What is the best equipment for an E9 Cyclops?

[sum1lost]

I agree that ethereal will not benefit you. Most things that can bust past your high protection will have magical attacks anyways.

[moderation]

I've been experimenting on w/ the Cyclops using a variety of nations, so I am mostly looking for the best configuration for it in the "best case scenario". I can see how things can depend on your nation. Having buff mages, particularly astral ones would be handy to save item slots (though of course it would suck to have your S1 buff Magic Dueled).

Omnirizon: By the way, why prefer the Shadow Brand over Frost or Fire? IIRC, the Shadow Brand deals damage that can be resisted with MR. Maybe the weakness that it causes is better against enemy SCs though.

[thejeff]

Shadow Brand: Larger area, MR resistable. Doesn't work on lifeless.

Frost/Fire Brand. AoE1. Doesn't work on Cold/Fire immune.

Shadow Brand is really nice against normal chaff.
SC's are likely to have enough MR to ignore it. But they're likely to be Fire/Frost immune too. Especially once you start fielding lots of Fire/FrostBrand wielding thugs.

Against standard Undead chaff (longdead/souless), Firebrand is really the only option. Though against truly huge hordes of chaff, damage shields are the only thing that works.
Even with a Firebrand and quickness, 1 SC can only kill 300 human sized units before hitting the 50 turn limit.

[Zeldor]

Trampling is the way to go against hordes of chaff. Stymphalan wings + boots of quickness + 2 shields [including fire one] do wonders. You need to be careful with that approach though. Flying carpet to retreat if you face something big

[MaxWilson]

Flying carpet is redundant if you have Stymphalian wings.

-Max

[moderation]

Does a flying carpet help you retreat? If I understand things correctly, when you retreat, either you survive if there's an adjacent friendly province for you to move to, or you die if there isn't. The flying carpet or any other form of flying shouldn't help your chance to survive.

[Hadrian_II]

If you fly, you dont get caught while running away.

[PvK]

Isn't anything that incurs fatigue going to fall to fatigue if it tries alone to trample 300+ foes who don't rout?

[Jazzepi]

PvK said:
Isn't anything that incurs fatigue going to fall to fatigue if it tries alone to trample 300+ foes who don't rout?

Not if you have enough reinvigoration.

Jazzepi

[Saxon]

Flying will help your retreat from the battle field if you are not fatigued, but it will not help you if the provinces surrounding you are enemy provinces. It is a great way to kill a low HP SC that has a put a decent PD in the province. Once you kill the PD, the SC retreats and dies.

That said, the advantage of strategic mobility is huge, so the Winged Shoes are a very attractive choice. It gives you more flexibility, makes it easier to acheive surprise and makes it harder to predict and counter your unit.

On the items question, it does depend a bit at what point of the game you are at. The later in the game, the more important MR is. As such, the Rainbow armor is almost always going to be more useful than Robe of Shadows, but early on, you might get away with it.

I would think reinvigoration is more important than regeneration. Once you tire, the hits will come in. If you go over 100, you are dead. I took out a high protection Cyclops with a death bless. As the fatigue mounted, I got in more hits, which started afflictions. It was a nice cycle for me, but deadly for them. Regeneration would not have helped, more reinvigoration would have.

Think of the ways people are going to try and kill your SC and prepare for them. Think of Vengeance of the Dead. Late in the game, you want to resist it, not fight it, as you will have killed many, many units. Think Soul Slay or Paralyze, think the other SC counters.