A Poisoner's Guide to LA Pythium

[Raiel]

Love the guide, Ironhawk! Just one question...

'Next you should research Arrow Fend and find a mage who can cast it in order to protect said Hydras. If you havent found one from a site, research Const 4 and build a booster for one of your air Theurgs. '

If I'm not mistaken, all non-unique Air boosters are either A4, F4W4, or S6. Those are all pretty expensive for arrow fend. So it seems like a pretender, nature summon or indy are your only options. What am I missing? (I love the idea of protecting my hydras' hides from the pesky, pinpricks of piddling archers, but...)

Also, I think natpy and Endo are correct... there are nine forms for the hydra, so the combined HP total should be 88 (40 + (8x6)). This only underscores your original assertation of toughness, though.

[MaxWilson]

Okay, the short version is that the F9 bless affects hoof attacks (and presumably, all secondary attacks).

Longer version: I modded 3 Eponi chieftains to be sacred, with maxed attack values and two hoof attacks doing zero physical damage. I took an F9 bless and had my prophet cast Divine Blessing at the beginning of combat (then retreat). I used Shift-K to kill off all the real opponents in the battle, and Control-U to insert a common archer #33, modded to have 1000 hit points, morale 99, and 100% fire vulnerability. I re-ran this combat several times. Variance in the damage was high, but with two flaming hooves (zero physical damage), the archer seemed to take about 50 hit points of damage per round. With one flaming hoof it was about half that. Eliminating the fire vulnerability brought this to 25/12, again with very high variance (50 points some rounds, 6 on others).

F9 bless affects all melee weapons. This is good news for jaguars, etc. I imagine D9 is similar but I have not tested it.

-Max

(Mod script follows)

-- Test fire bless
#selectweapon 8
#nostr
#att 25
#dt_cap
#dmg 0
#end

#selectweapon 56
#nostr
#att 25
#dt_cap
#dmg 0
#end

-Eponi Chieftain. Comment out one of the 56s to remove a hoof.
#selectmonster 1207
#enc 0
#prot 40
#holy
#weapon 56
#weapon 56
#end

-- Archer, I think.
#selectmonster 33
#hp 1000
#enc 0
#fireres 100
#mor 99
#end

[Ironhawk]

MaxWilson said:
F9 bless affects all melee weapons. This is good news for jaguars, etc. I imagine D9 is similar but I have not tested it.

Thanks for doing that work, Max! I'm really surprised as I was sure that JK/KO had said it was an extra attack but this clearly proves otherwise.

[Aezeal]

Ironhawk, the fact it benefits all attacks is why it's used on jaguar warriors.. the jaguars have 3 attacks

[MaxWilson]

Heh. I'm finally getting around to trying out EA Mictlan now, and F9W9D9N4 Jaguar Warriors + lots of missile support is FUN. And the jags are more resilient than I would have expected from looking at their stats (Prot 6). I suspect if I took this beyond a test game into a real strategy, I'd probably go for Blood and Conjuration (for the national summons and Tartarians) with backup in Alteration (Wooden Warriors) and Enchantment (Gift of Reason).

-Max

[chrispedersen]

D9.. imo is not optimal.

[MaxWilson]

D9 isn't an optimal bless, but Death magic is a lot of fun for me personally and I like having a pretender who can toss D9 Clouds of Death (HUGE area of effect), D9 Leprosy, Eagle Eyes + D9 Banefire, Stygian Paths, etc. I also like having the option of my mages doing tricky stuff with their D9 bless (like Earthquake, which afflicts everybody in the army). Therefore, D9 is pretty optimal for me since I'm not giving up either F9 or W9 for it. S9 would have been an option, but I just don't like Astral magic as much as Death.

Note also that D9 isn't half-bad either. I ran my Epony Chieftain test with a D9 bless and IIRC they were doing 20-odd points of damage per round to the poor archer. 2 AN damage is like an attack of strength "whatever your Prot is, plus two" (although you have to take the MR check into account too), which means it's often about as good as adding a hoof attack to cavalry.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Raiel said:
If I'm not mistaken, all non-unique Air boosters are either A4, F4W4, or S6. Those are all pretty expensive for arrow fend. So it seems like a pretender, nature summon or indy are your only options. What am I missing? (I love the idea of protecting my hydras' hides from the pesky, pinpricks of piddling archers, but...)

I don't know about boosters, but Arrow Fend is A3, 100 fatigue. It seems logical to throw together a 3-man Communion and burn an extra Air Gem. 2 slaves, 1 master with A1, boosts the master to A2 whereupon you can cast Arrow Fend. A staff of storms would be better (one A1 mage can cast Summon Storm Power to boost himself to A2 without a communion, plus Storms also impair missile fire automatically) but requires A4 to forge, which you've sort of ruled out already. However, it WOULD let you boost all of your Air mages. Combine the two approaches and you can have A3 without burning any gems, which means Thunderstrike is castable.

-Max

[Lingchih]

Thanks much Ironhawk. I had considered PM'ing you about writing a guide such as this, since I am playing LA Pythium in two MP games right now, but did not want to impose on your time. This totally eclipses the little scatter-shot guide that I had written.

I differ with you on pretender choice... I still think an awake PoD gives you better early expansion... two, then three indy annihilation forces with your second group of hydras, but agree on all other points.

I had not realized the milite were so good, instead spending my valuable resources on elites. I will correct that in the future.

I also don't take the misfortune 3. I have been burned by it in another game, and won't use it again in MP. The chance of early tragedy is small, but if it happens, you are screwed. I take misfortune 2 instead.

[Aezeal]

Well.. I'm wondering..

As you all know (or not) I've developed a praticular hate for triple blessed jaguar warriors (fire/water/astral all 9) I wonder how hydra's stand up to them.. (I think pretty bad) then I wonder how triple blesses (well against mictlan you don't even really need the air bless) hydra's do against them

I would think the triple blessed hydra's would end up being SC killers/SC (at least thugs) themselves and might keep up being viable till late game when your research allows you more buffs.

The different heads protect from some damage-kill spells I'd think (gift from heaven) so main problem would be real one-shot kill spells