LA Pythium

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Ha ha ha Sorry, but I only played one game in SP, and didn't even hire a bunch of units available to the nation.

There's so many other things LA Pythium can do, like make Fever Fetishes with a Heliodromus, cast an early Mother Oak with a N3 Serpent Priest, actually use your Epoptes healers (they can't heal the PoD! And since they are heretics, they either belong on your front lines or in one of your quarantine labs), etc.

A definitive guide should mention all that and more.

[Lingchih]

Well, I can add a few things then. From playing several builds now.

The Epoptes are rather poor healers. I had an afflicted dragon in one game (limp), and he had never healed after more than 10 turns trying to heal him. They do not really cause much unrest though, unless you have a bunch. I kept a few in my capitol for a long time, and unrest never climbed above 0, with no patrolling.

I am curious about your choice of sloth? All of Pythiums elite troops, which are awesome, have a very high cost in resources? How could you build enough with Sloth3?

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I don't. I build Hydras as my main force. The only other troops I hired were Comitats and Milites.

I'm still playing that game and am thinking of branching out with indy archers (yay, tribals in LA) and Flaming Arrows from F2 Heliodromes, with fever fetishes on scouts.

I hate taking production scales. Just my personal preference . It always seems a waste later on in the game.

I don't like map-move 1 units either, that's why I stick with Comitats. I prefer them to Palatines because of the javelins. I can't recruit a lot, but that's good, because I need the cash for new forts with labs, and hydras. Hydras are mapmove-1 so it's good to have something faster.

Epoptes don't cause unrest. They are heretics, so they lower your dominion (or your enemy dominion).

Edit: Is there a quickfix for the "U 1856 Hydra Wrong secondshape" bug? I searched but couldn't find one. If you're going to do a Pythium MP game with a Hydra strategy, you should really use a patch for this.

[Lingchih]

I don't know about that bug. I thought the Hydra problems had been fixed with the last patch.

[Wick]

The hydras were fixed and, if not, Endoperez had a QuickFix mod that did.

Are you sure about recruiting Revelers? They are an extra 30g each for a 1/20th chance of blood, so 600g for B1. I wouldn't touch that unless I wanted unrest causing heretic 3 units for some other reason.

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I thought they were fixed, but then I thought I saw a hydra limping around with one head. I made a disabled (pretty much empty) sacredhydrasfix315.dm just in case I need to apply it in the middle of the game.

Revelers are cheap enough researchers that the ones without blood can sit around in your quarantine lab researching or making snake rings. It's a 20% (1 in 5) chance of BN, so 1 in 10 for B1, not 1 in 20. I'm a big fan of blood, so that's worth it for me.

I've attached my SP save game at around 12 months. Caelum declared war on me, the other nations are leaving me alone. I would not buy this much PD (21 etc) in an MP game, but it keeps the AI off your back.

There was a cluster#!%& in Birman Highs the previous month, where my tower shields managed to get mixed up with my hydras and they all got poisoned and died, that's why my hydras and some new infantry are getting together in Waywoods. They aren't set up to fight yet, but the army in Kolermegor is. This sort of disaster happens about 1 in 15 fights, and it's just a loss of 8 to 12 infantry. Not really a disaster, but it means you have to regroup. I don't like sending in hydras without an arrow shield. I was surprised by a wind mage province early on, but because the arrows were all firing at my tower shields instead of the hydras, I took the province with no lost hydras.

Hydras are terrible at defending if you mix them with PD because you can take 75% losses and route. That's why Kolermegor has no PD.

The map I'm using can be found here:

http://dom3maps.wikidot.com/systemxlands

[Lingchih]

I have been using my Hydras separately, with a poison immune commander (usually my Pretender), and keeping my other armies Hydra free. The Pythium troops, especially the elite ones, are very good, and can take provinces easily without Hydra help. And the Hydras, even without any backup troops, pretty much slaughter anything that is not poison immune. It helps to send a meat shield (like an SC) with them to soak up some blows, so they don't get overwhelmed while they are poisoning everyone.

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Yeah, I agree about the infantry, they are pretty nice. Which ones are you using?

I think my "shield decoy" for the Hydras would fail miserably against any half-decent MP player, who would just set archers to fire at monsters. Limitane Solaris should do pretty well against Flaming Arrows, with their tower shields and 50% FR. So I suppose it's just a question of sending the right army against the your opponent.

Did you try out Foul Vapors with your Hydra army? N3W1 Serpent Priests are pretty common.