Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

Problem with using gladiators for sieges is that they fix you in location for the duration of the siege, and if any third-party casts a remote summon on the siege, your gladiators will vanish after the battle. Same result if a single scout popping his head out and screaming, "Come get some!".

Haven't played 'em yet, but I've SP'd against them. The heavy infantry's strat-2 makes them quite interesting for a low-magic situation.

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

Their troops are on the pricey side, but IMO worth the price. Also, their non-capital only troops are not that much worse than the Comitatenses.

Regarding the siege issue, I don't know what to tell you. If you have a pretender with Earth, then you can make Gate Smashers or something. In my games, I normally play with Luck and so I have random troops hanging around to help.

And yeah, I never noticed Orgy until after I had a Blood Reveler and looked at the Blood spells to use. That might be another possible use for the Satyr is to produce the Maenads to pull down walls.

Another option is to wall the player inside his forts, and bring in your heretics to dominion kill him. It is surprising how fast the dominion drops.

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

I was mulling over LA Pythium last night and liked all the Heretic flags on thier mages. It occured to me that you could really easily take full drain with this nation and still be ok. Since your researchers are pretty good just on thier own and would negate your own bad dominion in a research center. Has anyone tried that?

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

huh ... wait heretics auto preach your dominion? I thought they decreased it instead?

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

Its kinda the same thing, heretic 3 is the same effect as a enemy lvl3 priest preaching.

I wonder if anyone has been brave enough to take virtually all negative scales with a low dominion of lets say 4 and use those heretics to stop your own very nasty dominion spreading beyond your capital, a couple of adjacent provinces?

It would allow you to take a triple+ bless, you have 3 sacreds to use them with and you only suffer the negatives at your capital plus a couple of adjacent provinces.

Would it work or will you die of dominion death?

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

Well a very low dominion score and a high bless aren't exactly good together, even if Hydras are expensive.

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

Oh yea, that will teach me to write before I think! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Perhaps 6 or 7?

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

It could work in a rush maybe. Eventually it would probably either just get too difficult to keep your dominion completely under control(making temples to get more sacreds) or you would be left with a small number of sacreds(6-7 per turn) and, at best, completely average scales.

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

Yeah you dont want to go full negative since you can only negate your own dominion in a few choice provinces. To try to do something systemtic or empire-wide would risk dominion death. The reason why drain is so attractive in this one particular case is because it wouldnt ruin your economy when spread over your nation but is (almost by default) negated for free by your researchers.

Re: LA Pythium Hydras
 

The important part, from my perspective, is that they auto-decrease _anyone's_ dominion, every turn. So yes, if they are in your dominion, they decrease it. If they are in enemy dominion, they will decrease that. I have found them to be useful in rapidly converting provinces from enemy control (dominion-wise) to neutral.