C'tis strategy

[Jurri]

One thing you might consider with C'tis is researching enchantment 1 first. It gives access to animate skeleton, with which your empoisoners can conquer most indies.

[The Panther]

I am currently playing Miasma C'tis on turn 90 in what was (at the time it started) my third MP game ever. That theme is far stronger than I ever thought possible.

I took dominion 10 in my pretender design, but really only needed 9. Even 8 might do, but that is the absolute minimum for this theme. The extra income from the dominion will rock your socks off.

The biggest drawback in your pretender design is the watchtower selection. The problem with that is that people in MP may be inclined to take you out early to avoid the troublesome disease spreading action later on. In a 1-on-1, this does not matter. But in a true MP game with many opponents, you could easily die early to annoyed opponents ganging up on you. With the lack of mobility for C'tis, watchtowers just do not delay enough.

I went with the Hill Fortress in my game. Those 250 defense things are extremely hard to take out. And no enemy wants to sit on them without disease immune troops and commanders for the many turns it takes to drop the walls. Put city guards behind every fortress and it will truly hurt them while crashing the gates. If they eventually win, their troops are likely already dying.

So, how did I get the pretender points to do all this?

Simple - I did not use an SC pretender. I choose the immortal saurolich, who seems exactly designed for a Miasmi theme with high starting dominion. I gave him only death 4, researched the raise skeleton/dead spell, and never once lost him to indy 9 neutrals. Of course, I never sent him in alone either. Several times, he was the only troop left after my lizards routed, but he never lost a battle. I even three times crashed on a neutral at the same time as an opponent and won every single time.

One of the things to worry about is finding the correct summons to match this theme. Demons and undead do not catch the disease. Cold blooded folks like lamias and draconians do not either. I tested a lot of summons over the course of the game to see which died and which didn't. There are plenty that don't, so it turned out to not be that big a problem.

Anyway, the Miasma sauromancers are extremely cool. They all come with 1 water for quickness. The 2 death, 2 nature base magic seems very strong. The one random is incredibly useful. And the best thing about them? You can recruit them in any castle.

[Tuidjy]

Yes, Miasma is extremely powerful. I do not understand why C'tis isn't more
popular in multiplayer. I have won every single MP game I have played with
C'tis (and intend to win the one I'm currently in) even if I made a lot of
mistakes the first time.

A couple of things that I want to add to the advice above:

The shaman is an awesome researcher, and great for casting 'Astral Probing'.
In battle, you can have them use communion for 'Relief', 'Charm', or even an
old fashioned Astral barrage ('Mind burn', 'Soul Slay', 'Enslave', etc). Left
on their own after their scripts run out, they will cast 'Curse' and 'Healing
Light' which are very useful in prolonged battles.

The empoisoners are great at taking indies out with 'Animate Skeleton'. They
are also dangerous to anyone if they start with 'Swarm' and eventually attack.

Deathmasters' random picks make them specialists:
Fire: Use them to forge fire skulls, fever fetishes and rune smashers, to summon
Bane Archers, and (with a fire skull) cast Augury.
Air: With a cheap thistle mace, they can cast 'Healing mists' or 'Summon
Sprites' in combat.
Water: Clams and Boots of Quickness alone make them valuable
Earth: Jade armour is very nice for mounted commanders and non-flying thugs.
Astral: Use shamans as communion slaves, and enjoy higher Nature/Death levels.
Death: Give them a staff, and you have the deadly 'Drain Life'/'Raise skeletons'
uber-combo. Or use them to cast 'Ghost Riders'.
Nature: In battle you cannot go wrong with 'Relief' and 'Charm'. With a cheap
thistle mace, you can cast rituals like 'Kelp Fortress' and 'Gift of Reason'.
Blood: Blood hunters. If there are no blood nations in the game, you have a
good chance to snatch a few Ice Devils.

And do not forget that with some triton bait, marshmasters can take underwater
provinces without too much trouble. Once the skeletons start flowing...

On top of everything, the troops do not suck. Hell, they are actually very
nice - you have defenders and you have heavy infantry as damage shields. Who
needs more? The nice priests are just icing on the cake.

One thing about a high domain level - it will piss your neighbors a bit too
early. I prefer a lower domain level - six, as a matter of fact - so that I can
get a decent supercombatant. Later, when you can afford to push people around,
building temples will take care of your domain.

But still, C'tis is not one of the top nations, because it has no mobility to
speak of. I was given a few turn files in which Vanheim demoralized an
arguably stronger C'tis empire not by defeating him on the battlefield, but by
airdropping, sneaking, and basically jumping in his rear until he resigned.

In my games I avoided that by fortifying heavily, but with a top nation, you
have cheaper ways to defend.

[Schmoe]

Yvelina said:
... but first and foremost, I would play Miasma rather than Standard. Recently I had a chance to observe Miasma in the hand of people who knew what they were doing, and I was impressed.

You'll have to tell me who those people were so I can get some pointers. After the thorough spanking you laid on me at the end of our game, it surely wasn't me

[The Panther]

Hey! Thanks, tuidjy, for your helpful post above. Here I am on Turn 95 (I just checked this) and I gleamed some useful things from your post that I can still even use in my game!

As for the dominion thing, I surely expected my neighbors to come crashing down on me early with my 10 starting dominion. But they did not, though maybe this was partially due to a bit of luck.

One of my neighbors was a total rookie and he went AI early and quite unexpectedly. Another neighbor started a war in the other direction, eliminating Ermor early (as can be typical). Caelum expanded quickly and built lots of temples, thus keeping my 10 dominion away from him, and we had an armstice for a long time.

My other near neighbor was Norfleet (yes, the game started THAT long ago) who went AI on about turn 10 or so after he got caught cheating. Cohen quickly made a beeline for Norfleet's former empire and eliminated him at once. But, by that time, I had a nice solid empire in the middle of Karan, and used my incredible income bonus from my massive dominion to make a lot of mages of all types and sizes and fortify every single province with Hill Fortresses, labs, and temples.

I suppose that this will not always work out so well as it did for me, though, so taking a lower dominion might be prudent. But on a small map like Karan, it can be problematic building your dominion up from 6 to 10 in order to reap the full Miasma income bonus.

[Chazar]

Tuidjy said:The empoisoners are great at taking indies out with 'Animate Skeleton'. They are also dangerous to anyone if they start with 'Swarm' and eventually attack.

Is it necessary to equip the empoisoners with either skull talismans (for item-spellcasting) or skull staffs to prevent fatigue?

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Miasma is really annoying, so I usually make Ctis my second enemey after pop-killing nations if I have the choice to do so. That supports a mid-level domininon score (7) and strong fortress in my view as well. Hill-fortress seems best choice, but how do you build hill-fortresses in swamps? Seems a bit weird to me...

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What is a sensible general-purpose tactical setup for C'tis? Do you set all living troops "on guard" only and rely on raise skeletons solely?

I am currently trying front placed marshmasters set on raise skeletons, protected by elite warriors on hold and attack close, but usually they overtake the slow skeletons and take the damage themselves. On the other hand, placing the marshmasters up front with a few guards seems dangerous to me, no?

I make up my forces with those weak-protected predator lizards only, for I found that swamp guards are a bit too expensinve for first-row hit-point-soakers, no?

Is it sensible to make runners for flanking-attack-rear? I had some success, but I think the elites are reasonably fast on the battlefield as well?

Is it really worth messing around with those sacred serpents? They die so easily (probably their slightly higher than normal hitpoints/size makes them first-rate targets for the tacital AI, while their bad protections seals their fates.) and are not even poison immune to combine them with poisom-slingers...

I also found that poison slingers are better placed forward on fire and flee, but their limited range makes the fire and flee-command into a "move forward, take hits from archers, fire once and scatter over all available friendly provinces"-command, which is pretty annoying...

[Jurri]

Chazar said:
Is it necessary to equip the empoisoners with either skull talismans (for item-spellcasting) or skull staffs to prevent fatigue?

No. In magic dominion at least they can easily cast enough to beat almost any indy. (Notable exception being knight commanders; even against bodyguarded priests they usually seem to win.)

Skull staffs, on the other hand, allow you to cast raise skeletons which makes them very dangerous even against human controlled opponents.

[Schmoe]

Chazar said:

Is it necessary to equip the empoisoners with either skull talismans (for item-spellcasting) or skull staffs to prevent fatigue?

I've found that most indie commanders die against 3-4 skeletons, so I never found it necessary to equip an empoisoner, though they were surely more effective with equipment.

What is a sensible general-purpose tactical setup for C'tis? Do you set all living troops "on guard" only and rely on raise skeletons solely?

I am currently trying front placed marshmasters set on raise skeletons, protected by elite warriors on hold and attack close, but usually they overtake the slow skeletons and take the damage themselves. On the other hand, placing the marshmasters up front with a few guards seems dangerous to me, no?

I make up my forces with those weak-protected predator lizards only, for I found that swamp guards are a bit too expensinve for first-row hit-point-soakers, no?

Is it sensible to make runners for flanking-attack-rear? I had some success, but I think the elites are reasonably fast on the battlefield as well?

First of all, elite warriors are more expensive than swamp guard (16 gp vs. 12 gp). In addition, the elite warriors have poor defense and poor protection, so they die quickly. They are great on offense, though, with high attack skill, good strength, and a great weapon.

My favorite troops to buy are actually City Guard. They are relatively cheap in terms of gold and resources (10 gp, 13 res) and provide a decent meatshield. I usually complement them with a few falchioneers scattered in, though I'm not sure how effective those guys are. Swamp Guard are great at holding the line, though, and I try to build up a core force of them for any heavy-hitting army.

One thing you could try is to have marshmasters placed forward, with some troops set to guard commander. Place a strong force slightly behind them on hold and attack. If the force is swamp guard or city guard, they don't need to be too far back, if they are elite warriors you'll need to place them further back. Make sure to put a few token troops ahead of the marshmasters to draw archer fire.

Is it really worth messing around with those sacred serpents? They die so easily (probably their slightly higher than normal hitpoints/size makes them first-rate targets for the tacital AI, while their bad protections seals their fates.) and are not even poison immune to combine them with poisom-slingers...

Sacred serpents are great because of their standard effect. I try to mix some into any serious force. Between the serpents and your great priests, you shouldn't have problems with routing troops.

I also found that poison slingers are better placed forward on fire and flee, but their limited range makes the fire and flee-command into a "move forward, take hits from archers, fire once and scatter over all available friendly provinces"-command, which is pretty annoying...

The few times I tried poison slingers in SP I found them very difficult to use. Maybe I just didn't grok them, but I've since avoided them.

[Chazar]

Schmoe said:First of all, elite warriors are more expensive than swamp guard (16 gp vs. 12 gp). In addition, the elite warriors have poor defense and poor protection, so they die quickly. They are great on offense, though, with high attack skill, good strength, and a great weapon.

My favorite troops to buy are actually City Guard. They are relatively cheap in terms of gold and resources (10 gp, 13 res) and provide a decent meatshield. I usually complement them with a few falchioneers scattered in, though I'm not sure how effective those guys are.

Hmm, ok, it seems like I got carried away by thinking that it makes no sense buying city guards if I can by swamp guards for +2GP. Then I found out that I cannot produce a large number of swamp guards due to a lack of resources and thus switched to elite warriors... ...especially since in an older thread about C'tis generally concluded that Falchioneers are strictly inferior to elite warriors, but it simply makes no sense to raise elite warriors monocultures...

I also think that order+3, sloth+3, heat+2 is sensible for miasma. Especially sloth+3 seems pretty thematic to me, but this restricts the building capacities of the vegetarian troops, especially with an hill-fortress, which is not easily spammed everywhere for decentral production...

[Tuidjy]

Miasma is really annoying, so I usually make Ctis my second enemey after pop-
killing nations if I have the choice to do so. That supports a mid-level domininon
score (7) and strong fortress in my view as well. Hill-fortress seems best
choice, but how do you build hill-fortresses in swamps? Seems a bit weird to me...

I have never been attacked earlier than expected with dominion six. Yes, the
Miasma domain is annoying, but it is cheaper to fight dominion six with a priest
or two, rather than starting an early war. And as those who have played me know,
I always field a major supercombatant, which makes attacking me costly, at best.

It is true that an early coalition can be dangerous to anyone, which is why I try
very hard not to push my domain into other peoples' spheres of influence.
Sometimes, it just happens, but that means that the victim has very low starting
domain, which usually flags him as a newbie that should be easy to intimidate,
or failing that, eliminate.

Another thing that is great about C'tis is that their research priorities can
be tightly focused, which, added to great researchers available everywhere,
makes them a very high tech nation.

Note that I am talking about my built, here, which assumes a SC with Air, Water,
Earth, and Astral at a minimum, and my standard domain O3S3H2D2M2M3.

You go for Alt2, which lets your SC safely expand on turn three, searching
provinces which look promising. On turn four, you can launch a second strong
expansion force consisting of all the troops you have built and a level five
prophet with smite.

Then you go for Cons4, which will give you a wraith sword and boots of flight,
which go, of course, on your pretender and maybe on your prophet, if he luckied
out with one of the fighter perks from the Hall of Fame. Incidentally, you also
get clams, which, depending on your luck with randoms and searching, you may be
able to start cranking out.

By that time, you should have at least one additional castle, and be producing
two or more mages per turn. Go for Ench3 - it will give you 'Raise Skeletons',
and your pretender will thank you for 'Astral Shield' and 'Breath of Winter',
as by then, he will have items that give luck and armour, and thus have available
script slots.

With 'Raise Skeletons' and 'Quickness', expansion becomes trivial. Focus your
research on Alt6. Cons6(8) and Conj5(8) are also viable targets, depending on
what the political situation is. Your research will be matched only by Pythium
and Arco. Do you want to go for artifacts? Or do you want to roll over your
neighbors? Will you be facing SCs, or hordes, or battlefield targetting spells?

In any case, you have answers to any of these - in most cases the answer is:
Quickened 'Raise Skeletons' fueled by 'Drain Life' or 'Relief'...

The things to watch for:
Pythium, Arco, R'lyeh - beware of the mind targeting spells, which will bypass
the skeleton waves. Use cheap, but not mindless fodder (archers, militia)
Caelum, Abysia, Marignon, Man, Vanheim - Get the right immunity items.

The things that will kill you, and there is nothing you can do about it:
If you play a good player with a mobile nation: Vanheim, Pythium, Caelum, etc.
your powerful armies will be assaulted with remote spells, and avoided by the
enemy, while all other provinces will be taken over and pillaged... and if it
turns out to have decent gem income, you will see an instant castle poping
underneat the forces you sent to liberate it.

The moral? At turn 15 you should start taking out the powerhouses... Vanheim,
Pythium, and Caelum being the most dangerous ones. Except, of course, if I am
playing one of these... then it is not worth it, find someone else to beat on :-)