Guide to EA C'tis

[MaxWilson]

You usually get astral gems from astral and nature sites, both of which can be found by shamans. Not all, true, but it's worth sending them out. Still, it depends on luck, and you may end up getting most of your astral gems in some games by finding a good supply of water gems (with your Sauromancers or mercenaries or indy mages) and banging out clams of pearls.

You know, I've never been all that good at expanding into the sea, in spite of the fact that sea provinces tend to be fairly rich. I'll do water as LA Agartha because umbrals rock, but as C'tis I would miss my Cloud of Death underwater. In the past I've typically waited to expand into the sea until I find a province of ickies or kappas. Report on whether your zombie strategy works well; I suppose C'tis is also well-suited to skelly spamming underwater. My problem with underwater zombies is that they've got an attack of 3 and a defense of 1 or something.

-Max

[thejeff]

Shamans can cast Arcane probing and it only takes 4 non-astral gems to cast. I'd do that until I found some astral income and then it's self-sustaining.

[MaxWilson]

True, but shamans are also cheap, so manual searching doesn't hurt much. As always, manual searching vs. spells depends on tradeoffs between gold (mage-time) and gems.

-Max