I suck with Pythium ... please help!

[Kel]

Mages *will* cast relief after turn 5. I don't know what conditions encourage it but I have seen relief casters cast it repeatedly through long battles, much to my relief, so to speak.

True, you can't count on it...but then that applies to most mage scripting

I don't know if you are already doing it but I tend to make at least some of my communion masters into communion slaves also. This does take up one of their 5 guaranteed spell slots so it's more useful in long battles (then again, I don't bother with communions early on or in small battles unless I *really* need a specific spell).

It may also be what you are casting and who your masters are since, as you knwo, the more paths you have, the cheaper each spell is.

- Kel

[Huzurdaddi]

For all you critics of AAs and Harbingers out there - do you have any better ideas on how to spend your astral gems for the purpose of defeating devils?

If you are talking late game then the answer all troop: doom horrors. For the cost of 3 angelic Hosts you get a commander who has a strat move of 10 and who can take out tons of devils.

Before you get to that tech level there is not much you can do other than make an SC via alchemy.

I like Archolaept's plan w/ the 6+ theurgs and N communicants, the best.

Well it's a nice plan. But it does not work out too well. Devils in quanity are very hard for Pythium to handle. Heck they are hard for most armies ( not SC's ) to handle.

[archaeolept]

Mages *will* cast relief after turn 5. I don't know what conditions encourage it but I have seen relief casters cast it repeatedly through long battles

w/ pythium? my experience is that they usually don't, though their may be ways to "entice" them to do so.

Well it's a nice plan. But it does not work out too well. Devils in quanity are very hard for Pythium to handle. Heck they are hard for most armies ( not SC's ) to handle.

Lol. well, surely it does depend on the relative numbers of theurgs and devils. as a cost effective method, given that pythium has no trouble forging staff of storms, it certainly can work. you can also script them for falling frost or orb lighting, or hell, wrathful skies and false horrors , or whatever else suits your fancy. the only advantage of banishing demons is the lack of any fatigue cost, which is negated if you have a lizard anyways



ooh, and against devils, don't forget to throw in a water gem for "rain"

[Arryn]

Thufir said:
The one big lack w/r to Angelic Host is that the troops are non-replenishable, which is not true of most summoned leaders that come w/ matching troops. I think it would be cool, and not unbalanced to add a spell out there that summoned the Angel of the Host, at some low cost.

Trolls can be summoned independently of the kings, so angels ought to be as well. OTOH, the devs may not consider an archangel as a "king/queen" type unit.

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
Only banefire / gifts from heaven may work but these spells are so hard to get casters for that you can't count on them.

Thunder strike, astral fires, falling frost, frozen heart, raise skeletons + drain life or drain life + raise skeletons depending on what order you want them in, bladewind etc. Those are all effective spells against Devils.

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
I'll see how it works for more sane numbers of thurges ( like 4 or so ). I have a feeling that 8 will be insufficient.

You'll probably want about 4-5 communicants per theurg when you have 4 or so theurgs.

After those 5 spells random things are going to happen. Which also limits it's power.

These spells will usually be things like thunderstrike, paralyze, soul slay, and such, plus body ethereal, so they aren't that useless.

[Graeme Dice]

Huzurdaddi said:
No number of releif casters will buy you more than 5 turns extra. On the 6th turn they will stop casting releif. I have never seen them cast it after that point.

Relief gets cast when the fatigue of your entire army starts to get to be large. Cast heat from hell, rigor mortis, or rain if you want your army to generate more fatigue so that relief gets cast more often. You can also put clockwork horrors on the field, since their fatigue generation will trigger the casting of relief.

[Huzurdaddi]

Thunder strike, astral fires, falling frost, frozen heart, raise skeletons + drain life or drain life + raise skeletons depending on what order you want them in, bladewind etc. Those are all effective spells against Devils.

Thunder stike works quite well on devils. Astral fires not so well, MR negates and it's hard for pythium to get access to it, falling frost is ok but does not really kill devils all that well ( it really should don't know what goes wrong ), Blade wind works decently but against it is hard for Pythium to gain access to it, raise dead/drainlife works well against anything, but is hard for pythium to gain access to it.

Of those suggestions the best two for Pythium are Thunderstrike and falling frost. And thunderstrike has a cool sound effect.

[Huzurdaddi]

You'll probably want about 4-5 communicants per theurg when you have 4 or so theurgs

3 seems to work at 4 theurgs. They die exceedingly rarely. I have not tested for 5 theurgs.

These spells will usually be things like thunderstrike, paralyze, soul slay, and such, plus body ethereal, so they aren't that useless.

Actually I see a tremendous amount of ghost wolves. Mostly when the opposing army is retreating. I do however also see soul slay and enslave mind which is nice.

Relief gets cast when the fatigue of your entire army starts to get to be large.

Really? Are you sure about this? If so then clockwork horrors could be quite useful.

[Tuna]

A little thing I've found out about mages casting relief: If you have mass protection up, they are a LOT more likely to cast relief once the script runs out, as you dont have protection to cast.