Tips for LA C'tis
 

I just started playing with these guys in SP, and might play them in an MP game. You lose some stuff from EA and MA, but you also gain a whole lot.
Good
Sauromancers are sacred!!
You get decent damage shielded infantry.
You can actually cast summon Scorpion Man!
You can summon reanimating priests!
All Sauromancers can cast Banefire!

Bad
No more nature or astral without pretender.
No more water.
No more predator lizards.
You still don't have any decent sacreds.
You don't have any high att units, or units with multiple attacks.

Even though they're cap only, I really liked the Desert Rangers for expansion after the first couple provs around your capital.

The tomb priests and kings sound cool, but I'm leery of shelling out that many D gems for a few reanimaters, especially when the tomb kings can't cast the H4 national spell. However, the 0 enc lizard chariots look pretty badass. Another problem though is that C'tis undead seems to be even crappier than the average, usually lacking armor and being armed with low dmg spears.

Just messing around, I took an awake dom 9 E9 Cyclops with O3 S1 H3 Mis 2 and D2. I got excellent expansion, though I hired some mercs to help me out, and my cyclops gives me access to all those nice endgame earth spells:D What do you guys think?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I think LA Ctis still operates on the basic Ctis premise: Sauromancers Carry the day.

Im by no means an expert but my experience as found that the Death Gem Cost for the Tomb King's and Priests is worth the extra power granted to you through the Tomb Wyrms and the Tomb Chariots.

WHile undead can be countered, forcing your opponent to go for the counter can be very beneficial if you can also mix them in with decent non-undead units.

Ive a hard time though with Ctis simply because their normal, national troops are subpar imho. Im still trying to work on a way to quickly get from National Troops to Summonables.

A rainbow pretender seem to be the best route to go, because as a mage-powered nation they are heavily reliant on Gem Income.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

rainbow is best i think too. or at the very least something that provides _some_ path they don't have (and they only have four, and only death is at anything more than pretty weak level)

the cheap national troops have one strong advantage, their cheap, slightly poison resistant, and good at dying.

tons of those cheapest light infantry stand up good enough to missile fire with their giant shields, soften stuff up with their javelins, and die with everyone else in the giant poison clouds (but not quite as quick since their poison resistant). use them as the front lines for your poison slingers and smite spamming priests and banefire spamming mages.

the poison slingers only do area damage. you actually don't need that many to be effective. when their all in the same 'group', the computer seems to attempt to have everyone in the group target a wide area within the enemy targeted group (suitable for large massed armies). or split them up, have one right behind your frontline firing closest, and another on the sideline aiming for the archers (more suitable for smaller armies where you can maneuver around the sides)

bring a reanimator or two with your armies. the grave consorts are actually the most efficient. after the tons of troops die, start reanimating. soulless will actually come back as C'tis specific troops when there are lots of C'tis corpses around; they are pretty good for soulless and, if they're just going to be dying holding back a frontline inside a big cloud of poison anyway, are just as good as the elitist infantry.

Stay mobile. C'tis uses lots of cheap/free troops, and looses lots of cheap/free troops. The battle plan for C'tis doesn't start at the army arrangement screen, but at the supply lines on the main map screen. this is the main reason why sacred serpents sort of suck, map move 1. also part of why you should use the unarmored version of the light infantry rather than the militia; they can stand some missile fire, and have map move 2.

LA C'tis fights wars of attrition. throw cheap/reanimated stuff at your foes backed with clouds of poison, banefire, and smite. be sure to include the reanimators with your armies. you might lose one hundred of your troops, and they might loose just 25. but in the end your loses are freespwan or 8 gold cheepy light infantry, and their loses are elite troops who die gagging in clouds of poison where all their defense and armor means nothing. Next turn you just reanimate your guys all over again and keep trucking.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

A few fun tips:

If you wait until you can summon a black servant, you can prophetize him for a cheap H3 undead to reanimate tomb wyrms.

If you take some sort of bless the priests can become decent thugs - good HP, natural prot, 0 enc, self bless. Best of all, you don't need research to summon them.

Poison slingers firing over your skeletons can do a lot of damage without worries about friendly fire.

LA C'tis has a hero with level 5 holy magic :eek:

You actually do have nature and astral magic: empoisoner has N1, and Sauromancers get astral randoms. If you can summon it (with your pretender or indies), the Couatl gives you level 3 of each.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

the black servant tip is nice. never thought of that :)

i'm not so sure about blessing. nothing worthwhile really benefits from a bless. nothing undead can regen. none of the wyrms have armor to be improved with earth (and the undead priests have nothing which they can do to fatigue themselves). what bless is there really that is worth better scales, an awake SC, or a rainbow mage?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I goofed around a bit with LA C'tis recently, and I've got a few observations for you. And I agree, having 100% capability for Banefire is pretty sweet. ;)

First thing, as soon as you can afford to, Desert Rangers are awesome. I highly recommend that you actually make them nonstop throughout the game, so you have at least one HInf army around that has map move 2.

Second thing, if you can get to Ench3 fast, groups of 2-3 Sauromancers can skellie spam almost any independent out, finishing out your initial expansion with a bang.

Next, honestly, every single Death gem you can get (remember: search early, search often) should go to Tomb Priests. Personally I think the Kings are a waste, as even though the Wyrms are fairly badass, and Sacred, you only get 1 per turn, whereas Chariots come 2-3 at a time.

Magic Diversity will hurt you a bit, you may well want some sort of Rainbow pretender - but I've no specific recommendations. Things to bear in mind though, you are going to be rather predictable unless you can diversify, and you are unlikly to just be able to have your pretender accomplish everything. So what you really need, is some manual searching on paths you don't start with natively, and to pray for a decent indie mage site that can bring -anything- unexpected to the table. Your Sauromancers are sleek and deadly, and it's not entirely easy to find ways to negate their power - but adding in anything worthwhile to the equation, can tip the scales wildly in C'tis' favor.

Bear in mind, I'm not suggesting that my own strat (do I have one yet, really? :p) for them is contingent on finding indie mages, merely that it takes their mid-late game from good to great, if you can find something useful (even Crystal Amazons would be awesome for this purpose, and don't even require the search!).

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

It's probably not worth the points, but a water bless is nice with the priests for quickness w/ 0 encumbrance. Or just a couple minor blesses from a rainbow mage can help by boosting defense/attack. Also, the priests benefit from C'tis national holy spells that boost undead.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

i did well with them in a blitz lately.
I agree there's a lack of really good bless options for the nation.
i had a high bless earth/astral, but it wasn't all that relevant, though the extra reinvig is nice.

Tomb kings can make good thugs and passable SCs, as even without a bless, they have stats of about a banelord, wihtout the equipmenet, but being blessable (as well as getting +4 mr and +4 att and ap from the undead booster spells). and you have good paths for making gear, like horror helmet/shield of gleaming gold. though you'd also need to forge some armor for them.
So you can have the kings switch from reanimating undead freebies to thugs if needed.

Sometimes you need to make Tomb Wyrms, while Tomb chariots are best most of the time, they don't have much hp or mr. Tomb wyrms have 40 hp and 16 mr, so if your opponent has heavily massed banish, you may need to use tomb wyrms some.

Sauromancer are indeed awesome, and are the backbone of the nation.

I think i'd agree that rainbow pretender would probably be best, my sphinx didn't seem quite worth it, though the reinvig was nice in long battles with skellispam, which i had a fair number of.
Zlefin :)

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I still don't get why the Tomb Wyrms are so good? Is it the HP?

Everyone is asking what you would want a bless for, but they seemed to have missed my first point: Sauromancers are sacred! An E bless becomes very attractive, and even in CBM an E9 awake Cyclops is possible with decent scales.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

It is a very powerful race and one of the main reasons it is powerful is that any undead level 2 priest will reanimate chariots for you. Of course, you need an undead prophet (Mound King costs 3 gems, Black Servant costs 5 while Tomb King costs 23 for the same thing). Your prophet (I'd prefer enchantment to conjuration and therefore Mound King to Black Servant) with your starting priest will provide you a decent chariot income, after that I'd summon another Tomb priest but what you should aim for (if you want to win, of course) is despised by many tactics of reanimating priests by killing them under Life after Death. Each High Priest of C'tis you manage to reanimate will give you lots of tomb chariots. Perhaps they won't win you the game and it isn't going to be early, but, properly played, this card is very powerful.
As for pretender design, LA C'tis is among very few races that can afford rainbow pretender with nearly all required magics and not sacrifice dominion quality to do that. You don't need strong SC god because your troops (Rangers) are quite good and your expanding capabilities will grow rapidly over time after researching Ench3 and\or having enough chariots. So rainbow is good, maybe even the best option.
As for wyrms, I can't see anything that could justify their cost in comparison to chariots.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

The one time I used LA C'tis, I used Tomb Kings extensively (as opposed to what everyone else here is saying about them). If I remember, Reanimation increases with Holy level, so that's a plus. Not to mention they can Smite along with your regular Kings, and likely would make good thugs (I didn't equip them though, I probably should've).

Huh, it looks like Tomb Kings reanimate one more Tomb Chariot than priests, so they're slightly (ever so slightly) more efficient at producing them.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Hmm. Well, I'm playing around with an awake green dragon. Breath weapon seems synergistic.

I also happen to love the lord of the desert plague.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

i couldn't imagine they do. they're reanimated, not summoned, anyway.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

From what I was seeing, you get 2-3/turn with the Priests, so I'm pretty sure that they still win out in numbers. Maybe a little later tonight I'll fire up that game and do some fiddling.

And Lord of the Desert Plague is my favorite for them, though the D is a bit redundant I suppose. He's just so cool though.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I did a quick test (I hadn't considered that the number of reanimated Chariots could vary from turn to turn) that showed that Priests reanimate 2 and Kings 3 chariots. Since Kings cost 23 D gems and Priests 16, Kings would be slightly more fficient.

But continuing the test, I'm finding that Priests can produce 3 and Kings 4 tomb chariots. Assuming this is a 50% chance (so Priests 2.5 and Kings 3.5 chariots/turn), Kings are suddenly slightly LESS efficient.

However, Kings can Smite, not to mention the thuggability, so they're actually useful in a battle.

Hmm, I just checked, and it looks like not only do Tomb Kings not have the ability to cast normal priest spells, neither do normal Kings. I very much remember being able to Banish and Smite Ermorian hordes. Has something changed? Is my version of the game bugged? :confused:

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

LaCtis's normal high priests, and other priests can do the normal priesty things. I think that is what you are thinking of ..

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Huh, it looks like I had enabled a mod that messed around with holy spells. That was the cause of all of the normal holy spells missing. So, there goes that mystery.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I think it's sort of a case of "if I have to mobilize these guys, I've probably already lost", where you are still better off reanimating Priests, then perhaps just summoning a single King now and then, as thug chassis, or as leader/buffer for a batch of chariots moving out to the field.

Of course, if you had a convoluted strategy that considered the usefulness of the chariots to be marginalized by late game, perhaps you want all the Kings you can get your hands on, so that they can be geared and deployed at the "Opportune Moment". I honestly haven't studied their full game enough to discover whether that train of thought has merit or not. I guess it just depends on if the Kinfs, with appropriate gear, are en mass more effective than a nearly infinite flow of chariots - and depends on your ability to even forge enough of the gear you want.

Oh decisions decisions. :p

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I can't see a reason why you would want one Tomb King before two Bane Lords or 6 Banes for thugging.
Some Bless? Too high an opportunity cost for it be worth it alone.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

The Tomb King is superior (not hugely so, but still) to a Bane Lord, and can take advantage of any minor blesses that you have due to your build.

What it comes down to on that point, is do you consider the extra 11 D gems to be worth the upgrade, -as well as- all of the chariots produced up until the point of deployment as a thug.

Also bear in mind, for some potential strategies - Dark Knowledge (essential!) is only Conj2, while the Bane Lord is Conj 5 - and the Tomb King is immediately summonable. So if you can find the gems, you can have Tomb King thugs out earlier than anyone else could get a viable thug (unless they can buy them, ie- Gath).

Though to be honest, looking at the numbers, the Priest is nearly as good as a Bane Lord (plus H2!), and is only 4 gems more, plus can reanimate chariots. They do need more gear (or more numbers) to start being effective (due to low base Def), but they're an interesting middle ground on the cost/benefit spectrum.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I think you're a bit biased by experience Darkwind, given that you were fighting Ermor alongside mighty Utgard and were chasing that lovely death income from ermor's capital to cover your death gem expenses ;)

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I played La Tien Chi and faced La Ctis in a war in MP and even thou I was in a rather nice position, those freespawn chariots eventually overwhealmed.

Remember, with undead, throw in darkness, rigor mortis and they become very, very fierce indeed. Massed banefire on top really, really hurts.

Also, when I won as La Ermor the nation that give me most problems was La C'tis and those Sauromancers. Those Sauromancers spamming wither bones killed around 5,000+ undead and they were backed up with darkness/rigor mortis. Lucky for me by then I had tartarians, all the elemental royalty and Utterdark up, so everyone give in!:)

Respect the Sauromancers.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

chariots are nice but not that nice, they have low hp and vulnerable to enemy archers and they can be easily countered.

while the chariots become less and less effective, the d gems you invested on your priests eventually is a total waste.

for extra 7 d gems you have a very good thug/SC with the right minor bless, option to swtich between chariots/tomb wyrms, not to metion they only summon slightly less chariots than the priests do

priest king is always my first choice.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

what minor bless do you suggest?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

F/W, I suppose.

Earth seems a little pointless, and N/S have no effect. A isn't generally much use, at str 17 Blood might add a little, and D doesn't seem that useful for them.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

You don't really need a huge bless for them. Astral/nature minor bless which covers your natural low path in them will be fine.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

nature is a rather useless bless for them, considering that the main units one might wish to benefit with a bless do not benefit at all from nature. OTOH, I think astral is a good (maybe the best) bless for them.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Yeah, the tomb kings can't get regen from nature can they? If they could it might be a little ridiculous with their 50 HP...

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I don't think you should even consider the Tomb King when you are thinking about an LA C'tis bless. Tomb Kings are better off summoning.

But if you do need to use one in battle:

- You don't need an F bless, base Att 14 is sufficient, plus you're likely have an AoE wpn, and you can gear up situationally for more attacks or +Attack when needed.
- Air bless is a joke, give it a shield
- W is not needed, defense is high already
- E will do nothing except get rid of your tiny fatigue from Holy Avenger/Bless
- S does nothing for base MR 18
- D is not important for a few melee thugs
- N buys you nothing
- B ... well, Str 18 is good enough already

So, Tomb Kings are not a unit where you care about a bless IMO.

How about Sauromancers?
- E: Cold-blooded units suffer in cold provinces. But just +2 reinvig/turn doesn't help all that much.
- N: They have old age, so a shroud or being blessed in battle will heal up diseased mages. But they also are heavy into death, so they don't get disease from old age as often. Could help with indy mages like Lore Masters.
- D: Not bad, if you do a little Bone Grinding. But not worth building a strategy on.

So, use your pretenders paths to diversify, so you can build your own hammers, cast Wish in the late game, or a global you want, or cast some cool battle ritual like Fog Warriors, that you'd have trouble doing with your nationals. Or use make a strong SC pretender that you can tear up the indies (or neighbors) with. Or go strong scales for massive amounts of Sauromancers and research. But I wouldn't put much effort into even a minor bless.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

i disagree about S doing nothing for base 18. you can never have enough MR. that fact that base is so high makes it that much more valuable. with that base plus S bless plus prot of the grave they could have MR of 25 with no items.

that's damn valuable.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

No, actually an S bless does not boost units MR over 18. So, if you have base 18 MR, and are blessed and sacred, and have an S10 god, your MR is 18.

It's even in the manual! :D

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Hmm, I never noticed their MR was base 18, but I was referring to n4,s4,e4 being a very reasonable bless for LA C'tis as a whole. However, I would be very confused if they didn't benefit from Nature bless?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

wow I never. good tip.

KissBlade: I was referring to the fact that the guys you really would want to bless are all lifeless, and can't regenerate. if getting an N bless coincided with another reason for having high N, then by all means (it does benefit your living sacreds). I just don't think any of the living sacreds are worth making any sacrifices in any other area to get a certain bless for.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Are Tomb Kings tagged lifeless? (Not on my dominions so I can't check) IF they're only undead, they get regen benefits still.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Yup they're lifeless. :( I was getting excited about taking an N8 bless just to screw around. :p

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Yep, they are lifeless, Tomb Wyrms too.

Hmmm... I should try a W9 bless, mostly Tomb Wryms, and see how that goes. I suspect horribly, but might as well give it a shot!

Edit: Ninjas! Everywhere! Look out! :)

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

being lifeless btw doesn't *always* mean you don't regenerate.
Works just fine on vampires.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

What does mean you don't regenerate, then?

Is it a visible "ability", or some hidden "noregen" tag?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Vampires aren't lifeless though are they?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I went and checked. They ain't.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Yeah they're lifeless. I suspect that really puts a damper on any use of tomb kings as thugs.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

So I tried a W9 bless, and it's pretty cool! Mainly because it stacks with Royal Power/Power of the Grave/what-have-you.

Platform: Sleeping W9N2 Mother of Rivers. The amount of W gems in CBM she gets is just sick: 6 a month. Mother of Rivers says "I'd like to order a dozen clams, please." So +N on the Mother for making clams on her own, and for summoning Naiads later to do more clamming. And N2 is a good site-search early on, to turn up Enchantresses etc, rather than puttering about with the lousy N1's you can hire.

Scales: Dom-6, Order-3, Heat-3, Growth-1, Magic-1.

In the 1st year:

Turn 1 hire Lizard King for smite, sermon; plus some Desert Rangers.

Until early fall, build Sauromancers, Desert Rangers, expand with the Rangers, research Conj. The free Tomb Priest reanimates Chariots from turn 1, just accumulate them.

Early Fall - Summon Servant, send out a D4EF site searcher if you've got one, otherwise D3EF; Research Ench-3
Fall - Prophetize Servant
Late Fall - Prophet reanimates Wyrms, hire another Lizard King
Early Winter - 1st Tomb King; move out Chariots as 1st undead army
Winter: Build Forest Castle (or some other 4-turn castle); hire a Keeper of tombs
Late Winter: get ench-3, switch to const.

And I get my first Tomb Wyrm into battle alongside my 18 chariots and 12 Desert Guard, and see what happens with some buffs:

Base:
HP 39
Prot 10
Mor 30
MR 16
Str 16
Atk 15
Def 5
Mov 2/7

+Blessed:
HP 39
Prot 10
Mor 30
MR 16
Str 16
Atk 15
Def 9
Mov 2/10

+Power of the Grave:
HP 39
Prot 10
Mor 30
MR 16
Str 16
Atk 19
Def 9
Mov 2/16

That's really nice that Power stacks with the Bless for more AP. A Blessed & Powered Wyrm is speed 16, exactly the same as a Powered Chariot.

Now in the 2nd year I can switch to Wyrms, skelly spam and slingers if the Rangers won't cut it. My god wakes up and I search manually for some N income for clams, and she can get thugged out if I need her to fight. And just pump another Tomb Kings every time I get enough D.

The elusive H4 is a ways off... if you Summon Spectre, you can get SE mages, and these can make Crystal Matrix items for your H3s, and it does boost them to H4 with 2 slaves. But in the early part of the game, if you need a big can-o-Wyrms army, just bring more H3's, AoE 5 on Royal Power covers up to 10 Wyrms.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

VFB that is a very good suggestion!

The bless though, is it worth the opportunity cost? wouldnt it be better to do a couple minor blesses rather than the water 9? Just playing around real quick with it, you can get 3 in one other path and 4 in a fourth path if you drop the water to 4. That provides benefits in a) site searching, b) magic diversity and allowing you to have perhaps an E4 bless or F4 bless as well.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Well it IS interesting, as with PotG, you are going from 7AP to 16AP, for potentially 2 1/3 attacks per round, on a 0 Enc unit!

Though, I'm not sure what sort of buffs you would need/want on them to keep them up long enough to matter, in the mid-late game.



GAH! :doh: I had been trying to resolve the riddle of the "magic item or Antimagic spell overwrites Blessing". They're not overwriting, it's that the Bless effect is factored in LAST, so if you push above 18MR through -ANY- other means, you lose the benefits of your bless (besides the Twist Fate, which is still nifty-ish).

Thanks VFB, now I can sleep at night. Well maybe not, but it won't be my Astral Bless keeping me up anymore..... <3

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

The only unit I know of which is Lifeless and still regenerates is Claymen.

-Max

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

I think Iron Dragons might too

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Really interested in an efficient build order for LA Ctis and the initial 10-15 turns, irrespective of the bless strategy. Quick question on this one: It is not clear if this recommends to build up rangers unitl early fall and THEN expanding, or rather starting expanding on turn 2 right away with a handfull of them? Any idea?

Given the initial Ctis contingent, how many rangers are necessary to start a healthy expansion?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Expand on turn 2 if you can. The number of rangers depends on the indies you're surrounded with. You might need an additional smiter and wait until turn 3 to start expanding.

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

By the way, why profetize a servant and lose the potential H4 with the King?

Re: Tips for LA C'tis
 

Because you can start reanimating earlier and cheaper.