[edit: this was written for CBM 1.7, with no hammers or sanguine rods]
LA Pythium is a nation that seems to confuse a lot of people. The problem, I think, is that it gives the impression of being all over the place and lacking focus. There are no obvious straightforward strengths like you see with most nations. When I look at them though, what I see is a beast out the gate with massive versatility waiting for a bit of polish to have the capability to attack strongly along dozens of different vectors and appallingly daunting defensive capabilities. A strong hand and some vision is required to keep them focussed and show the opposition why all roads lead to Pythium. LA Pythium is the last era of the Roman empire, and nobody has managed to tell them they yet that they don’t rule the world.

First off, the legion. LA Pythium’s infantry is second to no human infantry in the game. Sure, there are some that do better in a specific niche, but for a well rounded, use in every situation non sacred front line I can’t think of any that are superior. Beautiful tower shields leave them immune to archery (and several spells). Great defense and solid protection give them top marks for survivability. Broad swords with good attack and strength give a very respectable offense. A reasonable price tag means ranks after ranks of them. You’ve even got a fairly tough and effective standard bearer if morale is ever a problem (pity that idiot pretender who tried to rush you with his awe!) Needless to say, you shouldn’t have any trouble whatsoever stomping all over the indies with very economical squads. Use one squad of 4 hydras and your starting troops (in two different armies!) to clear the indies around your capital and you should have plenty of resources to flood very economical expansion squads of Comitatense at that point. Bring the hydras in to take out any tough indies, and surprisingly small squads of Comitatense can clear out the lighter stuff.

This is good, because much more than most nations LA Pythium’s strength relies on having many castles. We’ll get into this more in a minute, but while we’re still on the infantry it’s important to point out that everything you can recruit outside your capital is map move one. Well, you can recruit indies which is important to remember as heavy cav/knights (as well as some of the more exotic stuff) will help considerably in your maneuverability so keep an eye on what’s available. Also, keep in mind that having production scales does not mean you need to max the troops pumping out of every one of your castles. What we’re aiming for is considerably more capacity than you’re actually using – otherwise you’ll stall out well short of the castles you want. Once you’ve got castles sprouting like mushrooms with solid production scales though, that map move 1 doesn’t hurt quite as bad because you can rapidly build up forces at most points in your empire. It takes a bit of discipline, but you really do need to stop producing troops once you’ve got enough indie clearers and dump all your gold into castles. It’s also a good idea to hold off on buying Snake Priests for awhile, you won’t need them until you’ve got a bit of research going and won’t rely on having a huge number of them anyway. Spend a couple turns producing nothing but an 80 gold Renata while your economical troops sweep out the indies and your gold will pile up very quickly to be immediately transformed into castles.

A big part of the reason you want all those castles, of course, is because you’ve got a bunch of nice cheap mages. Now, your mages paths *are* all over the place, and there are a couple combinations you’ll land that just aren’t terribly useful, but remember you’ll pretty much always need researchers. Send the nice ones into the field or the forges and put the others in the library.

Before I get into the specific mages I’ll tip my hand and say that I have a hard time thinking of a pretender that could benefit LA Pythium more than a forge lord. Much, much nastiness is just barely outside the grasp of your mages and boosters are your lifeblood. You’ve got mages who with no more than one booster can remote site search every path in the game (admittedly, the A booster is a stretch) so once you get into mid game you should really have a pretty solid gem income across the board. The nice news is you don’t really need help early on, take a sleeping or imprisoned forge lord and pass out gems instead of boosters if you’re really pinched. Many of your mages are sacred so take at least E4 and you’ll be wanting cheap rings so at least S4 – I lay out several suggestions for RoS, at 20S pile up a few. You’ll also be wanting to spend those sleeping/imprisoned points on picking up a bit of D and possibly N.

You’ll want to skip the Mystes completely, but all your other mages have a welcome spot on your roster. Now a note on the heretics, you are going to want to pay attention to where masses of them are. They will knock out your dominion out, which on top of other considerations will render positive magic scales pointless for research. For this reason it’s a good idea to separate out your heretic and non heretical research centers. Don’t really worry about it outside large research piles, use whoever you want in your armies so long as you’re not fighting off a strong dominion push – in which case those heretics are quite useful.

Renata – 80 gold, sacred with 5 rp in magic 1 scales. These gals are going to be a solid support corps and your most cost efficient researchers who won’t fizzle your magic scales out. They’re also going to bring the cold when that’s the angle that’s called for, though they won’t be your default battlemages.
WW – frozen heart, numbness, cleansing water, grip of winter, wolven winter, ice pebble staffs, boots of quickness, water bottles
WS – communion slaves
WD - research
WN - research

Heliodromus – 50% of them are F2, and with phoenix power can drop those nice fire evos, heat from hell and fire fend (brings your Solaris infantry up to 100% fire immunity). With a half priced fire helm and fire skull firestorm is within reach – which lets you do a reasonable Aby impression.
FF – fire evos
FN – fire skulls give eagle eyes + fire evos. Otherwise heretic research

Epoptes –Your sole access to E magic. Seems paltry at just level one E, but you don’t need a lot of earth boots plus earth power to get a lot of utility out of it. A little E goes a long way. These ladies bring your infantry up to a whole new level.
NN – Sleep cloud, wooden warriors. Charm spam with a mace
NE – earth boots + earth power + eagle eyes. Destruction, blade wind, strength of giants, weapons of sharpness. Iron warriors (hydras), marble warriors. Iron bane (more on that in a minute). With a bit of effort you can drop Gia’s blessing which brings those mad mofo infantry straight through the game as fairly badass.

Renatus – with the obvious poison slant of the theme skellispam seems like the obvious angle, but I don’t really buy it. Only 25% of them can raise the dead, and they are only one of many mages you’ll be recruiting so you won’t have a pile of them. Even those that can will only cast it a couple times before passing out. Skellispam is all about critical mass, and you’re really not playing to your strengths to force it out of Renatus. That’s not to say there’s no place for skellispam, just not out of the Renatus. You will want to rotate undead into your forces to leverage cold and poison though, so think spirit mastery, banes, and manikins. For heavier D lifting you’ll mostly be leaning on llamia queens.
DD – shadow blast, disintegrate, skull mentors, banes, bane lords
SD – communion slaves, nether darts. Cap & ring give you VotD spam.
WD – research
DN – manikins (a nasty surprise when they’re unexpected)

Reveler – these guys are an important investment. The ones you really care about are the ones with a blood random, but there are certainly uses for the other 75% of them. The 25% with a N random are great for sleep cloud spam and sport a 40 leadership. The 50% who don’t get a random could be fairly miserable dead weight - they’re inefficient researchers as they heretically nix your magic scales yielding a non sacred 110 gold for 3 rp. Any research is good research, but for my money you’ll get more use out of them scripting eagle eyes and passing them a good bow while using them to herd troops. A half dozen high precision bows of war will thin out a lot of opposition who didn’t think you had any archers, while piercers or ethereal xbows will keep the enemy heavy hitters stepping lively and banefire xbows will ruin plenty of guy’s days. Still a tad expensive, but figure that cost into what you get out of the B randoms and they’re very much worth it. You’ll want to steadily invest in them to slowly build up your blood economy and Get It On. Just one bloodhunting province with 4 or 5 bloodhunters will let you spam orgy with every other blood random you get and still pile up the bloodslaves. The orgy may seem ineffective at first, I mean who needs a handful of maenads, right? The thing is, their growth is exponential. After a couple years you’ll be spawning dozens of free maenads per turn. Nowhere near EA Pangea numbers, but plenty enough to be useful. All those castles you cranked out? They’re looking pretty difficult to siege now. You can also pretty comfortably field a couple hundred maenads to fight under that iron bane you dropped (you didn’t think that was for use with your infantry, did you?)

So what do you do with those blood slaves that are piling up? First thing, empower your blood hunters to B2. This will roughly double the blood slaves each is pulling in, so it doesn’t take that long to pay for itself. In not that long you’ll find yourself with something resembling a real blood economy while generating a hundred free maenads per turn. Now, obviously there’s lots of useful stuff to do with blood slaves, but in this situation one angle stands out to me. Give those satyrs some teeth and build up a very powerful assassin corps.

Assassins with a lifelong protection and a cheap ranged weapon are a considerable threat to most anybody from bodyguarded mages to SCs. Obviously they won’t be killing everything in the game, but there are huge swaths of appropriate targets – particularly the double protected satyrs popping out 4 imps per turn with 15 defense. Just one surprise mass assassination can often be a war winner whether you cripple a critical army before a big fight or wipe out the support group at home destroying boosters and pretenders. Even if your opponent anticipates and pre-counters you, you’ll considerably limit the strategies that are available to him. Not many raiding thugs or SCs can cope with the neverending imps. Light bodyguards won’t cut it, you’ve got to use expensive elite bodyguards which dramatically increase the cost if you’re using them on all your commanders. Even skellispamers – generally the bane of assassins don’t have a chance. Don’t neglect to equip your assassins appropriately on top of the imps for what they’re facing. Ice pebble staffs, scepters of authority, fire bola, piercers, thunder bows, herald staffs, water bottles are all great ideas to finish off the tougher guys while your imps just keep them busy.

Therugs – communicant masters that get you the heavy buffs & enchantments. With a modest 4 slaves + power of the spheres you get A4, W4, S5 before any boosters. – Storm, wrathful skies, fog warriors, mass flight, quickening, will of the fates, etc. Not much to say because of the obvious power synergized with your awesome infantry, don’t let my lack of verbiage suggest they aren’t important.

Serpent priest – your signature mage, and they do some heavy lifting. The obvious angle is foul vapors, and of course they do this well. To really leverage it though you need some stuff to tie up the bad guys while they turn green and croak. The obvious thing is skellispam, but as I mentioned above Renatus just don’t cut it. There is another option though which the forge lord makes fairly economical, and that’s skullfaces. Use a second Serpent priest to buff quickness and each 12D skullface will spit out 10 skellies per turn, slap in a heart of life and just 2 or 3 are fairly overwhelming (as well as giving you 100% poison resistance when buffed by poison ward). Over a hundred undead before melee is joined, another hundred before those hundred can be killed…it’s overwhelming even without any other support – though there’s no reason to do that. ;)
WNNN – foul vapors, mass regen, mass protection, charm
WNND – mace + RoS + moonvine = Llamia queens (get you up into vamp lords to do lots of new fun stuff with your blood economy)
WNNS – moonvine, curse, Sirrush
WWNN = dragon master + ice drakes (plenty of hps to resist poison and wrathful skies)


Putting it all together

On the Northern front the wooden skinned legion is nigh unstoppable with their magically sharp weapons and on the verge of adding regeneration and mistform while the Will of the Fates themselves protect them.
On the Western front the fire immune legion fights under heat from hell as the heavens pour down fires, and will shortly bring firestorms to cover all their battlefields.
To the East ice drakes pummel the empires foes from behind never ending waves of undead, battlefields choked by noxious fumes and stiffening under the grip of winter while weighed down under thick waves of sleep clouds.
To the south waves of screaming maenads flow out, the armor of their foes falling useless to the ground while a hailstorm of absurdly precise arrows carpet the ground in front of their advance.
Off in the far East squads of ethereal, iron skinned, quickened hydras terrorize the countryside, hitting like a jackhammer those who can resist their poison and fear auras.
In the far West desperate troops try to break through buffed Sirrush as wrathful skies blast their formations apart.
Everywhere the enemies of the empire are found dead in their bedrolls come the morning, thousands of imp claw marks mutilating their bodies.
Any foolish enough to siege one of the empires castles find the walls repaired by near limitless maenads while swarms of satyrs decimate the leadership, the vengeance of the dead picking off those who manage to escape the imps. Very few get to witness to horror of attempting to storm through the gates as virtually every manner of unpleasantness known to man pours down upon them. Do they prep for cold? Fire? Poison? Or are they “fortunate” enough to just have to go toe to toe with the heavily enchanted legion?
The SCs who manage to emerge from a pile of imps and vengeance find themselves attempting to wade through tough opposition while bombarded by charm and disintegrate. Those who frustrate these attempts must content with bane lord anti-thugs and quickened manikin/mandragoras.

S P Q R - long live the empire!

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Love the guide. A great Christmas present for the community!

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

This is one of the best x-mas presents for me this year :) Baalz guide for one of my long time favorite nation in dom series. I played my first game in dom1 with them and most of my sp games in dom2 too :) I havent used them in late age much because i really didn't know good way to play them. Loosing the theurgs was little bit too big hit for them. And no angels :(

I really like skellyspam. There is nothing better to put on hot toast in the morning :D

But seriosly its very good counter tactic to many things. Things like raiding thugs or early game SC's. Works well against some sacreds too. I think that renatus can be quite effective spammers. Heart of life really is skellyspammers best friend. When fatigue is low it works just like any other +5 reinvig item. When fatigue goes over 100 the heart really starts to shine. Every turn the caster spends sleeping he will loose 15 fatigue. D 2 renatus with heart, skull staff and E4 bless will get 16 fatigue when casting raise skeletons. The same dude will shed off 17 fatigue when sleeping. That means 6 x raise skeletons on a row and then one more every other turn. Thats 140 skeletons by turn 50. Just one behind small pd can stop any light raiding partys. And they work well when used as groups.

I think i will try Pythium in my next late age MP game :)

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

You do realize the forge lord was dropped to 25% forge bonus in 1.7, right?

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

I'm curious how you protect against double protection assassins. I've been using that as Abyssia as well and it seems extraordinarily difficult to counter without a first turn kill on the assassin.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Remote assassin spells (mind hunt etc), heavy patrolling and decoy commanders.

The goal should be to invalidate the investment in assassins rather than trying to make commanders that can kill them.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Ah, no I didn't. A forge lord is probably still a reasonable choice, but likely a rainbow out site searching is a better way to go. Doesn't take too many extra sites found to offset gems saved with a 25% forge bonus if most of what you're forging is in the 10-15 gem range.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Yeah, several decoy commanders that *can* kill them on the first turn sitting around the real targets fairly rapidly bring the cost of lost assassins over the cost of lost targets. Put some flying boots or boots of long stride on whatever toughish cheap guys you've got (bane lords, sleepers, etc.) An outfitted assassin corps does still have considerable teeth on the defense though even if it's expected, as guys running/flying forward on the first turn don't have a long life expectancy marching into enemy territory and most remote spells won't hit hiding guys.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

My least favorite part of LA Pythium is the commander with the blood random. In one game I recruited 40 of them before I got one. That pretty much kills the blood strategy when the RNG does not cooperate.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

That's unlikely to happen if the RNG is actually working randomly. If 25% of them get a blood random then you've got a 97% chance of landing at least one blood random after recruiting 12. Sounds buggy unless you're exaggerating.

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.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

LA Pyth doesn't have any unique sacred SCs like MA's angels, so unless you wish for them or use shroud than I don't see SCs that will benefit any bless. I generally prefer W4N4 MoR instead of W9, better bless for the hydras and more useful magic paths for later on. N4 is much easier to get to 6 for GoH and stuff than N1/2 and W4 is enough for all the W you'll ever need, W6 and even 7 is easily obtained, and that's more than enough even for Maelstrom(assuming you manage to get enough W gems for it in the first place).

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

The Sphinx and Oracle are mostly interchangeable. The only difference is that the oracle have fortuneteller 50 and the Sphinx has more hitpoints and earth 1. The earth is the most important, because Pythium can never get higher than earth 1 on its mages. A sleeping sphinx with earth 4, could forge earth boots for the Epoptes, witch could in turn cast Gnome Lore. The Sphinx could later, with a ring of wizardry or earth ring, cast important earth spells like, Riches from beneath and summon earth king.

Also, have you ever tried thugging with a teleporting Sphinx? Neither have I, but I assume its Great!

Edit: When I looked again I see that the oracle have 4 misc slots versus the Sphinx 1. That change things a bit, but I would still go with the Sphinx as it is cheaper than buying earth on an oracle. the oracle would probably be better if you wanted to cast Wish, but without gemgens and with late age only having 35% site chance, it might not be the must have tactic it once were. Also, the oracle is vulnerable to poison for some strange reason?



LA Pythium lack sacred bless chassies, unfortunately.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

The Sphinx is supposed to be immobile, even regarding teleporting spells.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Really? Is that something unique to the sphinx or is it something new? Because I remember reading in Matryx Lets play, that he teleported his immobile pretender onto land.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Total immobility is a Sphinx thing, hardcoded i believe. The Sacred Statue can teleport iirc.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Oh? Alright then. Another beautiful plan smashed to pieces. :(

Oh yea! Your playing LA Pythium in a MP game right now! But why the N bless for hydras? They already have regen. And that the extra regen will only help once it is down to its last head. And that head will only have it increased from 12 to 14 hp/turn! Hardly a big improvement.
The only thing that would benefit from an N4 bless would be the Sirrus, whom would gain 4 or 5 hp/turn.

As for important globals...... The snake priests will gain N3 one time out of four. In fact, N is the only path that Pythium can reliably get higher than 2. If you have researched construction, you would be able to make, first a Thistle mace, then a Moon Vine bracelet and last a Treelord's staff. Bringing him up to N6. Granted, this is a bit costly, both in research time and gems. But you would have to forge a few of them anyway for your pretender. And you would not get away from Const 6 even with the pretender.

Although a pure W9 bless cost about 78 points more than your bless, It is IMHO a better investment. What with hard to hit hydras that are faster and gain 50% extra attacks.




On further reflection..... My god! The theurgs are terrible! How is it that they can go from recruit everywhere A1W1S2H2, to Capitol only S1?1H1 without a change in price! Yes, I understand that they are your only S2 caster and only air caster..... But even so, I can almost never justify buying them when I could have been buying a snake priest!

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

You don't like the idea of Rings of Sorcery and Wizardry for 75% off? Granted, this isn't true with 1.7, but still, those very expensive forges are much easier. Plus he's not the worst rainbow SC chassis you could get.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Corinthian, I just find W9 to bee too costly for what it gives, especially when you can't use a W9 mage. also, quickness for hydras is counter intuitive as it fatigues them way too much. hydras kill with their poison, they shouldn't be over fatiguing themselves and trying to win quickly, like say F9W9 blessed Jags/Vans/etc. also a high W+N mage has plenty of other uses later on, but I won't reveal all my secrets ;)

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Sphinx can't teleport. I think for all (relevant) intents and purposes that oracle owns sphinx. Unless you want to turtle in your cap ;)
Forge lord has 25% forge bonus in CBM. You'll need to forge one of the unique hammers to increase that.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

The Forge Lord had a 50% forge bonus (didn't realize it had changed), which meant you saved:

10 gems on a crystal shield
13 gems on a skullface/fire helm
20 gems on a ring of sorcery
33 gems on a ring of wizardry
etc.

Wasn't hard at all to save 100+ gems per year. He can also, in a pinch, make a good SC. Dropping him down to 25% forge bonus is a good change, it makes him one viable option out of a few others.

Re: LA Pythium - Much more than you were expecting
 

Have to try one sometimes.