Best way to play C'tis Miasma?

[Truper]

Frank: What would one do with either of the pretenders you've suggested? Miasma has no sacred troops to speak of, since they lose the Serpent Dancers, so the point of that Oracle you've suggested can't be the Astral 9 bless. I also can't figure putting water on it, unless you intend to have it teleport about spamming Stellar Cascades or some such. I've never found that Earth 3 alone is enough to turn a pretender like the PoD into a SC - I'd want to have Air for Mistform/Mirror Image.

I can buy parts of your argument for scales, although I must say that in an MP game Miasma without a combat pretender, with full Sloth and with a Dominion strength of 9 would appear to be saying "ally against me first".

Boron mocked my Miasma build on the IRC channel, so I expect to be dissected here shortly

[FrankTrollman]

Oracle Pretender: You can have your Oracle research quite well. Also it can make its own clams if none of your Marshmasters can do so. Finally, you don't need to go past Construction 4 or find any special magic sites to get your Wish factory or Arcane Nexus going. In short, you'll be able to bypass the entire "powering up" stage of high-end astral casting. Personally, I'd probably use an Astral 8 Pretender and take the saved 48 points to buy an extra point of Growth, as that is still plenty to Arcane Nexus and you'll be wanting to spam Enchantment anyway.

The Prince of Death is able to Soul Vortex/Invulnerability/Drain Life as soon as you hit Alteration 5. He's also big enough to make any Death effect you'll ever want - such as the Well of Misery or the Tartarian Gate. Also it can make Dwarven Hammers if you ever get Earth gems from anywhere. Finally, everyone in your empire can lead those stupid naked skeletons he makes around, and the spawn is better at higher Dominion levels, which you will have.

Ctis should be assassinating themselves to stolen provinces as soon as possible, so a Researcher Pretender is actually going to conquer more territory in the long run by allowing you to have more Assassins with Skull Staves spamming Raise Skeletons than a SC Pretender is. Especially compared to a SC pretender without Recuperation or Immortality.

Honestly, I find any attempt at a SC that lacks one of thse abilities to be asking for a lucky crossbow bolt to feeblemind your god and ruin your entire life. I do not and will not use them.

Gods are there to be casters as part of armies, site finders, specialty mages capable of casting spells you want to get up that your national mages can't master without empowerment, early researchers, or in the exclusive case of gods who can deal with battle afflictions - take provinces by themselves.

Miasma can't afford a god who can ignore battle afflictions, and therefore every second you spend considering a SC Pretender is a moment of your life you can never get back.

-Frank

[Ironhawk]

FrankTrollman said:
...Especially compared to a SC pretender without Recuperation or Immortality.

Honestly, I find any attempt at a SC that lacks one of thse abilities to be asking for a lucky crossbow bolt to feeblemind your god and ruin your entire life. I do not and will not use them....

I play with Dragons (red and blue) without either of those abilities all the time. They work great, tho I admit that it does require a certain degree of subtlety when you deploy them.

[Zen]

Wow, your expansion strategy revolves around Empoisoners with Skull Staves? Or is that the secondary expansion force, behind your Marshmaster force.

I'm guessing you don't plan on being any sort of early threat since your taking an Immobile and planning on expanding (quickly?) at Construction 4 after you can start expanding as soon as you hit Enchantment 3 and can expand about twice as fast when you hit Alteration 2.

At the very least I disagree that the Oracle is a 'good' pretender for Ctis Miasma. It has it's merits (easy high dominion) your probably better off with a PoD, Ghost King or a very thin possibility of a Phoenix (if you like/need Fire) with a point less of Dominion (especially since in the unmodded game) Sloth gives C'tis a big edge and 'free' points.

[Zooko]

Empoisoners equipped Skull Talisman are excellent against independents -- probably greater than 95% success rate at assassinations, and you can start churning them out with no research whatsoever.

Later, when you have higher levels of spells available, you can power them up with empowering items to make them a good threat against other nations.

Here's my idea (but keep in mind that I don't play the normal "Free For All" multi-player style -- I play only multiplayer, but I play only styles in which there is Proper Incentive For War, such as 1 team vs. 1 team or Pentagram).

Oracle, 10 Dominion (oh yes, 10)
+3 Order, +3 Sloth, +2 Heat, +3 Growth, standard luck/misfortune, +3 Magic
Mountain Fortress (oh yes, the Mountain Fortress)
spend the rest of the points on whatever magic you will use to forge items for your Empoisoners

Start with several Empoisoners, making the first one your Prophet. Each one forges a Skull Talisman for himself and then sets about assassinating. (Keep notes about how many leaders you've assassinated from each province.)

Then hire the best researcher you can each turn, and research Construction and Enchantment, so that your Empoisoners, equipped with Death-boosting items, can cast bigger "summon undead" spells during assassinations.

Don't spend any money on troops. Don't spend money on temples unless you've started building a Mountain Fortress in that province. You need a second Mountain Fortress as soon as possible.

Improvise. Have fun.

Thanks to Panther for teaching me some of the flaws of the design that preceded this one... ;-)

[Zen]

Actually an Empoisoner with Enchantment 1, is as good as one with a Skull Talisman, I have found. Usually indeps are killed just as you fatigue out.

Although this could be because I tend to try to horde Death gems and don't like equipping units with Skull Talismans unless they are non-caster assassins.

[Zooko]

In my experience Empoisoners casting Summon Skeleton only win about 80% of the time. That's not a high enough win ration to make it doable as an expansion strategy. The Skull Talisman really makes a noticeable difference, and I think part of it might be the free skeleton at the beginning, so that the assassination victim has more than one opponent at a time for most of the battle...

I admit that this is a highly questionable expansion strategy anyway. Even if your assassins win 100% of their battles, it still takes four or five Empoisoner-turns to take a province (3 or 4 to assassinate all leaders and one to attack). So at best, you can't gain more than one province per turn from turn 8 through 16 or so, and two provinces per turn after that, and so on.

I'm toying with the idea that one way to optimize this is to sneak right through the low-income provinces and head straight for the high income provinces first...

[Zooko]

Hm... I wonder if my experience was due to heavy drain scale tiring my Empoisoners out faster or something. I've just done a bit of playtesting, and Empoisoners casting Summon Skeleton/Summon Dead have done fine, except for when the faced a mounted commander. In that case the two Skull Talismans being worn by the prophet Empoisoner saved the day.

Well, if after all they are effective without Skull Talismans, then this strategy is just a little bit more doable...

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
Oracle Pretender: You can have your Oracle research quite well. Also it can make its own clams if none of your Marshmasters can do so.

Neither of these will give you the kind of rapid start that you'll want.

The Prince of Death is able to Soul Vortex/Invulnerability/Drain Life as soon as you hit Alteration 5.

If he only has earth magic, then you aren't going to want to send him up against barbarian or or heavy cavalry provinces.

Ctis should be assassinating themselves to stolen provinces as soon as possible, so a Researcher Pretender is actually going to conquer more territory in the long run by allowing you to have more Assassins with Skull Staves spamming Raise Skeletons than a SC Pretender is.

This makes little sense. A Rainbow 2 great sage only researches at the equivalent speed of a couple of marshmasters.

[FrankTrollman]

Jurri Said:
You should probably use a scout or a regular commander to do the actual conquering

Absolutely. In fact, you should do the actual conquering with a Marshmaster, since you will want him to search the place for magic sites.

Mounted Commanders, with their multiple weapons, are always able to beat Poisoners a disturbing amount of the time. They can kill your skeletons faster than you can make them and that's the end of that. Your army, which you actually will have despite everything, is itself capable of taking out enemy provinces that have cavalry at merely tremendous losses. But since you aren't fighting the battles against Barbarians and such, taking tremendous losses to capture farmlands is OK.

In the later stages of early developement, your assassins can carry Skull Staves and cast Animate Skeletons. At that point they can take the commanders no problem.

Graeme Dice Said:
If he only has earth magic, then you aren't going to want to send him up against barbarian or or heavy cavalry provinces.

Well.. duh. Your pretender is extremely valuable. No god should ever be put into a head-on battle with an independent pile of barbarians. That's just suicide. The best Super Combatant you can make is still just going to die sometimes when surrounded by a bunch of greatsword wielding madmen. If you trick out a SC properly their failure rate is very small, but even that is way too much of a risk to expend on your god.

A bunch of hearty fools attacking for twenty something points each? No thanks. Heavy Cav is even worse. A Mist Formed Soul Draining Air Queen can still just get killed on the opening charge. It's not likely, but it's not the kind of risks that are acceptable in a game that can potentially drag on for months.

Yeah, a PoD pretender is not the kind of god that you are going to want to send frolicing into a pile of barbarians alone. This is irrelevent since at no time do you ever want to send your god frolicing in Barbarians, and because barbarians are so easy to Empoison that there is little temptation for Ctis to ever fight them.

Remember, with all the troops you don't lose by not fighting, those few fights you actually do engage in can afford to be blood baths. Heck, on the first turn you should seriously consider purchasing an Assassin and whatever Mercenary company is available whilst researching Enchantment.

-Frank