[Huzurdaddi]

But overall, it'll be a contest of economic resource.

In general this is true. However the problem is that his mages are sacred. This effectivly doubles the number of mages he can have. Yokies! I really think that this is the crux of the problem. His costs are lower due to the sacred modifier.

Hm, have you considered using Golden Era and trying to out-research him?

While I have not checked the numbers I doubt that anyone will be able to compete with sacred researchers for price/performance.

And Arco's strength is incredibly versatile magic - you have strong astral, and strong elemental magic - you can cast over half the spells out there.

Seems that people think that Pythium has inflexable battle ground magic. I don't know if I agree. They have strong astral, decent air, and decent water. They also have a random pick. Don't forget that due to them being excellently setup for communion those little randoms can easily become level 3 or 4 in combat and then they become real power.

Normally that would not be too much of a problem. However with their reduced maintainance costs they can really pump these guys out.

Your heavily armoured infantery is resource expensive but a lot tougher than his regular units

I think in general Pythium's armies are slightly sub-standard. They are not horrible by any means but they just do not have a "killer troop" (unless you count hydras, but their maintainance is too much for my taste).

Your priestesses can cure every ailment. Milk this ability for all its worth.

A nice ability to be sure. Really helps out those supercombatants!

Well, Pythium Prov Defense is pure crap...

True enough. It goes back to their army being somewhat sub-standard. Still sacred casters ... yeash.

That is indeed the ARM Commander from Total Annihilation, the best RTS made to date. Naturally, on my site, anyone who disagrees is a heretic and must be burned at the stake.

I think that the greatness of the game grew out of the interface infinate queuing changes everything. The only faw in with the game was the unbalanced units. This was mostly fixed in uberhack (it only took them like 6 years!!) but it took a while.

Oh and the TA-Hook is something that should have been included as well! It changed the game!

A TA2 with updated graphics, uberhack level (or better!) balance, the hook, and a good matchmaking system (a-la WC3) would be the best game ever produced.