Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

scales, pretender etc.

What I'm trying is not working. Rainbow pretender and I'm focusing on death summons and vine ogres for troops. Went horribly negative scales to focus on dominion (6) and tons of magic on my pretender.

Thx

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Don't build troops at all, just buy hordes of marshmasters.
Most important spells to rush at are quickness, relief and animate skeletons.

In midgame just drain the world in skeletons. In lategame you can then set up tartarian factories or stuff like that.

As pretender i would say father of serpents with n4d4 and good scales.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Miasma is a good nation with which to try out the Astral Wyrm I wrote about in the guide to buffing thread. He has Swamp Survival, so he's immune to the nasty effects of your dominion, and he benefits from the research paths Boron suggested.

Take a Wyrm, Astral 3, dominion strength 6, and a castle. That leaves enough points for 6 positive scales. Distribute those as you like. I'd probably go with magic 3 and luck 3, but then I'm a bit weird, and enjoy playing with luck - perhaps more than its worth http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif On turn 1, recruit a Lizard King, and on turn 2 make him your prophet. Its always fun to have a prophet who can Smite http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Meanwhile, have your Wyrm research Alteration 1. Once you've got that, your Wyrm is ready to go out and conquer, since he can cast Personal Luck. Then start researching Enchantment. That will eventually get you a few things. At ench 2, you can add Astral Weapon to the Wyrm's script, and at 3, Astral Shield. The big serpent is now a force to be reckoned with! The great thing is that your Marshmasters can now cast Animate Skeletons - one of the most annoyingly effective tactics in the game. I'd then reseach Alteration 2, so you can cast quickness before beginning the Skeleton spam. After that, you're on your own as far as research goes, althought getting Ivy Crowns and Vine Ogres is a solid strat - and don't forget that Miasma starts with Summon Bog Beast as its national spell - and that Vine Ogres are immune to poison.

As far as troops go, the combination of City Guard and Light Infanty you start with works pretty well. Put the City Guard out front to do the fighting, and the Light Inf. slightly behind and to one side set to fire closest, so they'll use their javelins. I myself can never resist buying a force of runners to be used as flankers set to attack rear http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

If you do it this way, you give up the magical diversity of a rainbow pretender, but you gain a pretender who can conquer on his own, and much better scales. Later in the game, you can even use you Wyrm as a Comminion Master, and a bunch of Shamen as Communion Slaves for some heavy-duty Astral casting. Note that the Shamen are very cost-effective researchers, since they're sacred, and you'll likely have a bunch of them around.

Hope this helps.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

You need Swamp Survival, Cold Blood, Poison Immunity, Lifelessness, or Undead status on your god. Dominion is always good, but in this case acts as a money multiplier, and an outright attack on nearby units. So very high dominions are a must. A Dominion of 6 is completely insufficient. You should be looking at 8 or 9.

Don't even consider pretenders that have even a small chance of getting diseased, so bypass any and all thoughts of Master Druids or Lords of the Gates.

The list of possible gods is quite large, you could have a Golden Naga or a Master of Serpents, for example. But you aren't going to, because buying Dominion is so good and so expensive. It costs 105 points to buy an Oracle up to Dominion 9, it costs 147 points to buy a Prince of Death up to Dominion 9, it costs 196 points to buy a Scorpion King up to Dominion 9, and it costs a hefty 252 points to get a stupid Naga up to speed.

So you are looking at a money multiplier, so you definately want a +$$$ scale setup, because a large Dominion multiplies that bonus. Nevertheless, as noted your troops are kind of a waste a of time, so Sloth is looking pretty good as a way to get points. So Order 3/Sloth3 is a given. Growth is also very good, since you get to multiply both ends of that gold bonus. And of course, you are taking Order to the max, so Misfortune writes itself into the equation. You get small sacred researchers automatically, so Magic is a must. And Heat 2 is a requirement of the theme.

So your Scales and special theme together cost: 50 points. Order 3/Sloth 3/ Heat 2/ Growth 2/Misfortune 2/Magic 2 is not unreasonable, which are theoretically balanced scales even though they are grossly tilted in favor of the Miasma way of life.

Marshmasters can be built anywhere, and you have a money bonus, so expect to mad castle like, well, mad. Maximize the benefits of that by taking a Wizard's Tower. Total cost: 170.

So now you have 330 points to buy a god, a set of magic, and a Dominion of 9. That can be done. Remember that looks are somewhat deceiving on cost. A Manticore says that it is free. But in practice you are paying 42 points for it over a Dominion 3 God because it starts at dominion 2.

Decent choices include an Oracle with Astral 9 and Water 2; or a Prince of Death with Death 5 and Earth 3. You can't afford a Vampire Queen at all.

-Frank

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

I was under the impression that Hill Fortresses (or whatever the maximum defense fort is) are the standard for Miasma Ctis. Since you want to stall any possible seige against you as long as possible to ensure that the enemy troops were debilitated by disease injuries.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Frank: What would one do with either of the pretenders you've suggested? Miasma has no sacred troops to speak of, since they lose the Serpent Dancers, so the point of that Oracle you've suggested can't be the Astral 9 bless. I also can't figure putting water on it, unless you intend to have it teleport about spamming Stellar Cascades or some such. I've never found that Earth 3 alone is enough to turn a pretender like the PoD into a SC - I'd want to have Air for Mistform/Mirror Image.

I can buy parts of your argument for scales, although I must say that in an MP game Miasma without a combat pretender, with full Sloth and with a Dominion strength of 9 would appear to be saying "ally against me first".

Boron mocked my Miasma build on the IRC channel, so I expect to be dissected here shortly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Oracle Pretender: You can have your Oracle research quite well. Also it can make its own clams if none of your Marshmasters can do so. Finally, you don't need to go past Construction 4 or find any special magic sites to get your Wish factory or Arcane Nexus going. In short, you'll be able to bypass the entire "powering up" stage of high-end astral casting. Personally, I'd probably use an Astral 8 Pretender and take the saved 48 points to buy an extra point of Growth, as that is still plenty to Arcane Nexus and you'll be wanting to spam Enchantment anyway.

The Prince of Death is able to Soul Vortex/Invulnerability/Drain Life as soon as you hit Alteration 5. He's also big enough to make any Death effect you'll ever want - such as the Well of Misery or the Tartarian Gate. Also it can make Dwarven Hammers if you ever get Earth gems from anywhere. Finally, everyone in your empire can lead those stupid naked skeletons he makes around, and the spawn is better at higher Dominion levels, which you will have.

Ctis should be assassinating themselves to stolen provinces as soon as possible, so a Researcher Pretender is actually going to conquer more territory in the long run by allowing you to have more Assassins with Skull Staves spamming Raise Skeletons than a SC Pretender is. Especially compared to a SC pretender without Recuperation or Immortality.

Honestly, I find any attempt at a SC that lacks one of thse abilities to be asking for a lucky crossbow bolt to feeblemind your god and ruin your entire life. I do not and will not use them.

Gods are there to be casters as part of armies, site finders, specialty mages capable of casting spells you want to get up that your national mages can't master without empowerment, early researchers, or in the exclusive case of gods who can deal with battle afflictions - take provinces by themselves.

Miasma can't afford a god who can ignore battle afflictions, and therefore every second you spend considering a SC Pretender is a moment of your life you can never get back.

-Frank

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

I play with Dragons (red and blue) without either of those abilities all the time. They work great, tho I admit that it does require a certain degree of subtlety when you deploy them.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Wow, your expansion strategy revolves around Empoisoners with Skull Staves? Or is that the secondary expansion force, behind your Marshmaster force.

I'm guessing you don't plan on being any sort of early threat since your taking an Immobile and planning on expanding (quickly?) at Construction 4 after you can start expanding as soon as you hit Enchantment 3 and can expand about twice as fast when you hit Alteration 2.

At the very least I disagree that the Oracle is a 'good' pretender for Ctis Miasma. It has it's merits (easy high dominion) your probably better off with a PoD, Ghost King or a very thin possibility of a Phoenix (if you like/need Fire) with a point less of Dominion (especially since in the unmodded game) Sloth gives C'tis a big edge and 'free' points.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Empoisoners equipped Skull Talisman are excellent against independents -- probably greater than 95% success rate at assassinations, and you can start churning them out with no research whatsoever.

Later, when you have higher levels of spells available, you can power them up with empowering items to make them a good threat against other nations.

Here's my idea (but keep in mind that I don't play the normal "Free For All" multi-player style -- I play only multiplayer, but I play only styles in which there is Proper Incentive For War, such as 1 team vs. 1 team or Pentagram).

Oracle, 10 Dominion (oh yes, 10)
+3 Order, +3 Sloth, +2 Heat, +3 Growth, standard luck/misfortune, +3 Magic
Mountain Fortress (oh yes, the Mountain Fortress)
spend the rest of the points on whatever magic you will use to forge items for your Empoisoners

Start with several Empoisoners, making the first one your Prophet. Each one forges a Skull Talisman for himself and then sets about assassinating. (Keep notes about how many leaders you've assassinated from each province.)

Then hire the best researcher you can each turn, and research Construction and Enchantment, so that your Empoisoners, equipped with Death-boosting items, can cast bigger "summon undead" spells during assassinations.

Don't spend any money on troops. Don't spend money on temples unless you've started building a Mountain Fortress in that province. You need a second Mountain Fortress as soon as possible.

Improvise. Have fun.

Thanks to Panther for teaching me some of the flaws of the design that preceded this one... ;-)

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Actually an Empoisoner with Enchantment 1, is as good as one with a Skull Talisman, I have found. Usually indeps are killed just as you fatigue out.

Although this could be because I tend to try to horde Death gems and don't like equipping units with Skull Talismans unless they are non-caster assassins.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

In my experience Empoisoners casting Summon Skeleton only win about 80% of the time. That's not a high enough win ration to make it doable as an expansion strategy. The Skull Talisman really makes a noticeable difference, and I think part of it might be the free skeleton at the beginning, so that the assassination victim has more than one opponent at a time for most of the battle...

I admit that this is a highly questionable expansion strategy anyway. Even if your assassins win 100% of their battles, it still takes four or five Empoisoner-turns to take a province (3 or 4 to assassinate all leaders and one to attack). So at best, you can't gain more than one province per turn from turn 8 through 16 or so, and two provinces per turn after that, and so on.

I'm toying with the idea that one way to optimize this is to sneak right through the low-income provinces and head straight for the high income provinces first...

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Hm... I wonder if my experience was due to heavy drain scale tiring my Empoisoners out faster or something. I've just done a bit of playtesting, and Empoisoners casting Summon Skeleton/Summon Dead have done fine, except for when the faced a mounted commander. In that case the two Skull Talismans being worn by the prophet Empoisoner saved the day.

Well, if after all they are effective without Skull Talismans, then this strategy is just a little bit more doable...

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

You should probably use a scout or a regular commander to do the actual conquering - no sense to waste an expensive assassin turn! Also, it's a good idea to make a fake attack with the selfsame scout even before bringing the assassinators to the province to see just how many and what type the commanders are, again to save the time of the lizards.

In my experience an empoisoner wins most anything but knight commanders with the animate skeleton. Sometimes a priest has heavy infantry guards and they get lucky, or a mounted commander might avoid a limping skeleton and attack the lizard instead, but generally it's a risk worth taking, in my opinion.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Neither of these will give you the kind of rapid start that you'll want.

If he only has earth magic, then you aren't going to want to send him up against barbarian or or heavy cavalry provinces.

This makes little sense. A Rainbow 2 great sage only researches at the equivalent speed of a couple of marshmasters.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Absolutely. In fact, you should do the actual conquering with a Marshmaster, since you will want him to search the place for magic sites.

Mounted Commanders, with their multiple weapons, are always able to beat Poisoners a disturbing amount of the time. They can kill your skeletons faster than you can make them and that's the end of that. Your army, which you actually will have despite everything, is itself capable of taking out enemy provinces that have cavalry at merely tremendous losses. But since you aren't fighting the battles against Barbarians and such, taking tremendous losses to capture farmlands is OK.

In the later stages of early developement, your assassins can carry Skull Staves and cast Animate Skeletons. At that point they can take the commanders no problem.

Well.. duh. Your pretender is extremely valuable. No god should ever be put into a head-on battle with an independent pile of barbarians. That's just suicide. The best Super Combatant you can make is still just going to die sometimes when surrounded by a bunch of greatsword wielding madmen. If you trick out a SC properly their failure rate is very small, but even that is way too much of a risk to expend on your god.

A bunch of hearty fools attacking for twenty something points each? No thanks. Heavy Cav is even worse. A Mist Formed Soul Draining Air Queen can still just get killed on the opening charge. It's not likely, but it's not the kind of risks that are acceptable in a game that can potentially drag on for months.

Yeah, a PoD pretender is not the kind of god that you are going to want to send frolicing into a pile of barbarians alone. This is irrelevent since at no time do you ever want to send your god frolicing in Barbarians, and because barbarians are so easy to Empoison that there is little temptation for Ctis to ever fight them.

Remember, with all the troops you don't lose by not fighting, those few fights you actually do engage in can afford to be blood baths. Heck, on the first turn you should seriously consider purchasing an Assassin and whatever Mercenary company is available whilst researching Enchantment.

-Frank

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

With protection over 25, mirror image, no fatigue, and defense around 20, those deaths are rare enough as to not worry about them.

Why not? If your pretender dies in the first 10 turns, then you won't be playing the game for months anyways. Either you'll get steamrollered by your most powerful neighbour by turn 20 (He'll have two to three times as many provinces as you by that point.), or you'll manage to negotiate for an alliance.

Of course you can. You simply have to script him right, and give him the proper equipment. You likely can't do it quickly enough with Miasma C'Tis, but any of the earth nations can do it within 5 turns. The easiest way to show this is to give him 9 death magic and play base Ulm. Give him a black plate cuirass, black plate helmet, sword of sharpness, lead shield, and boots of the behemoth. No scripting required beyond an "attack rear". It's a very rare province indeed that will give him more than a single affliction, and those don't affect his performance to any great degree.

You'd still be better off doing this with a ghost king though, as the etherealness makes him all but immune to normal troops once his protection gets high enough.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

I just checked, and you can easily afford a vampire queen if you are willing to make small sacrifices for the extra safety she offers. Simply take O3, S3, H2, MF3, MG2, dom 8 with A2W2E3D1B2. That leaves you with 2 points left over. Of course, a much better choice for Miasma is the ghost king, since you can give him better magic paths, and still afford a dominion 10.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

I like taking the astral wyrm Order 3 growth 3 dom 9
3 astral.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Thanks for all the help.

I used the Saurlich as my pretender. Fairly strong chassi and he's immortal. I like the idea of the astral worm also.

Everyone is right however that a Domain of 6 is not enough. I ended up right next to Oceana with a starting dominion of 9 and he is crushing my dominion and I'm having trouble getting to him.

I like the early expanding with the assasins. That will help next game.

Next game should be much better.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

I have to say that I like base C'tis more than Miasma. While the dominion of Miasma is very nice I strongly prefer the Sauramancer over the Marshmaster. This is mostly due to the Marshmaster being over priced vs. the Sauramancer by formula. Also D3 is just so nice.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

A note about early Assassin Expansion:

You do much better with a Skull Earring than without. Assassins should all make their own earring before leaving home.

You probably can't Assassinate an Amazon, Lizardmen, or Woodsmen province because they have a tendency to have bodyguards. If you eventually get Bottles of Living Water on these guys, you can start killing Lizard Shamans and such.

Nothing will bring your victory chance to 100%. But a Bottle of Living Water and a Skullstaff comes really close.

Mounted Comanders are the death of you. They can personally kill skeletons at more than 1/round.

-Frank

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

for mounted commanders: figure out the distance it takes him to get directly in frot of your empoisener, then kill him with sleep touch.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

My Empoisoner with TWO skull talismans can kill mounted commanders.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Interesting reading, this - I'm just losing my first ever game as C'tis base, to Vanheim, and I'm thinking of trying Miasma next.

One question though - when you assassinate indie commanders, how do you know how many are left? When you've assassinated them all, can you take the province with a single scout because the troops will all rout immediately? I've never taken indy provinces by anything other than brute force, so I'm keen to know how this works.

CC

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

You don't know how many commanders are left, unless you attack the province (before or during the assassinations): you will then be told that you need to kill X commanders.

Once all commanders are dead, a scout is enough to take the province, as the enemy will rout right away.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Also, if one of your assassins has been ordered to assassinate but there was no assassination attempt, you know that there aren't any commanders left.
So, if you have two assassins assassinating in a single province, and one of them assassinates a commander and the other doesn't, you know for a fact that all commanders are dead.
You should notice though that assassinating commanders only works well against indies, because a normal player (or AI) can use his PD to make your assassinations useless.

Wow, so many S's in a single post :O

And, a funny quote related to assassinations: http://www.bash.org/?73185

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Strange, I haven't lost Empoisoners to any mounted commanders. No items or anything. A priest with bodyguards killed a couple, but fell to one with a skull staff and Raise Skeletons, as did Amazons.

Mounted commanders didn't seem to be able to reliably kill a skeleton per round. Sometimes they would, but often enough they'd fail.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Of course, after posting that, I go home, play one turn and lose my next empoisoner to a mounted commander. When will I learn to keep my mouth shut.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

What do you mean ? PD is useless vs Assassination, the PD leaders aren't targeted. Having a high PD helps discovering assassins, but you can't really count on it.
My preferred trick with any assassin (or even scouts !) is to give them a Black Bow and try to find the big enemy mages http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Cold.gif[/img] http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

I guess he means nobody will take one of your provinces with assassins alone, because of that PD. It's not quite correct though: an assassin doing a normal attack against 1 PD should win without trouble, and you will not always want to put PD in your provinces (if you plan on defending the province with a lone commander).

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

The PD commander will also command any troops left by the proper commander. Thus it's not quite as simple to rout enemy armies with assassins if the armies have PD to support them. If the troops are undead/magical and the PD commander doesn't have the corresponding leadership this isn't an issue, of course.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

What I meant was that because PD leaders are immune to assassinations, you can't take a none-indie province merely by assassinating all the leaders and marching over with a scout, since the PD commanders will be there to lead the troops.

EDIT: And just now I notice that everyone else explained it for me, exactly like I meant it. Silly me for not seeing there is a third page.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

i got 8 emposoners with skull staffs and talismans casting the spell that gives like 5 skeletons, the talisman is mainly to help vrs archers/flyers. my empoisoners did a huge amount of damage. also, can u assasinate while u r besieged? that would b fun with miamasa and high def fort. also i cant find any advantage to take the dark fort over mountain fort. same price but dark is faster to build and stuff

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Yes.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

sweet 5 - 10 empoisoners casting raise dead ( skull staffs ) assasinating all his comanders would b fun. especially if he had high dominion, it could also prevent him from storming, i just tried it in single player and i killed a golden naga

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

unless u want big expensive items for ur empoisoners then i suggest giving your god powers he can use ! your marsh masters/skull staff empoisoners can forge their own stuff 5-10 with skull staffs at the back of the battle on their own can conquer indys. thats 25 - 50 skeletons a turn, the only trouble i have is crossbow, flyers and cavalry. all of which are countered by skull talisman(the skeleton infront takes arrows and stalls fast units. if playing on a map with lots of water water/against a water nation then its worth giving your empoisoners something so they can breathe. also on a random note i had a god with 2 rune smashers and 2 spell focus's casting master enslave on armies that might endanger my empoisoners

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Are you sure the MR bonuses stack for the two rune smashers and spell focuses?

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

probly not, but i like it neway

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

I thought they did but I've never tested it...

edit: Oh I see, yeah two of the same item doesn't. I just meant that one rune smasher stacks with one spell focus.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

you can use two rune smashers w/ the nataraja, or two spell foci w/ the Divine Emporer or Oracle; but besides those few exceptions, same items do not stack.

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Lets not forget the Crone. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

i love having 4 misc slots :p

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Master lich also has 3 misc slots, allowing the 2 spell foci ( and a ring of wizardry in between for extra penetration ).

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

Interesting thread. Rediscovered it since I'm playing Ctis in dom-III http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

So I wonder what I could summon safely (i.e. that won't get diseased) under miasma dominion. So, of course undead and inanimate or cool as well as lamias (cold blooded).
I'm not sure about the following:
Vine man/ogres and Ivy king
Tree lords
Elemental royalty
Abominations
Trolls
Farie court
Tarrasque

Not sure if someone still frequents these forums any more but one could hope so http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Best way to play C\'tis Miasma?
 

The vine creatures would seem logical to not be affected. But if they are then you might want to mention it to Kristoffer as a thematic change.