sauromantia

[Aezeal]

Well I doubt it'll give me that much province.. the gorgon was taking 1/turn till it died (turn 10 ish)

Luck doesn't seem to be giving me much cash btw maybe order/misfortune and less sloth would give me much more archers.. but I doubt I'll expand as quickly as I did with the gorgon

Or is it luck to have the gorgon survive against 12 indies w/o items?
How is a gorgon SC usually used?

[Karlem]

Did you have Dom 9 (Awe) and crafted a hide shield? That increases its survavility a lot.

[Foodstamp]

Naw, it wasn't luck she survived so long. On the contrary it was bad luck or bad battle selection that she died at turn 10ish. Normally I hit soft provinces with her at turn 2 on, and I forge her some ghetto gear to get her through the early turns. This means that she has to come home at some point, and that point for me is usually when there are not soft provinces left close to my capital. She comes home, gets some gear, maybe some gems if she is going to be casting anything, then she is back out building her reputation in the HOF

[sum1lost]

Your quick expansion rate is useless because your scales devalue the usefulness of your provinces.

[Aezeal]

I was attacking a Hinnom warband of about 40-50 ish pplz so that would be poor selection I guess.. avvite archers and swordsmen (with no shield the archers did me in with their high damage if I retrack it.. probably the most dangerous units for the gorgon, high damage ranged attackers.

turmoil 3/luck 3 is an accepted strategy is it not?

it is said you end up with about teh same cash. Personally I could easily spend all my cash (even with sloth) though I don't think it was close to order 3 income (a few 100 gc bonus and a castle).

More prod would mean more androphag archers though since they are capitol only so building more castles isn't helping on that part.

sum1lost:
But would it be worth it to go dormant and then about O3 M2 and S -1?
your reply is a bit too easy: give me your adviced strat for sauromatia then so I can try it out

[triqui]

sum1lost said:
Your quick expansion rate is useless because your scales devalue the usefulness of your provinces.

That's untrue. It depends on how "quick" you mean with "quick". If he has a 50% less gold compared to a nation with good scales, but he conquer 60% more provinces, then he is doing well.

With sauromatia i would not go with turmoil luck. It's a valid strategy, but i would take order-misfortune instead. The Gorgon is awesome, althoug sauromatia has some problems to equip them properly early on. However, put her a Raw Hide shield to start with and high Awe, and should not has any problem to crush weak indies for a few turns. Once she can cast ironskin, summon earth power, wears vine-shield, pendant of luck and hydra skin she can kill most armies without a sweat.

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Ah yes, my dirty little secret is I actually haven't recruited a single hydra as Sauromatia due to the aforementioned wealth of options, but I can certainly see a situation where they'd be exactly what you'd want. I will say that you haven't convinced me that they wouldn't be quite effective for the role I suggested though - kamikaze poison bombs to soften up large enemy armies for major confrontations. Particularly since they're practically resource free you can throw them in at the last minute if something nasty threatens your capital. If you're facing a large army, from lets say a dual blessed Vanheim, placing 3 hydras spread out on the front row will have them die to be sure, before you've even got to worry about friendly fire most likely. Now those Vans have used up their first strike though and are poisoned (does this cancel the glamour? I don't remember) and the clock is ticking as they now contemplate your most excellent PD, and behind that your real forces which consist of more than just androphag archers (who are very hard to target because all your PD is archers). The enemy is drastically weakened before they even engage your army - you practically only need skellispam to tie up those super elite enemy troops and give the poison (which the androphag arches continue to pile on) time to work.

WRT the sacreds, I agree with you that though you could hang an effective strategy around your sacred cavalry other nations do that better. To my mind though the sacred cavalry is just a very big bonus to the real reason you'd go dual bless - warrior sorceresses.

This isn't specifically responding to you alone, but aren't Hydras a bit too expensive for kamikaze roles? I suppose I tend to play heavy-bless , low Order games, so g250 per unit seems too much for a throw-away unit.

So I tend not to use Hydras at all. Too expensive for niche roles, and too risky to integrate them with the rest of the Sauromantia military machine.

I also think it makes more sense for C'tis to have Hydras--given the innate poison resistance for C'tis--but then I suppose that would make the C'tis over-powered? And I suppose it also makes more sense for the Hydras to be units for a nation grounded in the Greek mythos, and Sauromantia is based on Herodotus.