LA Pythium

[Dedas]

Please do! I'm very interested in this nation but haven't had the time to test it much.

[B0rsuk]

Ok, some random thoughts below:

- hydras for fast early game, possibly elephant counter (I'm not sure if they're size6).

- Theurgs can counter elephants, minotaurs, and other tramplers. Hydras, theurgs and cataphracts against minotaurs.

- Serpent Priests are Water/Nature mages. Bone Melter is available, although I didn't have a chance to try it.

- National hero is a level3 serpent priest with high water and nature. Human with 3 misc slots and awe.

- Daughter of Typhoon is an immortal hydra.

- National mages: theurgs for communion and astral, occasional astral on other mages. Epoptes can heal afflictions. Heliodromus and Leo can forge lightless lanterns. Leo sounds like a good prophet. Serpent Priests, Renata and Renatus are not heretics. Low ranking cultists are usually not heretics, too.

- Solaris infantry: very expensive in terms of gold, but higher stats and fire resistance. Still, if you're not facing fire magic or Abyssians, they're overpriced.
Regular infantry is mapmove1. Elite infantry with mapmove2 is capitol only.

[ComTrav]

Serpent Priests also have a high chance for a death pick, so it seems like expansion into death would be easy; Streams from Hades is probably the best route to a decent-path death mage. Water/Death also lets you get a good chance for Earth with Frozen in Snow.

[B0rsuk]

ComTrav said:
Serpent Priests also have a high chance for a death pick, so it seems like expansion into death would be easy; Streams from Hades is probably the best route to a decent-path death mage. Water/Death also lets you get a good chance for Earth with Frozen in Snow.

Well, Renatus simply starts with D1, and has either 1/3 or 1/4 chance for DD . They're sacred, cheap, and available everywhere. Cost-effective researchers, so you're likely to have many of them.
Renata with WN can cast Mossbody. Sounds like an interesting spell, I'll have to try it.

[Karlem]

Easy question: heretics only lower dominion where they are? I mean, they do not spread it like negative temple checks to other provinces? If that's the case having drain and seems quite interesting....

[Kuritza]

Great infantry and terrifying Hydras, lots of mages incapable of good combat spells. No national summons worth mentioning.
With a booster, your mages can cast foul vapors though - that might compliment Hydras. Otherwise,I believe that Serpent Cult's only hope for the late game is a properly designed God. Perhaps a rainbow mage to improvise with whatever available resources. Early on, it may be capable of a good rush; I am curious whether archers are a good counter to Hydras or not.

P.S.
I tried taking drain and playing a wannabe-Mictlan, it didnt pay. Researchers are bad already, drain makes them terrible. It takes a while to build a second castle, and then it will be a very long time till your heretics 'clear' drain from it, if they do at all. Regrettably, they lower dominion, not wipe scales. I think they may be of some use to suppress enemy dominion as you invade somebody, not your own.

[Jazzepi]

Kuritza said:
Great infantry and terrifying Hydras, lots of mages incapable of good combat spells. No national summons worth mentioning.
With a booster, your mages can cast foul vapors though - that might compliment Hydras. Otherwise,I believe that Serpent Cult's only hope for the late game is a properly designed God. Perhaps a rainbow mage to improvise with whatever available resources. Early on, it may be capable of a good rush; I am curious whether archers are a good counter to Hydras or not.

P.S.
I tried taking drain and playing a wannabe-Mictlan, it didnt pay. Researchers are bad already, drain makes them terrible. It takes a while to build a second castle, and then it will be a very long time till your heretics 'clear' drain from it, if they do at all. Regrettably, they lower dominion, not wipe scales. I think they may be of some use to suppress enemy dominion as you invade somebody, not your own.

You probably can't do this anymore. Even if you eradicate all the scales from a given province I think the way the new scales work, all the provinces around it with your dominion in them would still tilt the scales inside of the "voided" province.

Jazzepi

[Agema]

Jazzepi's right. Scales take a while to fade away. And drain is a disaster for nations that can't build high-research mages outside the capital, as is the case for LA Pythium.

My suggestion is an S/E pretender with at least +2 Productivity, otherwise you'll barely be able to recruit troops except the chaff. Order would be good too. I'm thinking your critical items are Ring of Wizardry, Dwarven Hammer, and crystal doo-dahs (Coins for +1S, Matrices) to help along communions.

Pythium has every type of magic, even blood, and S mages are easy for N, W, A; rarer for D. So that's 5 magic types viable for communion immediately. Nature and Death can be advanced to mid-level easily enough. Everything else is tricky, so I'd think Ring of Wizardry is an absolute must, as then W, E and S can be raised easily (although you'll already have E and S from the pretender.) So all you'll be missing is Fire, Air and Blood from easy increases. I'd be tempted to ignore blood entirely though.

The other thing to do is site search like crazy for massive gem income - you can search for anything to at least level 1.

[Digress]

hydras for fast early game, possibly elephant counter (I'm not sure if they're size6)

They literally eat elephants for breakfast. Every head hits (with poison) - and if the elephants gang up on the hydra and actually hit the worst they will do is knock a lesser head off. Then there is the fear ....

[Randvek]

I've been using hydras with a strong fire bless in MP, and what you can take with only 4 hydras is truly disgusting.