This is a beginners guide to help players get a handle on how to play my Lizard King class, based on C'tis from Dominions.

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0. If your starting location spawned completely surrounded by mountains/hills you may wish to consider restarting/rerolling the map generation. A peninsula with decently open terrain and access to plains to expand outward is ideal, but anything other than a highly restricted starting zone is acceptable. Being surrounded by forest is fine, you can always burn it if need be.


1. The very first thing to take note of is that you will always start with an iron bog and 3 swamps near you. Swamps/bogs are the most important terrains for you to be getting control of [see the C'tissian Population section below for more details.] The 3 swamps will not spawn under your control so you should grab them with your commanders right away.


2. Like most classes that start with a combat caster it's generally better to have your starting Lizard King lead your initial army. Just take care as losing him will be a major setback, and though they look somewhat sturdy on paper the C'tissian infantry die much easier than you would expect. I suggest leaving 2 of the poison slingers and maybe a couple light infantry to defend your Temple City.


3. Next, your main priority should be saving up enough gold to recruit a Swamp Tender; these will allow you to slowly expand your swamp which should be your main focus for the duration of the game. The Swamp Tenders can vary wildly in price but its generally safest to hold onto around 85 gold to purchase one. You can safely spend anything beyond that on more units. For now 1 Swamp Tender will be all you need; you can get a second or third one in a few years.


4. Take your main army around the surrounding area and try to claim as many gold producing squares as possible; grabbing forests and jungles - or even lucky extra swamps - is also helpful. Take care not to stray too far from your swamp however, as you will not be able to recruit any extra units on the move. C'tissians spawn only in your Temple Cities and need to be upgraded just like dwarves or satyrs. When you feel like you need more men head back home and grab some extra C'tissians. Even unpromoted the base C'tissians make sufficient enough fodder to deal with the independents generally. Claiming citadels like guard towers isn't necessary early on, you don't really gain anything from owning them until you have a steady stream of basic C'tissians moving up to the frontlines.


5. Remember to start trading for iron - you're going to need a lot of it. If you're not making enough gold you can turn it off but try to always stay above 30 so you can keep promoting your heavier units as necessary. Early on you won't really need more than 50 but later in the game you will need all the iron you can get so every little bit helps.


6. If you have any fungus you feel you can spare occasionally mixing in some Poison Slingers can make a big difference early on. Just don't spend too much early on as expanding the swamp is going to cost you mountains of fungus over the course of the game.


7. Once you manage to get a Swamp Tender, give him an escort of units and send him to the border of your swamp - preferably in whatever direction is safest, replacing him early is an annoying setback. Once in position you'll need to keep repeating the 'Tend Swamp' ritual until the square is turned into a swamp/bog. This is rng based, you might get it on the first try, you might get it on the 25th. If you don't get it after a few casts don't be discouraged, you're not missing out on anything by throwing fungus at the swamp, it's what it's there for.

Keep making swamps. Never stop.


8. From here you have two options, which you pick first can heavily affect the flow of the game moving forward; they are not mutually exclusive to one another but your relic income will be the limiting factor here.

A. Save up your relics to turn your Swamp Tender into a Marshmaster using 'Marshmastery'. This is the option you choose with an eye for the longer game. The Marshmaster will be able to convert swamps into sacred terrains, including additional Temple Cities which just like your starting one will spawn basic C'tissians. Ultimately the Marshmaster is the key to your enduring success. If you choose this option be sure not to promote the Swamp Tender until you have 150 relics saved up; spending the 50 on him immediately can be risky - if he accidentally dies before you get the 100 you need to use 'Sacred Swampland' it will be a massively larger setback than if you were to just lose a Swamp Tender.

B. Use the Lizard King's 'Slavemasters' ritual to get a Slavemaster. This option is a much more immediate impact and will give you a larger boost early game. The Slavemaster will allow you to recruit Predator Lizard mercenaries in your Temple City - these do not need to be promoted like C'tissians do but they will cost some fungus to recruit. The predator lizards are quite strong early on and will help you control the area surrounding your swamp easier, but the fungus cost will be a hefty setback on expanding your swamp. The Slavemaster himself will also be able to start placing Taskmasters in mountains using the 'Quarrying' ritual to help boost your iron income.

Choose wisely.


9. If you are feeling threatened by the AI at all, consider spending some resources on additional poison slingers to guard your home, they are expensive but they make excellent wall defenders against most enemies. If you have a Slavemaster and iron to spare, while the relic cost early on hurts, if you are desperate consider placing an Obelisk in your Temple City for a sturdier defense. You will need to have at least 3 Taskmasters quarrying in mountains to be able to do this.


10. For now just keep doing what you've been doing and slowly build up your swamp/army. I find a healthy early game army has a decent central core of heavy infantry containing a mix of falchioners and maybe 3-6 Elites, flanked by a couple dozen light infantry and 2-6 poison slingers. The falchioners have 'spread' just like Standard bearers for the Senator and will spread themselves out amongst the Heavy Infantry, allowing the heavy infantry to soak up more damage while the falchioners do most of the killing. If you have Predator Lizards or Predator Shamans sieges will go a lot more smoothly.


11. At this point you should focus on maximizing your Fungus income as well as holding onto as many Relic producing squares as you can. Relics are what will unlock access to most of the class's content through the Lizard King's various rituals, and is what the Marshmaster will use to get you access to the necessary terrains to do so. More relics means you will progress much faster over all.

Try to hold onto as many villages as possible; if you are feeling ambitious and want to try and take a town or city, as you don't have access to any siege weapons currently, it is highly recommended you mass a decent number of poison slingers, who are just as effective when sieging a wall as they are at defending it with their poison aoe attack. Falchioners will be key to breaking down the gates.


12. Once you have saved up the 150 relics to get a Marshmaster and make a Sacred Swampland do so immediately. The first sacred terrain you get from this will heavily influence your style of play moving forward as it will determine which of the Lizard King's rituals you can use first and what access to new units/rituals you will get. You can see a list of the possible outcomes below in the 'Sacred Swamplands' section of the guide, which will guide you somewhat on how to proceed from there.


If you've reached this point then you should have a good grasp on the basics of playing the class. Go have fun turning Elysium into a massive swamp!

The C'tissian Population mechanic is somewhat complex but can be boiled down simply to 'more swamp, more better'. The more swamps/iron bogs you own the more basic C'tissians will spawn on average. Note that regardless of anything else, C'tissians will not spawn in winter. This can sometimes lead to a very painful first year of play.

Additionally every swamp/bog you control has a 33% chance of providing you 2 extra gold income every turn.

The number of C'tissians and the chance you will get any at all each turn are determined by 2 things: your Population Level and Population Intensity for that turn.

Population Intensity is determined randomly each turn, it is not affected by anything else, it is simply a Low, Medium or High. This will alter the chance that C'tissians will spawn in each Temple City as well as the number that spawn when they do in relation to your Population Level.

Population Level is determined by the number of Swamps/Iron Bogs you control. Each Swamp/Bog has a 50% chance of contributing to this count each turn, and your Population Level is determined by the final count after that is processed.

The first few levels are as follows:

1: 1 to 3 swamps
2: 4 to 6 swamps
3: 7 to 10 swamps

So for instance, if you had 8 swamps, but only 3 of them passed the 50% chance check then your Population Level for that turn would be Level 1, not 3.

This is recalculated at the start of every turn and is unique to each Lizard King player. There are 15 Population Levels, with the number of swamps required to reach each significantly increasing as you progress. To consistently reach Level 15 every turn you would need roughly 300+ swamps, so don't worry that you've ever reached the limit and aren't benefitting much from more swamps anymore - it's nearly impossible to actually reach.


It is important to note that *only* Swamps and Iron Bogs contribute to your Population Level - every swamp you convert into a Sacred Swampland will no longer contribute to the count. Sometimes it can be advantageous to have larger sections of swamp with no special terrains mixed in, but that is up to your personal preference.

Your Marshmasters can convert non-adjacent swamps into sacred terrains, each of which is listed below with a brief description of the benefits they bring.

- Temple City: This is the most common result of the ritual, it provides you an additional Temple City just like your starting one, effectively increasing your basic C'tissian spawn rate by 100%. The only major difference is unlike your starting Temple City your second one can have the Empoisoners Guild ritual cast in it by the Lizard King. This will give you access to Empoisoners, assassin commanders, as well as more cost efficient poison slingers and the ability to give poisoned weapons to your basic units.

- Ancient Temple: The second most common result, the Ancient Temple will give you access to the Lizard Priesthood. This will give you access to blessed units as well as creature summons.

- Ziggurat: The Ziggurat will give you Sauromancers who will create armies of longdead/soulless to bolster your forces. Make sure to always have 1 Sauromancer reanimating units in each of your Ziggurats, as it is the only location they can get their unique summons at. Corpses will continually spawn in the Ziggurat so long as a Sauromancer is present. Unlike priests Sauromancers get their recruitment chance increased by libraries, so odds are you won't be getting lots of them, try to keep the ones you do have alive.

- Pyramids: The Pyramids aren't especially useful in and of themselves early on. If you have a Slavemaster you can place up to 3 Taskmasters here using the 'Tomb Excavation' ritual. This will significantly increase your gold income which can come in handy. Try to always keep a Slavemaster nearby however as the Taskmasters working on Pyramids often die while doing so. Their excess laborers can be used as cheap cannon fodder whenever that happens. Later in the game after you get a Pharoah your Sauromancers will be able to revive Tomb Kings and other ancient C'tissian units here.

- Sphinx: The Sphinx is without a doubt the worst of the 5 possible results to get early game, as its advantages are almost strictly limited to the mid and late game. If you are at all inclined towards save scumming for better results, getting this one as your first Sacred Swampland is one of the few times I wouldn't hold it against you if you did. Th Sphinx will give you access to the Sobeks, however the Sobeks are quite expensive to make use of and are not particularly cost effective the first few years of the game. The Sphinx is also used for a number of late game summons; additionally the Slavemaster can throw endless amounts of iron at the Sphinx to attempt to increase your blessing strength, should you have an excessive amount of iron to spare. Though that iron is often more prudently spent on more important things.