Dealing with Hydras

[Omnirizon]

Scenario:

20 - 40 Hydras on your doorstep. The bless is open, but only one strong and one weak bless (Think of the worst combination you can).

What are some possible solutions to this problem. Give me several: SC setups, army compositions, magic, combinations of all those. Give me an array of solutions, covering both high and mid level research.

[HoneyBadger]

What nation are you playing?

[HoneyBadger]

Nation basically aside, the first thing that comes to my mind is curse-spamming the hydras themselves, and then mass producing Bow of Botulf, and sending in cheapo flyers equipped with medallion of vengeance. Attack the rear ranks enough, and the whole army might retreat.

Remember too, each hydra is a 250 gold, non-sacred, gold suck, so hit them in the pocketbook by instilling unrest.

[Omnirizon]

Argatha.

E9 cyclops available. E9 blessed blindfighters on standby (I'm afraid using them against Hydras is wasteful, since their high prot is meaningless.)

[Omnirizon]

Hydras, to my understanding, can only take as much damage as their current form has available; making medallion of vengeance rather underwhelming against them.

[vfb]

Blindfighters is LA Agartha, right?

Do you have Enchant-3 for skelly spam Necros? With a big poison-immune undead shield you should do okay. 30 Hydras takes a while to build up, so you might have been able to get Evok-4 to blast them with a few Blade Winds before your chaff stops their advance on the battlefield.

Then you can switch to Magma Bolts or Farstrike etc, depending on the randoms on your Necros and what you have researched.

Fight in cold provinces if you can. If you've got friendly neighbors too in an MP game you could have them send you a Snake Ring for your god, and cast Wolven Winter to make your battle province colder.

Also, recruit some light crossbowmen. They've got bad precision, so you need lots to make sure some bolts land in the squares where the Hydras are. But Hydras are size-6, no shield obviously, so they're pretty vulnerable to missile fire. 'Fire Large Monsters' to avoid shield decoy tricks.

[Omnirizon]

I'm close enough to Enchant-3 or Evo-4 to reach them in one turn of research. What about Thau-4 for Plague? That seems like a really good spell for dealing with them to me.

I've actually got cold3 scale, so that's a bonus.

[K]

Hydras are wicked weak to archers.

For Argartha specific tactics, you should be using Marble Statues backed-up by guys casting Petrify and/or Earth Meld.

[Omnirizon]

This is LA Argatha, BTW.

What are these marble statues of which you speak? MA troops?

I figured they are weak to archers. I just need something to keep them from reaching archers.

chaff like militia or cheap troops dies way too quickly. Hydras mow through a hundred of them in a few turns. I was thinking I need something robust, or something ethereal.

Crushers would work, but I can't summon tons of them and they are susceptible to Soul Slay. I was actually wondering if Spirit Mastery would be a good idea. Ethereal, 100 PR, and they paralyze! 1 HP doesn't matter, because Hydras do enough damage per head to kill any chaff in one hit anyway. They might be able to hold back a mass of Hydras while archers tore them down.

[HoneyBadger]

The Medallion was more for taking out the human commanders in back of the hydra-thus, why they're on flying troops.