sauromantia

[OmikronWarrior]

When you say "frost father" under the Pretender section, did you mean Father of Winters? One is a rainbow chasis, the other an SC.

[Baalz]

Yes, that is what I meant. Updating now.

[Aezeal]

hmmm I'm now using a few small hydra's and/ or 1 large hydra as screen for archers and it seems to work very well, the multiple heads make them survivable and they are poison resistant.

I went for a E9N1 dom 9 awake gorgon... great expansion but gorgon is a bit vulnerable (and dead now) and not easily called back by sauromatia.

Due to the bless my scales suck a bit (sloth 3 and I went for turmoil 3/luck 3 (doesn't seem to be paying of yet apart for a free castle.)

Would it be worth it to skip the bless and go for better scales or would that totaly nerve the effectiveness of the gorgon? Making it dormant is an option too.. but kinda not what a SC is about.

[Foodstamp]

Aezeal said:
hmmm I'm now using a few small hydra's and/ or 1 large hydra as screen for archers and it seems to work very well, the multiple heads make them survivable and they are poison resistant.

I went for a E9N1 dom 9 awake gorgon... great expansion but gorgon is a bit vulnerable (and dead now) and not easily called back by sauromatia.

Due to the bless my scales suck a bit (sloth 3 and I went for turmoil 3/luck 3 (doesn't seem to be paying of yet apart for a free castle.)

Would it be worth it to skip the bless and go for better scales or would that totaly nerve the effectiveness of the gorgon? Making it dormant is an option too.. but kinda not what a SC is about.

In this case the dormant Gorgon may not be such a big deal if you can develop a very effective early expansion utilizing what your getting in return.

[Aezeal]

Well I doubt it'll give me that much province.. the gorgon was taking 1/turn till it died (turn 10 ish)

Luck doesn't seem to be giving me much cash btw maybe order/misfortune and less sloth would give me much more archers.. but I doubt I'll expand as quickly as I did with the gorgon

Or is it luck to have the gorgon survive against 12 indies w/o items?
How is a gorgon SC usually used?

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Ah yes, my dirty little secret is I actually haven't recruited a single hydra as Sauromatia due to the aforementioned wealth of options, but I can certainly see a situation where they'd be exactly what you'd want. I will say that you haven't convinced me that they wouldn't be quite effective for the role I suggested though - kamikaze poison bombs to soften up large enemy armies for major confrontations. Particularly since they're practically resource free you can throw them in at the last minute if something nasty threatens your capital. If you're facing a large army, from lets say a dual blessed Vanheim, placing 3 hydras spread out on the front row will have them die to be sure, before you've even got to worry about friendly fire most likely. Now those Vans have used up their first strike though and are poisoned (does this cancel the glamour? I don't remember) and the clock is ticking as they now contemplate your most excellent PD, and behind that your real forces which consist of more than just androphag archers (who are very hard to target because all your PD is archers). The enemy is drastically weakened before they even engage your army - you practically only need skellispam to tie up those super elite enemy troops and give the poison (which the androphag arches continue to pile on) time to work.

WRT the sacreds, I agree with you that though you could hang an effective strategy around your sacred cavalry other nations do that better. To my mind though the sacred cavalry is just a very big bonus to the real reason you'd go dual bless - warrior sorceresses.

This isn't specifically responding to you alone, but aren't Hydras a bit too expensive for kamikaze roles? I suppose I tend to play heavy-bless , low Order games, so g250 per unit seems too much for a throw-away unit.

So I tend not to use Hydras at all. Too expensive for niche roles, and too risky to integrate them with the rest of the Sauromantia military machine.

I also think it makes more sense for C'tis to have Hydras--given the innate poison resistance for C'tis--but then I suppose that would make the C'tis over-powered? And I suppose it also makes more sense for the Hydras to be units for a nation grounded in the Greek mythos, and Sauromantia is based on Herodotus.