Tips for LA C'tis

[KissBlade]

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

[vfb]

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.

[NKIcan]

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.

[JimMorrison]

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.

Originally Posted by vfb

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!

GAH! 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

[MaxWilson]

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

-Max

[Omnirizon]

I think Iron Dragons might too

[Viajero]

Originally Posted by vfb

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.

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?

[vfb]

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.

[Viajero]

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

[thejeff]

Because you can start reanimating earlier and cheaper.