c'tis themes

johan osterman · #1 November 5th, 2003, 03:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by izaqyos:
Did anyone try out the desert tombs and miasma themes?
I would like to know the details of those themes.
Are they stronger/weaker then the default?
Is the desert tombs the equivalent of DOM-I ermor?
if so, Are there more nations thet get this kind of theme?

TIA

I'll leave the weaker/stronger question for someone else to answer.

Desert tombs is not equivalent to dom 1 ermor, it is somewhat similar in that it has summonable units that can reanimate undeads, but it doesn't have the destructive dominion and it has a set of units recruitable for gold that is similar to ordinary C'tis.

In the full game the Carrion woods theme for Pangaea will be more similar to the old dom 1 emror. Carrion Woods Pangaea does have a destructive dominion, and it's dominion causes some undeads to appear for free. Carrion Woods is a little special in that it both has units recruitable for gold and a destructive dominion.

licker · #2 November 5th, 2003, 05:18 PM

While its true that DTombs doesn't 'require' a destructive domain, it is so fricken expensive (200 points) that if you want to do anything with magic on your pretender you almost have to take a destructive domain, or at least a domain with negatives.

Though in fairness, DTombs can handle alot of negative scales fairly well...

Miasma is interesting, though maybe a poor selection for MP since your domain effect is going to tick off your neighbors, probably worse than Ermor ever did. I've been fooling around with it for fun though, havn't quite figured it out very well yet though

WraithLord · #3 November 5th, 2003, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Though in fairness, DTombs can handle alot of negative scales fairly well...

Can you elaborate on that?
Can they handle death -3? order -3? etc.

In DOM-I I could take ermor with -3 on all scales (+3 cold) and get tons of free points.

licker · #4 November 5th, 2003, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by izaqyos:

quote:
Though in fairness, DTombs can handle alot of negative scales fairly well...

Can you elaborate on that?
Can they handle death -3? order -3? etc.

In DOM-I I could take ermor with -3 on all scales (+3 cold) and get tons of free points.

Well like I said, I'm not an expert on Tombs, but it seems that you don't need productivity or order that badly, death also can be knocked up a bit. You don't have as much flexibility as Ermor had in Dom1, but you do have more flexibility than standard C'tis or Miasma. I'm sure there are others out there who have crunched the numbers on the scales already who can give you a concrete answer, but my 'gut' feeling is that if you are going to rely on summons and revived the productiviity and order scales are mostly unneeded. Anyway, the effects are not as bad as in Dom1, so you have more time to get your Death based economy off the ground. You could also probably add blood to the mix fairly easilly.

apoger · #5 November 5th, 2003, 06:34 PM

My thoughts;

Desert Tombs:
Costs 200
Requires minimum heat +2 and death +2
The heat +2 puts C'tis at -%5 as it is not their prefered temerature.
No Swamp guards available.
Start with one unholy priest.
Have the ability to convert death gems into more unholy priests.
Unholy priests can generate undead for free.

The undead generation of the priests must be compared to C'tis's ordinary ability to generate undead via reanimation. It takes the priests approximately 7 turns to generate more undead than their "reanimation" cost in death gems. Thus gaining advantage in undead summons takes a bit of time. However with time it can get very impressive. The question is, will your enemies let you sit around and slowely crank up an undead generation machine. Plus by the time it really is pumping, will undead be meaningfull?

It's hard to tell. I'd say that Desert Tombs is fun, but questionable for multi-player situations.

Miasma:
Costs 50
Requires minimum heat +2
The heat +2 puts C'tis at -%5 as it is not their prefered temerature.
Sauromancer replaced by Marshmaster (-1 death, +1 water, +40 gold cost).
Raises taxes by 1% per level of dominion, but requires at least dominion 6 to start seeing benefits due to the extra heat.
Miasma requires a high dominion strength to be effective, and as such has the hidden cost of that extra dominion.

I've done some testing for the "disease" function of Miasma. I ran a few armies of enemy troop back and forth over a Miasma C'tis. Results were approximately a 5% chance of each troop getting diseased every turn they were in the Miasma dominion. Keep in mind that this is an aproximation from a small sampling. Extensive tests may get more precise results. While this is unpleasant, I don't think this will stop enemies from attacking. Particularly if the Miasma dominion is seeping into their area.

I like the idea of +5% taxes with a 10 dominion.
I don't like the Marshmaster, or the attention that the dominion will draw in multiplayer. It's a close call, but I'll probably pass on Misama.

Nagot Gick Fel · #6 November 5th, 2003, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by izaqyos:
Did anyone try out the desert tombs and miasma themes?

Miasma seems actually very interesting with a strong dominion. Now the interesting question is: does the diseasing effect also apply to your non-cold blooded pretender?

licker · #7 November 5th, 2003, 06:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

quote:
Originally posted by izaqyos:
Did anyone try out the desert tombs and miasma themes?

Miasma seems actually very interesting with a strong dominion. Now the interesting question is: does the diseasing effect also apply to your non-cold blooded pretender?

I wondered this myself, but I've only used undead or CBed pretenders... Its annoying as well that indie priests and mages are a bit more of a risk, though there must be ways to protect them from disease.

I'm not sure about this, but I think with seasons the effects of the extra heat scale arn't as bad as they would be otherwise, though it depends on how much the seasons are effecting the temperature scales. My point is that though you have a +1 default difference from prefered, during certain seasons you will be at prefered, while other nations would be 1 off of their prefered... Of course what matters is how many seasons, and how far off of prefered Miasma is compared to other nations, but remember a swing of -2 is only an effect of -1 for miasma, there is no swing of +2 (which would be -3...)

Also miasma decreases taxes outside of your boarders by a decent amount (if I remember correctly) where you have domain, and the fact that you will take heat 2 and death 2 means that you will further complicate enemies taxes where you can get a domain advantage, if you are able to do it right you will really create problems for your neighbors, which of course will create problems for you in MP... I dunno, it will be interesting to see how it works in practicality.

Also you can seemingly use sloth at a high level since you don't have alot of resource hungry units (if you go with serpents and summons) so you can further crud up border provinces... seems Miasma is could be very effective for domain pushing since it adds more negatives to your neighbors.