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?

[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.

[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,

[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

[cleveland]

Unending chaff + Decay. Kills Hydras dead.

[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.

[Renojustin]

Raise Skeletons x 4 Raise Dead x 1, Cast Spells.

Usually the skeletons kill a few bodies for the Raise Dead spell. Plan accordingly... if you don't think 50 bodies will be there by turn 5, don't cast 5 Raise Deads, but each one has the potential to put out 10 undead bodies, which is fantastic when you can pull it off and usually more effective than even the skeleton spam.

[thejeff]

And if he's backing up the Hydras with Vestals and Principes, try delaying tactics. Use enough undead to hold his living troops in the poison clouds and let him kill his own.

[llamabeast]

Yeah, but the ordinary thaums are only D1, is that right? So they can't do skelly spam.

You want grand thaumaturgs spamming I guess. Set as many as you have on "Raise skeletons"x5, and you will have a lot of skeletons. If he has no priests with his army he will struggle to deal with that.

You can also forge some skull staffs to let the ordinary thaumaturgs do it, but that's expensive.

Oh yes, and communion is an excellent solution if you have a fair number of thaumaturgs.