Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Thank you Baalz. What a lovely way to pass the evening, armed with a cup of cool beer, reading your guide for my favorite nation :)

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

I've read the guide. It's good stuff as expected :)

some comments:
- 2nd Fantomen's comment re. Forge lord. Not sure it's worth it. I'd perhaps go for awake high dom SC pretender. I know pyth can expand w/o one but this can super charge their early expansion and with a few key paths that SC can later retire to forge or cast while high dom mitigates heretic's influence.

- What's wrong with hydra only expansion. Say with A9 bless?

- What's wrong with legion only based expansion. Say with monster scales pretender?

- w/o high dom the heretics can be really counter productive. I once played LA Pyth MP and preferred to stay away from them.

- The overall strategy sounds promising but I wonder how the broad spectrum strat. would work out in real MP games where every cent counts. Beside the high competence level required for this specific guide, some guides (like Caelum) just sound good in theory but having trouble delivering in real MP games. I'm not being controversial, I'm frankly curios and would love to hear back in this thread from players who actually gave it a try.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

The chance of a random was only 10% base, and in CB versions before 1.7.

Also, does anyone have any suggestions about giving the Mystes a niche?

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

A Hydra only expansion tends to be very gold intensive. You need about 4 to keep routing from being an issue which is the same amount of gold as a new castle. I played a game awhile ago with a double N/W bless, and indeed the berzerking got rid of the routing problem and the defense plus extra regen allowed single hydra expansion parties. That was fun and a crazy opening, though it stalled out later because of the scales I had to take to afford it. You really need production scales as the game wears on.

Re: Broad spectrum, I take a bit of artistic licence to make things more interesting to read, you're unlikely to be fielding 8 differently set up armies at once. You can, however, shift strategies to take advantage of the specific weaknesses of whoever you're fighting at the time. If you successfully get up several castles up early on (shouldn't be difficult), and steadily recruit a good spectrum of your different cheap mages then there isn't much I suggest that can't be fielded in a couple turns. The trick is you have to have your prep work done ahead of time - you're gonna be sucking air if you are trying to recruit the mages with the randoms you want right when you need them. Have a couple of everything you might want and a variety of boosters sitting in your lab though and by the time your opponent adjusts to fighting under heat from hell you're dropping foul vapors on him from behind skellispam, and by the time his poison immune stuff gets to the front line you're dropping weapons of sharpness and mass protection on your guys who were previously fighting under fire fend and heat from hell, the guys sent to deal with that get a couple heavily buffed sirrush and hydras fighting under wrathful skies. Assuming you've got the research all that can be done with the same 100 troops, a handful of mages and under 100 gems worth of forgings & summonings. Investing in maenads and assassins, vengeance of the dead spam and lamia queens are all powerful side strategies options swhich are not strictly necessary.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Maybe move the healer ability from the Epoptes to the Mystes?

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Thematically, Mystes are supposed to be lesser initiates on the same path of initiation that later leads to Epoptes, so it's hard to justify them not being subsets of Epoptes.

If you look at the Greek mystery cults that these are based on, the Mystes are initiated into the mysteries of Persephone (goddess of the underworld) and then Epoptes are additionally initiated to the mysteries of Demeter (goddess of the hearth/fertility). There is also a focus on duality of soul/body, and on transitions (the basic draw of the cult was apparently that it promised insights into the afterlife or some form of immortality for the initiated, though it's clearly not straightforward "stay alive forever just as you are" immortality.) So, based on that, you could fairly reasonably extend them something death/underworld related.

Perhaps some undead leadership? Minor death magic itself is already reliably filled by the Renata/Renatus, though. It would still be hard to thematically justify *not* giving whatever you gave the Mystes to the Epoptes, though, except via some sort of "transition/transformation" explanation. I suppose you could give them some kind of magical "reaper" or banishment attack, but it's hard to imagine them thugging out too much.

Maybe you could just make them even cheaper so they improve as (non-heretical) research factories? A lesser supply bonus?

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

"Maybe you could just make them even cheaper so they improve as (non-heretical) research factories? A lesser supply bonus?"
+1. Perhaps consider giving them passive healing ability as well, like witches are supposed to have.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

A mystes was supposed to learn things by reading texts, learning lore, listen to elders and/or by following rituals performed. Maybe they should have a research bonus, because effectively researching various stuff was what they were doing?

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

You're right Baalz, there is much more to LA Pythium than I imagined. Though I would design my pretender quite different from you. I have never seen the appeal of a Forge Lord.

After experimenting in CBM 1.6 a bit, I found two pretender builds that I like.

The scale build sphinx: There is few nations that benefits as much from a scale build than LA Pythium. Not only because they require huge amounts of gold for their hydras. But also because the pythian capitol starts with the Great City fortress. And in Dominions, all money multipliers multiply each other!

Let me break down the math for you: A capitol starts with 30k pop. That translates roughly into a 300 gold income. 300 (base) * 1.21 (order) * 1.09 (prod) * 1.09 (growth) * 1.30 (Great City) = 560 gold/turn from the capitol alone! Remember that you can always over-tax this amount and that your income will grow over time thanks to the growth scales.

Depending on whether or not you want some magic on your pretender (starts with E1S3) you could choose between asleep or imprisoned. Another option is to choose magic 3 scales. Your cheap but weak researchers will benefit from more this than other nations would.



The other pretender build I like is the Imprisoned Mother of Rivers with a W9 bless. This build also allows for decent scales. Although the fact that you miss out on her "flood of water gems" special ability is a waste.
The water 9 bless is pretty much the only bless that is not overpriced on a hydra. Improving their abysmal speed? Check! Strike two different squares in one round? Check! Improve their defense in melee and thus improve their offence? Check!
This bless also work well enough to warrant buying Serpent Catapracts and maybe also Sirruses.
Serpent Catapracts might not seem like a good unit but remember that you get four and some, for the cost of one hydra. Also, they have a second shape with 28hp and prot 17 witch makes them very survivable in the big battles. Thats 40 hp on a cavalry unit!


The only thing i cant figure out is what to do in mid game. Even if your researchers are cost efficient, they are also very slow and even if you build one in every castle you will be behind in research in the early game. This in combination with pythiums rather lackluster battle mages and lack of recruitable thug chassis, make for a miserable mid game.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

I like your suggestions, but why take sphinx over oracle?

W9 is nice. I wonder if you could get any juice from this on mid/end game as LA Pyth. Meaning access to thug/SC chassis that'd benefit from it.