I suck with Pythium ... please help!

[Boron]

Huzurdaddi said:
Actually that is a suboptimal way to deal with devils. Devils have a very good MR. The only way to win that battle is with far more forces than he has.

The only really cost effective way of beating devils is to use an SC that can tank them. This is not super easy to acheive, but is possible. You will need an actual SC, mini-SC's need not apply.

Mechanical men+wrathful skies also works against devils.

Yeah devils are special . They struggle with mechanical men / living statues and storm demons for the title most useful troop for offense i think . In defense you can add vampires .

I think the savest way to kill them is by a SC as you suggested . By mages is difficult because if you mix them with storm demons then the mages have a really hard time to chose the right spell to kill both .
Only banefire / gifts from heaven may work but these spells are so hard to get casters for that you can't count on them . Only ctis desert tombs has natural Banefirecasters but they pay 150 dominiondesignpoints for this .

[Huzurdaddi]

So getting back to Pythium ....

I want to hear from people that successfully used Communion. It is supposed to be the bread and butter of Pythium but when I use it the communicants almost always die.

What ratios do people use? I have even gone so far as to give the communicants an Earth Blessing ( for Rejuv ) and this does not help as the Thurges still murder them ( generally by casting ghost wolves at the end of battle that will never reach the front ).

I'll run some tests with ratios and see what I get. I know that there is no ratio once you get a silly number of thurges into the combat ( around 12 or so will kill any number of communicants if the battle goes on for any length of time ).

I'll see how it works for more sane numbers of thurges ( like 4 or so ). I have a feeling that 8 will be insufficient. Yeah just ran some tests. Sometimes they will not kill the communicants, but if the battle goes over like 10 rounds those communciants are toast. Clearly you can add more communicants and the amount of time that you can survive will increase ( if you keep the number of thurges constant ).

Probably 12 comunicants will survive 4 thurges.

Another problem I am realizing now is that having to cast communion master consumes one of the precious 5 spells that you can cast. After those 5 spells random things are going to happen. Which also limits it's power.

It is slowly comming back to me why I really use the etherial principes too much. They are brain dead easy to use, very effective, and cheap and not prone to disaster.

Communion OTOH is expensive, very difficult to use, costly, and prone to huge disasters if something outside of your planning occurs. However it can be very useful for boosting the power of your mages for a particular spell. I suppose it is not a bread and butter tactic but rather a tactic to be pulled out only for very special occasions.

Interesting.

Ok given that communion is not for everyday use and that pythium has a lack of summons what is one to do? Perhaps Pythium should fall back on the age old false horror spam? Not a bad tactic I suppose.

[Thufir]

And, while we're on the subject of communion, is it common to run more than one communion master at a time? If so, is it necessary that one of the communion masters are continuously casting relief?

[archaeolept]

relief is the key; hence the vital importance of an adjutant nature mage like a lizard shaman. that, and expecting any serious battle to kill of your (cheap) communicants. W/ relief I'm generally happy w/ 2 to 1 ratio, or even smaller for battles that look to be short. Castle assaults, otoh, will usually kill off all your communicants.

[Thufir]

archaeolept said:
relief is the key; hence the vital importance of an adjutant nature mage like a lizard shaman. that, and expecting any serious battle to kill of your (cheap) communicants. W/ relief I'm generally happy w/ 2 to 1 ratio, or even smaller for battles that look to be short. Castle assaults, otoh, will usually kill off all your communicants.

So, are you saying that with castle assaults, even if you have relief, you still expect to kill all your communicants?

Let's set up a specific example:
3 theurgs
1 shaman
8 communicants

In this case, if it is expected that all communicants die, I would've guessed that adding another shaman or two wouldn't be that hard, and would be well worth saving 8 communicants. Or is it truely that problematic that simply adding relief casters doesn't suffice?

[Huzurdaddi]

relief is the key

Releif buys you exactly 5 turns. This can be huge with communion since your mages can deal great damage in those turns. However it is not a panacea. Further in large battles with many Thurges one releif caster is no where near sufficient. Even massive numbers of communicants can accumulate huge amounts of fatigue per turn when there are 12+ thurges casting.

And in a shocker to me it is actually more effective to go for evocation than for Thaumaturgy when it comes to Thurges. I was trapped in the Pythium is an astral nation hence go for Thaumaturgy for battle magic. With a good number of communicants ( and you will need a good number ) some of the early Evocation spells ( and the computer will even cast them! ) do a great job.

[Huzurdaddi]

Or is it truely that problematic that simply adding relief casters doesn't suffice?

No number of releif casters will buy you more than 5 turns extra. On the 6th turn they will stop casting releif. I have never seen them cast it after that point. I'm sure someone, somewhere, has seen it but I never have. So don't count on it. You *need* to get the battle over with ASAP with communion. Script the most punch spells even if they take a lot of fatigue ( thunderstike is one that comes to mind ) since time is your enemy not the guys with pointy sticks on the other side of the field.

[archaeolept]

adding relief casters generally does nothing, other than giving you a fallback in case one is killed. the problem is that after the 5 scripted spells, your relief caster will often decide to cast whatever useles bit of drivel wanders into his head

so long battles, especially any serious castle assaults, will usually end up w/ all your communicants dead. having a communion master casting earthpower or some such will certainly help, though earth mages are fairly rare for the pyth.

[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