C'Tis - Miasma, Question about cold blodded

[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.

[WraithLord]

Changing MA Ctis in a way that will allow them to branch into blood (not too easily though) would go a long way to improve MA Ctis mid to late game.

This may be unthematic though, so I'm not sure I like to idea.

[Endoperez]

Giving any nation a 120gp, sacred B1 mages would go a long way to improve its mid to late game. It'd be an easy enough mod, but I don't like the idea in base game.

[WraithLord]

Make it 180, non sacred 2 sorcery radnom pick, this way it will be a tough decision whether or not to diversify into blood.

[Tifone]

Mmmh I can't see those lovely little lizards sacrificing people Joking, but even I have doubts on the thematicness of C'tis going into the blood magic :\

[WraithLord]

Yes, maybe going into blood via a recruitable mage is too far a stretch thematically. But how about it giving them a conj. 5 summons that costs about 30D to get an undead Pandemoniac. The spell description could relate to the history of wars vs Pangaea and the newly discovered costum of reanimating the Pandemoniacs in ancient battle fields.

The undead Pan should get something like 3 B/D picks, or 2B+1D fixed paths.

sounds better?