Thoughts about Pythium...?

[apoger]

Pythium rocks both magically and militarily.

Principe and Emerald Guard are both superb troops, and the others are pretty good as well.

Hydra rock.

Arch Theurgs casting quickness-orb lighning are great. Make a bunch of communicants, and 'super size' those orb lightnings!

For a bit of early game abuse... make 8 communicants and stack them with some therug acolytes. Have the acolytes cast communion master and then Smite X4. Not bad considering it takes zero research! However in a long fight you will kill the communicants via communion fatigue.

Theurgs can cast quickness-aim-star fire, for a bit of low cost/low research magic shooting.

As the game goes long the communicants can super charge the Arch Theurgs for an enormus number of battlefield spells. Storm Warriors/Wrathful Skies will put the hurt on most enemies.

Always remember that the Arch Theurgs can move anywhere using Cloud Trapeze.

Theurgs can cast Paralyze, Arch Theurgs can cast Soul Slay. With communion or Light/Banner or the North Star, upgrade to Enslave Mind. Astral magic pretty much rocks!


Pythium has one of the biggest boxes of toys in the game. Enjoy it!

[ywl]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Pythium is absolutely amazing, and they seem to have a much easier time getting an early start that some of the other nations like ulm.

I set one of the AIs to ulm, so I will see how well I do against them.

Ulm can have a reasonable start - you just don't know how .

[SurvivalistMerc]

I actually do get a reasonable start with Ulm. But since they are resource-dependent I like to take surrounding provinces, and that is not always easy.

I find that I need mercenaries to help me get a good start as Ulm. Because I can't (it's not possible) to buy very many troops at first until you get some more territories.

It would be great if you'd share your wisdom as to how you do it, ywl.

I imagine you are using a supercombatant pretender. I like RBs better with Ulm, but that is a matter of personal taste.

[apoger]

One of the easiest way to quickstart Ulm is to take a pretender with earth-3. Such a pretender can cast legions of steel on the troops, making the starting force much more potent.

[Fearun]

Thanks to you all! Your advices taught me some useful things. That orb lightning+quickness-combo is more than worth of trying. You made me to remember some other things too which I had forgotten.

[ywl]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
I actually do get a reasonable start with Ulm. But since they are resource-dependent I like to take surrounding provinces, and that is not always easy.

I find that I need mercenaries to help me get a good start as Ulm. Because I can't (it's not possible) to buy very many troops at first until you get some more territories.

It would be great if you'd share your wisdom as to how you do it, ywl.

I imagine you are using a supercombatant pretender. I like RBs better with Ulm, but that is a matter of personal taste.

I was only teasing you - in no way, I'm belittling your skill . It's just Dominions is such a complicated game that everybody is going to miss something.

With a rainbow mage, the expansion would be slow for most nations, except for those few with cheap but powerful units, such as Man's Longbows, to a less extent, Tien Chi's archers or some javelin throwing nations (haven't tested those enough yet). I don't think I have much secret or magic there.

But if you're using the shieldless infantries with "only" 15 protection, the resource requirement (20 or 21) is not that much more than the different forms of Legionaires or the Hypaspist... And as Ulm, your units are so cheap that you always have more golds you can use in the first few turns. Outbidding the others on the mercenaries is easy. So, the expansion should not be too bad.

My trick is more to use the powerful low level earth items. With Construction 2, with the large number of earth gem income, you could easily put a "Boot of the Behemoth", "Black Steel Full Plate", "Lead Shield" and "Black Steel Helmet" on your pretender. You would have a trampler of 30+ protection! The only weakness would be a very high
encumbance.

But. If you're using a Prince of Death, it wouldn't matters - he does not suffer from any melee fatique. Your PoD would also have at least Death level 5. So, you'll have a flying trampler with fear +15 aura (and 30+ protection). What indies can stand in his way?

Moreover, with the points from drain, you can easily have one more path at level 4. If you use the order/misfortune combo, you could have another. For example, if you go for Nature and Water, he would have Regeneration (Enchan 2), Cold Aura (Enchan 1), Quickness (Alter 2). If you go for Nature and Fire, he would have Regeneration and Fire Shield. And or Astral?

Both Death and Nature can give you *very* good summoned mages once you've got to Conjuration 6. If you're lucky, Nature can also give you some very good sites that have versatile mages... So, you don't really need a killer, rainbow mage to diversify your Ulm setting. If you go for order/misfortune, a PoD could give your nations access to at least four paths. How many more can you ask for?

Actually, the optimization of a PoD with Ulm is so cheap and efficient - powerful combatant for early game and late confrontation, multiple magic paths, late game magic diversification - that I almost want to call it imbalance. But judging from the depth of the game, I guess I'd be proven wrong very soon in any MP game .

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by ywl:
Actually, the optimization of a PoD with Ulm is so cheap and efficient - powerful combatant for early game and late confrontation, multiple magic paths, late game magic diversification - that I almost want to call it imbalance. But judging from the depth of the game, I guess I'd be proven wrong very soon in any MP game .

Gotta a slow race needing a rocket in its behind? Give it the PoD! Undercosted? When it comes to pretenders the PoD is the definition of the word. Not that I mind - I would like to see more like him. Just thinking of the dom1 Moloch makes me go warm all over - there was a pretender worth bowing to!

Giving decent armour to the PoD is amazing. I was using him to give one of the luck based Tien Ch'i themes a boost and got chainmail of displacement in a random event on turn one. Wohoooo!

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

In terms of interesting ideas for Pythuum its good to remember bless effects and that all your mages are sacred.

Want to go over to the dark side after all with Pythium? PoD with Death9 and some breath of winters to knock off your blessed mages and bring them back as undead with no upkeep. ooh and research terror as its amazing with death 9 - billowing black clouds of terror.

Feeling hasty? Water 9 for some speedy Vestals and mages.

Always running out of breath? Nothing like some some earth for reinvigoration to keep those communions running.

In general I think Pythium is one those races in which the basics of what you get are so good that you just need to work on getting the best out of what you have got. So I wouldn't invest in a rainbow pretender, which would just provide me to much to think about, but rather go for strong scales to get more of your stunning troops and Mages along with some bless effects for if you are feeling spicey. If I ever get around to playing Pythium I'll be giving the undead mages trick a go.

Cheers

Keir

[SurvivalistMerc]

Kier,

You really should try Pythium. It's amazing. I'm going to probably play it once or twice then move on to other nations because it just seems *too* good.

I can't find an overall national weakness. Powerful troops. Powerful priests. Powerful mages. All mages sacred. Additional communion bonuses you don't really need to make your nation powerful. Hydras as special forces...and an AI that will march troops right into the path of retreating hydras even if the troops can't catch the hydras...that seems a lot like an exploit to me. (And the solution may be to have the clouds not linger but only be around the unit during retreat...I don't know.)

Odd thing is that I don't have all that much difficulty against Pythium when it's an AI nation. I was impressed that the emerald guards could stand toe to toe with my black plate morningstar infantries...but given that they have a gp cost of 2.5 times what ulm's do...ulm has no real complaint.

I think I'm going back to Ulm Iron Faith after Pythium, then maybe Pangea. I'm waiting for a good Ry'leh guide, too. Iron faith is a nice challenge because the nation has deficits.

I absolutely love this game. It would be nice if you got random opponents but could exclude some if you wanted to. (I don't like the idea of Ermor in SP since the AI can't really deal with them.)

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
I absolutely love this game. It would be nice if you got random opponents but could exclude some if you wanted to. (I don't like the idea of Ermor in SP since the AI can't really deal with them.)

Check out....
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion/Dominions2/

The map files are re-rolled every day. They use the Aran.tga so they could work for demo also (I did this when only the demo was out). If you download the Man.map then all you have to do is choose Man and start the game. The AI's are randomly selected, random difficulty, and sometimes allied with each other.

Actually you can play the man map with other nations but the only gaurantee is that Man is NOT one of the AI's. Thats why there is one for each race, fresh every day.

I meant to add some of my other random surprises to it... random commanders, specialized gods for AIs, scattered magic sites, additional labs/temples/castles scattered around the map.. but no one really said they were using these so I wandered off looking for something else I could do of interest.

--
People on the net dont understand how to "pay" for free stuff.

[ December 30, 2003, 16:33: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]