Tips for LA C'tis

[NKIcan]

I think LA Ctis still operates on the basic Ctis premise: Sauromancers Carry the day.

Im by no means an expert but my experience as found that the Death Gem Cost for the Tomb King's and Priests is worth the extra power granted to you through the Tomb Wyrms and the Tomb Chariots.

WHile undead can be countered, forcing your opponent to go for the counter can be very beneficial if you can also mix them in with decent non-undead units.

Ive a hard time though with Ctis simply because their normal, national troops are subpar imho. Im still trying to work on a way to quickly get from National Troops to Summonables.

A rainbow pretender seem to be the best route to go, because as a mage-powered nation they are heavily reliant on Gem Income.

[statttis]

A few fun tips:

If you wait until you can summon a black servant, you can prophetize him for a cheap H3 undead to reanimate tomb wyrms.

If you take some sort of bless the priests can become decent thugs - good HP, natural prot, 0 enc, self bless. Best of all, you don't need research to summon them.

Poison slingers firing over your skeletons can do a lot of damage without worries about friendly fire.

LA C'tis has a hero with level 5 holy magic

You actually do have nature and astral magic: empoisoner has N1, and Sauromancers get astral randoms. If you can summon it (with your pretender or indies), the Couatl gives you level 3 of each.

[JimMorrison]

I goofed around a bit with LA C'tis recently, and I've got a few observations for you. And I agree, having 100% capability for Banefire is pretty sweet.

First thing, as soon as you can afford to, Desert Rangers are awesome. I highly recommend that you actually make them nonstop throughout the game, so you have at least one HInf army around that has map move 2.

Second thing, if you can get to Ench3 fast, groups of 2-3 Sauromancers can skellie spam almost any independent out, finishing out your initial expansion with a bang.

Next, honestly, every single Death gem you can get (remember: search early, search often) should go to Tomb Priests. Personally I think the Kings are a waste, as even though the Wyrms are fairly badass, and Sacred, you only get 1 per turn, whereas Chariots come 2-3 at a time.

Magic Diversity will hurt you a bit, you may well want some sort of Rainbow pretender - but I've no specific recommendations. Things to bear in mind though, you are going to be rather predictable unless you can diversify, and you are unlikly to just be able to have your pretender accomplish everything. So what you really need, is some manual searching on paths you don't start with natively, and to pray for a decent indie mage site that can bring -anything- unexpected to the table. Your Sauromancers are sleek and deadly, and it's not entirely easy to find ways to negate their power - but adding in anything worthwhile to the equation, can tip the scales wildly in C'tis' favor.

Bear in mind, I'm not suggesting that my own strat (do I have one yet, really? ) for them is contingent on finding indie mages, merely that it takes their mid-late game from good to great, if you can find something useful (even Crystal Amazons would be awesome for this purpose, and don't even require the search!).

[zlefin]

i did well with them in a blitz lately.
I agree there's a lack of really good bless options for the nation.
i had a high bless earth/astral, but it wasn't all that relevant, though the extra reinvig is nice.

Tomb kings can make good thugs and passable SCs, as even without a bless, they have stats of about a banelord, wihtout the equipmenet, but being blessable (as well as getting +4 mr and +4 att and ap from the undead booster spells). and you have good paths for making gear, like horror helmet/shield of gleaming gold. though you'd also need to forge some armor for them.
So you can have the kings switch from reanimating undead freebies to thugs if needed.

Sometimes you need to make Tomb Wyrms, while Tomb chariots are best most of the time, they don't have much hp or mr. Tomb wyrms have 40 hp and 16 mr, so if your opponent has heavily massed banish, you may need to use tomb wyrms some.

Sauromancer are indeed awesome, and are the backbone of the nation.

I think i'd agree that rainbow pretender would probably be best, my sphinx didn't seem quite worth it, though the reinvig was nice in long battles with skellispam, which i had a fair number of.
Zlefin