No MA C'tis guides :(
 

I'm playing a small hotseat game with me, my bro, and 2 comps. Me and my brother picked each other's nations, and he gave me C'tis. I gotta say, I really am unimpressed. At first I thought that I would leverage the poison resistance and spam slingers with some blockers, but that seemed to kill off nearly as many of my guys as theirs. I have switched to massing Swamp Guards, but I don't like them either, they can't hit anything and seem to run away way to easily for "elite" troops. I just started trying to use shamans spamming Body Ethereal, but the shamans die really fast to arrows. One thing that I hope will really help is that I just researched shadow blast and Nether Darts, which most of my marshmasters can cast. Any thoughts on improvements?

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

I don't play C'tis myself, but I remember reading somewhere that a good strategy would be to research enchantments for raise skel(3) and foul vapour(5). Make sure you make your marchmasters at least 100% poison resistance though (75% is not enough unless you are lucky).

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Take a look at these threads:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=33786
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ghlight=miasma

The first is a guide on EA C'tis. (you can also find it through the strategy index) While there are obviously some differences between EA and MA they are quite similar, and a lot of the points in this thread apply to MA too.

The second started out as a thread about the effects of the miasma, but in the second half you can find a little more general discussion about the nation.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Well I don't think there will be any new guides until the post editing issue is reconsidered, but I can give you a few tips.

Pretender:
Make sure you pick a poison immune pretender so you don't accidently die to your own miasma. Another option is an undead pretender who gets poisoned but doesn't suffer the afflictions, or a very high HP pretender like the Manticore. You'll get afflictions, but since the Manticore flies and basically kills everything in one hit it's not going to affect it as much.

Scales:
High dominion is important, you earn more gold based on dominion.
Order 3 - More money = more Marshmasters
Sloth 3 - Your troops are not powerful, so just recruit as many sloth 3 allows, but rely on your mages
Heat 2 - This helps offset an opponent with a cold 3 dominion, which really ruins your day. Nations like MA Jotunheim will bombard you with Wolven Winter and having an existing heat scale will make it a lot more palatable.

Strategy:
Your unshielded warriors have explosive offense, and your shielded troops are decent defenders but don't expect to carve out a huge empire with them. C'tis' early game strength is summoning hordes of skeletons with their mages. When a suitable counter comes up, you should have shadow blast for important battles. It costs a death gem, but it is an amazing spell and can easily turn the tide of an important battle.

I know this is extremely abbreviated, but it should give you an idea of what to shoot for. It sounds like you're already in the middle of the game, field some marshmasters with a block of national troops to suck up damage. Summon skeletons and use battlefield magic to kill the lion's share of the troops. You may want to mix in some Bane Lord thugs if appropriate. Your end game goal is Tartarians, although I don't know how good they are with the shattered soul update. I'm sure other posters can add more information. Good luck!

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

I had thought about skelly spamming, but I always got the idea that it was more of a blocking force while your other mages laid down the heat than a winning strategy in and of itself. As for the pretender, I totally forgot about getting a poison immune one :doh: , and ended up having to rush to cons 4 and ench 5 so I could cast gift of health to save my mother of rivers:p . I took something like order 3 sloth 1/2 heat 3 mis 2 magic 1 with 5 water and 6 astral, awakened.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Regarding skellyspam, in the early game the horde of skeletons/soulless you can raise (especially with the help of a const-4 Skull Staff) can easily win a battle on their own. I don't know what C'tis can do once opponents start lobbing magma eruptions and falling fires, though, or if your MP opponent gets smart and starts putting priests in (the AI never does).

What magic options does C'tis have in mid/late game?

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

so far as I can see C'tis has decent death, nature, and astral options for late game, and weak water. If I start summoning spectres though I suppose that I could branch out a little more.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Many of your Marshmasters get Astral, and you have unlimited training capacity for Shamans as communion slaves. An 8 slave communion will have Marshmasters casting at 4W/4S/5D/5N, before booster items. This gives you a wide array of BE to cast, as well as the potential for devastating, sustained artillery barrages. I took over MA C'tis in a game recently, and after exploring them more..... Well I think they're a good target for a full playthrough, and maybe write my first guide. ;)

The biggest point to remember with C'tis though, is the Marshmasters. That unit ties the entire nation together. The only reason to not train a Marshmaster, is to train a Shaman for research/slave. Basic rule of thumb would be to train a Shaman every time you get a Marshmaster with an Astral pick. I find keeping a balance of masters/slaves to be an effective way of keeping your fatigue in check over the course of a big battle.

Skellie spam can be very effective, but from my observation, it is most powerful early on, and slowly wanes in usefulness later. Though putting 3D Marshmasters in the army to just bulk your line with longdead while the communion does the real work, is viable.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

That reminds me, what is the proper order of casting to get communion master/slave working? Do the slaves have to cast slave after the master, or before? Or can everyone cast both? :)

Hmmm... that gives me some interesting ideas for Marginon, it never occurred to me that their astral path would be great for communion.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

I like to make heavy use of Curse and Horror Mark with C'Tis. In the early game, when Marshmasters are harder to afford and less viable, or if you can build a second fort quickly ,and devote it to shamans (I doubt they're capital only), then 10-20+ shamans spamming these spells should have a visible benefit. What C'Tis needs though-as has been mentioned-are troops that don't care about morale. Vine Ogres might work well here.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Anyone can join the communion as either a master OR slave, at any point in the battle. This includes Crystal/Slave matrices to be part of the communion at the beginning, and even allows the AI to join the communion after your script runs out. Most often, of course, the spells are cast in the first round of combat, which then gives your masters 4 scripted spells apiece before the AI starts doing strange things with all that power.

There's a lot of nations that get random Astral picks on their top mages..... It's most useful if you get a cheaper guy who either more reliably gets Astral (100% guarantee is nice) or who is a very cost effective researcher. Otherwise, you are using main mages for masters and slaves, and it's not as cost effective, or as easy to make up a large communion. However, even a 4 slave communion boosts you 2 levels in all paths, and starts to make some spells massively increase in power - not to mention that over the course of a longer battle, the lower fatigue costs can lead to more castings, rather than all mages casting 3x and passing out. :p

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

If you're planning on using lots of communions it may not be a bad idea to take a light Nature bless so your slaves don't die as easily from fatigue. There's nothing quite as infuriating as having your 5 communion masters raining down destruction on the last fleeing remnants of PD while their 10 slaves die from fatigue. A Nature bless doesn't fix the problem but sometimes is the difference between them dying in a 10 round fight vs. not.

-Max

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Vine Ogres will suffer from your miasma, but the C'tis national summons are decent (and holy, if you have a good bless) lamia summoning can be super-gem-efficient with a high nature pretender (not that that helps you now) and not a bad choice otherwise

Poison Slingers can be incredibly useful with good (or lucky) placement and instruction(and INCREDIBLY frustrating otherwise) you want them to fire as far to the back as possible without running up past your front lines... (which is hard with their lousy range)

PAY ATTENTION TO MORALE -- lizards are cowardly as hell, and will drive you INSANE if you don't find a way to make them braver. Positioning your snakes well is almost as hard as positioning your Slingers (

I've so far had pretty poor luck making enough progress with the national troops to reach fully summons/magic based armies, but when I do, mid game is easy sailing (no real end-game contest in SP, so don't want to make assertions on that)

Skelly-spamming assassins (add skull staff asap) are super handy, and can research and/or scout till you need them.

I've not yet hit on a strategy that I felt was guide-worthy, but i suspect there is one with these guys. I always feel like i'm "oh-so-close" to figuring out how to make them really click, and then hit a streak of critical battles gone horribly horribly wrong (

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

It's a good point, the Shaman are sacred, so can take advantage of a bless. Why Nature instead of Earth though?

As for communion slaves dying, I've not seen much danger of it with a 1:1 ratio, unless my opponent casts a fatigue inducing BE - or all the masters decide to chain cast Blade Wind or something. Maybe it's just because I try to make sure the communion is large enough that the fatigue costs of each spell are significantly decreased?



My current dilemma is that I am much more of a scales player, but C'tis seems to scream out for an awake SC..... Doing some test runs with a PoD right now - I am finding him remarkably fragile for some reason. I considered trying the Saurolich, but he just not as cost effective.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

This worked pretty well for me in MP:

Prince of Death (Body 383, 45 hits)
Magic: Death 6
Dominion 9
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 1 Heat 3 Death 1 Fortune 3 Magic 1
Awake

You really want high Dom and Order 3 to go with your high-income miasma bonus. I like the gem income from luck 3, and luck 3 scales with itself: more events that are better. You could go luck 0 and more prod or growth. But MA Ctis has more problems than anyone with magic diversity, because of miasma. So the extra random gems from luck are really nice.

Your starting City Guard is great for eating arrows while resource-cheap Slave Warriors do the damage. A Lizard King or two is also good to add for morale and smiting.

With Enchant 1, your starting empoisoner can take territory by himself, just avoid amazons, lizards, and other provinces with bodyguarded commanders.

Turn 2 you can make an enchanted shield (or raw hide) by alchemizing. Enchanted has much better Parry.

You can alternatively wait until Turn 3 and make a Raw Hide shield to save gems, and use your Death gems to make a Black Servant prophet to build up an early lizard souless army. In this case go Conj-1 first and make a skull for your empoisoner -- the skull is safer than casting in any case.

A dom 9 PoD is still pretty good versus tribals and barbarians if you can find them in MA. He'll probably pick up a couple of afflictions, but he can still scare off the indies. And if he dies once, well, you've got a bunch of H3s to call him back, and he'll still have D5 for the extra fear.

And once you've got Enchant-3, you can really start to roll, with Marshmaster skelly spam.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

From my limited experience with Ctis I can tell you two things. Placement and Magic.

All of C'tis' units are situational and specialized. Some factions can at often times just buy one unit and apply critical mass to acheive victory without fail. Vanhiem/Midgard is the biggest culprit I know of for this kind of brute strategy. With C'tis you need to know the role of every unit and use them all in order to get maximum effect. Getting the corus of C'tis units to sing together is difficult. In the end it may just come down to luck though.

The best use of poisen slingers I've seen is in spreading them all around the field as just one unit and have them target archers. It only takes eight or nine of them in a large army to deal a lot of hurt this way.

The units however are a weak wall to throw up between the units that matter and the enemy. In my opinion it is the mage power of C'tis that wins wars. There is a reason why your best mages can be made everywhere you go. I can remember several instances where I lost battles solely due to skelly spam and magical artillary. Again, making C'tis sing is a matter of tediousness. Study the list of magic spells and know how to weild them. 90% of your victory depends on knowledge of magic.

Good luck.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Try swarm instead. You'll have fun. :D

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Regarding morale, the best solution I have found for this is to recruit loads of H2 priests and use them as my main commanders. Casting Sermon of Courage works very well. The downside is that this makes it harder to recruit mages, but you'll have this problem anyway because you can't use indy commanders (miasma). Also they catch arrows frequently, but any large army will have several (each can only carry 40+ units) so losing all of them is unlikely.

I find a mix of elite lizard warriors and city guard mixed together does an adequate job of chewing up heavy infantry while surviving arrows.

With a skull staff, marshmaster skellyspam is moderately effective. I still don't see any good mid-game options, though.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Do Dark Vines suffer from miasma? Does anyone know?

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

I've always been partial to the Lizard Kings. Since you don't have a cap only mage, you can keep up your Marshmaster spam in your outlying castles, and pump out as many Lizard Kings as you need at your home, and they can Smite spam too.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

HoneyBadger - no, Dark Vines seem immune.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

If your having moral issues, avoid the H2 priests. Instead just keep getting marsh masters and research Thamaturgy 4. Touch of Madness is the way to never rout ever again. You also get a bunch of useful spells along the way.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

The elite slave guys are great, by the way. Recruit them in preference to the Swamp Guards.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

the elite slave guys are definately a better choice for melee the lack of a sheild a a little bit of a problem but shouldn't cause too much trouble.

Also i find C'tis could benefit from a defencive strategy, a combinastion of cheap and easily massed troops (if somewhat inferior to that of other nations) miasmas natural defence and skelly spamming make it a dificult defence to break through. Any dedicated force can be halted easily and weakened significantly with miasmas disease allowing a counter attack. For the offencive push C'tis has a number of pretty strong national summons such as the sacred sirrush(conj 5), it has 3 attacks and i find it is a good candidate for a nature bless.

i'm going to test some other strategies, don't ask what strategies because i'm not sure yet lol, it will come too me when i start playing hopefully.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

I think that Sirrush is a rather poor summon, probably one iof the poorest national summons at all because for 10(!) pearls you buy a mediocre fat sacred warrior. Taking on account the facts that pearls are very valuable and that they have lots of other uses, I'd rather forge 3(or 2 without a hammer) luck\antimagic amulets for my 12 gem banelords.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Surely it depends on the situation? Please correct me if I am wrong but Sirrush is size 6 (immune to trampling), not undead, has three attacks to Bane Lord's one, more HP, much faster on the battlemap, and you have cheap mages that can cast luck anyway. I would have thought they serve different purposes.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Good to hear that Dark Vines are immune-thanks Llamabeast!

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Some people seem to like a strong bless for the Oiorpata. I'd imagine that situationally, a 9W/?N that I've seen mentioned a few times, would make Sirrush pretty gnarly. Especially if you have a Conjuration bonus site. Even then, just some regen and maybe a shaman to cast Body Ethereal on them, and you've got some really durable anchors for your line.

I wonder if you get anything but misc slots with a GoR. :p

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

It's viable but believe me, even with Conjuration bonus site you may find much better way to use your pearls.
Of course, not.
Sirrush is a monster unit while Banelord is a perfect durable commander which with right equipment can easily be turned into horrifying killing machine. Yes, they definitely serve different purposes but I just can't find any for Sirrush :).

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Sirrush isn't necesarry, just an example which can work(rather leave better strategies for people to find themselves), there are tons of other powerful summons available national or not which would work especially with some buffs cast by a few shamans or something.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Sirrushes are powerful troops. I don't have any MA C'tis save here but I think they are sacred, then a good bless can have interesting effects. And MA c'tis has nature magic, hence has access to GoR if you really want to have a Sirrush commander. I tried MA C'tis once and Sirrushes were my favourite :)

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

They're not, unless it changed at some point.

I was playing around with c'tis a while ago and I think my scales were some combination of magic and growth, which unlocked the gardner event(blood druid + vines), both the gardner and the vines got sick.

The plus side though is that it seems that the event doesn't spawn again unless the druid dies (I tried the same scales with pan and got it, but only once. I tried the scales with other nations and didn't get the event at all), so if you take the mother of serpents (I think she's available for c'tis) you can amass a nice little army of vines and she can heal them up.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

It's already difficult for MA C'tis to branch out into blood. Getting random blood on Lamia Queens is just that, random. And they aren't exactly cheap. Mass indy scouts are just going to get sick and die. Tartarians will get blood, but that's way down the road.

And if you do have blood, why would you bother summoning Dark Vines? Just make some demons (devils or hell knights) instead, who are disease-immune.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

I wasn't looking at going heavy into blood.

The event provides the dark vines for free, it seems that as long as the gardner dies, you'll keep getting the event. Therefore more and more free dark vines.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Two situations where Sirrush might be better comes to mind (there might be others too):

1. Against tramplers.

2. Diversify your army. Opponents would expect skelly spam supplemented by other undead (Bane Lord is an obvious choice) and might spam dust to dust in addition to banishment. Sirrush's speed (relative to other C'yis units) also gives you more battlefield options.

BTW, adding equipment to Bane Lords add to its cost significantly and it would still be vulnerable to anti- undead spells. There comes a point where it would not be cost effective.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Well, if they're not, being plants that naturally live in swamps, they certainly ought to be.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

That is a really good point, I was trying to get my thoughts into words on this. Sirrush by themselves may not be the best expenditure of gems, but also it seems that overly relying on Bane Lords gives your opponent an idea of what to expect, and thus is also less efficient. Dividing your efforts between your options, with Bane Lord thugs raiding territories, and Sirrush supplementing your primary ground forces, could keep an enemy from being able to focus his own tactics, or even script properly.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Sirrushes are good with regen, and an N4 bless for MA C'tis is nice because you can make shrouds to keep sick indy mages alive. I'm pretty sure a regen Bless stacks with the spell, so it's not like your bless is wasted once you are able to buff the Sirrushes. But then you have to give up on a cheap awake PoD.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

How well armored are Lizard Kings? I prefer the H2s because they're cheaper and I can get several for the price, meaning more Sermons and less frustration when one catches an arrow. But if the lizard kings have enough armor to survive an arrow or two, maybe they're not a bad choice.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

If I remember well of my last headache playing MA ctis, the lizard king has a robe. Or nothing, as often robes are not displayed in the commanders equipment. 3 armor I think, due to their tought skin, could maybe survive a shortbow shot. However, you can prophetize one for Fanatism, and as you can't rely on indep commanders, they make effective commanders (one of them can command 120 chaps, saving recruit time for marshmasters)

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

The Lizard King is a rather hardy unit for an H3. Their protection is only 5 (all from natural protection) but their hp is 17. That's more then enough to withstand your average stray arrow. As the description reads, they are bred as warriors and so their stat line is rather good for a size 2 creature. Plus, unlike your average H3, they are not old.

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Everybody's talking about how good Sirrushes are, they're not.
They cost too much 10 astral, and although they are sacred, I don't think it's particularly smart to make a bless simply for them.
Summoning Golems is much better, they can make killer SC, and can teleport in/out.
I find MA C'tis good, people rarely chose to attack you because of your miasma dominion, an it does make it a little harder to use indie mages, but you just keep them in enemy dominion, and by the time you get the chalice It doesn't really matter.
No point going in blood since you can have a tartarian factory, and in my opinion something you have to do is have strong astral pretender for nexus, wish, since you can forge clams like crazy with marshmasters.

Oh, by the way, any suggestions for end game strategy?

Re: No MA C'tis guides :(
 

Because you don't natively get -ANY- access to Earth whatsoever. Golems may be better, but so are Lords of Creation. I'm not sure it's fair to portray people's description of Sirrush as "useful", as them saying they are "so good". They're alright, something you can make use of in some situations, with what is already available nationally. For golems, you have to have an E/S pretender, or you can fuggedaboudit.