Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Hello Lizard Lovers,
i just now begin to understund how to play C'tis and seeking advice for a good Pretender/Blessing design. Especially concerning the Sacred Serpents because i "discovered" that i can recruit those beasts at every castle. I really would love to make them useful but as it is now, they deal good damage but dye too fast because of horrible low defense.
Does a Death 4 Blessing help them from ending as hoburg milita food ?
Does a Nature 9 blessing (regen, 50% resit Poison) stack with the Snakes Natural 50% Poison resist to 100% Poison immuntiy ?
Does a W9 blessing have other results (melee survival) than a E9 blessing ?
thanks in advance for your wisdom and experiance.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

W9 also gives quickness, nature 9 is a great bless (also gives berserk) and if missle weapons scare you an air blessing isnt a bad thing

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Base game they are really too expensive to use as anything besides morale boosters. Probably the best single bless to give them would be nature, but that doesn't mesh well with the other sacred options (tomb wyrms or serpent dancers). A rule of thumb as to which blesses increase survivability; high HP - nature, high defense - water, high armour - nature/earth, very low armour - air, none of the above - astral.

The most cost-effective C'tis bless I have found is 4f5a4w (manticore modded, or ghost king unmodded) with serpent dancers.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

not related to serpents but marignon flagelants with a F9 (for flaming weapons) and high earth blessing are really useful since they do alot of damage close up and dont take much damage at range

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Four armour is not much, arrows (even slingers) will still kill them often. An air (or astral, to follow the standard Marignon strategy) bless would be much more effective.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

oops, i swear i ment to say air there. since ive used this with a phoenix, and since marignon has alot of high lvl priests they can easily bless all the troops

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Death 4: Not a bad blessing on a tougher unit but I dont use it much.
Nature 9: the 50% poison resistance does stack, yes. You also get beserk +3, as shovah mentioned.
Water 9: gives quickness and great defense, but is a bad idea to use on a unit with poor starting defense

My instinct is that for this unit the best bless would be N9/E9. You get regen, beserk, and half decent armor. The problem is that your armor is only good, not great. In addition, your units have very little punch with only one attack - thats not much combat power for all the design points you are spending on them! The traditional response to poor combat power is a F9 bless, but you can't do a N9/F9 bless here because the serpents would be slaughtered due to thier low prot + low defense. Really it seems that the Sacred Serpent just isnt a good unit to use for a bless strategy.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

but if you can do n9 f9 blessing and get Gift of Health up thats a different story

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

If you can get Gift of Health up, everything looks better. However, I have never really based blessing around them. They are sacred, and the fact that bless increases their morale is enough when you use them as rout-stoppers. I'd like to protect them somehow (Air, Earth 9 IF I would be taking Earth 7-8 anyway).

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Gift of Health doesnt really change the situation. More hp, sure but they'd still be stuck with the fatal low prot+low def combination. Pepper them with arrows and fight with some half decent infantry and they are done for.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Agreed. Even Tarrasques under dominion 10 GoH can be brought down by masses of heavy infantry, and they have both superb protection and more HP than a sizeable army of sacred serpents.

Now, A Tarrasque or Abomination prophet in dominion 10 with a Ring of Regeneration and Kurgi's Gift under Gift of Health, THAT simply can't be killed. Until your opponent just charms, enslaves, petrifies or disintegrates him, I suppose. I've never actually tried this stratagem, but I imagine it'd be truly hardcore until MR-based magic came into play. 'course, you'd need to give him air or, if you're feeling lucky, astral in order to teleport onto the field from dominion 10, unless said field is within flying distance of a dominion 10 province but... fine, so it's not a viable strategy. Still sounds fun. Not to hijack the thread, or anything. Thought just ocurred to me, and asked to be shared.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

fine then GoH and a9 n9 bless? resistant to missle weapons and have regen and good health, not the greatest but quite fun

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

I suppose that's one of the best blessings you can give these guys, but I doubt they were ever intended to actual be used as front line troops. They're strictly there for morale-related support, and any combat abilities they might possess are entirely incidental. They're certainly not worth actually desigining a blessing around.

Update: But they're cute. Oh, how I love C'tis.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Yah, the Sacred Serpents aren't worth building a strategy around. The Serpent Dancers on the other hand definately can be. They have nice stats that can be enhanced by any number of blessings, and total poison immunity does provide tactical possibilities...

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

I tried an F9A9W9 phoenix pretendr with the serpent dancers and a lizard king prophet to divine bless them then throw around fanatacism and smites.

had the world set as per council of wyrms diffuculty... well i had world richness be normal instead of poor... vs tien chi on the nile map.

anyway a small dancer army, combined with an equal troop of poison slingers did the trick for early independant provinces and even cut into the tien chi a bit. not expensive to replace any of those that die....

but irt lacked lasting power. I ended up taking tien chi with hoardes of pale riders instead of the blessed dancers/slingers, they where formidable though.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

your scales must have been **** though, to getboth phoenix paths to 9 and another path to 9

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Triple, even triple-and-a-half blesses can work, but you need just the right setup. In this case, taking air to 9 is not very useful for the cost, 5 or 6 would have a similar effect much cheaper.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

yeah, I tooled around with using earth instead of air. basically I had magic death turmoul and heat cranked down.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Ctis has one amazing advantage:
Most of their troops require almost zero resources.

So you can use Sloth 3 and get additional points from the heat scale.
Furthermore your mages are quite formidable too and you don't really need other magic since you already have death + nature, atm in my ever changing opinion imho the 2 most useful magic paths http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

With CB 5 i think one lvl 9 bless is most useful. Either F9 or W9.

Especially F9 is cheap and useful:

Moloch, F9, Watchtower, Dom 6, Order 3, Sloth 1, Growth 3, Heat 1, Misfortune 2, Magic 3.

That are economically quite good scales. Very useful for Ctis. The offensive power of both your serpents and your serpent dancers is considerably strengthened.

The snakes will still quickly die but you can replace losses fast.

The Snakes are quite dangerous vs. many Thugs/tough troops also.
With their 18 attack they hit rather often. With their flaming weapons attack they also hit etheral beings.
And then their is their poison.
So a Thug has to be poison resistent and has to have either high protection or fire resistence to easily slaughter the snakes.

The main Question is though if they are really useful for faster initial expansion. I think ctis with really good economic scales is even better. 1-2 Armies expand with Slave warriors or falchioneers and then you get your skeletonspamming sauromancers.
My estimation would be that ctis without a bless strat works even better then normal ctis.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

Thanks for all the replys. I was facinated from the fact that i can build sacred serpents everywhere but as Boron and others said the snakes alone are not worth an expensive bless effect. On my next game i will try a death 4(+) pretender so that my cute but somewhat useless sacred serpents can boost morale as well and in the same time rout enemys with the fear aura.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

For worthy non capitolonly sacreds you should try Mictlan, Marignon or Vanheim.
Mictlans Jaguar warriors are impressive. They require almost zero resources, are quite cheap but nontheless quite formidable.
YC played them with a triplebless in 2 recent MP games and did win those 2 games.

Re: Base C\'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed
 

but marignons are soo expensive, unless you mean flagelants (which i love with f9 a9 phoenix), the knights of the chalice are also quite good with e9 n9