Turn 1: I set my medusa to research (enchantment, to get to personal regeneration), and made my starting commander my prophet. Recruited a dryad commander and 3 dryad hoplites, and a satyr hoplite.
Turn 2: Put my new troops under the command of my prophet, and sent him toward a plains province whithout knights (most nations need to avoid knight provinces early). The battle orders set a single satyr hoplite in the front and a ways away from the seat of my troops (to attract arrow fire). The rest of the dryad and satyr hoplites were set to attack closest. The none-hoplite troops I started with were set to hold and attack closest, to avoid them being killed right away and forming a sort of reserve. The prophet was set to cast blessing fot two turns to get the most out of the dryad hoplites, then he would attack closest. Meanwhile, I recruited more dryad commanders and hopilites.
Turn 3: As long as the army I described befor avoids hard provinces (knights, barbarians, amazons, lizards), it con keep taking provinces for a long time without adding more troops. By now I have my pretender and 2 dryads reseaching, I set one of them to forgeing a thorn spear for my Medusa. And again I recruit more dryads and dryade hopilites.
Turn 4: The thorn spear is ready and personal regeneration is reseached, and the medusa is ready to start taking provinces. I give her the thorn spear and script her to sit in the back casting personal regeneration, cast panic a few times, then attack archers. This is only a good strat if you can find indies with archers or crossbowmen, but she can fly so it is very likely she can reach one, and again avoid knights. Meanwile a lot of dryad hopilits have piled up at the capital, so I set them under the command of a dryad commander, and they can start expanding as well (very simple orders, troops attack closest while commander blesses). Finally, I continue to recruit dryads of both kinds and switch research to conj. (lots of nature spells).
Turn 5: By now I have 3 forces taking provinces (Mendusa, starting army, dryad army), if none of them run into problems, they will have conquered 15 provinces by turn 11, plus whatever I had before turn 5. And every 3 turns or so you have another dryad army ready to go. At this point I will probably have found a province or two with indie mages (the best would be amazons, lizard shamen and sages), go ahead and send a dryad to build a lab there and start recruiting them for reseach and site seaching. This may mean not having enough gold for dryad production for a little while though.
Turn 6-9: Simply keep taking provinces and building armies and reseachers. After I get to conj. 3 or 4 I may want to switch to thoum., to start remote site seaching.
Turn 10: By turn ten, using this strat you should have a lot provinces and research, and a big pile of nature gems. You may want to recruit a Panii for casting call of the wild to disrupt your opponent, or you may want to save the gems for mother oak or lamia queens.
Anyway, I hope it's helpful
Re: 10 Turn Challenge!
Hybrid Mode
