Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

Why does Desert Tombs theme for C'Tis have to suck so much?

[ January 27, 2004, 04:34: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

Probably because it's a death scale theme that makes use of living units. Since taking any death scale kills all of your people rapidly, you won't have any way to support those living units, and if you can't make a full conVersion to undead units, you're screwed.

Plus it costs 200 points.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

Death scale 2 only kills 0,4% of the population every turn , and reduces some supplies

Its not so dangerous

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

I'd really like to use Desert Tombs, but I have no idea how to make it effective. Any Suggestions?

[ January 26, 2004, 16:16: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

Not that I've really tried DT lately, but I'd imagine that you have to use the special summons as much as you can, and get your death gem production up as high as you can.

I can't even remember what the available living units are, but other than mages and priests I'd not bother much with the rest of them after say turn 20 (or whenever you convert to more of a summons based economy). Its not like the standard C'tis units are all that hot anyway, especially since you don't get the Dancers (do you?). Maybe you can use the slingers to better advantage though... bah, I can't remember what you get and don't get in DT anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

*bump* Any more suggestions? I'd like to use C'tis so I can abuse Animate Archers and Fire Arrows spell.

[ January 26, 2004, 17:19: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

I've been wondering the same thing and considering approaches (since I love C'tis).

It seems that you pay 200 to get:

-nasty declines in your population
-to pay gems instead of gold for priests
-VERY nice Tomb Wyrms for free each turn from the best summoned priest (that are sacred)
-a super powerful final hero

So, I guess, like licker said, it would be about summoning the kings as much as possible by finding death gems, pumping out the wyrms and Sauromancers, blessing the wyrms with a nice buff, and setting +3 luck to get the super hero fast.

Magic? Anything that helps supporting or summoning of undead to join your vast reanimated hordes.

Not sure the advantages are worth +2 death and 200 points, but I plan on more testing along these lines to find out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 26, 2004, 18:54: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

Try playing a Blessing Effect with your Tomb Wyrms and using your Death Gem income only for Tomb Kings. If you can make your Pretender a SC and speedresearch to Enchantment 3 so you can take indy provinces with 2 or 3 Sauromancers each. Pick a low price Castle so you can build them everywhere to make Shamans and Sauromancers, forget about a normal army.

That's how I enjoy playing DT. They do very well later game if you build yourself up a decent Tomb King population for reanimation. But they are weaker than the base C'tis and Miasma. If the cost was lowered by half, you'd have much more magic you could put into a pretender in order to counter some of the weaknesses of DT.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

If they have the poison slingers, they'd combine very well with undead against non-resistant enemies.

PvK

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

BLAAAM!! oh crap...


*bump*

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

I must say too that this seems a bit pricey. Tomb wyrms are good, but dont justify a 200 points cost. Having to pay 23 gems for a tomb king seems a reasonable price, so its not like it is a super bonus given in compensation of this design points cost.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

What you get are C'tis longdead. *Do not knock this*. They have what other longdead lack, durability, thanks to their natural armor class. Yes, the death scale does suck, but you don't start out in the state of total blight that Ashen Empire and Soul Gate do, so you can use regular units (and C'tis's are cheap and at least modestly good) to conquer enough independents to get your undead horde going. And Royal Protection is *great*. Your enemies will find that your troops are very, very difficult to banish.

And Tomb Kings? Cripes, but those guys are powerful. They're potential supercombatants. There's nothing 'potential' about the First King, either. He's practically a god.

But I didn't go much for Tomb Kings. (Except one to be my prophet and cast Royal Protection) The next-lower-down can summon those sweet C'tis longdead, and are vastly cheaper. The sheer potential to win battles by route (because your troops come in such vast numbers and never break) is not to be sneezed at. And your regular C'tis troops feel real brave backed up by an army of 200 undead.

As you may be guessing, I love Desert Tombs. It's the only death-oriented dominion I really like.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

I dont see what is so good with Ctis longdead. They have a prot between 0 and 11, so nothing to speak of. You have to pay 16 death gems for a tomb priest which will rise 6 of them a turn. Its far from justifying a cost of 200 design points.

I agree that tomb kings can make good combattants, and that the Tomb king heroe can be a SC by himself though.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

The only thing I found different about Ctis longdead is that some of them are lizardmen with two attacks, trident and bite. This is nice when combined with an unholy5 priest raising att&speed for all undead.

But I guess the thing is that desert tombs ctis should be able to expand exactly as normal ctis in the beginning (how ever that is, I have not played ctis much). The difference is that by having a mage raise an unholy priest every few turns they can soon have a huge undead army in addition to the living one.

I dont really know if it can work in multiplayer though, 200 points is a lot.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death scale is not the same thing as killer dominion.

Death scale kills population VERY SLOWLY, reduces supply and reduces income slightly. In practice the supply reduction is the most important effect, IMO. (The income isn't totally negligible, but it's easily worth 40 points if you don't need the supplies.)

Killer dominion is a special effect of the Ashen Empire, Soul Gates and Carrion Woods themes. It kills population fairly fast, and those themes should not rely on having living population for very long. This is a serious weakness for Carrion Woods which has capitol-only troops (is there any way to use them after turn 20 besides wishing for population?), but Ashen Empire and Soul Gates don't really mind.

All three of these themes also get free troops in their dominion to balance it out, but CW is still hurt by the loss of its capitol-only troops. (Illwinter: why not remove the capitol restriction so that CW can build them in newly conquered areas that haven't yet been destroyed? Or give CW a minor +resource site that would still allow some production after the population has been killed?)


The main advantage of Desert Tombs is that it has unholy priests that can reanimate and DOESN'T have a killer dominion (a combination it shares only with Broken Empire, IIRC). So it can still use living units pretty well (it has most of the normal C'tis lineup), plus the tomb kings, tomb wyrms and other undead reanimation (in addition to undead summoned by the sauromancers).

The main disadvantages of DT are that it requires death 2 and heat 2 (a double hit to your income as C'tis prefers only heat 1) and then costs 200 points taking more than all the points you got from those scales (while C'tis normally relies on its 40 points for heat 1 to stay competitive; with the weakness of their normal troops they REALLY need a magic scale, and order too to pay for plenty of sauromancers and shaman). And, of course, undead are easily countered by anyone who knows what they're doing, and a reanimation-based setup is too slow to get an early lead (something C'tis already has problems with).

I'd like to see DT cost decreased to 100 - maybe less. They lose two powerful sacred troops to get the very gem-expensive tomb kings; it's hard to have more than a few tomb wyrms and they aren't even that tough; and spending early death gems on reanimators guarantees a slow start. They need a strong God to counteract all this.

One possible improvement (aside from/in addition to a cost reduction) - give them back the default sauromancer, and turn the new (fire) sauromancer into an undead that can be summoned for gems (no more than a dusk elder because he isn't ethereal). Default SM supports a mixed living/undead army better (nature is big in a death dominion, plus he has manikin ability and poison spells), but the new SM is also good with skeleton archers, a wider spread of search/forge potential (combined with shaman or normal SM) and potentially King of Banefires (so you can get him without having to design your God for it). Having both would give DT a bit more value for those 200 points. Also, the undead SM would be nice if you have to fight in cold provinces - living SM get messed up pretty bad by cold scales.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, but normal C'tis can do that just as well (in fact, with their poison resistance, it works even with non-[undead/vinemen/manikin] troops - you may take some damage, but not too much). The only real advantages of DT are unholy priests (reanimate) and tomb wyrms.

It's nice to be one of the few themes in the game (or is it the ONLY theme in the game?) with both types of priests. But I don't think it's worth 200 points. And designing your god for bless effects on the tomb wyrms is futile - you can't get enough tomb wyrms for it to pay off.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

I just checked their unit lineup - they lose the Swamp Guard and Serpent Dancer, and replace the normal Sauromancer with the red Sauromancer (D3 F1 ?A1). They still keep all their normal priests, Sacred Serpent, poison slingers and the Empoisoner as well as their more mundane troops.

They also start with a free Tomb Priest in addition to their normal Commander, 10 City Guard, 15 Light Infantry.

It occurs to me that they are one of the few nations that might be practically able to Mass Protection a horde of undead... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif (most likely shaman leading a communion of other shaman - although they get no capitol nature gem income). Combine with Royal Protection for banish resistance (as banish is armor negating). I'll have to try this and see how it works.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

Started a quick game:
Ctis, desert tomb,
Phoenix, fire9, air1, dom5
order1, sloth3, heat2, death2, luck0, magic3
Mausoleum

Or order 2/death3 maybe.

The phoenix can capture provinces from turn 2 onwards with fire dart. Sloth might not be a huge problem if you use sauromancers with raise dead to expand when you have it available. The tomb wyrms with fire blessing can kill stuff and have nice mr, but can die fairly quickly unless you have lots of fodder troops.

I got the king hero on turn 2 or so... as prophet hs has unholy6 and summons 3 tomb wyrms each turn. Perhaps not a good idea though, since you need him to fight or cast royal power.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Didn't seem so very slowly to me. They died rather alarmingly fast in my book. By turn 40 or so, the place was a total wasteland.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd say a more serious weakness in CW is the total creation point loss: You're essentially losing about 160 creation points just by taking it: Carrion Woods is functionally equivalent to Death 3+, yet you have to take Growth, a scale which is completely negated and then some by the theme dominion. While the weaknesses of other themes can be attributed to scale issues, being forced into taking Growth for a Death theme is a killer right there. The theme had better be DAMN impressive to justify this....and it's not.

While the death scale of DT definitely kills somewhat more slowly than, say, Ashen Empire, that just means you suffer the negatives of having no population, without the positives of having no population: With COMPLETELY no population, your land is worthless and generally undesirable: It has a fairly good "what's mine is mine" feel to it. And you don't have to deal with their constant whining. With just regular death, they STILL die fairly quickly, but in the meantime, you're stuck dealing with their snivelling while gaining none of the benefits for a mass slaughter.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

Even at 100 I would still be unsure if they were not overpriced...

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death 1 is a 0.2% population loss per turn. Over 40 turns in your capital, this would bring your population down to 27K people.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The rates are nowhere near being comparable. Ashen empire kills thousands of people per turn. Death 1 kills a thousand if your initial population happens to be 500,000 people. With a population of 30K, you will lose 60 people per turn.

Killing all the population in a province is a bad thing. It means that ashen empire is at war with everyone from the get go.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ashen empire has no unbanishable troops without summoning them. Desert Tombs does not have this weakness.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, but normal C'tis can do that just as well (in fact, with their poison resistance, it works even with non-[undead/vinemen/manikin] troops - you may take some damage, but not too much). The only real advantages of DT are unholy priests (reanimate) and tomb wyrms.

....

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've been doing a LOT of practicing with the poison slingers using Miasma lately and have found that the slingers are too dangerous for me to use with living troops (at least en masse). The slingers are super powerful but a few good friendly fire hits can rout one of your own units very easily.

The thing about poison resistance is that unless it is 100 and therefore does zero damage, it still counts as a "hit" on ALL of the poisoned troops and that can add up to a lot of morale checks very quickly.

I've been using hordes of these slingers with totally immune troops (Longdead Horsemen, other Undead, and Claymen) with great success though. (at least early on when relying on capital only troops still works).

So, I agree that this is a BIG advantage in Desert Tombs since it is nearly impossible to get enough immune troops to make these awesome units safe otherwise.

[ January 29, 2004, 11:43: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Are you referring to the AI, or MP diplomacy? The AI hates everyone, as far as I can tell. Since your ultimate objective is the burnination of everything and everyone, whether the AI feels like talking to you or not is really somewhat moot, as Ashen Empire helpfully allows the use of the Russian Defense:
1. Withdraw to the capitol.
2. Wait for winter.

By the time the AI's troops have starved to half to death, they're easy pickings. Since I have no unrest to deal with, nor income to really lose, the territory is easily retaken, possibly with the AI being so generous as to even build me some improvements on rare occasions.

In MP, the fact that your domain is generally unpleasant doesn't preclude easily coming to a diplomatic arrangement with some of your more distant neighbors who will not be exposed to it. The level of magic power you can afford makes early site-searching a snap, which gives you a sizeable head start on gem income. The people I've played with so far don't seem to be terribly concerned that I've burninated my countryside, seeing as it's not theirs. The diplomatic game is every bit more fun when you're playing the sides off against each other while sitting on the sidelines. Nobody wants to commit the resources needed for a push into the hellhole that is the Ashen Empire, knowing that I might induce one of his other neighbors to backstab him while he's occupied.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can't imagine that anyone other than Carrion Woods Pangaea would ever even really think of allying with the Ashen empire, no matter how nice a present they gave them. Their dominion is so hostile to everyone else, and their growth is exponential, so I really can't see them surviving unless people are in a prearranged team game. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, obviously it would have to be a game that allowed allied victory. Otherwise, the longer AE survives, the more dangerous it is to everyone including its present allies.

But if endgame alliances are allowed, the longer AE survives, the more dangerous it is to its enemies. As long as you don't border AE (their allies will typically not be chosen from among their neighbors), or make the border in low-value provinces, or keep priests and temples to keep back AE's dominion, you can coexist with them just fine.

Re: Why does Desert Tombs suck?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I can't imagine that anyone other than Carrion Woods Pangaea would ever even really think of allying with the Ashen empire, no matter how nice a present they gave them. Their dominion is so hostile to everyone else, and their growth is exponential, so I really can't see them surviving unless people are in a prearranged team game.