earthquake?

[Boron]

izaqyos said:
I'm not sure that they are outdated.
After all false horrors are great vs. PD, which keeps the theurgs effective for raids (with flying boots).

Also they can cast any number of powerfull astral spells with/out communion.

I do agree that they become less usefull and that keeping them alive becomes a challenge.

Yeah for raiding but in my current game , now on about turn 65 , so not anymore midgame but lategame my evil enemy decimates my theurgs with ashen angels . I get 5-8 ashen angel attacks per turn and a few ghost rider attacks also .
I can't think of a good strat how to defend them vs. that .
In midgame an abysia player could do lots of assasins with lifelong protections . the imps are good and even with 5 principes as bodyguards it is a tough fight for the theurg .

izaqyos said:
I've also experienced this mid game weakness with Pythium.
Truth is, the reason for my original post is that I'm trying to form a successfull mid game pythium strategy.

rain of stones and earthquaked wasting theurgs is one problem I wanted to address.

Another problem is limited access to SCs.
I was thinking that maybe building towards good astral summons (angels, ether) might be a good direction.

I always play pythium with a strong god , often with VQ cause pythium can afford one imho .
Conjuration 7 is for me normally my first or second research goal for AQs . Then you can summon 1 mound fiend also and he keeps summoning bane lords .
You should get at least 1 AQ with pythium and then a couple of banelords . This solves the SC issue somewhat .

The troop issue is very severe with pythium also imho . National mages can neither do vine ogres nor mech men nor blood stuff .
So during midgame the troop problem is imho most severe because principes die too easy .
I find defending vs. FoDs or Devils on turn 30-50 extremely difficult with pythium .
Single AQ gets killed by the Devils normally .
If you use lots of theurgs + staff of storm instead you have the problem with troops to avoid routing if you want to do wrathful skies also .
Without wrathful skies the devils kill pythium easy , with wrathful skies it is still dificult because your own troops die to it also .

[alexti]

izaqyos said:

I've also experienced this mid game weakness with Pythium.
Truth is, the reason for my original post is that I'm trying to form a successfull mid game pythium strategy.

rain of stones and earthquaked wasting theurgs is one problem I wanted to address.

Another problem is limited access to SCs.
I was thinking that maybe building towards good astral summons (angels, ether) might be a good direction.

A lot depends on whether you attack or defend. If you're defending, the best method I think is to cast fog warriors in the first round. If you're attacking, that's harder, because you're not sure what tactics the opponent will employ. Typically, I will put something like copper plate+ring of fire+ring of frost. That protects reasonably well vs various nasties like RoS, earthquakes, flames from the skies, murdering winters etc... But in the mid game you probably don't have enough gems (9 gems per mage) for all that equipment. I would avoid trying to take any fortresses with Pythium in the mid-game. Just keep attacking everywhere with small squads led by your mages. If enemy tries to take your fortress, you can use fog warriors (and put domes against other things) and script resist lightning for the first round as a precaution.