An intial try at a Pythium strategy guide

[Huzurdaddi]

I thought I would give a whirl at a 1st stab at a Pythium strategy guide. If anyone has any ideas/tricks that they would want to add please feel free!

So you just started your game with Pythium and you look over your troops there are one in particular that stands out. The Principe. A pretty cheap with an excellent defence ( really excellent ).

To offset the Principe's main weaknesses ( normal levels of moral + slow combat speed which make breaking suicide ) liberally sprinkle in "Standards."

This by itself is a decent army. However were it possible to skew the odds of combat in the favor of the principe they would quickly become demons of the battlefield with very high ( almost untouchable ) defence. The is the core of the inital Pythium research.

We can quickly get to alteration level 3 ( usually by around turn 6 or so ). With this we gain access to Body Etherial. With this we can use the "In the Shadows we walk" strategy from Pocus. Except we can modify it a little. Simply take a good number of infantry ( let's say 50 under a Emerald Lord and sprinkle about 5 theurgs or theug acolytes though the block of infantry. Set the infantry to "hold and attack" and tell the acolytes to cast body etherial 4 times or so. This will make the entire block ( or most of it ) etherial. This will considerably improve the survivability of your troops which adds to their experience again improving their survivability! Woot!

Use these Etherial Armies in your initial expansion. They will not fare well against SC's but most other troops get mowed down quite badly.

After you got Altertaion 3, you might as well make a pit stop at Construction 2 since it is so quick to get. At construction 2 you will get access to Clams ( you have to find a way to make them though. Water 2 is hard for you to get ) and Quills ( handy with research but hardly necessary -- but like I said it's quick ).

After you get construction 2 you can either go for Thaumaturgy for spells which are excellent given your national mages : Mind Burn, Paralyze, teleport, Soul Slay, Gateway and Enslave Mind ( all this by level 5, which you can get in 15 turns or less!). If you go this route you may want to quickly follow it by getting to construction 6 so that you can get some banners of the northern star to help your casters in combat. And be sure to get lots of the excellent and cheap Theurg Communicants ( beware though the theurges tend to kill the poor Communicants unless you can find a very nice Shaman who will be able to cast relief after becomming a communion master ).

Or you can go for Conjuration 6 which gives you access to Ether Warriors. I usually go for Conjuration. You can probably get here by turn 25 or 30 or so. By this time assuming that you have not had to use your astral gems for anything you will be able to summon at least 2 ( maybe more depending on what sites you found along the way ) Groups of Ether Warriors.

Now casting Ether Gate has some pretty hard requirements: Astral 4, Death 1. Sadly your best casters are astral 3 death 1/8 ( 1/8 chance of getting death with their 1 random ). Now you could set your pretender to cast this, but I am leaving pretenders out of this entire guide.

So how to get these requirements? Well note that star shine caps are construction 6 and you can actually make them. So you can wait to research that and then it becomes the simple task of empowering 1 Arch Theurg with death 1 ( if you did not get it by luck ). This is the usual path. It is however a little time costly.

So by turn 30 - 35 you now have 2 armies of ether warriors and a couple of armies of well experienced etherial principies. With this you should be able to give almost any nation a run for their money. Actually more than a run. The ether warriors are excellent in combat ( I really don't know why their stats are not that good ). They truely excell at obliterating magic troops due to their moonblades. This reduces the number of counters to your offensive considerably. You have a good number of thrurges hence undead are not as much of a problem as they would be to other races. And you normal troops ( now etherial ) do a solid job against almost all commers ( as do the ether warriors again I don't know why! ).

After you have conqured an empire or two with the above armies you may be wanting to increase the voltage within your armies. The next summoned troop that is somewhat easy for your nation mages to summon is the abombination. With a water bracelt and a starshine cap any arch theurg can summon them. So long as they use their death gaze they are excellent, excellent summons.

If during this time you are having problem with undead ( although this is unlikely given the power of thurges ) you can summon Harbringers ( conjuration 6) which have a devestating attack against undead.

If anyone has any other suggestions as to what tricks/summons are especially powerful for pythium please post a reply.

Oh and finally if you really like cheeze the ArchThurges come with air 2. If you can somehow get 1 mage to level 3 ( either through luck or empowerment ) and you have access to construction 4 ( quite easy ) then you can construct sufficient items to get yourself to air 3 which allows you to employ apoger's "THE PERFECT STORM" tactic. Quite brutal. But *really* cheezy!

One more note: remember quickness is your friend with Theurges!