Guide to EA C'tis

[RamsHead]

I might do a guide on all three ages, and, if I do, I will go in order. For now I will say that I am not nearly as big of a fan of LA C'tis as I am of the other two. This is mainly do to the loss of Warriors and Shamans.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

I want to thank you for this guide, since I'm a newbie dedicated right now to EA C'tis. My last five games have been singleplayer medium map C'tis vs Ulm. And I've been losing each time. Regardless, I am lasting a bit longer now.

I've found your guide handy, though I've been experimenting and not perfectly following. If there are no objections to me resurrecting this topic, I'd like to go over some of my games and offer my (admittedly flawed, n00bish) perceptions, and ask for some advise, while trying to contribute something myself. Certainly, my advice might not be as high quality, but giving it will help me see what I'm doing wrong, and maybe right, especially if it gets criticism.

One problem I've had trouble dealing with, especially since I'm not a fan of Order scales, is affording those Tel Cities at 1400 gold apiece. Roughly speaking, what kind of early game expansion strategy would you suggest, and how should I decide when and where to build my first very expensive fortress?

If I build them in a high resource province (typical bottleneck), I get enough production, sure, but I'm still drastically short on cash. If I build it in, say, farmlands, I can imagine it paying for itself in maybe 14 ~ 28 turns.

Is it possible, and profitable, to use those light militia in your outlying provinces simply to raise taxes? When I get back this evening, I'll try and do the math on my questions, and experiment, but I'd love to hear what others have to say.

Thanks.

[lch]

Very nice, could you put this info into the StrategyWiki?
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Dominio...C_Lizard_Kings

In case you don't want to register I think there are some others like Sandman which transfer the guides from here to there, but it would be best if you yourself "owned" the article there.

[MaxWilson]

C'tis has access to cheap fortresses if you build on mountain (Hillfort), forest (Forest Ramparts), or swamp (Swamp Fort). The city type doesn't really matter since mostly you're just interested in having another location to pump out troops, so there's no real reason to go for Fortified Cities unless you're in the middle of a bunch of resource-rich provinces or you think the extra cash over time is worth the extra 600 gold up front. In all likelihood the cash bonus from forts will be a very tiny percentage of your late-game income, so generally I would build hillforts instead of Tel Cities. The high-resource provinces you refer to will probably be mountains and thus cheap (800 gp) hillforts, so I don't think your dilemma generally exists.

I find that C'tis expands easily with a mix of 20 elite warriors and 10-15 heavy infantry, or else 10-12 chariots, per army. And of course good expansion means an easier midgame. Since you have no national scouts, either summon black servants or get indie scouts.

-Max

[RamsHead]

Lazy_Perfectionist: Specifically against Ulm you may want to consider making greater use of Lizard Chariots. Ulm often has trouble with tramplers. The javelins that your Light Infantry use could also be useful.

Like MaxWilson said, stick to Hillforts and Forest Ramparts in the beginning and build them in either high-resource provinces or in strategically important positions. Tel Cities are good forts, but they cost an arm, a leg, a kidney, and several ribs to build and take half a year to construct! You should also consider going with an order scale.

Ich: I never put anything in a wiki before, but I will see if I can't get it up sometime.

MaxWilson: Nothing I can disagree with there, with the exception of the Swamp Fort. C'tis builds Swamp Cities instead of Swamp Forts. They are like Fortified Cities, only better.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Pretender commentary, from experiences: (limited, but will get better as my survival times increase)

Saurolich: Immortal, undead, and not cold-blooded. Worth noting you're only immortal in your dominion, undead is a vulnerability, and if you make it far enough, you won't be able to use the Jade Mask on your pretender, only your necromancers. You can't depend on that for a late game death boost. Still, you can equip enough, certainly.

Prince of Death: Though a death pretender is somewhat redundant with C'tis, this, barring the lack of immortality, is in many ways superior to the Saurolich. There's the obvious flying, but in addition to that, you get fear +13 base. Add in the death magic bonus, and you can get some truly ridiculous fear. If you go all the way to 10 death magic, for instance, you get a fear of 20. So, considering pg. 57, your fear would affect 26 squares (longer than some bows), and require a morale check against 14 instead of the base 10 and 6. Also, you save about 35 points, and get an extra dominion candle to boot.

Mother of Monsters: I wanted to use her, I really did. She seemed fairly tough on paper, but she ends up dying earlier than any of the other combatants when used offensively. The problem is her poison cloud - my first thought was enemy only crowd control, but it can easily deal you more damage than the enemy, even with the 50% resistance. (The Serpent's Blessing spell is later, but definitely worth getting.) You'll often find her exposed or hurting her own troops. You'll need to think very carefully about placing her so she doesn't get swarmed, or she'll go down quicker than you'd expect. Consider giving her all your nature/death summons (most of which are conveniently PR100%), giving your commanders poison rings, placing non-critical mundane troops in close support, or dancers. Even if the dinky skeletons or vine men aren't much from a damage perspective they're much superior from a morale perspective than your regular troops, and conveniently poison resistant.

It's much easier to use the Mother of Serpents (just be sure to give her the attack order so she doesn't waste her time hiding behind your troops). You can equip her with more and she is much more friendly to mixing with your troops. So not only does she make better use of your normal support, she also comes with her own renewable bodyguard team in the form of several horned serpents. While these guys will go down pretty quickly on their own, they combine nicely with a rushing strategy. Put her slightly in the front, they get the first arrows, when and if they're down, your troops are there to take more blows. A few less troops to replace and a lot more momentum. She won't win battles by herself, or make you win the unwinnable, but you'll go through 'fair' fights with a lot less casulties. Against some independents, you can go fairly far with just 30 light infantry and 10 city guards and one Mother of Serpents.

The healing is almost a nonfactor, but it is nice icing on the cake. The mother of serpents is definetly my favorite pretender so far, and easy to use, though not as overpowering as say, a Wyrm. Oh, and unlike the Mother of Monsters, she'll dramatically benefit from barkskin.

I haven't tried the Cyclops, though I am interested if anyone else has. He's the only Ctis pretender with a three base in earth. That might enable some C'tis strats that no other C'tis pretender would allow, or it may just be a minor event.

My early research often goes in a drive for black servent, followed by shades. I was thinking ethereal would combine with the heat scales and encumbrance and low mr of ulm, nicely. But it turns out that EA Ulm has a surprisingly low encumbrance. So, I'm thinking instead I might try for Black Servants followed by a beeline to raise skeletons/undead, then finally Dark Knowledge, than finally the nature scrying spell, since luck without order often gets me that nice shaman.

Now, I'm seriously considering bowing to pressure and trying an order scale or two... What would you suggest as an early game spell build for that?

If I find that lack of luck too painful, I'll experiment with growth, constant over-taxation, and militia patrols. I don't expect it to go very far, but I'll hit the math and give it a try-out. After all, I already made the mistake of getting confused about how much income a Tel City/Fort brings in. It's only somewhere around 25% extra, right? Hardly reason enough to save up for a city/fort when forests and hills are available.

When you take death scales, does that influence your starting position any? I've only played a few games, all on randomly generated maps, and while it may be coincidence, all my death scale games have surrounded me in wastelands.

Come tomorrow, I'll have a day off to hammer out these ideas of mine with some practice. Thanks again for the original posts and later responses.

P.S. Don't Lammashtas attack your own mage? I heard somewhere that you can place them at the edge of the battlefield with a summon, retreat order and they'll likely survive.

[MaxWilson]

Lammashstas--yes, they do attack your own forces, particularly if you have some ahead of your mage, like an archer decoy. I think they must do an "attack closest" order.

Prince of Death: while fear +20 does have an AOE of 26, that's not the same thing as a *radius* of 26. It's 26 squares around the POD, arranged in a semi-random fashion that will generally be circle-ish, with a radius of 4-5. So, don't try to rout archers from across the battlefield with this.

-Max