Re: OW's Guide to MA Pythium: Marx and Angels' Communion Manifesto
 

They heal up in combat. You only need to be in combat for one round, and then you can retreat if you like, and you will regen full HP, because regeneration (and poison, decay, etc) is applied for a bunch more rounds once you leave the battlefield.

Diseased units with regeneration do lose 1HP every year, every late winter.

Re: OW's Guide to MA Pythium: Marx and Angels' Communion Manifesto
 

I know it used to work.. I started relying on it. However I tried it with a bunch of mictlan priests with ff's .. and it did *not* work.

Re: OW's Guide to MA Pythium: Marx and Angels' Communion Manifesto
 

Regfen healing might not work with FFs ON. I managed to heal Ancient Lords to max HP pretty recently. Try testing it by removing the fetishes.
Also put a fetish on the shrouded Diseased Archtheurgs for micro-free gems.

What about the Serpent Knights? Not very expensive (45g), 2x15 damage with an attack skill of 12 and 13.
Emerald Guards won't slow you down if you have other move 1 troops. Like Archteurgs, Hydras and short/longbowmen.
Don't forget the gladiators for initial expansion.

About Hydras. Get an indie commander, put him in a back offset up/down, 5xHold and Stay behind troops. Put the hydras in the front offset the other direction.

Re: OW's Guide to MA Pythium: Marx and Angels' Communion Manifesto
 

He'll still get poisoned if the fight lasts long. Better to give him a bow (whatever kind) and have him shoot at whatever you like. The bow might kill some opponents, but its main use is to protect your commander from the poison.

Re: OW's Guide to MA Pythium: Marx and Angels' Communion Manifesto
 

Or if you don't want to spend gems on a bow, a few indy crossbowmen.
Again, place them part way back opposite the hydras. When he goes to stay behind troops, he'll be behind them.
If it's a really long fight, even the x-bows will run out of bolts and close, but there's no avoiding that. If you're going to use hydras in large scale battles, you need poison resistance or to just accept poison casualties.

Re: OW's Guide to MA Pythium: Marx and Angels' Communion Manifesto
 

A few points, some have been mentioned:

1. The Lord of Rebirth is just about the perfect pretender for Pythium. You are missing the following magic paths: Earth, death, nature, blood. The Lord of rebirth gives you three of those in one nice package! Further, your angels like both nature and earth blessings. And finally, he is a titan which is always nice. Perfect!

2. Gladiators are excellent at early expansion, especially at higher independent levels. Always snag a few.

3. For the most part, your angels begin and end with the Harbringer. He is the cheapest. He has the best paths, and he is very mobile. What is not to like!

4. Angelic host is a targeted ritual, so it has some extra uses. And unlike most targeted rituals it packs a pretty serious whallop. Those little angels are armed with serious weapons and can be useful in many cases, like killing off just about any undead summon in the 1st round if they are alone. The Arch Angel you get in the bargin is also a decent caster as you mentioned.

5. A nature+earth blessing combined with a shroud of the saint has is simply fantastic. More so if your earth blessing is level 9 (which is probably won't be with lord of rebirth, sadly).

6. Serpent Cataphracts are excellent, nice defense, excellent protection, good HP, very survivable and they pack a serious punch.

7. While the Principe is very nice, do not forget the Hastatus when you have a lot of resources, he is easily 90% as good for 75% of the price.

8. If you need bulk in your army in a hurry you could do worse than the Velite, easy on the resources, nice shield and a javlin. Very nice for 10 resources.

9. thejeff and P3D's suggestions for how to keep commanders alive with hydras are great.

10. Fear works wonders when combined with Awe. Horror Helmets, Implementor Axe, Lantern Shield all give fear and can be useful (although I am not so sure about the Implementor axe, I have not had great success with it ... the other 2 work nicely!).

Re: OW's Guide to MA Pythium: Marx and Angels' Communion Manifesto
 

Tested with Machacka, using fetishes and rings of regen. The .trn and fthrlnd files are attached (zipped).

Both healing-in-battles and delay-of-health-loss work as advertised.

As a side note, isn't the delay of health loss more useful? If I remember the statistics lch gave a while back, the odds for getting a gem are something like this:

full health -> 1/3 (or less) chance
-1 health to -2 health -> 2/3 chance
-3+ health -> 100% chance

So by those numbers it is most effective to "pause" the health loss after 3 hitpoints have been lost to provide the most gems. Unless you are looking to conserve your regen rings (as they are expensive, doubling the cost of the fetish) in which case you could pass around the ring and run them out to battles (though then you have to keep your vulnerable fever fetish factory -fff- near the front lines, along with requiring more micro than simply hiring new commanders would).