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Say... When my pretender or commanders have natural protection and I give them armor... Does natural protection supplement armor, or is it replaced? If I give a test Cyclops (basic prot. 20, earth +3 prot) black steel plate and helmet, I get a protection of 32. How exactly does it combine?
Natural protection and armor protection will combine but will not equal the total. IE you give a Lizard Lord (natural protection 5) a full scale mail (protection 14) and the total will be 17, not 19. The more natural protection a unit has the less he will gain from armor. I don't know what the actual equation is to figure this out though. IIRC the Dom2 formula for combining natural and armor protection was something like: (Armor + Natural) - (Armor*Natural/40) 8.16.2 MA Ctis, Miasma 8.16.2.1 Dom-II guide
Most important spells to rush at are quickness, relief and animate skeletons. In midgame just drain the world in skeletons. In lategame you can then set up tartarian factories or stuff like that. As pretender i would say father of serpents with n4d4 and good scales. [note, quickness in dom-III doesn't make mages cast double per turn so not really important in dom-III. Also, high dominion is really important (because of income bonus) so dom-9 or 10 are recommended. Two example builds: Awake Wyrm, No paths, order+3, production -3, heat +3, magic 1, luck 1, Dom-10 Dormant PoD, Death 5, Air 4, order+3, production -3, heat +3, magic 1, luck 1, Dom-10 ]
Take a Wyrm, Astral 3, dominion strength 6, and a castle. That leaves enough points for 6 positive scales. Distribute those as you like. I'd probably go with magic 3 and luck 3, but then I'm a bit weird, and enjoy playing with luck - perhaps more than its worth On turn 1, recruit a Lizard King, and on turn 2 make him your prophet. Its always fun to have a prophet who can Smite Meanwhile, have your Wyrm research Alteration 1. Once you've got that, your Wyrm is ready to go out and conquer, since he can cast Personal Luck. Then start researching Enchantment. That will eventually get you a few things. At ench 2, you can add Astral Weapon to the Wyrm's script, and at 3, Astral Shield. The big serpent is now a force to be reckoned with! The great thing is that your Marshmasters can now cast Animate Skeletons - one of the most annoyingly effective tactics in the game. I'd then reseach Alteration 2, so you can cast quickness before beginning the Skeleton spam. After that, you're on your own as far as research goes, althought getting Ivy Crowns and Vine Ogres is a solid strat - and don't forget that Miasma starts with Summon Bog Beast as its national spell - and that Vine Ogres are immune to poison. As far as troops go, the combination of City Guard and Light Infanty you start with works pretty well. Put the City Guard out front to do the fighting, and the Light Inf. slightly behind and to one side set to fire closest, so they'll use their javelins. I myself can never resist buying a force of runners to be used as flankers set to attack rear If you do it this way, you give up the magical diversity of a rainbow pretender, but you gain a pretender who can conquer on his own, and much better scales. Later in the game, you can even use you Wyrm as a Comminion Master, and a bunch of Shamen as Communion Slaves for some heavy-duty Astral casting. Note that the Shamen are very cost-effective researchers, since they're sacred, and you'll likely have a bunch of them around. Hope this helps. [Note, Low astral on pretender is asking for mind duel and quick death by astral mages. So I'd suggest a Wyrm with no paths. Also, I'd recommend for this build to build a strong blood economy (with Hierodules and task masters) and empower a few marsh masters in order to compensate for luck of diversity by adding the all powerfull blood school) ]
Frank: What would one do with either of the pretenders you've suggested? Miasma has no sacred troops to speak of, since they lose the Serpent Dancers, so the point of that Oracle you've suggested can't be the Astral 9 bless. I also can't figure putting water on it, unless you intend to have it teleport about spamming Stellar Cascades or some such. I've never found that Earth 3 alone is enough to turn a pretender like the PoD into a SC - I'd want to have Air for Mistform/Mirror Image. I can buy parts of your argument for scales, although I must say that in an MP game Miasma without a combat pretender, with full Sloth and with a Dominion strength of 9 would appear to be saying "ally against me first". ]
Wow, your expansion strategy revolves around Empoisoners with Skull Staves? Or is that the secondary expansion force, behind your Marshmaster force.
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Later, when you have higher levels of spells available, you can power them up with empowering items to make them a good threat against other nations. Here's my idea (but keep in mind that I don't play the normal "Free For All" multi-player style -- I play only multiplayer, but I play only styles in which there is Proper Incentive For War, such as 1 team vs. 1 team or Pentagram). Oracle, 10 Dominion (oh yes, 10) +3 Order, +3 Sloth, +2 Heat, +3 Growth, standard luck/misfortune, +3 Magic Mountain Fortress (oh yes, the Mountain Fortress) spend the rest of the points on whatever magic you will use to forge items for your Empoisoners Start with several Empoisoners, making the first one your Prophet. Each one forges a Skull Talisman for himself and then sets about assassinating. (Keep notes about how many leaders you've assassinated from each province.) Then hire the best researcher you can each turn, and research Construction and Enchantment, so that your Empoisoners, equipped with Death-boosting items, can cast bigger "summon undead" spells during assassinations. Don't spend any money on troops. Don't spend money on temples unless you've started building a Mountain Fortress in that province. You need a second Mountain Fortress as soon as possible. Improvise. Have fun. [comment: 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. [[response: 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...
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... ]] ] -> 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. -> A note about early Assassin Expansion: You do much better with a Skull Earring than without. Assassins should all make their own earring before leaving home. You probably can't Assassinate an Amazon, Lizardmen, or Woodsmen province because they have a tendency to have bodyguards. If you eventually get Bottles of Living Water on these guys, you can start killing Lizard Shamans and such. Nothing will bring your victory chance to 100%. But a Bottle of Living Water and a Skullstaff comes really close. Mounted Comanders are the death of you. They can personally kill skeletons at more than 1/round. -> Also, if one of your assassins has been ordered to assassinate but there was no assassination attempt, you know that there aren't any commanders left. So, if you have two assassins assassinating in a single province, and one of them assassinates a commander and the other doesn't, you know for a fact that all commanders are dead. You should notice though that assassinating commanders only works well against indies, because a normal player (or AI) can use his PD to make your assassinations useless. [Note, that's only true if you were trying to capture provinces using assassinations. However at mid to end game there's a much better usage for assassins - First, kill enemy commanders (the vulnerable ones, mages, mundane commanders etc.) and causing unrest in enemy production and/or income centers ]
sweet 5 - 10 empoisoners casting raise dead ( skull staffs ) assasinating all his comanders would b fun. especially if he had high dominion, it could also prevent him from storming, i just tried it in single player and i killed a golden naga -> unless u want big expensive items for ur empoisoners then i suggest giving your god powers he can use ! your marsh masters/skull staff empoisoners can forge their own stuff 5-10 with skull staffs at the back of the battle on their own can conquer indys. thats 25 - 50 skeletons a turn, the only trouble i have is crossbow, flyers and cavalry. all of which are countered by skull talisman(the skeleton infront takes arrows and stalls fast units. if playing on a map with lots of water water/against a water nation then its worth giving your empoisoners something so they can breathe. also on a random note i had a god with 2 rune smashers and 2 spell focus's casting master enslave on armies that might endanger my empoisoners ) -> 8.16.2.2 DOM-III discussion 8.16.2.2.1 Who gets diseased under Miasma dominion? Critter Miasma Notes Vine man/ogres and Ivy king BAD don't really care since they have lots of HP and take ages to die Tree lords BAD don't really care since they have lots of HP and take ages to die Elemental royalty BAD Don't use them or use only with regeneration items (to slow down death) Abominations BAD don't really care since they have lots of HP and take ages to die Trolls BAD regenerating so not much of an issue Farie court BAD don't really care since they have lots of HP and take ages to die Tarrasque BAD high HP regenerating, don't really care Immune are cold blooded, undead and inanimates. 8.16.2.2.2 Tips -> First off, skellie spam is quite good, although you do need to attain enough critical mass for it to be effective. One or two mages casting fireballs will make something of a difference in a medium sized battle, two skelliespammers won't. But make it 10 on each side, and the skellespam starts to look a whole lot better. I do agree they're less good at this as their EA or LA brother though. More importantly: Foul Vapors at Ench 5 is the spell to shoot for as MA C'tis. It does work a bit slower as the other battlefield destruction spells, so towards end game it looses its relevance, but it does make for a very powerful mid game. Your lizards are poison resistant, so with the appropiate spells (conveniently in enchantment too) you can immunize them. And those skeletons you were spamming before are now the ideal delaying tactic for the poison to take effect. (And, guess what? They're in enchantment too. ) And as we're talking about enchantment anyway: That gift of health I mentioned before? Yeap, that's here too. They can also cast the various other useful death and nature spells, (I especially like cloud of death for them, again with the reasoning that your enemy will be busy embroiled in melee with all those skeletons, and poison cloud/breath of the dragon) and 1/4 can communion master if necessary. And to top it of they're one of the very few MA races who can recruit their main mage everywhere. At the same time they have the lizard shaman who are not only efficient researchers, but, headed by couatls, also make for powerful communion potential. [comment: Lets see. Frost brand is not armor piercing and its AOE doesnt affect undead. Sometimes its a really big downside. Hydra skin armor and boots of quickness means death from encumberance unless chassis is undead. So your options are REALLY limited. [[ response: Well, yes. Obviously on a chassis that has encumberance problems you'd pick other items (boots of the messanger for example). But yes, you're limited (if you don't manage to find a way to diversify ). You do have a good base setup, but can't adapt to many things your opponent might throw at you. Another big issue you didn't mention is that you can't really get fire/lighting immunity. ]] ]
-> Good battlefield spells are: Serpent blessing, the one that gives 50% poison protection Faul vapors, constantly release poison in battlefiled rigor mortis, will kill live units so to protect your units also cast: life after death, your live units would return as undead in case they die (and mages will become undead upkeep free mages) relief, for your mages on units to keep the fight w/o giving in to fatigue -> SC department, mid game, bane lords late game, tartarians
8.16.2.3.1 Troops I will not go on about troops much, the main point is because C¿tissian troops become obsolete by mid-late game and you can find all this in RamsHead guide also.
Bad like all militia. Light Infantry Never used them efficiently. Low moral, bad protection, die too fast. Have javelins, if your national mages had air, fire and earth they¿d be worth considering with strength of giants, wind guide and flaming arrows. City Guard No helmet, also slightly lower moral (9), but fairly good protection, 12, can mass them easily enough with only 10 gold 10 resources per head. Also have castle defense bonus 1. Heavy Infantry Weaker version of swamp guard. Very good protection for absorbing arrows and such. Hold the line fairly good, but also have 9 moral and only 1 map movement, so if your going for heavy infantry better to go for swamp guards. Falchioneer They have two falchions, but using two weapons reduces the units attack skill. This can be negated by ambidexterity, but Falchioneers only have an ambidexterity value of 2. This means that their attack skill for each falchion is only 8, but with two strikes each this increases the odds to strike a bit. No shield so watch out for archers. It¿s good to have some but not too many Falchoneers. Slave Warrior Good stats, bad protection, watch where you put them. Higher moral than average (11) and two attacks with the value of 11, very good. I never use them, prefer elite warriors. Elite Warrior Probably the best C¿tis unit to buy. Even better attack than slave warrior, 12, also two attacks, bust most importantly they have armor, so this makes them rather hard to kill. Also very vulnerable to archers. Runner Pretty much same stats like slave warrior but faster. Only good for archers. Sacred Serpent, Sacred Not worth using a bless for, main use is to boots the low C¿tis moral with a standard of 10. Bad defense, get killed easily, a little higher MR than other C¿tis troops, 14. Swamp Guard Excellent heavy infantry, the only unit worth buying beside elite warrior. Put a couple of sacred serpents to boots morale and they can last very long, but watch out for encumbrance, 8, that¿s even higher in heat 3! Good for keeping the line while your mages cast poison cloud, skelly spam¿ Poison slinger Bad stats but can be used efficiently with the C¿tissina special. Watch where you put them so you don¿t poison your troops or them. They would work best if there were an order fire and hold. 8.16.2.3.2 Commanders Taskmaster Leads 40 troops. Never once bought them, never will.
Leads 40 Troops. Stats of heavy infantry. More difficult to kill than Taskmasters. Lizard Lord Leads 80 Troops. Even better than Commander and taskmaster, better stats also, but you just want his for his 80 troops leadership. Hierodule Level 1 Priest. Never found a use for them. High Priest of C¿tis Leads 40 Troops, Level 2 Priest. Leads troops, casts sermon of courage, very important for C¿tis. Good against undead and demons, can be recruited everywhere. Sometimes I cast life after death and auto-kill them with rime hauberk so they can reanimate. Shaman Leads 10 Troops, Level 1 Astral Level 1 Nature Mage. Cheap, recruitable everywhere, sacred. Can cast arcane probing and summon national units like Sirrush and Couatl. Good for research, good for battle. Best used in reversed communion with power of the spheres, light of the northern star and soul slay. Summon a Couatl for master enslave and some heavy astral, or nature spells. They can cast magic duel to eliminate some SC and dangerous astral mages. Can cast great buffs like luck, body ethereal, protection, which works best on Behemoths. Also curse for giants and SC and communion for panic or sleep cloud. There are just so many uses for them. Marshmaster 1W2D2N 110% WSDN, leads 10 troops. Marshmasters are what make C¿tis so dangerous. With them recruitable anywhere, no other MA nation can match them in death magic, no not even Ermor because Arch Theurgs are Cap.only. You will have many marshmasters with 3 death and some with even 4. They are mainly used for darkness+skelly spam. If you get a random astral pick you can cast nether darts, excellent spell, can also communion with shamans for large battlefield spells like soul drain. But the most dreadful thing you can do is: 1. Have your N3W1 marshmaster cast foul vapors, give another marshmaster a thistle mace to cast serpents blessing for 100 PR ( marshmaster are not 100 PR like sauromancers ) equip a W2 marshmaster with a robe of the sea and a water bracelet to cast quagmire and make the battlefield a swamp to slow down the enemy and to lower the stats a little, no effect on you since all your troops have swamp survival , and start casting poison cloud to make the battlefield as unpleasant as possible for your enemy, and also cast storm of thorns, raise skeleton, nether darts, shadow blast to slow them down as much as possible. End result, devastating. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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