I suck with Pythium ... please help!

[BigDaddy]

Right, I use the emerald guard strategy i outlined to take hordes of provinces early. Drive to another good castle site and repeat once or twice. You'll easily have the most provinces. Often you can have 40 or more by turn 30. That kind of income is a huge boost to research, and you get tons gems with AR. Speed is not neccessary, because you are just taking one province and the next, etc.

[T77]

EGs are good against tough independents, like Knights. I find that Principes take heavy casualties against Knights. So early on I build EGs and then I switch to Principes once I've cleared out my area. Then I just use the existing EGs as garrisons.