C'tis and the Dancers of Death

[Wendigo]

Excellent stuff. Your designs are a bit extreme for my style (I guess I am a pretty conservative player), but they do indeed have potential.

Why the 6 death? do you feel the extra Fear from 4->6 is worth the cost (and the sacrifices elsewhere), or are you planing on using your pretender for ritual summoning in the later game?

[HJ]

I had great fun using dancers in combination with poison slingers. I also had water 9, to give them extra defense and to get double fanaticism, but I had air 4 to give them some protection from missiles.

[Patrik]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

Sample of how it went:
t.8 - 10 provinces 468 gps
t.9 - 13 prov 551 gps
t.10 - 16 prov 733gps
t.11 - 19 prov 873 gps
t.12 - 20 prov 961 gps

This was with all non-sea indie's gone and a border with AI's. Time for war with large amounts of troops for the job. This is a very good start by my books and it did not seem to have involved much luck - though no real bad events.

This is indeed a very good start!! I think it makes a lot of sense to stop at about this point (i.e. t.12) when comparing different setups for starting strength. Looking at what you have at t.20 (as was suggested by Pocus) depends much more on the strengths of nearby computer AI's.

I would rarely play with drain 2 though. If you don't find those sages (and I 'never' do ) - how do you manage??

Another possible weakness is your pretender as a SC. About the only spell you can use for boosting is Quickness (Breath of Winter doesn't really go well with your dominion or your troops ). I guess Quickness - Raise Dead can be quite good though. To me it seems that taking high magic on your pretender to get good Bless effects have more obvious benefits (for the Pretender) in other Paths (Earth - increased prot, Fire - Fire darts, incr fire shield, incr attack, Air - incr. prec., mirror image, orb lightning etc.)

These extreme themes are cool though!! Have you looked anything at what can be done with Fire 9 - for example in combination with sacred cavalry? If both the normal and hoof attack hits (and with +4 to attack it's pretty likely) you get FOUR damage rolls (normal, hoof, and 2 with 8p AP damage) .

[PhilD]

OK, it's official, I suck at this game.

I tried copying the exact same setup, and at turn 12, I am now the proud owner of 14 Provinces, with a monthly income of 550 Gold. I am ahead in Provinces and in Income (barely; Arcoscephale is just behind), but my research is way behind everybody else's (I found 2 Libraries for Sages two turns ago, but don't have the cash for Labs).

And I'm being attacked by Pythium (which took two of my Provinces over the Last 2 turns). I seem to have a larger total army, but it's spread all over my empire, and I don't have much to throw in the way of the Legions. For some reason, every indy province seems full of archers, and I have way too many casualties.

Oh, and some of my Sauromancers are rebels; they keep casting Raise Dead instead of the Terrors they've been instructed.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by PhilD:
Oh, and some of my Sauromancers are rebels; they keep casting Raise Dead instead of the Terrors they've been instructed.

I've had trouble with that sort of thing too. The worst is Fanatacism, which only gets cast when my prophet wants to, regardless of being scripted. And often my stupid prophet casts Sermon of Courage instead. I mean, come on!!! A 4-holy unit should NEVER EVER cast Sermon of Courage.

Your problem COULD be a range limit on Terror; you might want to check that out and move the mages closer to the front. Against the indy archers, just build heavy infantry, or send out a lone heavy infantry up front to draw all the arrows.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Wendigo:

Why the 6 death? do you feel the extra Fear from 4->6 is worth the cost (and the sacrifices elsewhere), or are you planing on using your pretender for ritual summoning in the later game?

Its only 48 design points so its not a big cost. I find high level death magic to be one of the most rewarding in terms of spells with which are nastier the higher your magic level - especially as C'tis starts with terror which is much more effective with high death. And as you say Death gets some great high level summonings I want easy access to.

Patrik:

I'm used to high drain scales (like the MR bonus for a race like this) and rapid expansion generally leads to Sages. If not the extra gold from the start will generally make up with quantity for less effective researchers. The Princes ability to research early is another key.

Using the Prince as an SC I mainly go for the fear effects so quickness plus Terror plus fear seems plenty to play with. To be honest I don't like pretender SC's much - too many counters for my liking - but the Prince of Death is one of the best I've used for not getting afflictions due to his ability to scare many things away with casting Terror with high level death.

Cheers

Keir

[ November 19, 2003, 19:14: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Truper]

Any nation with a starting Death gem income can get around drain scales for research purposes through the use of Skull Mentors. They rock!