[DrPraetorious]

You have to *summon* the vampires. Off of your god.

Having spying and magic on the same unit is not synergistic. If you want to give late era pythium powerful spies and asassins - well, I agree, they should have those.

I'll agree that late period pythium needs Summon Couatl and Summon Sirrush.

Nothing useful?

WW/NNN/S opens up a top of the line collection of thug equipment - boots of speed, swords of swiftness, decent armor, rings of regeneration and lucky charms? It's painful to not have air (no displacement, no weightless shields, no defense against lightning) but hardly a dealbreaker.

If you worship an Earth deity you start to seriously consider clam hordeing.

Water-boosting is easy enough that with Constr 6 you can make Unfrozen, which diversifies your magic a lot.

When your main army is made up of sacred hydras, healing light becomes nuts. You can build serpent mages everywhere - and one in four can spam that spell. Once you've got people pinned down with hydras, you start casting quickness on the hydras, you start casting fear spells on people who are already frightened of the hydras, it's very respectable combat magic.

So you can give LE pythium a bigger mage if you want - but what they really need are good national spells.

In additiona to couatl (NS) and sirrush (SN), they could have -

DNN - Snakes are ritually slain, and their spirits are contacted and offered the opportunity to adopt human form in exchange for service. They are cold-blooded undead sacred to the serpent cult, armed with poison bows. 3 archers per casting for 10 death gems.

WNN - Northern serpents. Summons serpents in combat, can be cast underwater. The northern serpents are not poisonous per se, but they are immune to poison and radiate intense cold; their bites always bleed profusely. These serpents are ethereal and sacred to the cult of pythium. Costs 50 fat, you get 1 snake per casting.

And I could go on but that's what they need - a whole lot of frickin' snakes.