Base C'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed

[Horst F. JENS]

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.

[shovah]

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

[quantum_mechani]

Horst F. JENS said:
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.

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.

[shovah]

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

[quantum_mechani]

shovah said:
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

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.

[shovah]

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

[Ironhawk]

Horst F. JENS said:
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 ?

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.

[shovah]

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

[Endoperez]

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).

[Ironhawk]

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

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.