Pythium: newbish Vestals question

[geo981010]

Licker-
Water 9 is great on most holy mages, but that blessing and Pythium mages doesn't add up to the sum of the parts. Water 9 gives 50% quickness like you mentioned (2 spells/attacks 1 round, only one the next), but the quickness spell gives quickness 100% (2 attacks every round). Since you have to be blessed to get the Holy bonus, any non-prophet mage should be quickened anyway on the same round as the Divine Blessing is cast on the battlefield. Very little gain for their mages...

For holy mages that don't get Water magic like Marignon and Vanheim (especially Vanheim - no feet and no random magic on the Vanir, so that's the only real way to get them quickened), the bonus is really powerful

[Wendigo]

To the original poster:

Taking 4+ Nature in the pretender of a nation with mage-priest such as Vanir or Arch-Theurgs is not a good idea IMO.

Do you really want to see your mages charging forward into hand to hand combat with their fists as soon as they suffer a scratch? The results can be painful!

[Pocus]

for quality troops, if you have astral mages, etheralize them. Thats not specific on vestals though, but it works rather well with them too.

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Wendigo:
To the original poster:

Taking 4+ Nature in the pretender of a nation with mage-priest such as Vanir or Arch-Theurgs is not a good idea IMO.

Do you really want to see your mages charging forward into hand to hand combat with their fists as soon as they suffer a scratch? The results can be painful!

/smacks head

Excellent point - thank you Wendigo. What would you have chosen for a dual-bless in such a scenario as I described? As an aside, my pretender in that game was the Divine Emperor.

Or would you not have bothered with dual-bless at all?

It seems like because the Vestals are such cheap Sacred units (good gold cost, perfect resource cost), I want to utilize them in the best way possible - but maybe a bless strategy isn't the way to play it at all. Any thoughts?

By the way, thank you Pocus for your insights as well. Hopefully I'll have my full copy of the game today (crossing my fingers for UPS to pull through) so I'll be able to test things more thoroughly this weekend.

[Wauthan]

I agree with Pocus on this one. It's all about how you deploy the vestals. These units got very little going for them besides the low cost and defence so water9 will play on their strength.

What you need to do is to deploy them in smaller Groups with a mage in the midst. Set the mage to cast protective spells like protection and luck while the vestals are on "hold and attack". They won't be able to take down anything but they will fend off the enemy while your mages pelter them with spells.

Plain Pythium is not such a good choice for a dual bless strategy though. You would be better off with taking a smaller amount of magic and concentrate on economy boosting scales. You got the best mages in the game after all so you might as well focus on them.

Serpent cult pythium however is a very different kind of baked potato.

[Wendigo]

Fahdiz, I do not think bless strategies work too well with Pythium, as these usually work best on nations with powerful sacred troops.

For something cheap & efective you might consider 4+Earth on the Pretender: it gives your mages & communicants reinvigoration when blessed, gives you a good shot at finding Firbolg forts (extra forts always good for someone that wants to pump out communicants in numbers), and Lastly it gives you a dwarven hammer forger to take advantage of your good gem income.

[fahdiz]

Excellent. Thank you so much, Wendigo and Wauthan. I really do appreciate the help!