[OmikronWarrior]

Pretender Design:

The goals with most pretender designs is to simultaneously enhance national strengths while shoring up weaknesses. With good mages and troops, but expensive castles and the need to build labs and temples, Pythium plays to strengths with positive scales, especially income and magic. Immobile pretenders are the most efficient ways to get good scales. On the flip side, Pythium really only has three magic paths covered well (Air, Astral, and Water), and only dips occasionally into fire. The solution to cover this weakness is a rainbow pretender, but this will leave a player with a weaker dominion score fewer positive scales. Getting a SC pretender is another option, but this is not recommended as it fails to address either the strengths or weaknesses of Pythium. Regardless of which route the player takes, Earth of at least level 4 is recommended. This reinvigoration bless benefits both Pythium's communions and their angelic summons.

Immobiles:

For maximum efficiency, there are two immobile chasises worth considering, the Oracle and the Blood Fountain. Since the central purpose in either is to give Pythium the best possible scales, setting the immobile to sleep or imprisoned is a worthwhile way to more get points. For reference sake, know that adding a new path on a mobile costs 40 points, and to raise it to level 4, 112 points total, nearly three scale clicks.

The Oracle: With a base cost of zero and a base dominion of 4, this is a great way for the player to achieve the best scales in his MP game. However, its base magic is Astral-3, and Pythium already has Astral magic in excess. However, if the player puts Earth magic on their Pretender as recommended, the combination is actually great for Pythium. Earth and Astral combine to allow the Oracle to forge Crystal Coints (+1 Astral magic), Crystal Matrices and Collars (auto-cast Communion Master and Communion Slave, either allowing non-Astral mages to join communions or allowing communion masters to get their spell off a turn earlier), and a large variety of useful equipment. Of course, a high level Astral mage is always useful. If the player increases the Oracle's Astral to level 6, then he only requires the three miscellaneous Astral boosters to be able to cast Wish. The oracle can also be teleported onto armies to cast Master Enslave. Unfortunately, the Magic Resistance bonus provided by an Astral Bless cannot raise it past 18, the default for Angels, so the bless utility of Astral is almost non-existent. Also, the player should keep in mind that the oracle cannot equip Dwarven hammers, so the expensive Astral forging should in general be done by Arch-Theurgs.

The Blood Fountain: Similar to the Oracle in most ways, except the Blood fountain has a base Blood magic of 3 instead of the Oracle's Astral. The Fountain also has a fear aura, but its unlikely that this aura will ever be used. The real advantage for the Fountain is a bonus to blood hunting. Even with Blood at the base 3, the Fountain will typically capture over 10 slaves a turn, presuming patrollers keep unrest at 0. This is the easiest and quickest way for a nation like Pythium to break into blood magic. The combination of Blood and Earth lets the Fountain forge Blood stones, which provides a double whammy in helping Pythium break into Earth magic, better than an Oracle could. Another obvious use for blood slaves is to forge boots of youth, which stop the aging process and prevents afflictions due to old age (provided the mage wears the boots before the regularly scheduled check in the winter). For these reasons, the Blood Fountain is recommended before the Oracle, though both are primarily a vehicle for positive scales.

The Sphinx and the Statue: These are also very similar to the Oracle, with the basic trade off being a slightly higher initial cost in exchange for more HP. Indeed, the Sphinx has a base of 500 HP, the highest in the game. Neither, however, is recommended. Not for the slight additional cost, but because they have a mere 1 or 2 miscellaneous item slots versus the Oracle and the Fountain's 4. Also, the Sphinx is completely immobile and cannot change locations even with Teleport, which the Oracle can, and thus will never be used in battle except when the empire is already lost making the excess HP meaingless.

Rainbows:

For this section, I am only going to discuss the different chaises briefly. The real decision in creating a rainbow is what paths the player choses for him or her and to what level he or she raise them. Hence, individual paths will be discussed under their own section. The player should feel free to apply what is written to about these paths to any other Pretender build, even Super Combatants which are not recommended by this guide.

Air: Arch Theurgs grant the player Air-3, with only a 2.5% chance of Air-4. Putting Air-4 on the Pretender allows both Air bosters to be forged. Still, Air is not recommended as its to much a redundancy. When it comes to casting higher level Air magic, Pythium has other options, namely Power of the Spheres or Communions. Upon reaching Construction-6, a properly boosted Arch Theurg can forge a Ring of Wizardry, which boosts Air as well as all other magic paths, allowing for the first Air Booster to be forged, which itself allows further Air boosters to be made.

Astral: Like Air, this path is usually redundant on a Pretender. The Oracle allows higher levels of Astral making endgame casting easier, but for the most part Arch Theurgs will handle all Astral magic needs. The one exception to this is a pretender that already has Earth Magic, Astral and Earth magic make a potent combination.

Blood: Pythium is not a blood nation, and should not be thought of as a blood nation even if the player does choose the Blood Fountain. Some guides suggests becoming a blood nation is as easy as getting the first 50 slaves. Certainly this allows a unit to be empowered so he or she can blood hunt efficiently. However, real blood nations do not need to pay 50 blood slaves every time they want a hunter. Furthermore, the very act of blood hunting comes at a cost, it takes a mage away from research and usually the province that is being hunted looses income. Both are stinkers for Pythium. Still, a little bit of blood magic can go a long way. Boots of Youth look great on the ever aging Theurgs and Arch-Theurgs. Blood magic also yields a variety of summons to diversify Pythium's angelic lineup and save on pearls. There is also one incredible spell for communions: Reinvigoration. It sets the casters fatigue to zero, but when cast by a Master in a Communion, reduces all slaves fatigue to zero as well. Sabbath Master and Slave are blood spell equivalents letting blood mages join communions. Just remember Blood Magic can never be anything more than a side show for Pythium.

Death: This branch of magic has the distinction of offering numerous death mages for summoning. Once you get your first death mage and a slight supply of death gems, he can cast Dark Knowledge and start site searching. Putting Death magic on your Pretender (no more than 3 levels) is a good way to break into Death magic, but is not as important as Earth. On a side note, empowering a Fire-1 Arch Theurg lets him build Flaming Skulls, a fire boosters then allows the player to remotely search for fire sites.

Earth: I consider this the one indispensable path for Pythium. Pythium has no native Earth mages, and Dwarven Hammers (Earth-3) are very useful for a nation planning on forging expensive items (such as Rings of Sorcery and Wizardry). Furthermore, Earth-4 gives the 2 reinvigoration bless. Thats really handy to have for communions, and with the right gear your angelic summons will not need separate reinvigoration items to be effective as thugs or SC's. Anything above 4 is gravy for the bless and possibly endgame globals like Forge of the Ancients.

Fire: Fire-1 on a quarter of Arch Theurgs is not that great. However, the need for fire is not that great either. I recommend skipping this path in favor of summoning an Arch Angel down the road (which comes with Fire-4). Only Astral-5 and 50 pearls required to cast it, which is a lot cheaper for Pythium than the design points.

Nature: Pythium has no native Nature mages, but Nature is the only magic path that can be reliably found on independent mages, though only at the N-1 level. That being said, using a Ring of Sorcery gets the indy mage to Nature-2, where he can forge the Thistle Mace booster allowing him to remotely site search, forge more Maces, or forge a number of useful nature items. A small Nature bless for the regeneration is handy on Angelic thugs, but should be a low priority.

Water: Theurgs and Arch-Theurgs have this path covered well enough for Pythium's basic needs. At Water-4, Angels get a small defensive bonus, but Angels rely on other defensive mechanism and are helped marginally by this bonus. The only important water synergy is with nature for the construction of Clams, but this can be achieved by empowering an independent Nature mage and summoning Naiads for additional clamming duties. Still, might be worthwhile on a Rainbow pretender to have 2 or 3 to jump start having a water income.