Strategy tips for newbie C'Tis

[Seve82]

Well started game on dificult or mighty ai and was doing good progress untill I manged to stumble upon Abysia on eastern front and Sauromantia on North. Both declared war quite fast on me. Currently have been warring back and forth on two fronts for some 50 turns with no victory in sight.

Had no time to mass up money to get 2nd fort going so I've been mostly down to one fort building troops untill I recently manged to wrestle one off abysians. Sad thing about that one is its on poor ground thus having barely any resources to build troops on.

My start loc was on desert lands leading to poor income. Map was designed so that I would start there...

So far been able to fight them with combination of mercenaries and nationals. Currently on conj 5 thus having first national summons and soon to have undead hordes on evocation(?)

So what kind of troops I should ideally have against Sauromantia. They keep raping my poor fellas with arrows. Abysia on other hand has much fewer troops but they are heavily armored and seem to have lots of salamanders which torch my poor lizards way too fast.

[Torin]

Early, light infantry and Lizard Kings for smiting.
Later add heavy infantry and later on Skeleton spamming Sauromancers.
Several common sauromancers and one more powerful (skull staff and skull helm) casting darkness will make your skeletons better. Bring a small front of heavy infantry there.

Abysians are better taken out by smite.
Massed archers with heavy troops.
keep away from cold provinces where your sauromancers get extra encumbrance for being coldblooded.

[Seve82]

Well archers are rare as I have better independents mod on and only place I can get some amazonian archers is poor prod and gets raided frequently by flankin enemy. This game is on EA.

I sure wish I had chokepoints to stall their advances... pd on c'tis is a joke that barely holds barbarians on 20

[llamabeast]

In order to get an advantage against the AI, you need to concentrate on magic.

Firstly, make sure you recruit a sauromancer every single turn. Put them on research.

You want to head straight for "Raise Skeletons", in Enchantment (Enchantment 3 perhaps?). Then your sauromancers will be able to help you a lot in battle by producing vast hordes of skeletons.

Also, research evocation for "Shadow Blast". It costs a gem, but it's viciously powerful.

As Torin says, Darkness is a very powerful spell, which will help you a lot, although it will take a while to research.

If you have spare death gems, Pale Riders (Enchantment again) will give you large numbers of cavalry quite cheaply.

Hope that helps! If you manage to make really good use of magic, you should be able to kill a great many AI troops for every one that you lose. Then you can save some money for a second fort (might be a good idea to prioritise that quite highly), and so on.