Dealing with Hydras
 

Scenario:

20 - 40 Hydras on your doorstep. The bless is open, but only one strong and one weak bless (Think of the worst combination you can).

What are some possible solutions to this problem. Give me several: SC setups, army compositions, magic, combinations of all those. Give me an array of solutions, covering both high and mid level research.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

What nation are you playing?

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Nation basically aside, the first thing that comes to my mind is curse-spamming the hydras themselves, and then mass producing Bow of Botulf, and sending in cheapo flyers equipped with medallion of vengeance. Attack the rear ranks enough, and the whole army might retreat.

Remember too, each hydra is a 250 gold, non-sacred, gold suck, so hit them in the pocketbook by instilling unrest.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Argatha.

E9 cyclops available. E9 blessed blindfighters on standby (I'm afraid using them against Hydras is wasteful, since their high prot is meaningless.)

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Hydras, to my understanding, can only take as much damage as their current form has available; making medallion of vengeance rather underwhelming against them.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Hydras are wicked weak to archers.

For Argartha specific tactics, you should be using Marble Statues backed-up by guys casting Petrify and/or Earth Meld.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

This is LA Argatha, BTW.

What are these marble statues of which you speak? MA troops?

I figured they are weak to archers. I just need something to keep them from reaching archers.

chaff like militia or cheap troops dies way too quickly. Hydras mow through a hundred of them in a few turns. I was thinking I need something robust, or something ethereal.

Crushers would work, but I can't summon tons of them and they are susceptible to Soul Slay. I was actually wondering if Spirit Mastery would be a good idea. Ethereal, 100 PR, and they paralyze! 1 HP doesn't matter, because Hydras do enough damage per head to kill any chaff in one hit anyway. They might be able to hold back a mass of Hydras while archers tore them down.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

The Medallion was more for taking out the human commanders in back of the hydra-thus, why they're on flying troops.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

I sorry. my mistake.

I have things capable of flying to the rear and beating down anything they might have back there, but they don't do it predictably enough. I've run several simulations, and many times a unit I equip with intention to fly to the back and take out commanders, instead flys to the back of the troop of Hydras. Therefore, I wasn't going to try and depend on such a strategy.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Enchantment 6 has a spell, Enliven Statues that creates Marble Statues. As an earth power, its should be one of the spells you cast often considering that they have high protection, high HPs, shields, decent other stats, and lifeless and unbreakable morale.

Undead spamming is also a decent tactic, but you'll need a lot of undead.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Blindfighters is LA Agartha, right?

Do you have Enchant-3 for skelly spam Necros? With a big poison-immune undead shield you should do okay. 30 Hydras takes a while to build up, so you might have been able to get Evok-4 to blast them with a few Blade Winds before your chaff stops their advance on the battlefield.

Then you can switch to Magma Bolts or Farstrike etc, depending on the randoms on your Necros and what you have researched.

Fight in cold provinces if you can. If you've got friendly neighbors too in an MP game you could have them send you a Snake Ring for your god, and cast Wolven Winter to make your battle province colder.

Also, recruit some light crossbowmen. They've got bad precision, so you need lots to make sure some bolts land in the squares where the Hydras are. But Hydras are size-6, no shield obviously, so they're pretty vulnerable to missile fire. 'Fire Large Monsters' to avoid shield decoy tricks.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

I'm close enough to Enchant-3 or Evo-4 to reach them in one turn of research. What about Thau-4 for Plague? That seems like a really good spell for dealing with them to me.

I've actually got cold3 scale, so that's a bonus.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

fire shields tear the hydras up as well since they have so many attacks and a low prot value, if you can get a high-prot thug with PR...they don't have stellar strength scores either, so it's not THAT hard to get something that can stand up to them for a few rounds while they burn themselves to death.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Terror is also a good choice. It causes them to run, which means that you can drive them back into their own forces. Its not as good as a kill, but its not bad.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Objectively speaking, what the hell frightens a 9 headed, 12-ton, poison-spitting dinosaur?

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Spiders. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Little hairy and mean dude named Heracles. Rename your commander after him before sending him to battle Hydras, and watch Hydras rout instantly. It's a little easter egg left in the game by developers.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Like K said, if you're a turn away from Thau-4, then Terror is great, especially if your skelly spam is holding the Hydras.

Each hydra can kill one square of skellies a turn, but the hydras are unlikely to all be in a line. Don't be skimpy with your mages, you need a lot of spam.

If you have to choose between Evok-4 and Thau-4, I'd go for the blade winds. Summon Lammashtas is also an option. They are PR 100%, and may decide to fly over to attack the commanders. If the hydras chased the Lammashtas to the read, it could be pretty much a disaster for Pythium. So if you've got Conj-3 already, then you've got to decide between Conj-4, Evok-4, and Thau-4.

Plague is Thau-7. And I'd be leery of using that with non-undead on my own side.

Bring some blindfighters to the battle on Guard Commander, enough to make sure you don't auto-route when all your PD gets killed.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

In CBM, plague is Thau-4. I think it may be useful, but only as a little bit of constant tick damage.

I've already got the Lammashtas, and was considering using them. Bladewind is probably ideal for this situation too, but is so fatiguing.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

I meant Bladewind for the Cyclops only, not for your Necros. An E9 Cyclops can cast 3 or 4 before worrying about wiping out your own skelly spam, if everyone's at the back.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Turn them to stone with a gorgon.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Offhand, I'd say some very high protection thugs with poisoin immunity to occupy them while a whole bunch of archers attack. Remember, hydras cost between 10 or 20 normal units, and that kind of investment means the player is very vulnerable in having invested so much into this one tactic.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

I don't know, but I would doubt an LA Pythium player would have just invested in Hydras. Their elite infantry is the best in the LA game, and I would hope any player could back up those Hydras with their hard-to-beat infantry.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

If he has so much unit so early in the game (low research yet it seems) then he must have pumped it all in hydra's 40 of them is like 10 + turns of cash (assuming some researchers have been recruited too)

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Even Heracles needed help, and he didn't manage to kill the Hydra, he just cut off most of it's heads and buried the last one under a rock. The Hydra got it's revenge, in the end: it was the Hydra's poison that did Heracles in, in the end, that and his wife and her tricksy centaur lover.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

I can thoroughly recommend archers, as stated above. Even if it's just to lop off as many heads as possible before you face them in melee.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Skelly spam is quite effective, but numbers are needed. As one poster stated, don't be skimpy on your mages.

In MA, just tons of undead will eventually wear them down, but it is an long, ugly battle. If you don't have enough missle units, they will use up their ammo and then charge into battle. It keeps your mages safe another turn, but is not ideal...

Thanks for the other ideas, I seem to have a hydra infestation and your tips will help!

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Rage spaming. Its may be very effectiv

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

Umbrals + Iron Warriors is probably worth a shot, if you've got the research and the gems. Use them as blockers while your mages spam them with (Terror/Blade Wind/Skelly spam/whatever you have researched). Shooting from the hip, I'd say 10 umbrals with Iron Warriors up should be able to whip 40 hydras, perhaps even without any mage backup. Of course I could be radically underestimating--I'll simulate this battle later.

-Max

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

I tried the Iron Warrior + Umbral counter at home. It worked just dandy, up to a point. I used 1 Attendant of the Dead and had him hold for five rounds, then attack large monsters. 13 umbrals were his guards. 4 Ktonian necromancers cast Summon Earthpower, Iron Warriors x4, and all of the umbrals got nicely covered. The hydras could hardly scratch the umbrals, although the Attendant died pretty quick (doesn't matter, he was just a mechanism for holding umbrals in place long enough to be buffed). And then... all the umbrals ran away, and my necromancers died.

Turns out hydras have Fear +0. Ah, well. Scratch one possible counter.

-Max

Edit: by the way, when I replayed the battle after modding umbral morale up to 99, they wiped the floor with the hydras. 40 dead hydras, no dead umbrals, although most of the umbrals had picked up a couple of afflictions. It's the fear, and nothing else, which saved the hydras.

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

That's a bit of a poor test. What spell casters were backing up the Hydras?

Re: Dealing with Hydras
 

None. The problem statement was 20-40 hydras, so I kept it simple.

-Max