How do you use hydras?
 

It keeps poisoning my own units; I am really getting pissed off.

I suppose I can only use hydras with sacred troops that have poison resistance?

Re: How do you use hydras?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Don't have to be sacred. And you need poison resistance (100) to survive, because the hydra's poison is very toxic. If you play Serpent Cult, your mages can summon poison-immune critters. Or you can try Poison Ward on 50% resistant lizards warriors, if you find a lizard province. Undead troops is another option.

Or you can use gladiators, if you don't mind paying for troops that'll leave after their first battle.

Re: How do you use hydras?
 

Put the hydras on a flank and forward, keep the non-immune troops back or on the other flank with hold/attack, fire or guard. The battlefield's fairly large, so don't mix your hydras with everybody else as you don't have to.
Get a nature mage, use the early Summon Horned Serpents ritual to get the expensive, Pythium-only hydras some cheaper poison-immune backup that you can quickly replenish, too.

Re: How do you use hydras?
 

For others... keep in mind that these suggestions also apply to heat aura and cold aura creatures.

[ November 11, 2003, 15:38: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: How do you use hydras?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">However, if you expect a long battle (especially when storming a fortress), you probably shouldn't use heat, cold or poison aura creatures at all, unless your entire army is immune (Caelum, Jotunheim, Abysia, some themes of Ermor) or at least resistant (C'tis - and even then, try to put poison immune (e.g. undeads) near bog beasts or where you expect the poison sling bullets to fall). Formations WILL get mixed up and jammed together in that type of fight.

Or you can just accept a certain amount of friendly fire casualties, if you are going to inflict even greater damage on the enemy. I'm not thrilled with this approach but it can work.

Re: How do you use hydras?
 

I've been mostly using them as a second army all by themselves, with horned serpents, bog beasts, and vine creatures as a backup. Any leader can lead them, you just have to put him in the far back and make sure he stays there, either by casting spells or by firing a missle weapon. The only problem in the early game they might have are massed crossbows, because the hydras are slow. Anything else will rout very quickly and usually without inflicting any casualties. I had a fun battle when I was defending the province with my toxic army that posioned my entire local defense militia force on the first turn (militia guys moved right into the cloud they left behind), and they routed right after that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Btw, another great toxic combo are serpent dancers and poison slingers. Dancers die, but not easily due to their high defense, and with fanaticism you can take out some pretty serious opposition, since pretty much everybody will get poisoned one way or the other. Even though slingers tend to run into their own clouds and die as a result...

[ November 11, 2003, 17:39: Message edited by: HJ ]