Best way to play C'tis Miasma?

[Zen]

Actually an Empoisoner with Enchantment 1, is as good as one with a Skull Talisman, I have found. Usually indeps are killed just as you fatigue out.

Although this could be because I tend to try to horde Death gems and don't like equipping units with Skull Talismans unless they are non-caster assassins.

[Zooko]

In my experience Empoisoners casting Summon Skeleton only win about 80% of the time. That's not a high enough win ration to make it doable as an expansion strategy. The Skull Talisman really makes a noticeable difference, and I think part of it might be the free skeleton at the beginning, so that the assassination victim has more than one opponent at a time for most of the battle...

I admit that this is a highly questionable expansion strategy anyway. Even if your assassins win 100% of their battles, it still takes four or five Empoisoner-turns to take a province (3 or 4 to assassinate all leaders and one to attack). So at best, you can't gain more than one province per turn from turn 8 through 16 or so, and two provinces per turn after that, and so on.

I'm toying with the idea that one way to optimize this is to sneak right through the low-income provinces and head straight for the high income provinces first...

[Zooko]

Hm... I wonder if my experience was due to heavy drain scale tiring my Empoisoners out faster or something. I've just done a bit of playtesting, and Empoisoners casting Summon Skeleton/Summon Dead have done fine, except for when the faced a mounted commander. In that case the two Skull Talismans being worn by the prophet Empoisoner saved the day.

Well, if after all they are effective without Skull Talismans, then this strategy is just a little bit more doable...

[Jurri]

You should probably use a scout or a regular commander to do the actual conquering - no sense to waste an expensive assassin turn! Also, it's a good idea to make a fake attack with the selfsame scout even before bringing the assassinators to the province to see just how many and what type the commanders are, again to save the time of the lizards.

In my experience an empoisoner wins most anything but knight commanders with the animate skeleton. Sometimes a priest has heavy infantry guards and they get lucky, or a mounted commander might avoid a limping skeleton and attack the lizard instead, but generally it's a risk worth taking, in my opinion.

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
Oracle Pretender: You can have your Oracle research quite well. Also it can make its own clams if none of your Marshmasters can do so.

Neither of these will give you the kind of rapid start that you'll want.

The Prince of Death is able to Soul Vortex/Invulnerability/Drain Life as soon as you hit Alteration 5.

If he only has earth magic, then you aren't going to want to send him up against barbarian or or heavy cavalry provinces.

Ctis should be assassinating themselves to stolen provinces as soon as possible, so a Researcher Pretender is actually going to conquer more territory in the long run by allowing you to have more Assassins with Skull Staves spamming Raise Skeletons than a SC Pretender is.

This makes little sense. A Rainbow 2 great sage only researches at the equivalent speed of a couple of marshmasters.

[FrankTrollman]

Jurri Said:
You should probably use a scout or a regular commander to do the actual conquering

Absolutely. In fact, you should do the actual conquering with a Marshmaster, since you will want him to search the place for magic sites.

Mounted Commanders, with their multiple weapons, are always able to beat Poisoners a disturbing amount of the time. They can kill your skeletons faster than you can make them and that's the end of that. Your army, which you actually will have despite everything, is itself capable of taking out enemy provinces that have cavalry at merely tremendous losses. But since you aren't fighting the battles against Barbarians and such, taking tremendous losses to capture farmlands is OK.

In the later stages of early developement, your assassins can carry Skull Staves and cast Animate Skeletons. At that point they can take the commanders no problem.

Graeme Dice Said:
If he only has earth magic, then you aren't going to want to send him up against barbarian or or heavy cavalry provinces.

Well.. duh. Your pretender is extremely valuable. No god should ever be put into a head-on battle with an independent pile of barbarians. That's just suicide. The best Super Combatant you can make is still just going to die sometimes when surrounded by a bunch of greatsword wielding madmen. If you trick out a SC properly their failure rate is very small, but even that is way too much of a risk to expend on your god.

A bunch of hearty fools attacking for twenty something points each? No thanks. Heavy Cav is even worse. A Mist Formed Soul Draining Air Queen can still just get killed on the opening charge. It's not likely, but it's not the kind of risks that are acceptable in a game that can potentially drag on for months.

Yeah, a PoD pretender is not the kind of god that you are going to want to send frolicing into a pile of barbarians alone. This is irrelevent since at no time do you ever want to send your god frolicing in Barbarians, and because barbarians are so easy to Empoison that there is little temptation for Ctis to ever fight them.

Remember, with all the troops you don't lose by not fighting, those few fights you actually do engage in can afford to be blood baths. Heck, on the first turn you should seriously consider purchasing an Assassin and whatever Mercenary company is available whilst researching Enchantment.

-Frank

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:The best Super Combatant you can make is still just going to die sometimes when surrounded by a bunch of greatsword wielding madmen.

With protection over 25, mirror image, no fatigue, and defense around 20, those deaths are rare enough as to not worry about them.

It's not likely, but it's not the kind of risks that are acceptable in a game that can potentially drag on for months.

Why not? If your pretender dies in the first 10 turns, then you won't be playing the game for months anyways. Either you'll get steamrollered by your most powerful neighbour by turn 20 (He'll have two to three times as many provinces as you by that point.), or you'll manage to negotiate for an alliance.

Yeah, a PoD pretender is not the kind of god that you are going to want to send frolicing into a pile of barbarians alone.

Of course you can. You simply have to script him right, and give him the proper equipment. You likely can't do it quickly enough with Miasma C'Tis, but any of the earth nations can do it within 5 turns. The easiest way to show this is to give him 9 death magic and play base Ulm. Give him a black plate cuirass, black plate helmet, sword of sharpness, lead shield, and boots of the behemoth. No scripting required beyond an "attack rear". It's a very rare province indeed that will give him more than a single affliction, and those don't affect his performance to any great degree.

You'd still be better off doing this with a ghost king though, as the etherealness makes him all but immune to normal troops once his protection gets high enough.

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
You can't afford a Vampire Queen at all.

I just checked, and you can easily afford a vampire queen if you are willing to make small sacrifices for the extra safety she offers. Simply take O3, S3, H2, MF3, MG2, dom 8 with A2W2E3D1B2. That leaves you with 2 points left over. Of course, a much better choice for Miasma is the ghost king, since you can give him better magic paths, and still afford a dominion 10.

[RibbonBlue]

I like taking the astral wyrm Order 3 growth 3 dom 9
3 astral.

[Nappa]

Thanks for all the help.

I used the Saurlich as my pretender. Fairly strong chassi and he's immortal. I like the idea of the astral worm also.

Everyone is right however that a Domain of 6 is not enough. I ended up right next to Oceana with a starting dominion of 9 and he is crushing my dominion and I'm having trouble getting to him.

I like the early expanding with the assasins. That will help next game.

Next game should be much better.