Bless for LA C'tis?

[Viajero]

Going to play LA Ctis soon, anyone willing to post some key aspects about it?

1- recommended bless, yes no? the manual sugegsts LE Ctis is not suited for bless? why is that?
2- Main thugs
3- Key research paths
4- Key units/mages
5- Short, medium, ong term strategies

Any help appreciated!

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by Viajero

Going to play LA Ctis soon, anyone willing to post some key aspects about it?

Like all versions of C'Tis, their strength is in powerful mages that they can recruit anywhere. City guards and elite warriors are your standard recruitable units, with the occasional sacred serpent thrown in if you don't need to move the army quickly.

1- recommended bless, yes no? the manual sugegsts LE Ctis is not suited for bless? why is that?

The only sacred units LA C'Tis has are sacred serpents and tomb wyrms. Sacred serpents aren't really good enough to be worth investing in a major bless, and tomb wyrms are expensive to reanimate. Your sauromancers are sacred, so they could use a minor earth bless, but don't wear armour, so the earth 9 bless is wasted on them. I'm not sure how the minor death bless interacts with banefire. But not much survives a banefire hit anyways.

2- Main thugs

Bane lords.

3- Key research paths

Enchantment 3 for raise skeletons. Evocation 6 for bane fire. Conjuration 5 for bane lords. Construction 6 for equipping them. Alteration 5 for drain life, alteration 6 for darkness, alteration 8 for disintegrate. Enchantment 6 for rigor mortis.

4- Key units/mages

Sauromancers. Lizard kings if you are fighting Ermor in the early game. Sauromancers who cast wither bones later on. You no longer have access to lizard shaman, so you'll want to find a cheap communion slave for your astral sauromancers.

5- Short, medium, ong term strategies

You have the best and most common death 3 mages around. Use them constantly. You don't have any mages that can easily forge the chalice, cast gift of health, or gift of reason, so you might want to plan for that on your pretender if you plan to make it to the tartarian stage of the game.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by Graeme Dice

The only sacred units LA C'Tis has are sacred serpents and tomb wyrms. Sacred serpents aren't really good enough to be worth investing in a major bless, and tomb wyrms are expensive to reanimate.

However, note that for the cost, CB 1.6 has given the tomb wyrms fear, so they should theoretically be much more effective than before (if you're using CB 1.6 mod.)

[Viajero]

Originally Posted by Graeme Dice

The only sacred units LA C'Tis has are sacred serpents and tomb wyrms. Sacred serpents aren't really good enough to be worth investing in a major bless, and tomb wyrms are expensive to reanimate. Your sauromancers are sacred, so they could use a minor earth bless, but don't wear armour, so the earth 9 bless is wasted on them. I'm not sure how the minor death bless interacts with banefire. But not much survives a banefire hit anyways.

And what about Tomb Priests and Tomb Kings? I have read somewhere that they are blessable?

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by Viajero

And what about Tomb Priests and Tomb Kings? I have read somewhere that they are blessable?

Yes they are, but they are quite expensive to base a bless strategy upon. They don't need Earth (0 base enc) nor Astral (good mr). Fire isn't really needed for attack, and you have fire mages so spending points there on your pretender is wasted. Blood isn't very useful as tomb kings are already strong.
So you could use Nature, but I think they're lifeless... but then you need Nature access for your tartarians late-game, and a minor N bless for your sauromancers can reduce afflictions and save some from old age.
Water will only help your blessed units. The good point is it will help enter water, but with only your god to find water gems, I wouldn't iunvest too much there.
Air is meh in terms of bless so I won't discuss it.
As for Death, extra afflictions are good but not overpowering. Getting D9 for death weapons looks useless to me since it's mr negated and those opponents which have low mr you'll kill without death weapons anyway given the strength of the king.

Imho the best bless you can get is E4N4 for your sauromancers, but that's about it. I wouldn't go overboard on magic paths for a bless but look at what I need for other stuff.