[Lingchih]

I thought this post was about LA Pythium. We all know how nice MA Pythium is... the question here is how to get the most out of the ludicrous LA Pythium, which turns all Pythium strategies onto their heads.

I have been playing them in MP for a few weeks now, and have learned quite a bit about them, although they are still a bit of an enigma. They are powerful though, for all their strangeness.

I usually recruit a Serpent Priest every turn. They are your backbone mages. They can lead armies, and they can lead Hydras (100 poison immune). The comitatenses are your front line troops. You need to be able to recruit a lot of them. They are not that expensive, but are resource intensive, so plan your scales accordingly. They are the toughest, fastest heavy infantry in the late game. I will build one early expansion force with just them and my Prophet.

The second early expansion force is a Serpent Priest leading some sacred Hydras... about 5-7 is usually good (that's a lot of money, I know. Raise those taxes and patrol early to get the money). This force can take almost any indies... just take care not to let the Priest get hit by a stray arrow. I do not mix my Hydras and regular troops... way too easy to accidentally poison the regular troops. The Hydras with a blessing do just fine by themselves.

My third early expansion force is my awake pretender. As mentioned above, the Prince of Death works very nicely for this. You may want to get construction 2 and equip him a bit before sending him out... they are a bit frail unequipped. I generally go with just D4-5 on him... E4 also in nice, but your sacred Hydras don't need it, and I like to use the extra points in my scales. And be sure to take Dom 9, so that he has Awe. Very important that he has Awe, to go along with his Fear. He can also lead Hydras in a pinch (since he is poison immune). A PoD with a Hydra backing army is a terrible thing to face.

All the heretic mages allow you to branch into almost any path. Just make sure you spread them out. They do not Dominion kill very quickly, but get too many in one place and you have trouble. You are still mainly a nature/death race (strange combo), but you have good access to Astral, Water & Fire, with some Earth and Air, and even a chance at blood thrown in. None of your heretic mages will be death dealers, but you can quickly build a group that is the equivalent of a rainbow mage for site searching.

As for late game... well, you are kind of out-classed here by many other nations. But if you empower/boost your mages intelligently, you can get access to most of the late game stuff. You still have Theurgs, though they a bit weak, but can be boosted to eventually make rings of Wizardy/Sorcery. And you have great nature mages in the Serpent Priests, who can easily be boosted to cast the mid-late game globals.

I know this is kind a scatter-shoot post. I apologize that is is not more organized. Just my play style on LA Pythium.