In ages past, a distant star inhabited by a great race of strange, alien beings was struck with an unimaginable catastrophe. The star fell from the heavens, breaking into tiny shards. One such shard fell through the Spheres and down upon the world. The shard came to rest on the ocean floor and there a remnant of this great race adapted and survived. They multiplied and enslaved a race of fishlike humanoids by sheer strength of mind.

R’lyeh, the Sunken City, is a mind-defying place built under the sea with an architecture unlike any known to man. In the halls of R’lyeh the Starspawns, the Great Ones who survived the Fall, plan the re-emergence of their Great Race. The Starspawns are powerful mages with great knowledge of distant stars and all of the Great Race are powerful mindcrafters.

All coastal forts of R’lyeh have a special well where women can submerge themselves in the hope of being impregnated by a Great One. However, most will be taken by Deep Ones instead, and the women’s offspring will be strange, fishlike humanoids instead of the noble Starchildren they wanted. These half-human hybrids are usually devoted to the cause of putting mankind below the sea and often join the army of R’lyeh free of charge.

MA R'lyeh is an underwater nation that often relies on hordes of chaff backed by powerful mages and void monsters. R'lyeh is often building for communions to further push this strategy. The R'lyeh capital contains a Void Gate, which any astral unit (regardless of the nation) can enter in an attempt to tame the void spawn beyond.

Race	Military	Magic Access	Priests	Buildings
Illithids Slave Alantians, Mermen, and Tritons Hybrids troops	Amphibious Armored Slaves Lobotomized Slaves Illithid Mind Blasters Voidspawn	4 (uncommon 5, rare 6) 3 (rare 4) 1 (uncommon 2, rare 3) 1 (uncommon 2, rare 3) 1	Average (2)	Standard Forts (Can build UW)

R'lyeh's best Mages get two 100% randoms and one 10% random, each with the same paths (), so each of those Mages has a 45.15625% chance of having 4, a 7.03135% chance of having 5, and a 0.15625% (1/640) chance of having 6. Your Merman Mages have a 25% (1/4) chance of having 1. Technically all of the nation's paths except for Water and Astral are uncommon, since only those two paths are guaranteed on any of your Mages.

• Costal Forts in your Dominion Spawn a Hybrid each turn

LA R'lyeh has access to two units named Starspawn. The capital only one is a very powerful mage for its cost. The other is an otherwise mediocre level 2 priest. Many of R'lyeh's front line units have the slave tag, halving upkeep costs. The Meteorite Guards, Illithids, and Crab Hybrids are among your stronger troops but note that Crab Hybrids are not amphibious.

description of the workhorse options, for the sake of sanity better skip the clearly subpar and generic stuff (no h1 unless special qualities, no 40, 60 leadership dudes that are average.

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Scout 25 1 1	Amphibious Darkvision Stealthy(50)	Amphibious scout to see things on land and sea.
	Traitor Prince 80 49 1	Amphibious Darkvision	The easiest access to generic leadership. High protection. Your troop line up would demand your Commanders have both normal and Magic Ld, but he is the only one to let your slave use formation for that special positioning strat. Also could be an early game thug chasse if you need Melee stats
	Illithid Lord 80 51 1	Amphibious Blunt Resistant Magic Being Spirit Sight Void Sanity (10) Taskmaster (+2)	Starting commander. Can lead an even mix of standard and magical units.
	Slave Priest 45 1 1	1 Sacred Amphibious Slave	Cheap access to a level 1 priest. Already Half upkeep from Sacred tag, now you pay 60% less because of the slave tag.
	Star Child 85 1 2 +Rec Costal Forts	1 7 Amphibious Blunt Resistant Stealthy(55) Spirit Sight Assassin (2) Void Sanity (5)	Makes for an excellent assassin, especially when given a water bottle for elemental summoning. Also, gold efficient Researchers and assault besieger that try to take their Fort.
	Slave Mage Slave Mage 175 1 2	211100% 13 Amphibious Slave	The Premier Mage of R'lyeh. Have the Ld to be ok-Ish at leading early expansion parties. Has about the same upkeep as a 90 gold mage and a very good researcher. Are your main Combat and Communion mages, with Water randoms can Summon Water Elementals out the box, Astrals can Mind Burn plus Eath and Nature can communion to cast spells that would be in high demand for a chaff nation. You're going to be tight on gold to buy them until near the end of year 0, but after that, you would really love to build forts for mass producing them.
	Starspawn 200 1 2	121100% 9 Sacred Amphibious Blunt Resistant Magic Being Summoning Skill (3) Spirit Sight Void Sanity(10)	An Illithid mage that is holy 2 and can random 1. Adding him to a communion adds spells like Fanaticism, Darkness and Skeli-spam to your arsenal. Another important duty is grabbing units from the void gate. Should get one quickly to venture in and level up its summoner skill to get some of the stronger spawns. There is always a decent chance that he will be attacked by the summoning, so put a ring of returning on them and call it good.
	Starspawn (Capital) 290 1 4 Capital Only	132100% 100% 10% 17 Amphibious Blunt Resistant Magic Being Spirit Sight Void Sanity (10)	Capital Only. Very strong mages with relatively high magical leadership. Are your strongest mage to recruit after you move your commander recs to other forts. Can Random the highest Earth, Water, Death, and astral in the nation. They are very important ritual casters, forgers, and out of the box battle mages. Having an 5 is significant for any nation.
	Hybrid Commander 50 19 1 Coastal fortress only	Amphibious Spirit Sight	A Mind blaster recruited on land that can lead units. Decent for what they are by being cheaper than Illithid Lord. Be aware their armor can rust.

R'lyeh has two modes of play, builds which has Illithids protected by swarms of Slaves as they paralyze the enemy and make it easy to pock them to death. Alternatively is High where you Mass produce the excellent Meteorite Guard at the cost of producing less mind blaster, fighting more in the style of Ulm(MA).

Sprite	Unit Name	Special Attributes	Comments
	Lobo Guard 5 1 2	Amphibious Darkvision(100%) Magic Being slave mindless	The excellent backbone of R'lyeh's armys. Dispite easily dying from most attacks, especially AOE spells, they will hold because they are Unroutable and you can have swarms of them for chips. Requires Magic Ld but that just means each Slave Mage can hold 20 of them. Note they are considered slow by underwater standards
	Slave Trooper 9 2 6	Amphibious Darkvision(100%) slave	Your Versatile and cheap Killy chaff. They hit very hard with their Trident on land or water and fight without penalty in deepwater. In moments when you need the numbers (Filling up your Commander's Normal and Magic units), You can rely on them if you're Resource capped.
	Slave Guardian 9 10 6	Amphibious Darkvision(100%) slave
	Slave Guardian 9 11 6	Amphibious Darkvision(100%) slave
	Slave Trooper Slave Trooper 9 2 6	Amphibious slave	Mermen are Less survivability then the Atlantian trooper but can act like fast cavalry underwater. No armor but could be mixed with other chaff to support with its net attack.
	Slave Guardian Slave Guardian 9 10 6	Amphibious slave	Mermen are Less survivability then the Atlantian slaves but can act like fast cavalry underwater. They don't offer much to justify themselves except to be used as additional chaff on land unlike Tritons.
	Slave Trooper 9 1 6	aquatic slave	Not as Fast as Mermen, but Tritons have some more HP, Atk, and Str over Atlantian. Comes at the cost of Never leaving the Water and costing you a few gold coins as they do nothing else rest of the game. The Guardian version is worth it as fast-moving killy chaff if your get into a Water war with another underwater nation.
	Slave Guardian 9 11 6	aquatic slave
	Meteorite Guard 13 33 16	Amphibious Darkvision(100%) slave	Your best unit and you may want Productivity Scales so you can spam them. Considered competitive with LA Atlantis Ice Guard and Ulmish infantry. Slow movement on and off the battle field but Decent HP, Str, MR, high Moral for a slave. Gets High Prot from Magical armor and deals High magical Damage.
	Shambler Thrall 20 1 22	Amphibious Darkvision(50%) Magic Being slave mindless trample	Cheap for what they are but they still cost some amount of gold and Rec points. They only have enough survivability to do their job, and that is to expand by running over Indies before they die.
	Crab Hybrid 35 1 33	aquatic Darkvision(50%)	Is a moderate protection unit with two decent attacks for almost no resources but high recruitment points. They can carve up most common infantry found underwater. Has the limitation of being stuck underwater after expansion and not a slave so paying his high upkeep.
	Illithid 50 1 37	Amphibious Blunt Resistant Magic Being Spirit Sight Void Sanity (10)	The stun locker artillery R'lyeh is well known for. High upkeep (off-set by being a slaver chaff nation)and low morale for their price. Not good in Melee and no Protection but good amounts of HP and MR to shrug off the first hits to your back row. Mind blasters are a force multiplier. Paralyzed units can't protect themselves from slave poking and it feels extra evil when an enemy mage fails to cast their important battlefield global as he stands slack-jawed for a turn.
	Illithid Soldier 50 51 37	Darkvision(100%) Amphibious Blunt Resistant Magic Being Spirit Sight Void Sanity (10)	in the event you have extra resources and need mind blasters that can survive some flyers or evocation pelting. If you have a surplus of resources, they do make excellent bodyguards.
	Hybrid 12 3 21 Coastal Fort Only	Amphibious Spirit Sight	A High Rec point chaff unit with two attacks. Have better Moral but are still in competition with the Atlantian slaves and their high damage Tridents. In a scales strategy, You would have costal forts spam in addition to the slave and Thralls underwater to overwhelm the enemy with chaff.
	Hybrid Trooper 13 6 24 Coastal Fort Only	Amphibious Spirit Sight

any breakout hits that might sway someone towards luck or away from it ?

Img	Unit Name	—-SpecialAttributes—-	Comments
	Shubejc - Visitor	14 15 Poison resistance(15) resist Cold(15) shock resistance(15) Blind unsurroundable(1) sacred Magic Being ethereal teleport Blink Amphibious Spirit Sight Need not eat	A reward for Repeated use of the void gate. They aren't much of a fighter but Ethereal protects them. They do add air to your communions. Teleport is their true power, giving the ability to ferry gear and Gems to the front line. They can also do light raiding if paired with a Vastness.
	Cthugul - Stargazer Hero turn arrival Limit: 10	25 19 Sacred Amphibious Blunt Resistant Magic Being Summoning Skill (5) Spirit Sight Void Sanity(10) taskmaster(3)	Despite being better off the bat with the void gate, He should be at the lab. An Off the bat Starspawn with his paths are rare and should be cherished for casting powerful rituals.
	Shadhul Ummush - Traitor King Hero turn arrival Limit: 10	5 15 Amphibious Waterbreathing(20) Resist Cold(9) Darkvision(50%)	Are a Queen of Elemental Water and Maelstrom caster. Also can bring powerful Land Indies and Summons into your Underwater wars.
	Auluudh - Aboleth Hero turn arrival Limit: 20	44 21 aquatic resist Cold(7) Magic Being Spirit Sight Void Sanity(15) taskmaster(3) Eyes(4)	Can't leave the water but a good commander in all areas (Lab, Leadership, Water, and Astral magic).

Any astral mage can enter the magic site in R'lyeh's capital (including enemy nations that conquer it). Only one mage can enter it per turn.

Each mage is assigned a percent chance to summon something, Starting at 20% and increasing by +20% until something comes out the portal. if successful(being attacked count as success) the mage's chances reset to 20%. A mages percent chance will persist as long as its not killed ( does twiceborn changes it?).

If a mage succeeds to summon something, what comes out is determined by a roll.
summon roll = unit summoning ability + 2d6 (not open)

After this roll is made, the unit's summoning ability is increased by 0.5 to 1.5. This increase will not apply to this summon roll. While the game will display the rounded down value, an extra .5 will still be stored.

the corresponding units rolled then appear. However, there is a 50% chance that the roll will be ignored if Astral Corruption is up. In that case, there is either a 75% chance of getting the horror attack roll or a 25% chance of attack by Eater of Dreams.

by default, their is a 20% chance the summons will attack the summoner, with the percent value increasing when Astral Corruption is up and specific rolls have a higher chance of attack. The chance of being attacked is multiplied by 4 if your nation isn't R'lyeh.

In addition to the summon attempt, there is a 2% chance for the unit to get feebleminded. There is also a chance of getting lost in time and space or gaining insanity. The base chance for either is 65%. This chance is divided by the unit's void sanity and rounded down, so a 10 void sanity unit has a 6% chance of either. These chances are done independently and both can happen at once.

If the unit gains insanity, an open roll of 65 / void sanity is done. A unit without void sanity rolls an open 1d65 but a 10 void sanity illithid rolls 1d6. If the roll is greater than 100, the unit is given 100 insanity. Otherwise, a different open roll of 65 / void sanity is added to the unit's insanity.

They are sacred but won't be able to gather enough to justify a bless specify for them. Higher Summoning skill increases the chances to summon the better units.

Sprite	Unit Name	Summon Roll	Comments
	Horror	2-3	100% chance to attack
	Lesser Othernessxd6	4-5
	Vile Thingxd4	6
	Thing Of Many Eyesxd3	7
	Thing From The Voidxd3	8
	Elder Thingxd3	9
	Formless Spawnxd4	10
	Thing From Beyondxd3	12
	Othernessxd4	11
	Dweller-In-The-DeepXd2	13	40% chance to attack
	Greater Othernessxd4	14
	Thing That Should Not Be(1)	15
	Vastness	16
	Greater Otherness(1)	17
	Shubejc - Visitor	18	Can only have one Visitor, if you already have one then you get a Greater Otherness
	Greater Otherness(1)	19
	Vastness	20
	Greater Othernessxd2	21+

They are sacred but won't be able to gather enough to justify a bless specify for them. Higher Summoning skill increases the chances to summon the better units.

Sprite	Unit Name	Comments
	Vile Thing	Weakest of the spawn. slow and only two weak un-damage-typed tentacle attacks.
	Thing Of Many Eyes	Can't Leave the Capital except for army-wide teleports. is a defense turret with a Ranged and melee weaken attack to punish besiegers.
	Thing From The Void	another not so great slow unit. Has 3 tentacles and a Slime attack.
	Elder Thing	Free Illithids with no upkeep. Not only dose it Mind Blast, it also punishes backfield attackers with additional paralyze Damage, stalling long enough for guards to come to your aid.
	Formless Spawn	Hard to kill Regenerating slime. Hold up Chaff while Crushing them.
	Thing From Beyond	like the Vile Thing, a defensive mind blaster and 3 tentacle attacks if threatened.
	Lesser Otherness	A hard to kill regenerating slime with with resistant to the main elemental damages and is a trampler. Easy to see how this would run over your enemy's especially if your gathering the Size 4s and 6s.
	Otherness
	Greater Otherness
	Dweller-In-The-Deep	Similar to Elder Things but can't leave the water. Has poison barbs and Life Drain + paralyze attack for defense.
	Thing That Should Not Be	A big high strength fear monster with 4 Life drain attack. Should be saved for pivotal moments in a war.
	Vastness	One of the great terrors to come out the gate. A monstrous creates, that starts fights with 4 mind blasters, then blinks around the battlefield and attacks with its strength stealing melee attacks, having Damage reversal for protection. Even more terrifying if made a commander as its a 3 Innate Spellcaster
	Shubejc - Visitor

Provided by user iRFNA¹⁾

Such Flexibility with Water, Earth, Nature, Death, and Astral every path has something and will depend on the situation. What would be a priority are Conjuration become water Elementals are important in Water wars, and must get thaumaturgy for communions eventually.

R'lyeh is a Communion nation, so magical depth isn't too big of a deal in combat. The nation's depth in a specific path is arguably what it's best-known for, however. The following ignores the 1/640 chance of a capital-only Starspawn having all of its potential random Magic levels match, and doesn't show numbers for summons.

Astral is the nation's primary path; most capital-only Starspawn have 4, and a few of them have 5. Due to their long lives, you can sit on your 5's until you need them, a luxury that isn't shared with most Human Mages that have special randoms. Using a Starshine Skullcap, a Ring of Sorcery (+), and either a Ring of Wizardry (+) or a Crystal Coin Forged by an Earth-random Starspawn, you can reach 8 without Empowerment. Unfortunately, you can't put all of your boosters on the same Starspawn so they can make Wishes, because Starspawn lack the imagination to put rings and trinkets on their extraneous tentacles. 8 still lets you cast Master Enslave and other top-tier Communion spells without too much fuss, however.

Water is certainly not the Starspawns' specialty, but R'lyeh somehow has access to better Merman Mages than most other nations, giving them a relatively-steady supply of 3's. With the Robe of the Sea and the Water Bracelet, you can reach 5 on a quarter of your Slave Mages without spending too much. You can then pass those boosters on to a Queen of Elemental Water for another two levels, and the Ring of Wizardry gives you another level, but both of those options are expensive.

The Starspawn and their Slave Mages have two minor paths each; a few capital-only Starspawn have 2 or 2, the latter of which can be cheaply boosted to 3, while the Slave Mages have 1 & 1. The Ring of Sorcery helps a lot with Nature, closing the gap between your 1's and the other boosters that you can craft the Thistle Mace and Moonvine Bracelet, bringing your access to 4. If you also have the Ring of Wizardry, you can then switch out the Thistle Mace for the Treelord's Staff and attain 6. You can also climb two levels with the Ivy King or Faery Queen by the time you have either Ring, but they're both dry-land Summons. On the other hand, Death requires both Rings up-front for further climbing, but allows you to reach 6 with the highest booster; Lichcraft then gives you another two levels once you claim a Lab on dry land, allowing you to open Tartarian Gates. For the Earth path, your climbing is hampered by the lack of feet on your Starspawn, limiting them to 3 with the Ring of Wizardry; fortunately, you can then climb onto dry land and summon a Troll King, who does have feet, and then have him wear Earth Boots & the Ring of Wizardry so that he can summon a King of Elemental Earth for another level (the Earth Kings don't have feet, either).

In terms of Gems (including level gains from the Summons):

• 5 + 70 = 7; 7 + 80 OR 7 + 22 + 1010 = 8
• 3 + 20 = 5; 5 + 50 = 7; 7 + 7 + 80 = 8
• 2 + 7 + 80 = 3; 3 + land + 55 = 4; 4 + 10 = 5; 5 + 50 = 6
• 2 + 10 = 3; 3 + 7 + 140 = 5; 5 + 40 + (land + 30) = 8
• 1 + 6 + 60 = 2; 12 + 255 = 14; 4 + land + 30 = 6; 6 + 7 + 8040 = 8

Your a communion nation with some of the most cost-effective communion mages.

Even without communions Slave Mages are strong water mages that can be mass-able numbers.

Already they can random in Earth and Nature into communions with Starspawn adding Higher Astral and death to it.

Just by themselves, a group of Slave Mages is a force, especially when leading groups of Meteorite guards, Illithids and lobotomized hoards. A decent-sized communion can use Army of Giants, Howl and Bone Melter, Marble Warriors.

Starspawn adds Stygian Rains, Darkness, Fields of the Dead and Enslave Mind. For laughs, a Starspawn with minimum support and boosters can cast Soul Drain (don't have important units around when you cast that nuke).

You are very flexible and can help you climb important end game magic, death, and Nature.

Can summon Kokythiads and Naiads with boosters. Nabbing a Ether Gate for Ether Lord could add Air and blood to communions, if not better death.

A Starspawn can easily nab a High-level Astral global like Stellar Focus out the box or Arcane Nexus with boosters.

You have very good Mind Hunting game.

• Anemone Mace Construction 2, 1 5. A thug weapon that grants a lot of attack skills and deals Paralysis and Mortal poison.
• Jellyberd Construction 6, 11 55. Fire Astral crosspath is not native magic. A more defensive Anemone Mace with stronger secondary damage, more Ideal for a supercombatant.

Focus on controlling the body of water you find yourself in. Water magic is far weaker in combat once you step on land. It's not a bad idea to try and carve out a small section of coastal provinces if able just to ensure you have a foothold for later expansion. Often if there are multiple underwater nations sharing a body the first half of the game will largely be them warring with one another in an attempt to gain sole control over the sea.

I tend to focus on Conjuration first to get access to the water elementals and Voice of Tiamat spell. Conjuration 5 gives full-sized water elementals as well as the Voice of Tiamat. A few points in construction are always beneficial (Construction 6 to give your Starchildren water elemental items makes them excellent assassins) and don't forget that you need a couple in Thaumaturgy eventually just to set your communions up.

By late game, slave armies supported by endgame magic from Cap Starspawn and communions like Army of Gold, Army of Lead, Mass Regeneration and Enslave Mind should run over armies, after many of their Leaders get assassinated by Rituals and Star children.

They are also natively capable with boosters to get high-level astral Globals.

R'lyeh can make the immortal Death thugs but can lack a natural end game super combatant (use a pretender of empowerment (Do have the off chance to steal one as an astral nation)).

MA R'lyeh: Uplifting Experiences by Perun

Nations
Early Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Ulm • Marverni • Sauromatia • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Mictlan • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Agartha • Tir na n'Og • Fomoria • Vanheim • Helheim • Niefelheim • Rus • Kailasa • Lanka • Yomi • Hinnom • Ur • Berytos • Xibalba • Mekone • Ubar • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Therodos
Middle Ages	Arcoscephale • Ermor • Sceleria • Pythium • Man • Eriu • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Machaka • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Asphodel • Vanheim • Jotunheim • Vanarus • Bandar Log • Shinuyama • Ashdod • Uruk • Nazca • Xibalba • Phlegra • Phaeacia • Ind • Na'ba • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Pelagia • Oceania • Ys
Late Ages	Arcoscephale • Pythium • Lemuria • Man • Ulm • Marignon • Mictlan • T'ien Ch'i • Jomon • Agartha • Abysia • Caelum • C'tis • Pangaea • Midgård • Utgård • Bogarus • Patala • Gath • Ragha • Xibalba • Phlegra • Vaettiheim • Atlantis • R'lyeh • Erytheia