No MA C'tis guides :(

[Trumanator]

I'm playing a small hotseat game with me, my bro, and 2 comps. Me and my brother picked each other's nations, and he gave me C'tis. I gotta say, I really am unimpressed. At first I thought that I would leverage the poison resistance and spam slingers with some blockers, but that seemed to kill off nearly as many of my guys as theirs. I have switched to massing Swamp Guards, but I don't like them either, they can't hit anything and seem to run away way to easily for "elite" troops. I just started trying to use shamans spamming Body Ethereal, but the shamans die really fast to arrows. One thing that I hope will really help is that I just researched shadow blast and Nether Darts, which most of my marshmasters can cast. Any thoughts on improvements?

[Ming]

I don't play C'tis myself, but I remember reading somewhere that a good strategy would be to research enchantments for raise skel(3) and foul vapour(5). Make sure you make your marchmasters at least 100% poison resistance though (75% is not enough unless you are lucky).

[Amhazair]

Take a look at these threads:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=33786
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ghlight=miasma

The first is a guide on EA C'tis. (you can also find it through the strategy index) While there are obviously some differences between EA and MA they are quite similar, and a lot of the points in this thread apply to MA too.

The second started out as a thread about the effects of the miasma, but in the second half you can find a little more general discussion about the nation.

[sector24]

Well I don't think there will be any new guides until the post editing issue is reconsidered, but I can give you a few tips.

Pretender:
Make sure you pick a poison immune pretender so you don't accidently die to your own miasma. Another option is an undead pretender who gets poisoned but doesn't suffer the afflictions, or a very high HP pretender like the Manticore. You'll get afflictions, but since the Manticore flies and basically kills everything in one hit it's not going to affect it as much.

Scales:
High dominion is important, you earn more gold based on dominion.
Order 3 - More money = more Marshmasters
Sloth 3 - Your troops are not powerful, so just recruit as many sloth 3 allows, but rely on your mages
Heat 2 - This helps offset an opponent with a cold 3 dominion, which really ruins your day. Nations like MA Jotunheim will bombard you with Wolven Winter and having an existing heat scale will make it a lot more palatable.

Strategy:
Your unshielded warriors have explosive offense, and your shielded troops are decent defenders but don't expect to carve out a huge empire with them. C'tis' early game strength is summoning hordes of skeletons with their mages. When a suitable counter comes up, you should have shadow blast for important battles. It costs a death gem, but it is an amazing spell and can easily turn the tide of an important battle.

I know this is extremely abbreviated, but it should give you an idea of what to shoot for. It sounds like you're already in the middle of the game, field some marshmasters with a block of national troops to suck up damage. Summon skeletons and use battlefield magic to kill the lion's share of the troops. You may want to mix in some Bane Lord thugs if appropriate. Your end game goal is Tartarians, although I don't know how good they are with the shattered soul update. I'm sure other posters can add more information. Good luck!

[Trumanator]

I had thought about skelly spamming, but I always got the idea that it was more of a blocking force while your other mages laid down the heat than a winning strategy in and of itself. As for the pretender, I totally forgot about getting a poison immune one , and ended up having to rush to cons 4 and ench 5 so I could cast gift of health to save my mother of rivers . I took something like order 3 sloth 1/2 heat 3 mis 2 magic 1 with 5 water and 6 astral, awakened.

[krpeters]

Regarding skellyspam, in the early game the horde of skeletons/soulless you can raise (especially with the help of a const-4 Skull Staff) can easily win a battle on their own. I don't know what C'tis can do once opponents start lobbing magma eruptions and falling fires, though, or if your MP opponent gets smart and starts putting priests in (the AI never does).

What magic options does C'tis have in mid/late game?

[Trumanator]

so far as I can see C'tis has decent death, nature, and astral options for late game, and weak water. If I start summoning spectres though I suppose that I could branch out a little more.

[JimMorrison]

Many of your Marshmasters get Astral, and you have unlimited training capacity for Shamans as communion slaves. An 8 slave communion will have Marshmasters casting at 4W/4S/5D/5N, before booster items. This gives you a wide array of BE to cast, as well as the potential for devastating, sustained artillery barrages. I took over MA C'tis in a game recently, and after exploring them more..... Well I think they're a good target for a full playthrough, and maybe write my first guide.

The biggest point to remember with C'tis though, is the Marshmasters. That unit ties the entire nation together. The only reason to not train a Marshmaster, is to train a Shaman for research/slave. Basic rule of thumb would be to train a Shaman every time you get a Marshmaster with an Astral pick. I find keeping a balance of masters/slaves to be an effective way of keeping your fatigue in check over the course of a big battle.

Skellie spam can be very effective, but from my observation, it is most powerful early on, and slowly wanes in usefulness later. Though putting 3D Marshmasters in the army to just bulk your line with longdead while the communion does the real work, is viable.

[krpeters]

That reminds me, what is the proper order of casting to get communion master/slave working? Do the slaves have to cast slave after the master, or before? Or can everyone cast both?

Hmmm... that gives me some interesting ideas for Marginon, it never occurred to me that their astral path would be great for communion.

[HoneyBadger]

I like to make heavy use of Curse and Horror Mark with C'Tis. In the early game, when Marshmasters are harder to afford and less viable, or if you can build a second fort quickly ,and devote it to shamans (I doubt they're capital only), then 10-20+ shamans spamming these spells should have a visible benefit. What C'Tis needs though-as has been mentioned-are troops that don't care about morale. Vine Ogres might work well here.