Pythium (MA) strategy

[Poopsi]

but you lose them after the first battle.

[P3D]

But you can attack an extra province in the 2nd turn without a SC pretender. Their main advantage is the negligible resource cost right when you need it. That means you can take some sloth and not compromise your initial expansion.

I could get well over 20 provinces in 12 months in a test game relying mainly on one hydra party and gladiators.

The other advantage of Retarii is that they can clean out Knight/Elephant provinces.