LA Pythium Hydras

[thejeff]

Good positioning should be able to protect a prophet or mage from the poison clouds pretty reliably.

I haven't played with Serpent Cult yet, but didn't have any problems losing mages to poison with Sauromatia. Troops, yes, but not mages.

You can also back them up with archers with little risk.

[VedalkenBear]

Strategy with the Serpent Cult?

I can think of several.

One is to ignore the Hydras and go with 'national troop rush'. Their troops are quite possibly the best human troops in the late era.

Another is to use the sacred Hydras. I've done it with a Fire-9 Bless, and troops just evaporate when facing them. Water-9 is another possibility, I guess, but I prefer the 'point blank annihilation' factor of Fire. (Your Serpent Priests are the natural commanders for them.)

Either way, your mages are amazingly diverse and deadly against opposing dominions. Sure, the heretics can't stealth into an opponent's territories like the Skeptic, but it's useful to eliminate opposing dominion from your territories (particularly newly conquered ones). Perhaps it was just my curiosity, but I really wanted Blood Magic, and so I recruited a _lot_ of Revelers trying to get it. That gave me an excess of, basically, auto Holy-3 preaching every turn.

Another point is that you have two Assassins. The Serpent Assassin has good stats and a good weapon, but needs some armor. The Orgy national Blood spell gives you, for 1 Blood slave, a stealthy berserking Satyr _seducer_ that can summon Maenads.

All in all, the Serpent Cult has to be one of my favorite nations to play.