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[tompliss]

I wouldn't mind another player.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   Yeah, 9 is a decent size when one nation is in the water. The biggest concern is the map itself. Anyway, all the other rounds I have run except the first has had 10 players. The specific number doesn't matter as much as the players themselves (up to a certain point of course). What matters right now is if we need a different map as that does matter (sometimes more than the player count).

[Delta Foxtrot]

9 is still within the realm of manageable game size. I also believe this is somewhat of a mixed skill game, so a newbie isn't out of place.

I'd say the skill difference was much larger in my first game, and I went with Vanarus of all things (like EA C'tis, it's fairly mage heavy nation that rewards people who can manoeuvre the magic system). C'tis isn't the easiest for a newbie to pick up, but I feel that you should first and foremost pick something that thematically interests you. Mechanics can be learned but thematics are what suck you in.

edit:
Criptfeind:
I don't know what you've tried, but you might want to try a few different builds for early game. One with a cheap, high dominion, imprisoned pretender and maxed scales. Other with an awake dom9 dragon with X4 (I'd recommend either the F or W variant).
There are other ways to go about it, but in my experience those are the most straightforward. Scales really supercharge your national assets due to extra gold&resources while a dragon helps a lot with expansion (I won round 408 with LA C'tis using an awake dragon).

The dragon strat is all eggs in one basket kind of thing, so you definitely want to try it a few times to get a good feel for how and what you can take on. While it's technically an early game boost at the expense of later game, the fact that you can emerge as the biggest nation early on effectively makes up for the worse scales you have to take to afford it.
Scales is better if you can pull off satisfactory expansion with just national troops. So you want to try both a few times and compare your performance.
There are other builds with dormant gods and specific paths to achieve certain things, but those two builds are really the most straightforward and simple while still being quite effective.

I would seriously advice against a bless or rainbow build. Rainbows are difficult to pull off with the current game and newbies in particular would struggle to make optimal use of them. Next patch is supposed to reprice the pretenders to make rainbows more viable, but that's in the future. Bless strats are among the easy, straightforward ones, but C'tis doesn't have any sacreds worth blessing so you might as well ignore it.

Some worthwhile research targets for C'tis:
Alteration 6 - Darkness, nerfs most units but demons and undead. Your mages can summon plenty of undead.
Enchantment 3-5 - Raise Skeletons/Horde of Skeletons, the abovementioned undead.
Evocations 5 - Shadow Blast and Stellar Cascades. SB costs a gem to cast and if it fails to break target MR it does nothing. On the flipside it has a huge AOE and you can forge spell focus and void eyes for a D4 sauromancer to boost their magic penetration. Also note that while humans have base MR 10 (Ulm have only 9), most fantastic races have higher. So it's situational, but if you end up fighting a human nation, consider shadow blast.
Stellar Cascades is spammable by your S1N1 mages (either communion them or have someone cast Light of the North Star). Cascades does irresistible fatigue damage with a decent AOE. It doesn't kill anything by itself, but fatigued units are easier to crit among other things. (I had a lot of success with massed S2 mages spamming cascades in round 402).
Thaumaturgy 1 - the abovementioned communion master/slave spells.

Do note that I've never played EA C'tis, and I've only played one games as LA C'tis, but those are some basics you might not be aware of.

Oh and if you're not aware of it, there's this tool (I know it's in the OP, I'm assuming no one reads them):
http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/
It's basically a web browser based civpedia. It has all the items, spells and units (filterable by nation or other parameters). Very useful reference tool.

[Criptfeind]

Thanks for the info , I'll be sure to take it into account.

I've not tested out starts as much as I should probably, but I was thinking of going with the big scales idea, mostly because independents seem to die really quickly to chariots. Even if they are pretty expensive and won't help me fight against a lot of the player nations, even a couple of them seem to make taking independent land really easy/cheap. Although I don't know 100% what pretender to go with. A friend advised me to try out a oracle with 9 astral, to protect my shamans from Magic Duel, and in the very late game to get master enslave. I've tried it, and it seems okay (although just against AI, and I've not gotten to the point where I can cast master enslave). Although Couatls (if I can get that high of conjuration, just against the AI I've been getting Couatls roughly around the same time my imprisioned pretender broke out... Although I didn't even think about these evocations and alterations you have listed. So to get them would slow me down on that front...) along with a bunch of communion slaves seem to be able to do roughly the same thing, so I'm not sure if it's quite worth it.

[USEC_OFFICER]

An Oracle to protect your shamans from Mind Duel? That's... It should be the other way around. Other people should be taking high astral to protect their guys from your shamans Mind Dueling them to death. After all, C'tis has awesome cheap shamans, and you'll probably be recruiting a ton of them for research and communions. Which means that you'll have plenty to sacrifice if you wanted to. Such as if someone took 4 or less Astral on their pretender, making them vulnerable to Mind Duel. Or if people had expensive STR guys with a smattering of Astral.

In other words don't worry about Mind Duel. You'll probably be using it against other players more than they'll be using it against you.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Couatls are pretty great, but for C'tis they're lvl 7 research which is really pushing into the lategame phase. It's good to plan for them, but it's very possibly you'll be killed before you reach first level 7 (remember that research cost increases exponentially, going from lvl 6 to 7 costs more than going from 0 to 5).

edit:
And Couatls alone aren't great. But they fly and have high N and S magic. In order for Couatls to be great you need to have great spells for them to cast first.

edit2:
You can either reach 1x lvl 7, or 3x lvl5 research school. That's a lot of utility to give up if you rush Couatls. You certainly want Couatls if the game goes on long enough, but I personally would not prioritize them. They might be my first lvl 7 school, but I'd want plenty of supporting magic before hitting that.

[USEC_OFFICER]

As well as plenty of shamans to act as.communion slaves for them. Coutals are much more impressive when they're S7N7 and don't have to worry about fatigue. _{What I'm trying to say is that I think that Lizard Shamans are awesome and I’m disappointed that LA C'tis doesn't get them.}

[Hellheart]

So...are we starting soon? Akrilius can choose a nation during the Pretender submission process, correct?

I'm suffering from Ulm withdrawal, which happens whenever more than half of my games aren't as EA Ulm

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Yes though I would like akrilius to post here in some form, even if not to declare a nation as the post to join was the most recent post made. Though probably Monday will start it one way or another.

[Hellheart]

He's on my Steam friends list. He's usually hard to get ahold of on weekends, but he's still aware this game exists and has been looking at nations.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Cool, I wasn't too worried as he has participated in some of the other Dom4 games. With this and the fact that he will probably pop back in on Monday since it will no longer be the weekend I don't see why I can't set it up. Sadly tomorrow I will be away from my comp and I need to go to sleep now so it will probably go up tomorrow night.

[akirilus]

Just reaffirming my interest in the game - I am still thinking about a nation to play, so will probably end up picking something that isn't claimed already during pretender submission.  or if inspiration strikes me sooner, I'll post here.

[E. Albright]

Bless strats are among the easy, straightforward ones, but C'tis doesn't have any sacreds worth blessing so you might as well ignore it.

One halfcorrection to this. EA C'tis indeed doesn't have troops worth a bless for their own sake, but their commanders love nature and earth blesses both major and minor, to the point where I'd not rule out an otherwise-impractical N9EX or suchlike. It's not mandatory, and you can fake it to a lesser degree with nothing, but being able to fire up turbocommunions on your Shamans is very, very evil - N9 allows up to 6 masters to cast indefinitely with no risk of killing off any number of slaves (2 or 20) no matter how long the fight lasts nor how ridiculously tiring their spells are, and ensure that modest increases over 7 will generally kill off slaves too slowly for them to die in all but the longest fights.

(Modest "cheap" turbocommunions of nothing but shamans and some/a blesser are actually pretty impressive properly deployed, and you can have e.g. "unbalanced" communions with ratios like 6+2 or 8+2 dropping Cascades sustainably from turn 2 w/o bothering with LotNS if need be (though obviously you'd prefer more than just 2 slaves if at all possible))

[Hellheart]

Wouldn't any bless higher than maybe N9E4 make it difficult to expand with Chariots without running neutral or worse on income, though?

Your basic Lizardmen isn't quite as hopeless as your basic monkey troop, but I feel like you're still playing Russian Roulette with Morale even if you're running Slaves under a Taskmaster.

[E. Albright]

I'd be disinclined to exceed N9E4, yes. But on the subject of morale, a fachioneer under a Lizard Lord is as good as an Elite Warrior under a Taskmaster, as is line infantry under a King, and that's without considering potential Fanaticism. And so long as you avoid line formations, you should be able to throw one or two Sacred Serpents into a formation to boost it one more. Morale is not my formost concern with C'tis during expansion. You've got tools to overcome your 1-pt national handicap.