Tips for LA C'tis

[Trumanator]

I just started playing with these guys in SP, and might play them in an MP game. You lose some stuff from EA and MA, but you also gain a whole lot.
Good
Sauromancers are sacred!!
You get decent damage shielded infantry.
You can actually cast summon Scorpion Man!
You can summon reanimating priests!
All Sauromancers can cast Banefire!

Bad
No more nature or astral without pretender.
No more water.
No more predator lizards.
You still don't have any decent sacreds.
You don't have any high att units, or units with multiple attacks.

Even though they're cap only, I really liked the Desert Rangers for expansion after the first couple provs around your capital.

The tomb priests and kings sound cool, but I'm leery of shelling out that many D gems for a few reanimaters, especially when the tomb kings can't cast the H4 national spell. However, the 0 enc lizard chariots look pretty badass. Another problem though is that C'tis undead seems to be even crappier than the average, usually lacking armor and being armed with low dmg spears.

Just messing around, I took an awake dom 9 E9 Cyclops with O3 S1 H3 Mis 2 and D2. I got excellent expansion, though I hired some mercs to help me out, and my cyclops gives me access to all those nice endgame earth spells What do you guys think?

[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.

[Omnirizon]

rainbow is best i think too. or at the very least something that provides _some_ path they don't have (and they only have four, and only death is at anything more than pretty weak level)

the cheap national troops have one strong advantage, their cheap, slightly poison resistant, and good at dying.

tons of those cheapest light infantry stand up good enough to missile fire with their giant shields, soften stuff up with their javelins, and die with everyone else in the giant poison clouds (but not quite as quick since their poison resistant). use them as the front lines for your poison slingers and smite spamming priests and banefire spamming mages.

the poison slingers only do area damage. you actually don't need that many to be effective. when their all in the same 'group', the computer seems to attempt to have everyone in the group target a wide area within the enemy targeted group (suitable for large massed armies). or split them up, have one right behind your frontline firing closest, and another on the sideline aiming for the archers (more suitable for smaller armies where you can maneuver around the sides)

bring a reanimator or two with your armies. the grave consorts are actually the most efficient. after the tons of troops die, start reanimating. soulless will actually come back as C'tis specific troops when there are lots of C'tis corpses around; they are pretty good for soulless and, if they're just going to be dying holding back a frontline inside a big cloud of poison anyway, are just as good as the elitist infantry.

Stay mobile. C'tis uses lots of cheap/free troops, and looses lots of cheap/free troops. The battle plan for C'tis doesn't start at the army arrangement screen, but at the supply lines on the main map screen. this is the main reason why sacred serpents sort of suck, map move 1. also part of why you should use the unarmored version of the light infantry rather than the militia; they can stand some missile fire, and have map move 2.

LA C'tis fights wars of attrition. throw cheap/reanimated stuff at your foes backed with clouds of poison, banefire, and smite. be sure to include the reanimators with your armies. you might lose one hundred of your troops, and they might loose just 25. but in the end your loses are freespwan or 8 gold cheepy light infantry, and their loses are elite troops who die gagging in clouds of poison where all their defense and armor means nothing. Next turn you just reanimate your guys all over again and keep trucking.

[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.

[Omnirizon]

the black servant tip is nice. never thought of that

i'm not so sure about blessing. nothing worthwhile really benefits from a bless. nothing undead can regen. none of the wyrms have armor to be improved with earth (and the undead priests have nothing which they can do to fatigue themselves). what bless is there really that is worth better scales, an awake SC, or a rainbow mage?

[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!).

[statttis]

It's probably not worth the points, but a water bless is nice with the priests for quickness w/ 0 encumbrance. Or just a couple minor blesses from a rainbow mage can help by boosting defense/attack. Also, the priests benefit from C'tis national holy spells that boost undead.

[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

[Trumanator]

I still don't get why the Tomb Wyrms are so good? Is it the HP?

Everyone is asking what you would want a bless for, but they seemed to have missed my first point: Sauromancers are sacred! An E bless becomes very attractive, and even in CBM an E9 awake Cyclops is possible with decent scales.

[ano]

It is a very powerful race and one of the main reasons it is powerful is that any undead level 2 priest will reanimate chariots for you. Of course, you need an undead prophet (Mound King costs 3 gems, Black Servant costs 5 while Tomb King costs 23 for the same thing). Your prophet (I'd prefer enchantment to conjuration and therefore Mound King to Black Servant) with your starting priest will provide you a decent chariot income, after that I'd summon another Tomb priest but what you should aim for (if you want to win, of course) is despised by many tactics of reanimating priests by killing them under Life after Death. Each High Priest of C'tis you manage to reanimate will give you lots of tomb chariots. Perhaps they won't win you the game and it isn't going to be early, but, properly played, this card is very powerful.
As for pretender design, LA C'tis is among very few races that can afford rainbow pretender with nearly all required magics and not sacrifice dominion quality to do that. You don't need strong SC god because your troops (Rangers) are quite good and your expanding capabilities will grow rapidly over time after researching Ench3 and\or having enough chariots. So rainbow is good, maybe even the best option.
As for wyrms, I can't see anything that could justify their cost in comparison to chariots.