[Cohen]

Thurfir, an advice.
If you went to 155 and wanted to save army, didn't engage, enter the province, set your army all behind with retreat oder.
C'tis capitol will return to his owner due to castle inside.
So unless C'tis was coming into 178, you'd have all your army saved.
If C'tis however has gone in 178 you'll get wiped out even without fighting.

For Pythium being weak in late game, I'd laugh at you. Pythium is far stronger than Abysya, with communion you can cast a very wide range of massive killing spells of ANY kind. Pretty difficult to find the right resistances against Pyth even for SCs.

The use of 1 PD in every province. If you've 0 PD, you don't see the battle, and you know only the enemy has taken you the province.
With 1 PD that costs 1 gold only, you see the battle, you know at least the exact enemy army composition, and what items they've.
With 5-10 PD (costing respectively 15 and 55) you gain:
Some chances to resist to a single scout/assassin and perhaps the hawks. Some PD can hold wolves too like Ulm PD.
With 10 you gain some not pop killing patrol and better chances to resist hawks and wolves.