Why does Desert Tombs suck?

diamondspider · #1 January 26th, 2004, 07:35 PM

I've been wondering the same thing and considering approaches (since I love C'tis).

It seems that you pay 200 to get:

-nasty declines in your population
-to pay gems instead of gold for priests
-VERY nice Tomb Wyrms for free each turn from the best summoned priest (that are sacred)
-a super powerful final hero

So, I guess, like licker said, it would be about summoning the kings as much as possible by finding death gems, pumping out the wyrms and Sauromancers, blessing the wyrms with a nice buff, and setting +3 luck to get the super hero fast.

Magic? Anything that helps supporting or summoning of undead to join your vast reanimated hordes.

Not sure the advantages are worth +2 death and 200 points, but I plan on more testing along these lines to find out

[ January 26, 2004, 18:54: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

#2 January 26th, 2004, 08:40 PM

Try playing a Blessing Effect with your Tomb Wyrms and using your Death Gem income only for Tomb Kings. If you can make your Pretender a SC and speedresearch to Enchantment 3 so you can take indy provinces with 2 or 3 Sauromancers each. Pick a low price Castle so you can build them everywhere to make Shamans and Sauromancers, forget about a normal army.

That's how I enjoy playing DT. They do very well later game if you build yourself up a decent Tomb King population for reanimation. But they are weaker than the base C'tis and Miasma. If the cost was lowered by half, you'd have much more magic you could put into a pretender in order to counter some of the weaknesses of DT.

PvK · #3 January 26th, 2004, 10:44 PM

If they have the poison slingers, they'd combine very well with undead against non-resistant enemies.

PvK

Argitoth · #4 January 27th, 2004, 06:35 AM

BLAAAM!! oh crap...

*bump*

Pocus · #5 January 27th, 2004, 11:47 PM

I must say too that this seems a bit pricey. Tomb wyrms are good, but dont justify a 200 points cost. Having to pay 23 gems for a tomb king seems a reasonable price, so its not like it is a super bonus given in compensation of this design points cost.

Bowlingballhead · #6 January 28th, 2004, 12:25 AM

What you get are C'tis longdead. *Do not knock this*. They have what other longdead lack, durability, thanks to their natural armor class. Yes, the death scale does suck, but you don't start out in the state of total blight that Ashen Empire and Soul Gate do, so you can use regular units (and C'tis's are cheap and at least modestly good) to conquer enough independents to get your undead horde going. And Royal Protection is *great*. Your enemies will find that your troops are very, very difficult to banish.

And Tomb Kings? Cripes, but those guys are powerful. They're potential supercombatants. There's nothing 'potential' about the First King, either. He's practically a god.

But I didn't go much for Tomb Kings. (Except one to be my prophet and cast Royal Protection) The next-lower-down can summon those sweet C'tis longdead, and are vastly cheaper. The sheer potential to win battles by route (because your troops come in such vast numbers and never break) is not to be sneezed at. And your regular C'tis troops feel real brave backed up by an army of 200 undead.

As you may be guessing, I love Desert Tombs. It's the only death-oriented dominion I really like.

Pocus · #7 January 28th, 2004, 10:34 AM

I dont see what is so good with Ctis longdead. They have a prot between 0 and 11, so nothing to speak of. You have to pay 16 death gems for a tomb priest which will rise 6 of them a turn. Its far from justifying a cost of 200 design points.

I agree that tomb kings can make good combattants, and that the Tomb king heroe can be a SC by himself though.