Guide to MA C'tis

[Executor]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

Thanks for the guide Executor.

What about an S6 D6 E2 F1 dom 8 awake master lich, with something along the lines of O3 S1 H3 Mis2 Mag1 in CBM? I've been messing around in SP, granted nothing compared to MP, and I've found City Guards to be pretty cheap and effective as expanders, especially if you spend the first few turns recruiting some lizard kings to provide smite support.
On an unrelated note, which is more effective, Smite or Banish, against undead like banes, or those MA Ermor sacreds.

Why S6? I think the master lich has 3 misc sloths and you don't need 6S for the +2MR bless. 5 should be enough for anything, astral cap, ring or sorcery and wizardry and crystal coin for S9 and wish or AN.
You can expand with city guards but they are risky and cost resources you don't have if you are taking sloth, which is reasonable. City guards have 9 base moral, that's 8 in hostile dominion. While Lizards have 11 and 12. You can expand easily even with slave warriors but be careful where you place them since they have no protection and tend to die easily to arrow fire, but you can recruit more of them with Order 3, they don't need much resources.

You don't need to buy mages the first couple of turns since you don't have any capital only mages, only H3 priests which you won't be needing many. Focus on expanding instead. Once you get more provinces, income, start popping out more forts and focusing more on mages and research. C'tis is a weaker nation, and they can't rely much on troops, so you will need to rely on magic to expand/defend.

[Trumanator]

:headslap: DOH! I completely forgot about the extra misc slot that lets you use the crystal coin with the two rings! What attracted me about the city guards was their low resource and gold cost, and that they have a shield, very useful against all those archer indies. Considering how quickly you ramp up in gold though, I think I will indeed switch to the tan lizards once my initial expansion is over.
FYI, Lizard Kings are actually NOT cap only, not that you would recruit many even so.

[archaeolept]

a small squad of city guards in the front center on hold and attack will work very well as arrow catchers, and complement the flanking lizards.

[Burnsaber]

I just noticed something potentially good, so I'll report it to this thread.

If you cast "Summon Animals" on swamp province, you get a mix of Horned Serpents and Giant Spiders. What does this have to with anything? Those two animals are both big size, have big hp and are poison immune. This makes them perfect muscle screen for your poison slingers, keeping the foes concentrated in the deadly clouds until it's all over. They should also work well with C'tissian special.

Also note that W random Marshmasters can spam Ice Drakes by just borrowing Thistle Mace for Dragon Master (which you get nicely with animate dead/skeletons).

[Alpine Joe]

On this note, it can be rather effective to use an awake mother of rivers as pretender. Sure you get diseased from miasma, but you are titan so it doesn't really matter unless you get an unlucky early mute. The plus side is your huge water gem income allows you to get a ridiculous amount of ice drakes. I had about 200 by the end of year two in my only mp game with them, if I recall correctly. Summon and outfit some cold immune bane thugs for frontline duty (along with skelli spam), which handily come in the same paths you need to get the dragon masters up and running. Round it all out with grip of winter if you are in weaker dominion to give enemies a time limit. You can throw foul vapors down too if you want, as Ice drakes have enough hp to survive FF usually.

Something like E3/W3 mother of rivers leaves you a lot of points leftover, getting you the all important E path.

Since you can't clam hoard anymore and tarts are weaker, this strat is more appealing in 1.6

[Baalz]

@Burnsaber yeah, the thing about fielding a bunch of stuff with death poison is it'll make anybody with expensive elite units have a whole other reason to avoid your disease dominion. Even winning battles is likely to involve expensive casualties as a single hit will kill most stuff. A bit of a mutually assured destruction vibe when contemplating attacking MA C'tis early on as you're likely to end up crippled even if you win.

[Burnsaber]

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

I just noticed something potentially good, so I'll report it to this thread.

If you cast "Summon Animals" on swamp province, you get a mix of Horned Serpents and Giant Spiders. What does this have to with anything? Those two animals are both big size, have big hp and are poison immune. This makes them perfect muscle screen for your poison slingers, keeping the foes concentrated in the deadly clouds until it's all over. They should also work well with C'tissian special.

Also note that W random Marshmasters can spam Ice Drakes by just borrowing Thistle Mace for Dragon Master (which you get nicely with animate dead/skeletons).

A small follow up on this: You have good access to "Spirit Mastery" and "Shade Beasts", both of which are size 1 ethereal undead. Sparkle them around with your spiders and serpents to increase their survivability (since all of the hits won't go to the big guy). This will also mean that occasionaly enemy banishments will go "waste" on squares that are only half-full of undead.

The Ice Drakes that have been mentioned are also good to bombard foes in the "death zone" in front of your spiders.

Your cold + poison damage combo is counterable by opposing undead spam, but you are a nation with H3 priests, remember? You can forge Void Eyes for some good old Banishment fun.

[Rytek]

Is the scorpion man immune to miasma affects of MA Ctiss?

[Zeldor]

I think that only swamp survival, undead, lifeless or immortality protects. I don't think scorpion man has any of that?

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

I think that only swamp survival, undead, lifeless or immortality protects. I don't think scorpion man has any of that?

IIRC only swamp survival and cold-blooded make you absolutely immune to miasma. Undead, demon and lifeless beings do catch the disease, they just don't care. Immortality I'm not sure either way.

In any case, Scorpion men and kings have none of those. They're plague meat.