Miasma

[onomastikon]

I really love the idea of the nation, the dominion effect, and the whole vibe from MA C'tis. Would I be on the right track assuming:
- I won't be able to recruit any independents, at least not without Gift of Health already up, so I can forget about foreign sages for research and mages to boost paths I am weak in, and I can also completely forget about archers and cavalry
- therefore, if I want any additional paths for forging or casting, it better come from my pretender
- Since I can forget archery (s. above), would it be a good idea to try to shut archery down by going for some air to forge Staves of Storms? Seems a bit pricey however
- Ideally thus I would want a Pretender with highish Air, at least 2 Astral, and some Earth (for forging and perhaps Reinvig bless), but there are no pretender chassis available with these (other than rainbow mages). A dormant Neter of Crafting just seems kind of weak point-wise.

Any advice?
Thank you

[ÆtherNomad]

Q1 and Q2: I think you're right, but if I were you I'd wait for answers from players that know the nation better than me.

Q3: Very pricey, yea. Probably not worth it, especially since your storms might then be exploited by other nations to cast air elementals or spam thunder strike, and C'tissians don't have native shock resistance.

Q4: If you want to cover several paths that your nations has no native access to, then yes, the obvious answer is taking a rainbow pretender, they exist exactly for that purpose. Taking a Titan is almost certainly a very bad idea, unless you're playing in a modded game. If you don't want a rainbow though, an immobile pretender MIGHT do the trick; with pathcost 40 (or 20 for the Demilich!! It's one of the strongest pretenders in the vanilla game, very OP really) and a generally very low cost (take into account that they also have +3 dominion compared to rainbows), they are often able to buy 1 or 2 additional paths without tanking scales.


In spite of all this, I'm not sure that taking a pretender to cover non-native paths is your best bet for MA C'tis. You probably want either a big bless for your cool Sobek sacreds (and Regeneration jumps to my mind) or a powerful expander that will also be able to protect you in early game. Of course, a rainbow probably is viable, but I'm not sure that it is optimal in this nation. Sometimes, you just have to accept that you won't access some paths - that's okay, really. You don't need access to everything in order to win. Although I'd probably try to take a pretender with both Nature and Astral magic just so that I can summon Couatls... especially since the regeneration + luck combo is pretty powerful. Still, scales might very well be the most important thing for C'tis, so even a N/S bless might not be the best choice.

[Zonk]

Originally posted by onomastikon:

- I won't be able to recruit any independents, at least not without Gift of Health already up, so I can forget about foreign sages for research and mages to boost paths I am weak in, and I can also completely forget about archers and cavalry

Your own sacred and all units with swamp survival or cold-blooded are immune to this effect.
So shamans will ignore this, and for non-sacred indie mages you could use Boots of the Spider (all survivals, including swamp) if you want to keep a few around.

EDIT: Of course, they might still disease themselves on turn you recruit them, if you do so in friendly dominion.

Also, if you're lucky you might find disease healing indies (from sites, like Convents) that you can use to keep your mages mostly disease-free.

Miasma doesn't work underwater, BTW, so you could recruit UW mages (Amber Clan?) risk-free if you have the chance.

[Uncle Al]

It seems totally counterintuitive to do it on a nation where everyone has swamp survival, but you can take a swamp survival bless. That means a shroud will protect indie mages from your dominion, and shrouds are far far cheaper and easier to forge than boots of the spider.

Another counterintuitive bless is taking poison resistance. As elemental and poison damage includes a DRN roll these days, foul vapours (which you should be using a lot) will punch through your native resistances somewhat, so this is actually useful on the sobeks. More usefully it means you can use indie mages in combat without having to worry too much about your foul vapours killing them.

Taking swamp survival does kind of block off taking regen, as you'd need N8 on your pretender which is getting pricey. That said, not worrying about a combat bless too much works just fine with C'tis. With great scales you can pump out lots of marshmasters, and they are the keystone of the nation. They're one of the best mages in the game.

Marshmasters easily get the randoms for the C'tissian standard combat combo (Foul vapours + Quagmire + mass Horder of Skeletons casting) and all three of those spells come at enchantment 5, making early research a bit of a no brainer.

The astral randoms can throw nether darts and communion up for big death spells (darkness, rigor mortis). Big nature is usually easier with a shaman communion. Be careful having any marshmaster masters if you're using shamen as communion slaves. Once they go off script the marshmasters usually spam Horde of Skeletons and kill all your shamen through fatigue.

As well as the sobek sacreds, you have some cheap summonables like monster toads and sacred crocodiles, plus the sacred serpents your priests summon for free from temples. They're high hp, low def, low prot so you might consider ethereal or awe, which also helps make the sobeks even more tanky than they already are. I don't usually like going heavy bless because the sacreds just aren't that good, but it's an option. This is even though I tend to play with dominions enhanced, which gives you summonable Children of the Neters, which ARE good sacreds, so makes a bless rather more attractive.

I quite like the Neter of Crafts, because 4S4E opens up rings of wizardry and sorcery and thus big death. I'd take him imprisoned though, as you're not really going to need him before you've got some serious research done. Taking him dormant allows you a bit of mid game site searching and forging hammers, but I'd rather have 5 scales and more marsh masters. You don't really need many construction items anyway.

Some sort of awake expander is also an option, to help get your cap ring cleared and ease up your early game resource constraints. Predator lizards can expand just fine once you get the hang of it though, so you don't need one. Just accept you'll lose the odd easy fight against indies because your low morale troops rout just as victory is certain. Again, I'd usally rather have more scales and more marshmasters.

Can you tell I really like marshmasters?

[Zonk]

That means a shroud will protect indie mages from your dominion

But sacred mages are already immune, and if you're relying on finding non-sacred mages from sites or the amazon poptypes, why not save the pearls & mage turns and use H1s to sitesearch and hope you find convents or abbeys?

Or just try very hard to get Gift of Health, which is generally good and not out of your reach if there aren't other N nations.

[Zymeth]

I recruited many mages in one of my MA Ctis games. You just don't mass them all the time, just buy whenever they are needed. It takes 10 turns to kill a unit IF it gets diseased all.

[onomastikon]

Thank you very much for all of these answers so far. All good stuff.
Question about this part:

Originally posted by Uncle Al:

As well as the sobek sacreds, you have some cheap summonables like monster toads and sacred crocodiles, plus the sacred serpents your priests summon for free from temples.
...

This is even though I tend to play with dominions enhanced, which gives you summonable Children of the Neters, which ARE good sacreds, so makes a bless rather more attractive.

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by
1. "sacred serpents your priests summon for free from temples" because I haven't played them yet but I'll look for it
2. " I tend to play with dominions enhanced" I just don't know what that means. I also cannot find "Children of the Neters" anywhere in the manual.
Can you elaborate please?

Thanks!

[DasaKamov]

Originally posted by onomastikon:

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by
1. "sacred serpents your priests summon for free from temples" because I haven't played them yet but I'll look for it

C'Tis' priests can spawn "Sacred Serpent" units while in their temple provinces. (More or less, sacred Horned Serpents).

" I tend to play with dominions enhanced" I just don't know what that means.

Dominions Enchanced is a compilation of mods from Red-Rob which adds new spells, new units and new pretenders while making a host of balance changes.

[onomastikon]

Sorry, just read this in the nation lore blurb on the Create Pretender screen: "The New God and all their sacred units are immune to this effect [disease]".
So does that mean that any sacred units I recruit, thus any independent units such as amazons or even vanilla priests, will be immune even without swamp survival?

[Zonk]

Originally posted by onomastikon:

any sacred units I recruit, thus any independent units such as amazons or even vanilla priests, will be immune even without swamp survival?

Correct except not all amazons are sacred.

[jojeck]

For C'tis there are 2 ways to cure disease in the early and middle game. That lets you use a few non native mages for a while and cure any disease your own troops pick up in battle as an affliction. The spell Cure Disease costs 5 gems and needs N4 and that is easy to cast with a marshmaster and booster. At const 4 there is an item which cures 1 disease per turn but it costs 40 gems and needs N5 to forge, which usually means waiting to Const 6 for the second N booster. I find forging one copy of the item is useful in the middle game and often use it to cure the free troops you get from events and useful mages like the Flame Spirit which can site search for F sites on land. Because it's an item you can switch it between labs and cure a disease before too many nasty afflictions accumulate.

Later in the game a good research objective is Conj 8 for the Fairy Queen and her ability to cure a disease (and excellent site searching for A). That also lets you use powerful units like the Elemental Royalty which can be cured if they get a disease from Miasma.

I'm playing C'tis game at the moment using a rainbow bless for the Cap sacreds with recupperation. That gives the ability to use a Shroud to cure disease and any afflictions it causes. This will allow Tartarians to cure their afflictions and Elemental Royalty can be used in Miasma in the late game without needing Gift of Health. The combat bonusses from the rainbow bless will be useful for making them cheap thugs and SC and can be supplimented by late game spells and equipment.

[onomastikon]

Thank you for all this good stuff.
One last question.

Originally posted by Uncle Al:

Marshmasters easily get the randoms for the C'tissian standard combat combo (Foul vapours + Quagmire + mass Horder of Skeletons casting) and all three of those spells come at enchantment 5, making early research a bit of a no brainer.

Quagmire requires w4, which I find pretty hard to do. I need at least Const 6 to forge a water bracelet, which will let me forge a Robe of the Sea, both of which a W2 Marshmaster needs to be able to cast it reliably. Or what am I not understanding?

useful mages like the Flame Spirit which can site search for F sites on land.

Seems I never have enough gems to do what I want (except fire and earth, which somehow get found anyhow and I never really get to use. How do you get those Flame Spirits?

Originally posted by jojeck:

useful mages like the Flame Spirit which can site search for F sites on land.

I can't really use these, since I don't have a rainbow, but maybe I should try. I still don't understand the concept of "Rainbow Bless", since my understanding of "Rainbow" is to have 2-3 points in as many paths as possible, and you need 4 to get any bless effect at all. Recup needs 5N, so I guess you take imprisoned, low dom and no scales? Or can you give an exanple please? Thank you

[Mormacil]

Taking 3 in all elemental paths and/or taking 3 in all sorcery paths give you bless points early.

[onomastikon]

I just got this: indy mage recruited, out of the box he was not sick, had a shroud waiting for him and he was shrouded, two turns later he got diseased - that really shouldn't have happened right?

[Morsigil]

There are plenty of ways someone can get a disease in this game! Are they old and was it just winter? They may have gotten an affliction in winter, or walked over a magic site that causes disease (there are a couple of common ones that do this)

[onomastikon]

Oddly in those two turns he was alive he didn't leave the lab he was recruited in, and it's fall but of course I have heat (miasma) - just checking!