Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

Any thoughts on how C'tis can stand up to Jot woodsmen with Fire 9 and Water 9. I mean with other races I would say crossbows or longbows but with ctis a lot hard to get those things. I have Death 9 and Nature 4.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

The power of C'Tis lies in its powerful mages. Sauromancers are the most powerful death mages available, and Shaman are cheap enough to use as communion slaves to cast all the nature and astral spells you want.

Your normal troops are primarily designed to delay your opponents and give your mages enough time to do their work. Drain life is an excellent combat spell against living units, as you will never run out of fatigue while using it. Raise skeletons allows you to flood the battlefield with units to wear down the enemies. Your fire 1 sauromancers can cast banefire, which is an extremely powerful combat spell. You also have access to soul slay through the use of teams of four shaman acting as communion slaves with one master. This is the bane of powerful but expensive units with moderate magic resist.

If it's a fire 9/water 9 Jotunheim, then his economy is likely going to be quite poor. As long as you can defend against his armies, then you should be able to prevail in the long run.

I would also suggest summoning a few bane lords and equipping them with flying boots, jade armor, and wraith swords. Regen rings are nice, but not necessary. They probably won't be able to take on a Jotun army by themself, but will work very well in combination with your troops and mages. Just remember that each Jotun woodsman needs to kill at least five of your troops to win the economic war.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

Thanks that is what I thought, or rather I should have started a topic of if the game maker does difficult of very difficult research then 90% of what you suggested can't every be accomplished. While Jot, Ulm, and a few others start out at there peak. I guess I just got out manuvered on races.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

Holy bejesus! W9F9 ?!?!

What the heck did he do to his nation to acheive that! Wowzie.

I would *love* dearly love to get a blessing like that ( but I would not use it on Jotunheim seeing as their sacred troops are marginal, unless you are taking about Niefelheim in which case their sacred troops are fantastically powerful but very costly ).

I just tried it out.

Disorder 1, Sloth 1, Cold 3, Misfortune 1, Drain 3, dominion 6, Fortress.

Yoikes. That's a pretty high price to pay.

I wonder how that will work my Water blessing race par-excellence Vanheim? Hmmm. Could be devestating! But sadly Vanheim does not get the 120 free points for cold 3 ( only 40 free points ).


Can you imaging a Van with a W9F9 blessing! LOL! It would be insane!

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

Hydras with W9F9 are insane, but also make your nation very one-dimensional.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

Actually you can get it fairly easy with the Son of Niefel. Go Drain 3 (no big deal if your not planning on magic since it is very difficult research) Cold 3 (Again no big loss for jot) and Misfortune 1 and you have Fire 9 Water 9 Domain 5 and the 30 admin fortress. The Woodcuters have a strength of I think 25 so all Indies pretty much die in one hit and compared to what you get there blessed troops are cheap. 55/11 Try it and watch them cut up indies. Not something you would try on a normal research but he will grow fairly big before running into say Ulm.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

yeah, the very difficult research really sets things out of whack. that's why on IRC we call the game "Retarded", which seems quite literally accurate.

Scales are horrible, but not unmanageable given the rich setting of the game. The trick w/ Jot bless strategies, IMO, is exactly what is held out as the "marginal" nature of Jotun woodsmen: their low armor.

Because of their crap armor, their resource cost is minimal. I can get by w/ sloth-3 for the Jots when doing a heavy bless strat. that goes a long way towards paying for the bless effects.

OTOH, my pretender is pretty useless http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

a c'tis water 9 serpent dancer w/ poison slinger strat would do fairly well against W9F9 jots. but base c'tis troops would seem to be very weak against such monstrosities.

You could always try negotiation http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I know I currently have little desire for a war over there. As well, the territories in question are getting fairly close to my capital, so perhaps pushing that direction of advance is not in your best interest...

[ April 27, 2004, 07:31: Message edited by: archaeolept ]

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm just tried it with Vanheim and I was able to get F9W9, well, well, well. Of course I took drain 3 like you are saying.

Now all I need to do is get some chumps ... I mean people to play a game with very hard research and I am set!

HoHoHo F9W9. That's going to make for some funny troops.

Perhaps I should try to get the map to be small too, that should make it painless at least.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That almost seems like suicide: Turmoil AND Misfortune? I would have traded down to Sloth-3 for Order-1, maybe another tilt of Misfortune for Order-2, and maybe a hit of death for Order-3. Turmoil and Misfortune don't mix.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

interesting question!

how C'tis is to stand up against the blessed woodsmen with W9F9 in a low research setting ?

I don't know the answer at all (still newbie), but I couldn't resist thinking of what I would try. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

if expecting a woodsman F9W9 i could be tempted for the heck of it to ****er with a molock W9F9 (and terrible scales) but serpent dancers with base defense 16 should now be able to standup to the woodsmans beating for a while and doing some damage in return. but they are (as i remember) capital only.

Good scales and maybe starting with severe patrools could give an gp advantage on more than 50%, adding up to have more than 5 troops for each woodsman. (until jotun outgrows c'tis). But how to damage them as ther water blessing makes them hard to hit.

A combination with a water 9 pretender and scales for the rest. For fodder and serpent dancers, might be a solution.

With the setup for c'tis D9N4 that is asked for here i can not really comes around anything. Except trying to gamble with battle setups. And offcause take the heat to the opponent , but without a stealthy priest thats not working.

with machaka i would have tried the nation spell starting spell blind. Would terror work ? If time and space for a few lost battles Could it work to curse them ? (should be in research range)

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

How many woodsmen are you facing? With their mediocre defense and protection, wouldn't a bunch of crappy units (skeletons maybe) be able to take them or with shaman curses at least turn them into giant walking afflictions?

[ April 27, 2004, 10:15: Message edited by: Yossar ]

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

Poison slingers and skeletal hordes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
A few undead behemoths on the flanks should work nicely too.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

True, they would be harder to hit but doesn't missle fire circumvent defense? If they have poor protection then they would be vunerable to fire and flee tactics or a horde of unbreakable troops(undead) could swarm them till their fatigue is so high that a 14 defense won't do much for them.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

The trick is to overwhelm them with fodder. Just send as many soulless as you can raise, supplement with light infantry and mages raising dead. Before you know it those spastic fire weilding maniacs will drop from exhastion, especially if you can get them in a warm climate (ie C'tis dominion).

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You are right. Sloth is clearly the way to go as woodsmen ( and Vans ) do not require much in the way of resources.

And the Vans *really* chop things up. Sadly I can not get the Order-3 that I usually use with Vans as they cost so much.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

The way to handle this is simple. 1 Lizard King set to cast fanaticism and 75 light infantry divided into three squads and set to fire at closest. If you can afford it add a sauromancer or two set to cast terror, and a couple shamans casting curse. If you are fighting the giants in your own dominion, you should be able route them easily. Swarms of predator lizards should also work, reasonable well, although you will take heavy losses. The key is a Lizard King casting fanaticism.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

That is good advise, everything Graeme said was great but what I could not come up with was something to do with my available resources that could hurt this guy and force him to negociate. Otherwise he was just going to role over me because the Poison dancers were just getting slaughtered but the Jav from the LF can ignore the water blessing.
Thanks

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think Jotuns suffer in normal climate, and unless the climate is heat-3, you don't get the "Severe Heat" penalty to encumberance. Thus you won't get much benefit out of that.

Burial under swarms of Soulless is more an AE Ermor thing, however, as C'tis will rarely have enough unburied corpses lying around to raise a huge enough army of soulless....and it would have to be pretty huge indeed.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Each sauromancer can cast raise dead or raise skeletons 5 times before reaching 100 fatigue, so it's quite possible to overwhelm many opponents.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

Re: Heat.

Unless they changed the way heat penalty works from Dom 1. Heat penalty is based on your nations preferred Heat scale. Giants in heat 1 would have the same fatigue penalty as Ulm in Heat 3. Plus they'll have a 30% penalty to supplies, and giants need a lot of food.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Water blessed woodsmen with a defense rating of 14 i would not call mediocre. Actual most c'tis units would have a hard time hitting a woodsman.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That was my understanding of how it worked.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yep, and the other thing to keep in mind, as C'tis, you should have an order of magnitude more (fodder)troops than the Jots. Even if you start out with no dead bodies, your own fallen LI can be popped back up again by the Sauromancers. Try sending out a pair of Sauromancers with 40 or so LI. Not a huge army, but do the math. Script the Sauromancers to Raise Skele X2 then Raise Dead X3.

If in a hot domain, the giants (I think) get +3 encum. Don't remember what thier base is, but lets say this brings it up to 7. That means they attack 15 times. Assume that every attack hits, and kills one of your units (worst case). Lets say 30 of your LI dies and the rest routs (you do have a lizard king, right?). There are 20 skeles, and the 30 dead LI pop back up. Lets say you get another 10 soulless/skelles before your mages pass out. So, in this worst case scenario, where none of your guys hits at all, and every one of thier attacks kills a unit, you'll take out 6 Jots just from fatigue. Once you take into account oe die rolls you're actually going to do better than that. Scale up your army if you're facing Groups bigger than 6, if you can just hold them back for awhile, research will give you a big upper hand. You should be able to recruit close to 40 LI for each 6 Jots (depending on your scales) and supplement with some summoned fodder using your death gems. I've found the trick with C'tis early game is just to overwhelm them with cheapies...

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The heat penalty affects supplies, but doesn't appear to affect fatigue in the same way: For instance, Raptor Caelumians are cold-3 preferred, yet suffer the Severe Cold encumberance penalty, because they're not cold resistant. I'm inclined to suspect that most units, unless specifically keyed to exhibit cold/heat related behaviors such as protection changes in heat/cold, function normally based on temperature-0. Exceptions include Coldblooded units, such as C'tissians, which suffer the "cold blooded in cold" penalty, which is seperate and not negated by cold resistance.

Re: Advis again F9W9 for ctis
 

You are correct. Heat penalties are no longer relative. I wonder if this is intended by the developers.