C'Tis - Miasma, Question about cold blodded

[Kuritza]

MA Ctis feel may be very right, it may be OK for turtling in early game, but consider that

1) You have GREAT difficulties diversifying your magics. Most indie mages die in your dominion, so you have to provide them with rings of regen every time.
2) Your mages cant craft some of the most important items, so you cant really equip thugs or SCs.
3) You have bad battlemages. Dont even say 'sceleton spam', its too Domionion II. With 40 fatique per cast, marchmasters cant raise enough skellies.
4) You have problems getting half-decent SCs until you get to summon Tartarians. Raiders, yes. SCs - I dont think so. Also, see part 2 of my list.
5) Turtling only works early. Granted, you wont be a target of priority... but then armies get more expendable, and that disease effect kills really slowly. I played MA tis, I know. Of two really BIG (300+ units) armies that invaded my lands, hardly a single soldier died because of disease.

Now, the pros... Clamming. Thats it, I think.

P.S.
We'll see the outcome of your little struggle against Tien Chi. I think its going to illustrate my points better than words.

P.P.S.
Back to the topic - poison immunity doesnt help against disease. Regeneration helps staying alive, but doesnt prevent catching disease. That much I've tested.

[Amhazair]

Kuritza said:
1) You have GREAT difficulties diversifying your magics. Most indie mages die in your dominion, so you have to provide them with rings of regen every time.

Absolutely. This is obviously the major challange when playing C'tis. You might also go for N4 on your pretender and give them shroud of the battlesaint. Getting the Chalice or Gift of Health will pritty much solve your problems, but other players will know that, so they'll try to dispel. It's also an option to go with a medicre dominion, and try to have some enemy dominion provinces on your border, and move all your indie mages there. This will cost you a couple of turns of movement, some mages will get diseased before reaching 'safe' territory and you'll also diminish the advantages the miasma brings, but it is an option to explore. Also, using them as battlemages if you're on the offensive will probably keep them out of your dominion. A rainbow god will of course help with the magical diversity too, allowing you to forge some key items, but on the other hand C'tis is also a nation that benefits from a SC pretender, so you'll have think hard on this.

Finally, the Miasma gives you up to 10% (if you go for heavy dominion) extra income, so whenever you loose an indy mage to disease you can console yourself with this.

2) Your mages cant craft some of the most important items, so you cant really equip thugs or SCs.

Mostly true. You have national access to some nice items (say, for example a standard setup of: frost brand, eye shield, starshine skullcap, hydra skin armor, boots of quickness, antimagic amulet, pendant of luck. Nothing much wrong with that) but it definitely narrows your options. I think it's quite important to take some earth on your pretender so you can at least forge a few hammers, and later summon a troll king court or two so you have reliable earth access. The trolls will get diseased, but with tons of hp and regeneration at least they'll survive.

4) You have problems getting half-decent SCs until you get to summon Tartarians. Raiders, yes. SCs - I dont think so. Also, see part 2 of my list.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about the chassis? I don't see much difference between C'tis and other nations here. Just about the only SC chassis that will get diseased are the elemental royals.

5) Turtling only works early. Granted, you wont be a target of priority... but then armies get more expendable, and that disease effect kills really slowly. I played MA tis, I know. Of two really BIG (300+ units) armies that invaded my lands, hardly a single soldier died because of disease.

I agree. The disease effect is more of a deterrent than anything else. You can truthfully point out that any armies your opponent uses to conquer you will vanish, wheter you win or loose, but unless you are truly evenly matched it will work to slow to help you survive.

3) You have bad battlemages. Dont even say 'sceleton spam', its too Domionion II. With 40 fatique per cast, marchmasters cant raise enough skellies.

Now, here is where I totally disagree. First off, skellie spam is quite good, although you do need to attain enough critical mass for it to be effective. One or two mages casting fireballs will make something of a difference in a medium sized battle, two skelliespammers won't. But make it 10 on each side, and the skellespam starts to look a whole lot better. I do agree they're less good at this as their EA or LA brother though. More importantly: Foul Vapors at Ench 5 is the spell to shoot for as MA C'tis. It does work a bit slower as the other battlefield destruction spells, so towards end game it looses its relevance, but it does make for a very powerful mid game. Your lizards are poison resistant, so with the appropiate spells (conveniently in enchantment too) you can immunize them. And those skeletons you were spamming before are now the ideal delaying tactic for the poison to take effect. (And, guess what? They're in enchantment too. ) And as we're talking about enchantment anyway: That gift of health I mentioned before? Yeap, that's here too.

They can also cast the various other useful death and nature spells, (I especially like cloud of death for them, again with the reasoning that your enemy will be busy embroiled in melee with all those skeletons, and poison cloud/breath of the dragon) and 1/4 can communion master if necessary. And to top it of they're one of the very few MA races who can recruit their main mage everywhere.

At the same time they have the lizard shaman who are not only efficient researchers, but, headed by couatls, also make for powerful communion potential.


I'm not argueing that they are a powerhouse nation, the miasma does indeed hurt too much for that, and they have a number of challanging difficulties to overcome, but they do have their strengths too, and calling them "just bad" is doing them injustice imo.

[konming]

I think seraph and chayot also get diseased.

[Sombre]

I don't think you can immunise lizards with the appropriate poison res spells, since the ai refuses to cast +50 res spells on units with over 50 poison res. It does this to avoid going over 100. If however the spell gives poison res 100, then it works fine no matter what the poison res of your units.

[ano]

Most of C'tissian infantry have 50 poison res so AI should cast Poison Ward on them.
If I understood you right, Sombre.

[Amhazair]

Sombre said:
I don't think you can immunise lizards with the appropriate poison res spells, since the ai refuses to cast +50 res spells on units with over 50 poison res. It does this to avoid going over 100. If however the spell gives poison res 100, then it works fine no matter what the poison res of your units.

I never noticed any problem like this. Granted, most of the time I just cast the battlefield-wide version, which definitely worked fine. I can't remember any issues with the smaller area versions, but it is possible I just didn't notice it at that time. (Or forgot between then and now. )

The marshmasters themselves have 75 poison resistance, but the regular troops and most commanders just have 50. I'm not sure how that influences things.

[MaxWilson]

konming said:
I think seraph and chayot also get diseased.

Chayot has secondshape so can almost ignore disease--if anyone ever manages to kill you you'll come back with (sometimes) fewer afflictions. I recently killed a Dai Oni prophet with one eye only to have his spirit rout off the field with no afflictions. I did him a favor by killing him! Chayot is like that, x3.

-Max

[Kuritza]

Amhazair said:
You have national access to some nice items (say, for example a standard setup of: frost brand, eye shield, starshine skullcap, hydra skin armor, boots of quickness, antimagic amulet, pendant of luck. Nothing much wrong with that) but it definitely narrows your options.

Lets see. Frost brand is not armor piercing and its AOE doesnt affect undead. Sometimes its a really big downside. Hydra skin armor and boots of quickness means death from encumberance unless chassis is undead. So your options are REALLY limited.

Amhazair said:I'm not sure what you mean by this. Are you talking about the chassis? I don't see much difference between C'tis and other nations here. Just about the only SC chassis that will get diseased are the elemental royals.

Bane and Bane lord are rather weak and cannot teleport. Golems are possible only if you took a rainbow pretender. Elemental royalty is also something you will never get with your national mages. Blood magic is also very tricky for CTis, so no devils. And no national summons.

Amhazair said:
Now, here is where I totally disagree. First off, skellie spam is quite good, although you do need to attain enough critical mass for it to be effective. One or two mages casting fireballs will make something of a difference in a medium sized battle, two skelliespammers won't. But make it 10 on each side, and the skellespam starts to look a whole lot better. I do agree they're less good at this as their EA or LA brother though. More importantly: Foul Vapors at Ench 5 is the spell to shoot for as MA C'tis. It does work a bit slower as the other battlefield destruction spells, so towards end game it looses its relevance, but it does make for a very powerful mid game. Your lizards are poison resistant, so with the appropiate spells (conveniently in enchantment too) you can immunize them. And those skeletons you were spamming before are now the ideal delaying tactic for the poison to take effect. (And, guess what? They're in enchantment too. ) And as we're talking about enchantment anyway: That gift of health I mentioned before? Yeap, that's here too.

Thats theory, right? You look at the race and think - wow, they can do this and that!
So we agree that skellie spam with d2 mages is ineffective unless you field lots of mages. And then your enemy might bring along some priests... But still yes, in a very big battle your mages can skellie spam. But then, somebody might think - hey, he brough 20+ mages! Where's my rain of stones?
Also, I have tried foul vapors and skeleton spam in a really big battle. I even had darkness there. Well... darkness and skellie spam by 40+ marchmasters was just scary. Foul vapors DIDNT TO ANYTHING. They are just TOO slow, 95% of the time battles dont last that long.

Amhazair said:And to top it of they're one of the very few MA races who can recruit their main mage everywhere.

Thats hardly an advantage because they are also a race that needs lots of mages on the battlefield to do any good, as we agreed.

Amhazair said:
At the same time they have the lizard shaman who are not only efficient researchers, but, headed by couatls, also make for powerful communion potential.

I like the plural on a summon that costs 40 nature gems. You also want to cast Gift of Health, equip thugs with hydra skins and eye shields and probably make clams, right?

Amhazair said:
I'm not argueing that they are a powerhouse nation, the miasma does indeed hurt too much for that, and they have a number of challanging difficulties to overcome, but they do have their strengths too, and calling them "just bad" is doing them injustice imo.

Ok, I'm not saying they are hopeless. Just mediocre. I can see how they can become very powerful in the endgame with a good pretender design and lots, LOTS of luck.

[Amhazair]

Kuritza said:

Lets see. Frost brand is not armor piercing and its AOE doesnt affect undead. Sometimes its a really big downside. Hydra skin armor and boots of quickness means death from encumberance unless chassis is undead. So your options are REALLY limited.

Well, yes. Obviously on a chassis that has encumberance problems you'd pick other items (boots of the messanger for example). But yes, you're limited (if you don't manage to find a way to diversify ). You do have a good base setup, but can't adapt to many things your opponent might throw at you. Another big issue you didn't mention is that you can't really get fire/lighting immunity.

Bane and Bane lord are rather weak and cannot teleport. Golems are possible only if you took a rainbow pretender. Elemental royalty is also something you will never get with your national mages. Blood magic is also very tricky for CTis, so no devils. And no national summons.

Oh, I see. I was too hung up on looking at summons that would be affected by miasma as opposed to what you are able to summon with your national mages. Again, I mostly agree, though I have to say that I'll take a bane lord over a golem any day of the week.

Thats theory, right? You look at the race and think - wow, they can do this and that!

No, it isn't. I used Foul vapors to devastating effect time and again in the game I've played as C'tis. Worked absolutely awesome. Depeding on the opponent I did set up far back with all my troops on guard commander, so they didn't come within reach of the enemies evocations.

So we agree that skellie spam with d2 mages is ineffective unless you field lots of mages. And then your enemy might bring along some priests... But still yes, in a very big battle your mages can skellie spam. But then, somebody might think - hey, he brough 20+ mages! Where's my rain of stones?

Well, that's not unique to C'tis. Any race with human-sized mages is in danger against rain of stones.

Thats hardly an advantage because they are also a race that needs lots of mages on the battlefield to do any good, as we agreed.

Just the opposite. If the mages were capital only there'd be no way to get the necessary number of mages in the field. Being recruitable everywhere gives you the possibility to 'out-mage' your opponent.

I like the plural on a summon that costs 40 nature gems. You also want to cast Gift of Health, equip thugs with hydra skins and eye shields and probably make clams, right?

Well, depends on the size of your empire. I meant one Couatl per really big communion you assemble. (I'm talking Master Enslave size, smaller spells such as will of the fates can just be cast by the shamans themselves) So probably no more than one or maybe two for this purpose unless we're talking about deep endgame large empire struggle for world domination scenarios. It's also a pity the couatle can't equip rune smashers.

Ok, I'm not saying they are hopeless.

Good.

Now, instead of mediocre, say "A nation with a number of challanging difficulties, that requires planning and thoughtful play to get the most of" Sounds a lot better doesn't it?

[JimMorrison]

Kuritza - I think his point was they are very cool, and they do have tools that can be effective. I can't count how many times a tactic has been suggested to me, and my experience with it was not very exciting, or I have tried something new that seemed to work great, and other people shot holes through it.

I don't think anyone said MA C'tis is going to be in the top 3 "most likely to win" MA nations, only that they are fun to play, and very interesting and flavorful.