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

[[Image:Dom3 Rlyeh MindLord.gif|right]]

:These guys spawn automatically in any friendly underwater province with positive candles where there is a ''Polypal Mother'' commander. The amount of spawns/turn is randomized but the max depends on the number of friendly candles, usually ranging from 1-4 per mother. Their combat stats are mediocre, their morale low, and their low strength and weak tentacle weapon 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. At size-1 they deploy six per square so are at their most effective when they vastly outnumber the enemy. Buff spells like ''Strength of Giants'' mildly improves their combat effectiveness (ie. they go from useless meatbag decoys to squishy light troops). Each Polypal Spawn requires no gold upkeep but eats 0.5 food per turn.  Assuming they are being spawned in kelp fortresses located in your key provinces, this can lead to logistical problems due to starvation during a siege or late-game, because they never stop spawning even when you no longer want/need more. Hence you should come up with a plan to dispose of your excess polypal spawns (dump them in a low-food province to starve), kill off or locate your polypal mothers in enemy dominion, etc.

:EA-R'lyeh's bread-and-butter mage for research, communion slaves and some important E/N magic diversification. Interestingly they also have a decent def of 14, which can be further raised with ''Quicken Self''. Their gold price for research output is by no means cheap, essentially rendering R'lyeh as a mediocre research power, hence one reason why Magic scales are a good idea. Upkeep is 11 gold/turn. 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.

: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. In castle defense, once the Mother's mindblast attacks run out, they are most likely to spam ''Sermon of Courage''. But raising their holy magic to H3 to enable ''Smite'' using crystal matrices and a master casting ''Power of the Spheres'' might work. 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.  

:The eponymous mind-blaster namesake unit one expects to find from anything named R'lyeh. This is their Age, the ''Time of Aboleths''. So what is there it brag about? Good hp, high MR, some access to D/E magic and S3 casters. Upkeep 14 gold/turn and 3 food, the slave Magi are more cost-effective researchers. The limitations of ''Aquatic'' and only 2 misc slots is pretty severe. Likely kit is a ''Spell Focus (S1)'' or ''Eye of the Void'' 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 R'lyeh's lineup 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? There is a very niche use for D-random Aboleths joined in a communion casting Wither Bones (Thaum-6 D3) if you are fighting an Undead nation.

===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''.