setting up for ya.
So, how's the game for everyone else so far?
I haven't lost any territory, but I didn't have that much to begin with and my expansion options are all looking pretty painful. Surviving for a while is looking likely, winning is not. My underwater holdings are pretty much lost. If I'd understood how UW expansion works I would have played it very differently.
First of all, as it turns out I could have been supplementing my mermen with Longdeads from pretty much turn 3, which I didn't even try to do. I also didn't understand this, but most of the underwater recruits are largely identical which means the main way to expand with them is to massively outnumber the opponents. Took me too long to realize that, so I lost an UW fight.
EA R'yleh is on everyone's "worst factions ever" list, so I naively assumed that meant they weren't a threat. As it turns out, the main reason for this is that they can't easily bring their most effective tricks above water, which makes claiming thrones unlikely. They are actually quite good at fighting below water, way better than the indy recruits. They've got
25 gold tramplers.
I was also outmaneuvered by the R'yleh. I realized they were trying to build an underwater palisade to get their aquatic mages. So I decided to attack right when the palisade went up. Unfortunately THEY attacked the turn the palisade went up, and I didn't fix my combat programming for this possibility. Looking back, I should have started mass producing troops in all of my provinces the moment they appeared. I should have swarmed them with 200 tritons with clusters of trample immune sharks on my frontline.
Honestly though? That's like 2000 gold as an iffy bet to hold 4 provinces that are probably income neutral at that point. I should never have even tried with R'yleh in the game.