Ermor vs Pythium Hydras, help!

[Viajero]

Noob here so bear with me...I have found one thread on how to counter hydras here:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...=counter+hydra

But maybe some of you have additional info or experiences. The consensus seems to be fire rate vs fireppower, i.e. lots of archers/slingers.

What about defeating MA Pythium hydras from an MA Ermor point of view at around turn 15-20?

1- Shadow Vestal are ethereal plus undead (not affected by posion), so I would think they could be a good match for hydras? no?
2- Magic-wise what are the best hydra counters at around turn 15-20 for Ermor?

any other general tips to have Ermor beat hydras at the early stages of the game?

Thanks!

[VedalkenBear]

Viajero: Waves and waves of undead. MA Ermor should always have lots and lots of undead chaff to throw against anyone, and as you point out, they're all Poison-immune.

The problem comes when those Hydras are backed up by their mages (who are also all Priests). You'll lose your Undead in droves.

So, some suggestions. First, get some Undead Horsemen. (IIRC, Holy-3 priests or higher for MA Ermor can reanimate them.) Set them on the flanks with Attack Rear. Worst case, they tangle with the Hydras, and since they're Size-4, the priest spam on Pythium's part won't hurt as many units. Best case, they may take out the mages. I forget, but if MA Ermor still has the Equites, then you could mix these in with the Longdead Horsemen and make it even better.

Second, research Terror. Spam it on the Hydras. If you're lucky, the mages won't have Poison Immunity, and if you can break the Hydras, you stand a pretty good chance of killing the Mages just from the Hydras' own poison cloud. Another option is Paralyze. Soul Slay and Mind Burn are not that useful, because of the iterative nature of the Hydra. However, Paralyze shuts them down hard. Skellyspam will make it that much harder for the Hydra to clear out all the Undead.

Are these Hydras getting buffed at all? What other units are on Pythium's side?

[Viajero]

Originally Posted by VedalkenBear

Viajero: Waves and waves of undead. MA Ermor should always have lots and lots of undead chaff to throw against anyone, and as you point out, they're all Poison-immune.

The problem comes when those Hydras are backed up by their mages (who are also all Priests). You'll lose your Undead in droves.

So, some suggestions. First, get some Undead Horsemen.

Second, research Terror. Spam it on the Hydras.

Are these Hydras getting buffed at all? What other units are on Pythium's side?

I ll try these.

Waves of undead: how do you mange to get those? The thing is that at turn 15-20 I can not manage to get waves and waves of undead from the few Thaumatugs I have available for battle (around 6 of them at this stage). At most I could muster around 20-25 undead units in one turn and that means they are not doing anything else that turn. so to compile a wave of around 70-80 I mneed to have these thanums stuck 3 turns doing nothing but reanimate?

Horsemen: indeed, but they usually get stuck with troops before striking any commander. These hydras come acompanied by around 20- 30 battle vestas/principes. Worst case scenario around 50 of them.

Terror: that spell is high in the research tree, innit? the most I can have now i think is the level 1 Frighten? this may be enough?

No mages with the Hydras at this stage, Pythium has them all researching, as opposed to me. I have all my thaums spread in the map gobbling up indies, but as I said the ones close enough to the hydras are only around 5 or 6 of them.

Thanks,

[VedalkenBear]

Originally Posted by Viajero

I ll try these.

Waves of undead: how do you mange to get those? The thing is that at turn 15-20 I can not manage to get waves and waves of undead from the few Thaumatugs I have available for battle (around 6 of them at this stage). At most I could muster around 20-25 undead units in one turn and that means they are not doing anything else that turn. so to compile a wave of around 70-80 I mneed to have these thanums stuck 3 turns doing nothing but reanimate?

Well, you can either go the research route (which means running for Paralyze as fast as possible, and should be easily attainable by turn 15-20) or the Undead HORDE route. The rulebook's 'default strategy' for Ermor is surprisingly good. To really leverage MA Ermor, you need to be recruiting the Thaums. For your first few turns, I would suggest sending out your forces with a Thaumaturg so that he can reanimate the corpses left after the battle (Reanimate Soulless). Once there are no more corpses left in a province, move the Thaumaturg to the 'freshest' province (the one with the most bodies). Rotating three or so Thaumaturgs through this should give a good 'income' of Undead to throw.

Since Ermor doesn't really have much difficulty in expanding, I would suggest a rainbow Pretender, so that you have some research going on. If your goal is Thaumaturgy-4 (which is where Paralyze is, I believe), that's 360 RPs. If you need this by turn 15 or so, that means you need 24 or so research on your pretender. This should be easily possible. This frees all of your Thaumaturgs for Undead-raising.

Unless CBM has changed it, Paralyze is only Astral-2, which means that all of your Grand Thaumaturgs can cast it, and if you have a Banner of the North Star (which I doubt), or the equivalent spell, _all_ of your Thaums can cast it. I can't foresee how an Undead-shielded Paralyze push can fail to stop any reasonable number of Hydras.

I doubt you're playing a Single Era mod, but _if_ you're fighting the Serpent Cult and not the Theurg Pythium (that is, LA Pythium rather than MA Pythium), then laugh all the way to the bank as you Apostacize the Hydras.

I'm sorry that I forgot that Terror is unavailable to all of your Mages.

If he's using non-Poison-immune troops along with the Hydras, then your best choice is to put your Longdead Horsemen front and center and charge the Hydras. Sure, they'll die. However, it'll stop his line as close as possible to their starting points, and the infantry doesn't know enough to stay out of the poison. End result is that they'll die to 'friendly poison'.

Now, another research goal for MA Ermor is Evo-7, for Nether Darts. So you may want to investigate spells in that tree that you can use for that purpose.

Horsemen: indeed, but they usually get stuck with troops before striking any commander. These hydras come acompanied by around 20- 30 battle vestas/principes. Worst case scenario around 50 of them.

Oh yeah, Poison em all.

Terror: that spell is high in the research tree, innit? the most I can have now i think is the level 1 Frighten? this may be enough?

Frighten isn't bad, since all of your Mages can throw it. Terror is of course preferable.

No mages with the Hydras at this stage, Pythium has them all researching, as opposed to me. I have all my thaums spread in the map gobbling up indies, but as I said the ones close enough to the hydras are only around 5 or 6 of them.

Thanks,

5 or 6 Thaumaturgs spamming Frighten may be able to deal with the Hydras, but I doubt it. If you have 6, and can Communion, then 2 sets of 3 Thaumaturgs can throw Paralyze.

[chrispedersen]

All these options are tactically excellent - now use some strategy.


Two things come to mind:

1. Hydras are hard to mass. Counter attack where he isn't. SPlitting hydras singly makes them easy to defeat -so he wont do that.

2. Hydras are expensive. Hit his economy. Hit his capital or other forts with things like blight, baleful star - not once - but 5-6 times a turn. Once the unrest gets high enough - he won't be able to build them.

Everyone that doesn't get built is one you don't have to kill.

3. Thirdly, tactically, hydras are slow. Things like curse of stone, sleep cloud, terror+prison of fire (esp under cbm), can prevent hydras from ever getting to the front - so now you just need to make sure yours don't walkinto the poison cloud: set them to guard commander. Let your commanders spam undead or illusions.

Let him lose to time out....

[Ironhawk]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

3. Thirdly, tactically, hydras are slow. Things like curse of stone, sleep cloud, terror+prison of fire (esp under cbm), can prevent hydras from ever getting to the front - so now you just need to make sure yours don't walkinto the poison cloud: set them to guard commander. Let your commanders spam undead or illusions.

Let him lose to time out....

This is a really bad idea. Players using Hyrdas tend to use time out strategies themselves since surviving is what hyrdas are really good at. You could find yourself playing the waiting game while your enemy has just cast Foul Vapors and then you are totally screwed.

[Quitti]

Shadow Vestals pretty much require some sort of bless to be useful against hydras - prot0 really hurts considering that hydras make plenty of attacks to get through your defence of 12 (+4 from shield). Being ethereal negates some of the hits - so they are probably your best bet, but if they get struck, they're probably done for.

For magic counters - perhaps mind burn or shadow bolts - both unfortunately restricted to your grand thaumaturgs unless you have astral hats or death staffs. Mind burn isn't very useful against the main head since it'll probably just regenerate through that, but it'll burn through the smaller heads and gives a better chance for your melee to chop up the rest. Providing that you can get through that MR14, which is kind of nasty.

Edit: Like Vedalken suggested - paralyze is good, but it's thau4 so you probably won't have access to it yet. If you have ench1 you should just use those thaumaturgs to go nuts on animate skeleton.

[ano]

Shadow Vestals are neither poison nor cold immune so it's not an option. Skellpam + reanimated undead will work. Flanking longdead horsemen on "Hold and attack rearmost" will work best if you just want to rout them

[Viajero]

Bugger!

I had also forgotten that communion may raise the Thaums level enough to be able to cast Terror maybe?

By the way, what do you mean by Skelly spam or unending chaff? script thaumaturgs to raise undead spell in battle? each thaum only raises 1 undead... how can that be a spam?

BTW thanks for the advice so far.

[cleveland]

Unending chaff + Decay. Kills Hydras dead.