What is the best equipment for an E9 Cyclops?

[sum1lost]

I agree that ethereal will not benefit you. Most things that can bust past your high protection will have magical attacks anyways.

[moderation]

I've been experimenting on w/ the Cyclops using a variety of nations, so I am mostly looking for the best configuration for it in the "best case scenario". I can see how things can depend on your nation. Having buff mages, particularly astral ones would be handy to save item slots (though of course it would suck to have your S1 buff Magic Dueled).

Omnirizon: By the way, why prefer the Shadow Brand over Frost or Fire? IIRC, the Shadow Brand deals damage that can be resisted with MR. Maybe the weakness that it causes is better against enemy SCs though.

[thejeff]

Shadow Brand: Larger area, MR resistable. Doesn't work on lifeless.

Frost/Fire Brand. AoE1. Doesn't work on Cold/Fire immune.

Shadow Brand is really nice against normal chaff.
SC's are likely to have enough MR to ignore it. But they're likely to be Fire/Frost immune too. Especially once you start fielding lots of Fire/FrostBrand wielding thugs.

Against standard Undead chaff (longdead/souless), Firebrand is really the only option. Though against truly huge hordes of chaff, damage shields are the only thing that works.
Even with a Firebrand and quickness, 1 SC can only kill 300 human sized units before hitting the 50 turn limit.

[Zeldor]

Trampling is the way to go against hordes of chaff. Stymphalan wings + boots of quickness + 2 shields [including fire one] do wonders. You need to be careful with that approach though. Flying carpet to retreat if you face something big

[MaxWilson]

Flying carpet is redundant if you have Stymphalian wings.

-Max

[moderation]

Does a flying carpet help you retreat? If I understand things correctly, when you retreat, either you survive if there's an adjacent friendly province for you to move to, or you die if there isn't. The flying carpet or any other form of flying shouldn't help your chance to survive.

[Hadrian_II]

If you fly, you dont get caught while running away.