboleth brethren.

Freespawn

 * Polypal Spawn: free auto-spawn, weak AP tentacle attack, Aquatic, Magic Being, Darkvision
 * These guys spawn automatically in any friendly underwater province with positive candles where there is a Polypal Mother commander. The amount of spawns/turn depends on the number of friendly candles, but usually ranges from 1-4 per mother. Their combat stats are mediocre, their morale low, and their low strength means they hardly ever do any damage, but hey, it's free chaff right? Arguably they are most useful in the early stages of the game when even a dozen free units can help kite enemy troops to break tough indies. Buff spells like Strength of Giants might mildly improve their combat effectiveness (ie. go from useless meatbag decoys to sqishy chaff troops). Later on polypal spawns can bog down R'lyeh's economy because they never stop spawning, even when you no longer want/need them. Hence you should come up with a plan to dispose of your excess aquatic-only spawns, kill off your polypal mothers or locate them in enemy dominion, which all can be tricky if you are the dominant ocean power.

Commanders

 * Scout: Gold 20, Resources 1, Coral Knife, Amphibian, Stealthy, Darkvision (50)
 * An amphibious scout. The poisoned blade of the coral knife is afaik considered magic for purposes of attacking ethereal units. Any advantages from Darkvision will probably rarely come into play.


 * Slave Prince: Gold 60, Resource 20, Trident, Iron Cap, Scale Mail Hauberk, Amphibian, Darkvision (50)
 * High leadership, high hp, high strength, and better-than-average morale. Overall a good commander unit for your slave-troop armies. It's stats are high enough to consider thugging it out using magic buffs or limited forged items. One easy possibility is to stand them in the same square as a friendly S mage set to cast Body Ethereal: the spell takes effect on both commanders. Useful magic kit includes a Horn of Valor, which will help prevent your endemically low-morale units from running.


 * Slave Priest: H1, Gold 65, Resource 1, Magic Staff, Sacred, Amphibian
 * This guy actually has an above-average def skill (12) for a chaff priest commander. With their magic staff and sacred status, it almost begs taking a high W bless just to see if they can be leveraged as cheap mini-thugs.


 * Slave Mage: W2S1+(N/E/S/W 100%), Gold 175, Resource 1, Research 6, Magic Staff, Amphibian
 * EA-R'lyeh's bread-and-butter mage for communion slaves and some important E/N magic diversification. Their gold price for research output is by no means cheap, essentially rendering R'lyeh as a mediocre research power. Your slave magi lose 1 W pick on land, but thereby gain a feet slot, which is annoying but by no means insurmountable, since they all have S picks and can join a communion if necessary to boost their paths. That said, it can still be useful to outfit them as appropriate with Earth Boots, Thistle Mace, Water Bracelet, Crystal Shield, etc to be able to efficiently cast their allotted spell scripts. When summoned and employed in sufficient numbers, communions should enable them to cast any battlefield W/S/N/E spell as necessary.


 * Polypal Mother: H2, Gold 100, Resource 1, Life Drain, Mind Blast x2, Sacred, Aquatic, Poison Immune, Need not Eat, Magic Being, Blind
 * At first glance pretty interesting stats, but this proves to be probably one of EA R'lyeh's strangest units and most difficult to fit into any coherent strategy. One of the main factors limiting it's use is their immobility: without empowerment into S magic (which would be insane), they can never move from their home province, thereby rendering their use as purely defensive. Another factor is their aquatic nature, limiting their deployment to underwater provinces within a fortress (no point in giving Amulet of the Fish to a commander that can't move). A third is the auto-spawning feature of Polypal Spawns depending upon the current strength of friendly dominion in the province where a Polypal Mother is located. You would think that this would become a useful part of any EA-R'lyeh strategy: massive swarms of freespawn chaff similar to EA-Pangaea's Manaeds. However unlike Maneads, Polypal Spawns are non-sacred underwater-only meatbags that rarely do any damage when they hit, and they never stop spawning in friendly dominion, meaning they will keep building up till they hit the max unit limit, crash your economy or your computer's memory. Maybe that IS a strategy for EA'R'lyeh to win: hit the max game unit limit (currently about 32,000 iirc) and prevent anyone else from summoning troops. But perhaps another way to to meaningfully deploy them could be in key border provinces having strong adjacent enemy dominion, then have the Polypal Mother simply stop Preaching when you no longer want any new spawns and allow the dominion there to fall back into negative candles.


 * Aboleth: W2S2+(W/E/S/D 100%), Gold 200, Resources 1, Research 7, Life Drain x2, Mind Blast, Aquatic, Magic Being, Darkvision
 * Likely kit is a Spell Focus (S1) or Rune Smasher (F2W2) with Amulet of the Fish (if you can forge them) on land, maybe a W/S booster or an Amulet of Anti-magic underwater. There is a lot of overlap between the role the Aboleth plays in battle underwater and what the Giboleth/Gibodai units can do. So the Aboleth is really mostly necessary for it's magic buffs... but in that sense Mind Lords (who have stronger paths) or Slave Magi (who have more equipment slots) buff the same magic just as well, if not better, begging the question why bother with Aboleths at all? I guess the answer is that for land battles (when equipped with Amulets of the Fish) where you want to spam Mind Blaster attacks, you can keep twice as many Aboleths on hand as Mind Lords for the same price.


 * Mind Lord: W3S3+(W/E/S/D 100% W/E/S/D 10%), Gold 420, Resources 1, Research 9, Soul Leech, Enslave Mind, Aquatic, Magic Being, Darkvision
 * The Mind Lord has the highest research/gold cost of all your magi, but also the highest likelihood of endowing you with a coven of S4 mind-hunting casters (1-in-40 Mind Lords will have S5). A D-random ML out site-searching will discover all underwater W/S sites, and most of any available D sites (there is one underwater site that requires D2 to find). It shares the Aboleth's downsides of Aquatic-only and limited equipment slots. Being non-sacred, they cost a whopping 25 gold upkeep per turn, making them expensive commanders to horde in large numbers. Whereas the Aboleth paralyzes its targets, the Mind Lord enslaves enemies and converts them to friendly units. This is certainly a useful ability to have on turn 1, but you only get 5 free casts before the Mind Lord needs to be scripted to do something else, or the AI will likely move it to the front line to engage in melee. Soul Leach is effectively an AoE-1 AN lifedrain attack, which like a vampire gives the Mind Lord a hp boost that carries over into future turns. A mind Lord would probably make a good chassis for a semi-SC prophet in the early game.

Heroes
It's important to realize that if you take a Misfortune scale, you likely will never see any of these, while a Luck scale might bring a hero quite early.
 * 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. Basically a souped-up version of a Mind Lord, but he might end up being your best mage for empowerment to cast certain rituals.
 * The Visitor: Never actually seen this guy in game. Not sure what particular scale-picks are required to make his appearance more likely, nor if he is even available for EA-R'lyeh.

Starting Sites

 * The Gorge of Ancient Cities:
 * Produces 3S, 2W, 1E gems/turn
 * Enables recruitment of Mind Lord and Gibodai

National Spells
None. However, it should be pointed out that every single one of your national magi has S picks, making Communion Master and Communion Slave EA-R'lyeh's de-facto national spells. EA-R'lyeh needs to leverage its strong Astral across the board to make up for it's many weaknesses and have a chance at winning.

National Summons
None. It should however be said that as an underwater nation, R'lyeh's summons are limited till you can establish a foothold on a land province with a lab. Hence, having access to reliable underwater summons should be a core part of your strategy:
 * Underwater Commanders
 * Contact Naiad W3N1 Conj-5 Uses W gems to break into strong N magic, and you will easily have enough W/N slave-magi randoms to cast it. Limited operational range due to losing 1 hp/turn away from her home province.
 * Sea Kings Court W3 Conj-6 You really don't benefit much from this guy, having healthy W picks on all your national magi, although he does generate a W gem each turn, so eventually pays for himself. Sea Troll troops do have their uses, but if you take Turmoil scales, you have a fresh source of mind-controllable free Sea Troll troopers through random events.
 * Telestic Animation S3 Thaum-5 An alternative H2 immobile commander to your Polypal Mothers that won't weigh down your economy with auto-spawn polyp trash.
 * Summon Spectre D3 Conj-6 Uses D gems to notably break into some interesting magic path combos, although you have to get lucky finding enough D gem sites underwater to amass enough gems for casting. Sometimes you can get a E/S pick that will be able to forge Crystal Matrices and Crystal Shields without taking those picks on your pretender. The Kokythiand however offers a more reliable source of strong D magic, so you might prefer to save your limited D-gems for other uses.
 * Streams from Hades W4D1 Conj-6 A guaranteed way to break into Death magic for R'lyeh using it's native W gem income, as you eventually will have a Mind Lord D-random who can cast it. The Kokythiad's potential W/D battle magic synergizes well with R'lyeh's Darkvision-capable troops.
 * Harvester of Sorrows D4 Conj-7
 * King of Elemental Earth E5 Conj-8 E-gem sites are fairly common underwater, so it is likely you will have the gem income to reliably cast this.
 * Queen of Elemental Water W5 Conj-8 The only elemental royalty that must be summoned underwater, so if you control the oceans there is a high likelihood you will be able to get all three uniques.
 * Underwater Troops: All troops able to be summoned underwater are found in the Enchantment or Conjuration schools. Of course, possessing a land-based lab renders this limited selection moot:
 * Enchantment: Reanimation, Claymen, Watcher, Enliven Gargoyle, Enliven Statue, Leviathan.
 * Conjuration: Sea Dogs, Sea Serpent, Shades, Animals, Sea Lions, Kraken, Shade Beasts, Spirit Mastery, Naiad Warriors, Ghosts, Sea Trolls, Asp Turtle, Abomination.

Master Enslave
Why worry about summons when you can just steal your enemies units? Your Mind Lords/Aboleths start the game able to cast Enslave Mind in battle to covert an enemy into a mindless friendly unit under control of the caster. At Thaum-9 you can use a Communion of them to cast Master Enslave (S8), a battlefield-wide spell that attempts to cast enslave mind on every enemy unit.

This will be easier to do in provinces with high magic scales, and will be more effective if the caster is equipped with a Rune Smasher or Spell Focus.

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 Conjuration, 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:
 * Enchanter of the Void: Void Lurker: 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 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 of Utterdark: Master Lich: 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.


 * Lurker of Wishes: Void Lurker: F2 A2 W2 E3 S8 D3 N5 B3, Dom 6, use Cash scales dormant. In many ways similar to the previous pretender, but without mobility. It can remote sight search in any path, and can forge most of the magic items useful to R'lyeh, albeit without a forge bonus. It's strategy is to unlock Const-4 forging, then to bee-line up the Alt school and cast Mother Oak and Wish needing only a Crystal Coin booster to do so. By that time, we should have hundreds of Astral pearls saved up to spend on wishes.


 * Sower of Dark Dreams: Master Lich: E4 S7 D9 N4, Dom 6, use Luck scales imprisoned. This pretender design relies on R'lyeh's national troops and magi to handle early-game expansion and site-searching underwater in exchange for an all-in late-game strong showing in both Death and Astral magic. The Death Weapons bless might be just enough to make your sacred Gibodai troops somewhat more dangerous in battle, as well as granting interesting buffs for sacred Mind Lords and anyone else wearing a shroud. Diverse item forging has been sacrificed for a high bless, hence you will need to empower or find another means to be able to forge Amulets of the Fish or Rune Smashers, although much of the useful E/S/D/N items are easily forged at Const-4.

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 Naiads/Kokythiads/Spectres (all at Conj-6) underwater and Lamia Queens (also at Conj-6) and Hidden in Sand/ Snow (ench-6) on land.

Research Order
Detour into other schools for low-hanging-fruit battle magic as needed.
 * Alteration to level 3 for Body Ethereal.
 * Conjuration 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.