So what is Pythium's weakness?

[Daynarr]

BTW I remember a funny Arco/Pythium battle in Doms 1 where a few pachyderms changed sides several times in the same battle.

That must have been confusing experience:
- "He is your enemy!"
- "No, he is!"
- "He is lying, he is the enemy!"
- "Kill him, he is the enemy!"
- ...

[ywl]

[quote]Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
[quote]
But overall, it'll be a contest of economic resource.
Seems that people think that Pythium has inflexable battle ground magic. I don't know if I agree. They have strong astral, decent air, and decent water. They also have a random pick. Don't forget that due to them being excellently setup for communion those little randoms can easily become level 3 or 4 in combat and then they become real power.

Normally that would not be too much of a problem. However with their reduced maintainance costs they can really pump these guys out.

It's not Pythiums having inflexible battle magic. It's Arco having very flexible battle magic. His Arch-Theurg is 380 a piece. Being sacred reduce maintainence cost by half - 190/15. It's still more expensive to maintain than your mytics and astrologer, not to mention twice amount of initial cost.

Theurg is 150 a piece and cheap but they don't have the random pick. A large number of Theurgs with "Quickness", firing off "Starfire" and "Orb Lightning" is formidable. But it's not uncounterable for Arco.

[Taqwus]

Huzurdaddi --

Check the Philosophers. They're *very* cheap, being pure researchers (heck, they don't even get a single point of magic) -- 50 gold gets you 5 RP plus magic scale. On a GP/RP basis, the cheapest mainline Pythium researcher is 150 gp Theurg with 6 RP (25gp/RP). In magic +3 the GP/RP costs for a Philosopher drop to 6.25; heck, even in Drain 3 that's 50 AU/2RP which is as good as the Theurg in magic-0 on a pure gold basis.

The one limitation on Philosophers is that they're capital-only. The resulting opportunity cost is what'll hurt.

[Darryl]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Huzurdaddi --

Check the Philosophers. They're *very* cheap, being pure researchers

Umm..excuse my ignorance, but what is a Philosopher? I'm playing Arco right now and I don't have any in my capital. I played Pythium, and don't remember them there either although I'm pretty sure you meant Arco, right?

[Taqwus]

Philosopher's a Golden Era-specific unit, from the Akademia magic site. That same site also allows you to recruit stealth+0 Sceptics for tearing down dominion (including yours!).

[Huzurdaddi]

But if you go golden era you lose two of your principle advanatges: great mages and elephants. You also lose the very efficient Hypaspist. In return you get ... uhm ... a good research and some flying units.

Uhm. Ok.

So maybe I can sort of out research him with this setup, but uhm I have no casters. That's worth something I guess. I just don't know what.

I'll stick with plain vanilla Arco, thanks.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
But if you go golden era you lose two of your principle advanatges: great mages and elephants.

I suggest you look more closely. You still have mystics.