Why does Desert Tombs suck?

[Pocus]

I must say too that this seems a bit pricey. Tomb wyrms are good, but dont justify a 200 points cost. Having to pay 23 gems for a tomb king seems a reasonable price, so its not like it is a super bonus given in compensation of this design points cost.

[Bowlingballhead]

What you get are C'tis longdead. *Do not knock this*. They have what other longdead lack, durability, thanks to their natural armor class. Yes, the death scale does suck, but you don't start out in the state of total blight that Ashen Empire and Soul Gate do, so you can use regular units (and C'tis's are cheap and at least modestly good) to conquer enough independents to get your undead horde going. And Royal Protection is *great*. Your enemies will find that your troops are very, very difficult to banish.

And Tomb Kings? Cripes, but those guys are powerful. They're potential supercombatants. There's nothing 'potential' about the First King, either. He's practically a god.

But I didn't go much for Tomb Kings. (Except one to be my prophet and cast Royal Protection) The next-lower-down can summon those sweet C'tis longdead, and are vastly cheaper. The sheer potential to win battles by route (because your troops come in such vast numbers and never break) is not to be sneezed at. And your regular C'tis troops feel real brave backed up by an army of 200 undead.

As you may be guessing, I love Desert Tombs. It's the only death-oriented dominion I really like.

[Pocus]

I dont see what is so good with Ctis longdead. They have a prot between 0 and 11, so nothing to speak of. You have to pay 16 death gems for a tomb priest which will rise 6 of them a turn. Its far from justifying a cost of 200 design points.

I agree that tomb kings can make good combattants, and that the Tomb king heroe can be a SC by himself though.

[mivayan]

The only thing I found different about Ctis longdead is that some of them are lizardmen with two attacks, trident and bite. This is nice when combined with an unholy5 priest raising att&speed for all undead.

But I guess the thing is that desert tombs ctis should be able to expand exactly as normal ctis in the beginning (how ever that is, I have not played ctis much). The difference is that by having a mage raise an unholy priest every few turns they can soon have a huge undead army in addition to the living one.

I dont really know if it can work in multiplayer though, 200 points is a lot.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Probably because it's a death scale theme that makes use of living units. Since taking any death scale kills all of your people rapidly, you won't have any way to support those living units, and if you can't make a full conVersion to undead units, you're screwed.

Plus it costs 200 points.

Death scale is not the same thing as killer dominion.

Death scale kills population VERY SLOWLY, reduces supply and reduces income slightly. In practice the supply reduction is the most important effect, IMO. (The income isn't totally negligible, but it's easily worth 40 points if you don't need the supplies.)

Killer dominion is a special effect of the Ashen Empire, Soul Gates and Carrion Woods themes. It kills population fairly fast, and those themes should not rely on having living population for very long. This is a serious weakness for Carrion Woods which has capitol-only troops (is there any way to use them after turn 20 besides wishing for population?), but Ashen Empire and Soul Gates don't really mind.

All three of these themes also get free troops in their dominion to balance it out, but CW is still hurt by the loss of its capitol-only troops. (Illwinter: why not remove the capitol restriction so that CW can build them in newly conquered areas that haven't yet been destroyed? Or give CW a minor +resource site that would still allow some production after the population has been killed?)


The main advantage of Desert Tombs is that it has unholy priests that can reanimate and DOESN'T have a killer dominion (a combination it shares only with Broken Empire, IIRC). So it can still use living units pretty well (it has most of the normal C'tis lineup), plus the tomb kings, tomb wyrms and other undead reanimation (in addition to undead summoned by the sauromancers).

The main disadvantages of DT are that it requires death 2 and heat 2 (a double hit to your income as C'tis prefers only heat 1) and then costs 200 points taking more than all the points you got from those scales (while C'tis normally relies on its 40 points for heat 1 to stay competitive; with the weakness of their normal troops they REALLY need a magic scale, and order too to pay for plenty of sauromancers and shaman). And, of course, undead are easily countered by anyone who knows what they're doing, and a reanimation-based setup is too slow to get an early lead (something C'tis already has problems with).

I'd like to see DT cost decreased to 100 - maybe less. They lose two powerful sacred troops to get the very gem-expensive tomb kings; it's hard to have more than a few tomb wyrms and they aren't even that tough; and spending early death gems on reanimators guarantees a slow start. They need a strong God to counteract all this.

One possible improvement (aside from/in addition to a cost reduction) - give them back the default sauromancer, and turn the new (fire) sauromancer into an undead that can be summoned for gems (no more than a dusk elder because he isn't ethereal). Default SM supports a mixed living/undead army better (nature is big in a death dominion, plus he has manikin ability and poison spells), but the new SM is also good with skeleton archers, a wider spread of search/forge potential (combined with shaman or normal SM) and potentially King of Banefires (so you can get him without having to design your God for it). Having both would give DT a bit more value for those 200 points. Also, the undead SM would be nice if you have to fight in cold provinces - living SM get messed up pretty bad by cold scales.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by PvK:
If they have the poison slingers, they'd combine very well with undead against non-resistant enemies.

PvK

Yes, but normal C'tis can do that just as well (in fact, with their poison resistance, it works even with non-[undead/vinemen/manikin] troops - you may take some damage, but not too much). The only real advantages of DT are unholy priests (reanimate) and tomb wyrms.

It's nice to be one of the few themes in the game (or is it the ONLY theme in the game?) with both types of priests. But I don't think it's worth 200 points. And designing your god for bless effects on the tomb wyrms is futile - you can't get enough tomb wyrms for it to pay off.

[Chris Byler]

I just checked their unit lineup - they lose the Swamp Guard and Serpent Dancer, and replace the normal Sauromancer with the red Sauromancer (D3 F1 ?A1). They still keep all their normal priests, Sacred Serpent, poison slingers and the Empoisoner as well as their more mundane troops.

They also start with a free Tomb Priest in addition to their normal Commander, 10 City Guard, 15 Light Infantry.

It occurs to me that they are one of the few nations that might be practically able to Mass Protection a horde of undead... (most likely shaman leading a communion of other shaman - although they get no capitol nature gem income). Combine with Royal Protection for banish resistance (as banish is armor negating). I'll have to try this and see how it works.

[mivayan]

Started a quick game:
Ctis, desert tomb,
Phoenix, fire9, air1, dom5
order1, sloth3, heat2, death2, luck0, magic3
Mausoleum

Or order 2/death3 maybe.

The phoenix can capture provinces from turn 2 onwards with fire dart. Sloth might not be a huge problem if you use sauromancers with raise dead to expand when you have it available. The tomb wyrms with fire blessing can kill stuff and have nice mr, but can die fairly quickly unless you have lots of fodder troops.

I got the king hero on turn 2 or so... as prophet hs has unholy6 and summons 3 tomb wyrms each turn. Perhaps not a good idea though, since you need him to fight or cast royal power.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Death scale is not the same thing as killer dominion.

Death scale kills population VERY SLOWLY, reduces supply and reduces income slightly. In practice the supply reduction is the most important effect, IMO. (The income isn't totally negligible, but it's easily worth 40 points if you don't need the supplies.)

Didn't seem so very slowly to me. They died rather alarmingly fast in my book. By turn 40 or so, the place was a total wasteland.

This is a serious weakness for Carrion Woods which has capitol-only troops (is there any way to use them after turn 20 besides wishing for population?), but Ashen Empire and Soul Gates don't really mind.

I'd say a more serious weakness in CW is the total creation point loss: You're essentially losing about 160 creation points just by taking it: Carrion Woods is functionally equivalent to Death 3+, yet you have to take Growth, a scale which is completely negated and then some by the theme dominion. While the weaknesses of other themes can be attributed to scale issues, being forced into taking Growth for a Death theme is a killer right there. The theme had better be DAMN impressive to justify this....and it's not.

While the death scale of DT definitely kills somewhat more slowly than, say, Ashen Empire, that just means you suffer the negatives of having no population, without the positives of having no population: With COMPLETELY no population, your land is worthless and generally undesirable: It has a fairly good "what's mine is mine" feel to it. And you don't have to deal with their constant whining. With just regular death, they STILL die fairly quickly, but in the meantime, you're stuck dealing with their snivelling while gaining none of the benefits for a mass slaughter.

[Pocus]

Even at 100 I would still be unsure if they were not overpriced...