C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Desert Tombs. I have heard it is a weak and, after seeing it in action, I am not impressed. As such, I want to play it! Any suggestions for scales? Can they get the Nature priests that normal C’tis can get? If so, all those ghouls will get dangerous with Mass Protection.

On the other hand, is it fun? Is it something different or is it Ermor, but with dead lizards?

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Im not sure if they still have shamans (cant remember) but their sauros dont have nature. Their sauros are d3 f1 and 1 random, a great strategy is to mass banefire archers and their unholy priests, reanimate a huge screen of undead and back it up by those deadly archers. Place your sauros just infront of your archers and have them set to raise skeletons. For scales go sloth 1 or 2, whatever the requirements are, some magic and some order. Give the pretender n4 d6 and any other magics your fond of (i like earth for dwarven hammers and whatever else i need to equip my SC's, bearing in mind that you can summon spectres and lamia queens for magic. d6 means 1 booster and you can make tartarians, n4 means you can Gift of reason them+make vine kings and lamia queens (kings make ogres and cast relief+mass protection in battle while queens are versatile mages). If youy want certain items (boots of quickness, skullcaps, dwarven hammers ect) then give your pretender those paths because your mages arent very versatile.

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Hmm, it sounds like Ermor with a different skin, not quite as interesting as I had expected. Can you suggest an unusual theme to try out, something that is going to have a fresh spice to it?

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

You get a lot of death magic with DT but I wouldn't call it Ermor. Especially not a pop killing ermor. DT has a big banefire emphasis, which is interesting. Plus you can summon (un)holy mummified snakes.

You might enjoy R'yleh if you are looking for something unusual. Or mictlan.

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Their dominion doens't kill people at all, IIRC. Priests and anti-undead spells aren't enough to defeat them. You might encounter a living nation with Death support and some fire, or a dead nation with some living support, but both are very different from Ermor. For one thing, they don't have to alchemize anything.

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

yea. For unique themes try ulm black forest, VERY different from ulm. For an unused theme try that marignon sailing one.

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Not even close. Beyond the substantially different paths and national summons, Desert Tombs is an empire of both the living and the dead, with a good measure of the advantages and disadvantages of both. It's also one of the few nations that can pull off having three god-kings at once in the early game: the Pretender, the prophet, and the mummy of the previous prophet.

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Ermor is also an empire of both the living and the death.

Diffrence beeing that C'tis DT summons thier reanimators and Ermor recruits them.

C'tis DT has stronger battlefield magic then Ermor with D3 for raise skeletons and D3F1 for banefire. While Ermor has S2D2 and much more expensive mages capital only.

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Oh, right, that Ermor. Sorry, I'm just used to Ermor being synonymous with "a dead theme". Even though Broken Empire is my favorite of the three Ermorian themes.

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Exactly the same with me. I used to be annoyed when someone mentioned just Ermor when they meant one of the themes... Oops?

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

Yea, broken emprie is fun (shadow vestals rock). For desert tombs really try to get anthrax, king of banefires, he really suits them (abviously) and is amazingly kickass. Give him wraithsword (under cb, un modded try bloodthorn_a shield), horror helm, marble armour (if you can, otherwise some sort of high prot armour), ring of regen and 1 other thing (anti magic/luck reccomended). Script him to cast fire shield and then either attack closest or cast a spell then attack closest. With fireshield he has a 9ap dmg fireshield AND a 15ap dmg+decay banefire shield, almost anyone trying to hit him will die, most wounds are shrugged off by his high hp, protection and regen and those that arent the wraithsword can generally fix. With the horror helm he has fear +8 so routs enemys quickly and with marble armour his prot is 24 iirc.

Desert tombs is alot of fun, access to plenty of reanimated hordes, long ranged firepower in the form of archers and great priests (and fairly cheap d3 mages). Take atleast n4 d6 on your pretender and probably enough fire for anthrax as it means you can make ivy kings with no boosters, tartarians with one booster and can also cast some nice battlefield spells (make huge numbers of super cheap militia, throw quite alot of sacred serpents in to keep up morale+2 or 3 morale buffing priests and cast life after death on them).

Also if you can get well of misery fully up (cast then cast again with a really big boost after a few turns of its income) consider casting utterdark. It dosnt affect your skeletons (or banefire archers!) at all and affects your mages very little (as the best death spells either raise units, have 100 precision or affect the whole battlefield) and can really cripple enemys (would YOU like to face hgue banefire archers+longdead hordes in the dark?)

Re: C\'tis Desert Tombs ideas?
 

BE battle magic isn't what I'd call weak (Well, okay, I play BF ulm...), as they get nether bolt/darts and raise dead, plus randoms and boosters. Five or six thaumaturgs with nether darts will kill a whole lot, assuming you have the proper unliving screen.