I suck with Pythium ... please help!

[Master Shake]

Pythium is a great nation. With it's strong astral mages and gem income, coupled with the easy and early generation of clam of pearls for more astrals all mean strong flexibililty in the later game.

A good early-mid strategy is to recruit indy archers and go for Wind Guide. Principes are great basic infantry, especially with the standards to boost morale. Backed up by astral magic and wind-guided archers, it's a good combo.

The key to Pythium, however, it to go for Acashic Record (AR) early. Go for those Waste, Mtn and Forest provinces, and cast AR on them (Wastelands first) early. You should get set up for a good, broad gem income with that. With your Arch Theurgs' random pick, or with Sages, Druids, Amazons, or those flying death mages, you can get into many different magic lines and summons.

Air elemental queens are awesome, the Harbinger, or even better Angelic Host (which get you a strong Fire Mage). Contact Couatl can get you into Nature magic if you haven't already done it with Druids. Death is very easy to get into with a death 1 sage or an Arch Thuerg with a random death pick.

Edit: Forgot to add that your water magic can easily get you to Summon Troll King Court, which puts you into the water in force.

[ July 04, 2004, 22:05: Message edited by: Master Shake ]

[Kel]

Originally posted by Boron:
and i don't know yet how do design a good pretender for pyhtium because the arch theurgs are expensive and the principles need much resources so you can't take a sloth scale .

Or you can not make heavy use of principes.

Or you can make fast 2 turn castles and produce them from multiple points.

Or both.

- Kel

[Huzurdaddi]

Or you can not make heavy use of principes.

Waaa? But they are excellent for the cost. I don't know why people cry about how much they cost it's not like they cost resources like HI. They cost 19 resources. That's 33% less than most HI. They are *CHEAP* for what they do.

A good early-mid strategy is to recruit indy archers and go for Wind Guide. Principes are great basic infantry, especially with the standards to boost morale. Backed up by astral magic and wind-guided archers, it's a good combo.

I don't think that Pythium needs help in the early game. The principie takes care of the early game. You can even add in Therug Acolytes to make them *very* good against independents or any nation unlucky to be placed next to you.

The problem happens later, at least for me. Around turn 35-45 standard units become much less powerful compared to what they are facing. And I am having a problem fielding an army to match the other side. The problem, I think, boils down to the lack of death, blood or high air paths. The 1st two of these two schools have very powerful summons in the end game and air has very powerful battle magics. While Pythium has air magic it is only level 2, and it is on a very expensive unit. I understand that a nation can not have it all. But having one of these three things seems to be the ticket in the end game.

Hence in my current game I am doing anything and everything I can to cultivate both death and blood. It's slow going. It's tough, but it's the only option that I see.

Oh and I am going to make a good number of harbringers to counter other people's blood and death.

[ July 05, 2004, 05:28: Message edited by: Huzurdaddi ]

[Balmoth]

This idea assumes you have a pretender with S4, D1 and/or A5.

An idea for the Pythium mid-game could be to aim for conjuration 6 and cast Ether gate. Expensive gemwise, but yields 15 hard to kill Ether Warriors. and a DDSSSS commander that besides being a good combat mage is definately SC material.

After this go for Conjuration 7 and put the air gems to good use in summoning the Queens of elemental air. These are fine SCs in my experience. But it might be a race to get these first. You might need to convert some gems to get them.

These should help you through the mid game

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
The 1st two of these two schools have very powerful summons in the end game and air has very powerful battle magics. While Pythium has air magic it is only level 2, and it is on a very expensive unit.

Say it with me here: COMMUNION.

Yes, Air has very powerful battle magics, some of which require a fair level of skill to cast. Yes, the Pythiumians don't have as high an innate level of air proficiency as, say, Caelum or Vanheim. However, Pythium is ALL about the communion. Reaching any reasonably useful level of magic for all but the most ludicrously pathy spells is trivial for an Arch Theurg with sufficient communicants. The randoms, combined with the communioning, will let you use any spell in the game.

As for Air, you don't even have to worry about accidentally electrocuting your communicants: If the master casts Resist Lightning, all commslaves will be protected as well. Communion is fun.

This, of course, does not address the fact that your ritual-casting and forging ability is not that strong, but the right picks in pretender magics can easily circumvent this issue.

[Tuna-Fish]

Also, you keep asking for summons. Personally, I dont think pythium is a summon-nation, but instead they should base on a more conventional army with great battlefield magic. Just give those principes of yours mistform, luck, mass protection, whatever, and they become a force that even the most powerful SC's take frigging decades to kill. Then use them to shield your mages that can cast some real nasty damage spells with the help of communion. Even paralyse is very very nasty when cast by a mage that has effective astral of 8, and a spell focus...

I personally like a pythium strategy that has an e-10 cyclops as a pretender. He gives your mages, and most importantly, communicants, great reinvigoration, and also can cast the spell "enliven statues" with frightful efficiency when you slap on earth boots. Statues are very good sc-fodder, and when boosted by just a little they become very very hard to kill. Also, the cyclops can cast things like army of lead, blade wind with gazillion blades, and earthquake.
Just give him a load of gems and a staff of storms (to protect him), and perhaps some armour, and attack enemy army, cast earthquake twice, and flee: instant army-shredder.

Also, when you have army of lead up, earthquake is not really very harmful for you.

[Taqwus]

Hm, those Ether Lords might be nasty nether-dart machines when Communioned. Pricey for that 'tho; Lamia Queens might be more cost-efficient if you can get a Nature supply and caster.

[Thufir]

Master Shake said:
...
The key to Pythium, however, it to go for Acashic Record (AR) early. Go for those Waste, Mtn and Forest provinces, and cast AR on them (Wastelands first) early.

Why go for wasteland first? Does anyone have exact stats on improved probability of sites? What I've seen to date simply says that Mtn, forest and waste are better than plains, with no specificity beyond that.


Apologies for quoting myself, but nobody's answered this one, so I'll give it another try:

3) On Serpent Cataphracts, they seem like really good troops, but it's always a tough choice when you know you can get so many more Principe. So far I have put together a few times Groups of 5-7 Cataphracts, and they have been effective, but I wonder if I'm underutilizing them. Also, perhaps because my Groups were too small they didn't survive as long as I might have hoped (although in at least one case they took out a goodly number of devils before routing).

Anyone have any pointers on the minimal size of a Cataphract squad? Has anyone out there found it useful to mix other units in with the Cataphracts? Has anyone out there found the Serpent Lord worth paying for?

So, any help this time around?


On the subject of Arch Angels, I agree with Arryn in that they're useful in specific situations. With AA's, I think you have to remember (as Arryn pointed out), that many nations (esp. any clamhoarding nation, including Pythium), is going to be Astral rich, and as such will be likely converting a good percentage of their astral gems anyhow. The other thing that hasn't been mentioned is that Angelic Host can be targeted on any province, so from a balance perspective, it's cost should be compared to Co Wind or Co Wild. For a clamhoarder the value of their astral gems asymptotically (for you mathematicians out there ) approaches half that of wind or air, so it might be regarded as costing 25 gems compared to 5 for CoWind or 15 for CoWild. Which I think is reasonable when you look at what you get.

The one big lack w/r to Angelic Host is that the troops are non-replenishable, which is not true of most summoned leaders that come w/ matching troops. I think it would be cool, and not unbalanced to add a spell out there that summoned the Angel of the Host, at some low cost.

On the subject of Harbingers, I did a little bit of testing with their horns, under 2.12, and they seem to work pretty well, to me. I always have a hard time telling who did exactly what when I'm looking at combat replays, but it sure looked like the Harbingers were taking out devils with their horns, to me. It was equally clear that they weren't devestating to the devils, but it if you set them to "Fire Closest" (perhaps after a buff or two), they can play a useful support role when fighting devils. Again, as to whether they're worth the 25 astral, that's context dependent.

On the question of defeating devils, so far, I like Archolaept's plan w/ the 6+ theurgs and N communicants, the best. That plan gives me some good ideas on how to prioritize spending gold, but gives me no insight on how to spend my astral gems. For all you critics of AAs and Harbingers out there - do you have any better ideas on how to spend your astral gems for the purpose of defeating devils?

It is true that AAs or Harbingers are expensive, relative to other summons, so if there were a more cost effective way to use those gems, I'm all ears. I suppose I could always simply convert to death/earth/water and forge more equipment for my banelords, but it seems like there must be something better than that that could be done.

[archaeolept]

well, astrals go towards putting spell foci on your theurgs, but another good use for them is in summoning Golems, who can be turned into pretty nice little teleporting SC's. Sure, w/ a skull cap they only have S3 and so are possible targets for mind duels, but most people don't create a lot of mind duel squads as part of their anti-pythium campaign...

;p

[Huzurdaddi]

For all you critics of AAs and Harbingers out there - do you have any better ideas on how to spend your astral gems for the purpose of defeating devils?

If you are talking late game then the answer all troop: doom horrors. For the cost of 3 angelic Hosts you get a commander who has a strat move of 10 and who can take out tons of devils.

Before you get to that tech level there is not much you can do other than make an SC via alchemy.

I like Archolaept's plan w/ the 6+ theurgs and N communicants, the best.

Well it's a nice plan. But it does not work out too well. Devils in quanity are very hard for Pythium to handle. Heck they are hard for most armies ( not SC's ) to handle.