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[AlStar]

What purpose does the "Ruined Halls of the Mountain King" serve? Just an empty site?

It looks like it's the end of an event chain which involves defeating a Troll King - once he's defeated, whatever province that originally spawned him will pop the Halls (in addition to giving whoever beat him 2300 gold, 2 level 0-6 items, and 3d6 earth gems.)

[Radsoc]

Oh, well, looks like I was late to the party then

[ThtblovesDF]

Setup and discussion for Round 27 (all welcome):

Dominions 4 Round 27 - Setup

[E. Albright]

Is there a good guide on strategies for middle age C'tis? They fascinate me, but I have no idea how to play them properly and I wind up falling the moment people wise up and deal with my runner flanks.

Skellie spam and Foul Vapors are a good place to start. Turbo communions with the shamans as communicants also help, especially if you have N9 to get them up to 20% regen (i.e., +6hp/turn).

[Cruxador]

Is there a good guide on strategies for middle age C'tis? They fascinate me, but I have no idea how to play them properly and I wind up falling the moment people wise up and deal with my runner flanks.

Skellie spam and Foul Vapors are a good place to start. Turbo communions with the shamans as communicants also help, especially if you have N9 to get them up to 20% regen (i.e., +6hp/turn).

This. C'tis' strategy of combining foul vapors with as much Horde of Skeletons as you can muster is pretty much the poster child of a simple, straightforward, and effective strategy well suited to learning the game.

[Cthulhu]

Is there a good guide on strategies for middle age C'tis? They fascinate me, but I have no idea how to play them properly and I wind up falling the moment people wise up and deal with my runner flanks.

I've never used runner flanks, I don't see runners doing very well.

C'tis's star infantry are the heavy infantry and elite slave warriors.  Heavy infantry have good protection and great repel against things without spears, while elite warriors have two attacks and chew through almost anything. A big line of heavy infantry in front to target and soak up arrows (hold and attack closest) and then flanking groups of elite warriors (hold and attack rear) will mop up most indies with minimal casualties. 

Flanking is hard to do.  Attack rear doesn't work if enemies come in a certain range, though I'm taking advantage of it in that scenario.  Setting front-line units on the flanks to attack rear means they move straight forward and then aggro the enemy's center mass of troops to achieve a proper encirclement, whereas with attack closest they move diagonally to the center and get mashed up with the rest of your army.

Enchantment is their go-to battlemagic school.

Pretender choice is something I'm still wonky about on MA c'tis though.

Edit:  If you actually want flankers to flank put your main lineholders in one corner of the map as far forward as you can and put the flankers on the other corner, set back with hold and attack rear.  The lineholders will pull their force away from the flankers so they won't aggro.  This is also necessary for flyers, who have to make a morale check for each squad they pass over or immediately attack.

[Frumple]

MA C'tis has the assassins, right? Yeah, yeah, cap only but basically everything else except a mini-SC chassis/non-caster leader isn't, now that I check. I'm not saying half your workforce for a good chunk of the game can be skelliespam assassins, but half your workforce for a good chunk of the game can be skelliespam assassins. Don't even need the amulet, they're native 1D1N.

Can't recall if anything's been changed to do much bud nipping for that particular bit of nastiness, at least.

[E. Albright]

Sadly, D1 on an assassin is actually significantly inferior to an amulet. There's a reason I gave Empoisoners amulets in 404 (although D1 + amulet is also inferior to just an amulet, as once you're off-script the AI doesn't favor the flat-five-fatigue item over the 30-plus-enc-fatigue spell). The amulet starts you with one skeleton and gives you one a round for 50 rounds. D1 starts you with none and gives you maybe one per round for three, maybe four rounds before devolving into one every six rounds at best. The N1 for Swarm is actually probably more interesting.

[Cruxador]

Is there a good guide on strategies for middle age C'tis? They fascinate me, but I have no idea how to play them properly and I wind up falling the moment people wise up and deal with my runner flanks.

I've never used runner flanks, I don't see runners doing very well.

It's generally touted as an expansion strategy rather than a major battle strategy.

[Kagus]

Runners are basically just slave warriors with -1 HP, -4 damage (spear vs. trident), 1 less encumbrance and 3/16 move vs. 2/11, at the cost of one less resource point.

They're honestly not that bad of an alternative to the slave warriors, as they're marginally cheaper and have less encumbrance. The 3 map move may not seem great since you don't have access to any slave master mapmove 3 commanders, but if you put a pair of boots of long striding on a taskmaster you get exactly that... MM 3 with slave driver. Theoretically you could turn that into a quick-response task force or something, I'unno. Point is, stat-for-stat, runners are honestly pretty decent against lightly-armored enemies, since with their 2 attacks and 3 encumbrance they can tire out larger forces fairly well if they stick around long enough. Little expensive at 13 gold, but they can be levied quickly thanks to only costing 2 resources a pop.

Definitely not the frontline bruisers the elite warriors are, but there's some use for them.


As for expansion strategies, I've always kinda liked the poison slingers... They chew through heavy armor like nobody's business, and the AoE on the pellets helps against shields/general inaccuracy. Bloody expensive though, but still gonna be available a lot earlier than foul vapors.

[ThtblovesDF]

Everything is pretty decent against lightly-armored enemies - sure if you can tie up the enemy with something (undead), all those high attack, high speed units are good. But if you can tie em up with undead, just keep spamming undead...

[EnigmaticHat]

LA I really like their dual wielders.  Get some shield guys or generic skeleton summons in front and then a horde of dual wielders behind them, they chew through most things.  Even summons and thugs can struggle against them because many of those things are inefficient in terms of attacks per tile.

From what I remember of the LA C'Tis game I played I had one army that was nothing but triple bless mummy snakes and then one that was melee lizard dudes with banefire throwers behind them.

[Cthulhu]

Do runners have bite?  Two attacks is what makes the slave warriors so good.  6 attacks per square is big for dealing with giant expansion parties and lets you take bloodhenge provinces easy

[E. Albright]

They do, yes. The only differences between a runner and a curve-tailed predator are HP (-1), enc (-1), and movement (MM +1/AP +5).

[Wysthric]

Anyone got any ideas how to make the Nationgen stuff work?