C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

That is a lot of points! Is this correct? If so ... uhm .. why so many points?

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

The theory goes that having both holy and unholy priests (as well as killer dominion) is a major boost.

In practice, not all that is expensive is good. Some crap is just overpriced crap.

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

The de facto point cost is lower than that, because DT iirc requires +2 Death and +1 or +2 Heat, which gives you a 120 to 160 point rebate on the stated cost.

Then again, I haven't tried playing C'tis in any form, so I don't know much about the differences between its different themes.

Edi

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

I would like to see desert Tombs without forced death scales.

Running out of money is even worse than with Carrion Wood... at least all CW only summons are able to research. With DT you will have to buy some living mages, as you will spend all your death gems on more unholy priests

EDIT

Is there any reason (storywise) why DT kills its inhabitants? As far as I can see, the Sauroliches start to reawaken the kings of old to defend C'tis against the Ermorian hordes... pretty useless if C'tis dies out in the process, or do I get this wrong?

[ May 22, 2004, 21:06: Message edited by: PrinzMegaherz ]

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

You are forced to take those forced scales, so you cannot free as many points for pretender by taking negative scales as you would be if DT realy costed 160 or 140 points...

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Maybe the Sauromancers are about to make the same mistake Ermor did. It did say something about their behavior changing, after all.

[ May 23, 2004, 01:26: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

Sacred Tomb Worms

Bane Fire

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Think of Ctis in the terms of ancient Egyptian mythology. We can imagine Ctis has a complicated cosmology of parity in the life/death cycle, unlike in SG/Ashen Ermor where death is malevolent and forced by an externality upon an unwilling populace.

Desert Tombs Ctis is akin to a kind of 'Rapture Ready' philosophy, where the inhabitants are quite willing to pass into death so as to rise again in the final struggle vs. true evil. Or something.

[ May 23, 2004, 03:48: Message edited by: SelfishGene ]

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That sounds good to me. Still, Desert Tomb reminds me much of Vanilla Ermor, and I would like to see the forced death removed so it can compete with the other undead themes

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I take it that you've never played either theme, and are under the misconception that a death scale is the same thing as a population killing dominion. Carrion Woods, Soul Gate, and Ashen Empire are the only population killing themes that exist. They can kill thousands of people per turn. Desert tombs just requires a death 2 scale, which kills 0.4% of the population per turn, and reduces income by 4%.

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If you could purchase the unholy priests then that would be a major boost worth considering this theme. Since the only way you can get more unholy priests is by summoning them... it's not really that good in my opinion .

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I never said I agreed with the theory. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes that was a mistake indeed. I thought negative death was the reason for ermorian depopulation. Sorry to bother you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

I use quite like this kind of tactic with DT:

Pretender: Great Sage

6Death and 1 in all others

+1 order
-1 death
+3 warmth
+3 magic
+3 prod
0 growth

Watch tower is enough
Rest to dom strength

And now to the game:

- Build exclusively Sauromancers and once in a while a leader to command your troops

- Research: 8 conjuration, 4 construction, 9 conjuration

- Turn your only priest to prophet and make tomb wyrms

- Your sauromancer death power varies from 3 to 4, if only 3 make after Well of Misery, The Staff of Skulls to raise it to 4. It's relatively cheap produce them at that point of the game, if you've searched magic sites with your sage.

-By conjuration 9 you should have a nice pile of death gems and horde of level 4 death sauromancers. Now.. call Ghost riders. Why?
*They are cheap (5D gems)
*They rock
*You can mass em to far provinces

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why not just use the 200-point-cheaper base C'tis who can do almost the same exact tactic?

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why not just use the 200-point-cheaper base C'tis who can do almost the same exact tactic? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No wyrms?

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Why not just use the 200-point-cheaper base C'tis who can do almost the same exact tactic? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No wyrms? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The wyrms aren't bad but you're only going to have one guy reanimating them? (at 2 per round if he's your prophet) You lose the seprent dancer, 200 points, and are forced to take death. Doesn't really seem worth it to me.

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Wyrms are difficult to acquire early on in anything approximating useful numbers, require a very strong blessing to pay off, possess all of the undead weaknesses, and aren't THAT tough.

Death-6 is not what I'd call a strong or really useful blessing, so the Tomb Wyrms are not-that-useful. With a 200 point cost just for the theme, you're going to be hard-pressed to cram anything passing as a useful blessing on to top of that without having crap-for-scales which will render the living components of your army irrelevant.

Re: C\'Tis Desert Tombs -- 200 pts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Wyrms are difficult to acquire early on in anything approximating useful numbers, require a very strong blessing to pay off, possess all of the undead weaknesses, and aren't THAT tough.

Death-6 is not what I'd call a strong or really useful blessing, so the Tomb Wyrms are not-that-useful. With a 200 point cost just for the theme, you're going to be hard-pressed to cram anything passing as a useful blessing on to top of that without having crap-for-scales which will render the living components of your army irrelevant. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well they are the one of the best free undead units. They have 10/11 (?) armor, 15 Magic Resist (most Undead have 9) - that can be buffed to 18, good attack although bad defense, and 39 (?) hit points. I can't rem off the top of my head, and don't have access to my Ctis games. They also don't have the 'Cannot Heal' flag that most undead are afflicted with.

They're mainly banish tanks. Besides, Ctis undead are just ever so slightly better than your average undead, with usually 6hp over 5. The only decent blessing for them is either high Fear or 9-Fire for damage.

Worms are obviously a middle-late game strategy. Make your Tomb King prophet, site search until your pulling in 8-12 death gems a turn, then start massing the undead. Usually i try to have a 2/1 ration of Unholy priests summoning Worms and Longdead, respectively. I like making a Wyrm SC with Ctis Desert Tombs to keep the middle game momentum alive.