Base C'tis Sacred Serpent - Hints needed

[Ironhawk]

Horst F. JENS said:
Does a Death 4 Blessing help them from ending as hoburg milita food ?
Does a Nature 9 blessing (regen, 50% resit Poison) stack with the Snakes Natural 50% Poison resist to 100% Poison immuntiy ?
Does a W9 blessing have other results (melee survival) than a E9 blessing ?

Death 4: Not a bad blessing on a tougher unit but I dont use it much.
Nature 9: the 50% poison resistance does stack, yes. You also get beserk +3, as shovah mentioned.
Water 9: gives quickness and great defense, but is a bad idea to use on a unit with poor starting defense

My instinct is that for this unit the best bless would be N9/E9. You get regen, beserk, and half decent armor. The problem is that your armor is only good, not great. In addition, your units have very little punch with only one attack - thats not much combat power for all the design points you are spending on them! The traditional response to poor combat power is a F9 bless, but you can't do a N9/F9 bless here because the serpents would be slaughtered due to thier low prot + low defense. Really it seems that the Sacred Serpent just isnt a good unit to use for a bless strategy.

[shovah]

but if you can do n9 f9 blessing and get Gift of Health up thats a different story

[Endoperez]

If you can get Gift of Health up, everything looks better. However, I have never really based blessing around them. They are sacred, and the fact that bless increases their morale is enough when you use them as rout-stoppers. I'd like to protect them somehow (Air, Earth 9 IF I would be taking Earth 7-8 anyway).

[Ironhawk]

shovah said:
but if you can do n9 f9 blessing and get Gift of Health up thats a different story

Gift of Health doesnt really change the situation. More hp, sure but they'd still be stuck with the fatal low prot+low def combination. Pepper them with arrows and fight with some half decent infantry and they are done for.

[Vicious Love]

Ironhawk said:
Gift of Health doesnt really change the situation. More hp, sure but they'd still be stuck with the fatal low prot+low def combination. Pepper them with arrows and fight with some half decent infantry and they are done for.

Agreed. Even Tarrasques under dominion 10 GoH can be brought down by masses of heavy infantry, and they have both superb protection and more HP than a sizeable army of sacred serpents.

Now, A Tarrasque or Abomination prophet in dominion 10 with a Ring of Regeneration and Kurgi's Gift under Gift of Health, THAT simply can't be killed. Until your opponent just charms, enslaves, petrifies or disintegrates him, I suppose. I've never actually tried this stratagem, but I imagine it'd be truly hardcore until MR-based magic came into play. 'course, you'd need to give him air or, if you're feeling lucky, astral in order to teleport onto the field from dominion 10, unless said field is within flying distance of a dominion 10 province but... fine, so it's not a viable strategy. Still sounds fun. Not to hijack the thread, or anything. Thought just ocurred to me, and asked to be shared.

[shovah]

fine then GoH and a9 n9 bless? resistant to missle weapons and have regen and good health, not the greatest but quite fun

[Vicious Love]

I suppose that's one of the best blessings you can give these guys, but I doubt they were ever intended to actual be used as front line troops. They're strictly there for morale-related support, and any combat abilities they might possess are entirely incidental. They're certainly not worth actually desigining a blessing around.

Update: But they're cute. Oh, how I love C'tis.

[Truper]

Yah, the Sacred Serpents aren't worth building a strategy around. The Serpent Dancers on the other hand definately can be. They have nice stats that can be enhanced by any number of blessings, and total poison immunity does provide tactical possibilities...