Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

I have played a number of demo games as Pythium. In all games I've played, however, I've found that I have a dreadful time keeping my Vestals alive, even though they are blindingly fast.

Last night, for example, I tried a dual-bless strategy with 4-Nature 4-Air, and sent 8 Vestals and 13 Principii under the command of a Battle Deacon to deal with a small indie force just east of my starting province. I put the Vestals on the side (orders Attack Rearmost), the Principii in the middle (Attack Closest) and set the Battle Deacon to Stay Behind Troops, placing him close enough to the Vestals that he could cast Blessing without problems.

Although I don't recall the exact enemy count, they had a handful of archers, a few militia, and some cavalry. The Deacon blessed the Vestals right away. The Principii did their jobs flawlessly, but the Vestals were smoked in seconds by the small cav force as they were trying to get to the enemy commander and his entourage, even after the Vestals went berserk.

I've had similar problems in other Pythium demo games and was wondering what I might try to overcome this problem, or if other people feel that Vestals are too difficult to keep alive for more than one engagement or so.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide - I am more than open to any suggestions, including "what the hell are you doing using a dual-bless strategy on them?" I am totally new to the game, not sure if I'm doing the right things, and willing to learn. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

Typically I think of a duel bless strategy as one with 2 9s, not with 2 4s... if you are serious about the blessings you will need to spend more points in magic to make them worthwhile. I don't play pythium at all so I'm not great at talking about their strengths, but seemingly you'd be better off with nature9 or water9 for your blessings (and then one or two at 4 for minor effects). Nature9 would make the berzerk much better, and water9 would up the def and make them 50% faster so they'd get to the rear that much more quickly. Air4 is kinda useless only a 20% missle protection, Air6 is probably where you need to go if you really need the missile protection...

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

Nature blessing is a poor choice for Vestals. They are unarmored but have high defense , so astral 9, water and air are probably good choices. Not that they'd be very good even then... Having no armor is bad for survival.

[ February 12, 2004, 16:14: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Great, thank you for the advice. I can see that Water (at a higher level than 4) would have been a much better choice than Air. As I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure why I chose Air, since the Vestals are faster than the archers anyway...doh.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

If you are going to go with water I'd really suggest going all the way to 9, the added speed for your flaking sacred troops is very nice. Also if you have sacred mages (priests are all sacred arn't they?) They will occasionally (50% of the time) get 2 spells per turn. This does lead to fatigue problems, but you can ease those in a variety of ways. Take some earth for reinvig, equip them with reinvig items, or get some nature mages to cast relief... As pointed out in some other thread, quickened lvl5 priests (typically your prophit if you chose it) that smite 2+ times a turn are quite useful, and being able to get all/most of your buff spells off in the first turn speeds up your mages ability to rout the enemy, or just hammer them before they close on your own troops.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

Licker-
Water 9 is great on most holy mages, but that blessing and Pythium mages doesn't add up to the sum of the parts. Water 9 gives 50% quickness like you mentioned (2 spells/attacks 1 round, only one the next), but the quickness spell gives quickness 100% (2 attacks every round). Since you have to be blessed to get the Holy bonus, any non-prophet mage should be quickened anyway on the same round as the Divine Blessing is cast on the battlefield. Very little gain for their mages...

For holy mages that don't get Water magic like Marignon and Vanheim (especially Vanheim - no feet and no random magic on the Vanir, so that's the only real way to get them quickened), the bonus is really powerful

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

To the original poster:

Taking 4+ Nature in the pretender of a nation with mage-priest such as Vanir or Arch-Theurgs is not a good idea IMO.

Do you really want to see your mages charging forward into hand to hand combat with their fists as soon as they suffer a scratch? The results can be painful!

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

for quality troops, if you have astral mages, etheralize them. Thats not specific on vestals though, but it works rather well with them too.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">/smacks head

Excellent point - thank you Wendigo. What would you have chosen for a dual-bless in such a scenario as I described? As an aside, my pretender in that game was the Divine Emperor.

Or would you not have bothered with dual-bless at all?

It seems like because the Vestals are such cheap Sacred units (good gold cost, perfect resource cost), I want to utilize them in the best way possible - but maybe a bless strategy isn't the way to play it at all. Any thoughts?

By the way, thank you Pocus for your insights as well. Hopefully I'll have my full copy of the game today (crossing my fingers for UPS to pull through) so I'll be able to test things more thoroughly this weekend.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

I agree with Pocus on this one. It's all about how you deploy the vestals. These units got very little going for them besides the low cost and defence so water9 will play on their strength.

What you need to do is to deploy them in smaller Groups with a mage in the midst. Set the mage to cast protective spells like protection and luck while the vestals are on "hold and attack". They won't be able to take down anything but they will fend off the enemy while your mages pelter them with spells.

Plain Pythium is not such a good choice for a dual bless strategy though. You would be better off with taking a smaller amount of magic and concentrate on economy boosting scales. You got the best mages in the game after all so you might as well focus on them.

Serpent cult pythium however is a very different kind of baked potato.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

Fahdiz, I do not think bless strategies work too well with Pythium, as these usually work best on nations with powerful sacred troops.

For something cheap & efective you might consider 4+Earth on the Pretender: it gives your mages & communicants reinvigoration when blessed, gives you a good shot at finding Firbolg forts (extra forts always good for someone that wants to pump out communicants in numbers), and Lastly it gives you a dwarven hammer forger to take advantage of your good gem income.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

Excellent. Thank you so much, Wendigo and Wauthan. I really do appreciate the help! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True, and as the blessing doesn't stack with the spell (otherwise I don't see why it wouldn't be good, 3 casts/round)... I'm not much of a Pythium player, never taken past turn 10 so I'm not overly familiar with their units. However, for the Vestals, if you want to employ a blessing strat for them, water9 would still seem to be ideal. Earth and Nature don't really augment them (and nature is bad bad bad for sacred mages usually). Air isn't that useful, though maybe Pythium can benefit from the high level lightning protection with orb lightning? Fire and Blood... well fire is always decent, blood is ok (but not the death curse). I dunno, as someone said, Pythium may not be a great nation to bother with blessings, but if you insist on doing it anyway... I'd stick with water9 and not worry about the mages http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't insist on anything with this game, except that it is the best fantasy-themed wargame I've ever played, bar none. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I'm here to learn from more experienced players and to become more experienced myself, not to insist. I figured that since I was having trouble I'd see if what I was trying was really worth it after all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I think if I do try for a bless strategy (just to see what happens) I might take 9-Water (for the reasons everyone has given), but I probably will abandon the bless strategy for vanilla Pythium and go with Wendigo's 4-Earth idea to test out more of my options.

Thanks everybody for your help! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ February 13, 2004, 16:31: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

Earth4 is fine and all, but reinvig1 is pretty much useless, oh boy, 1 whole fatigue point back per turn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif You don't need earth4 for fribolgs do you? Rainbow blessing is interesting if you are making a rainbow mage, but unless your sacred troops are going to be used in quantity its still probably a waste from just taking lvl3 in the same paths (for searching lvl4 only gets you ~5% more sites, and some of them arn't that great anyway) and boosting your scales or dominion.

Playing with high blessings and lots of sacred troops is fun though, competative... I dunno, SP its fine, MP, I'm not sure there's been enough data to really show.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Check again. Earth 4 is reinvigoration 2.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, I was mostly just asking regarding SP, since I don't dare try MP yet with my limited knowledge of the game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I guess I should have specified that.

I agree that high blessings are really fun, and it's a ball trying out new things - in fact, I have yet to find anything about this game that I *don't* find fun. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Thanks again.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

even though water 9 is perhaps the best blessing for units with a good defence stat as Vestals, you can emphasize on some of (standard) Pythium strength, Air :

air 9 + air ward > a nice protection for a vestal based army with 2-3 archtheurgs casting wrathful skies.

fire 9 + mass flying, with a core of legionaires as bodyguards: flying vestals attacking with flamming weapon the rear (generally flyer manage to hit the rear while grounded hit the flanks of a large army). In essence they have first strike with a powerful flaming spear.

Re: Pythium: newbish Vestals question
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very interesting...and a very cool suggestion. I don't think I can research high enough in the demo to get mass flying (or can I?) but it's something I'll have to try out as soon as my copy of the game arrives.

Thank you, Pocus.