LA Pythium

[Karlem]

Easy question: heretics only lower dominion where they are? I mean, they do not spread it like negative temple checks to other provinces? If that's the case having drain and seems quite interesting....

[Kuritza]

Great infantry and terrifying Hydras, lots of mages incapable of good combat spells. No national summons worth mentioning.
With a booster, your mages can cast foul vapors though - that might compliment Hydras. Otherwise,I believe that Serpent Cult's only hope for the late game is a properly designed God. Perhaps a rainbow mage to improvise with whatever available resources. Early on, it may be capable of a good rush; I am curious whether archers are a good counter to Hydras or not.

P.S.
I tried taking drain and playing a wannabe-Mictlan, it didnt pay. Researchers are bad already, drain makes them terrible. It takes a while to build a second castle, and then it will be a very long time till your heretics 'clear' drain from it, if they do at all. Regrettably, they lower dominion, not wipe scales. I think they may be of some use to suppress enemy dominion as you invade somebody, not your own.

[Jazzepi]

Kuritza said:
Great infantry and terrifying Hydras, lots of mages incapable of good combat spells. No national summons worth mentioning.
With a booster, your mages can cast foul vapors though - that might compliment Hydras. Otherwise,I believe that Serpent Cult's only hope for the late game is a properly designed God. Perhaps a rainbow mage to improvise with whatever available resources. Early on, it may be capable of a good rush; I am curious whether archers are a good counter to Hydras or not.

P.S.
I tried taking drain and playing a wannabe-Mictlan, it didnt pay. Researchers are bad already, drain makes them terrible. It takes a while to build a second castle, and then it will be a very long time till your heretics 'clear' drain from it, if they do at all. Regrettably, they lower dominion, not wipe scales. I think they may be of some use to suppress enemy dominion as you invade somebody, not your own.

You probably can't do this anymore. Even if you eradicate all the scales from a given province I think the way the new scales work, all the provinces around it with your dominion in them would still tilt the scales inside of the "voided" province.

Jazzepi

[Agema]

Jazzepi's right. Scales take a while to fade away. And drain is a disaster for nations that can't build high-research mages outside the capital, as is the case for LA Pythium.

My suggestion is an S/E pretender with at least +2 Productivity, otherwise you'll barely be able to recruit troops except the chaff. Order would be good too. I'm thinking your critical items are Ring of Wizardry, Dwarven Hammer, and crystal doo-dahs (Coins for +1S, Matrices) to help along communions.

Pythium has every type of magic, even blood, and S mages are easy for N, W, A; rarer for D. So that's 5 magic types viable for communion immediately. Nature and Death can be advanced to mid-level easily enough. Everything else is tricky, so I'd think Ring of Wizardry is an absolute must, as then W, E and S can be raised easily (although you'll already have E and S from the pretender.) So all you'll be missing is Fire, Air and Blood from easy increases. I'd be tempted to ignore blood entirely though.

The other thing to do is site search like crazy for massive gem income - you can search for anything to at least level 1.

[Lingchih]

Thanks for all the ideas. I was very impressed by the Hydras as well, and after boosting to 3/3 order/productivity, I was able to build the very nice elite infantry at an acceptable level. I really don't think the Hydras need a bless at all.

Too bad the drain idea won't work. That would have been a great help with the scales.

[Zenzei]

I've been testing the following in SP and it worked nicely for me. Dormant S6E4 Son of the Sun with dominion strength 9. Scales were order3/sloth1/heat1/misfortune1/magic1.

Use starting army boosted with gladiators/retiaruses for initial expansion around your capital, this works really well. At this point you have enough resources to build enough palantines/palantines with javelins even with the sloth scale. If you need more troops/turn, build more forts and you should be doing that anyway because your mages are so cost effective. Serpent acolyte is second only to Mictlan priest and Yogi when it comes to good cost/research ratio. Aim to have 3 castles up and running by fall of the second year.

Buy hydras during the early turns whenever you have the extra 250 available. 5 snakes plus serpent acolyte as a leader takes indies easily. Because additional castles and snakes cost a lot of money you are really going love that order 3.

For site searching mix & match two mages so that you have WNSDH covered between them and send them out to find sites. Of course you should search for FAE gems too but WNSDH are the important gem types you are going to need later on, so they are a priority.

Research alteration 3 first and construction 4 second. After that you want to have at least alteration 5 (bone melter & mother oak), enchantment 7 (guaqmire/foul vapors/relief/serpents blessing/stellar focus etc), construction 6 (path boosters) and thaumaturgy 4 (gift of reason). When your gem income starts to shape up you need to decide whether to go for alteration 9 (seraphs and other wishable goodies) or conjuration 9 (tartarians) in order to have a good late game. It's kind of fun to able to make up your mind during the game because both options are totally available to you. If you go alteration 9, remember to clam spam with those renatas.

Word about pretender. Once awake, he is very capable SC provided you give him some items and script buffs like personal luck, body ethereal and ironskin. He can also forge some seriously important stuff like rings of sorcery/wizardry, crystal coins, dwarven hammers etc. You could go with great enchantress or oracle and get slightly better scales but I like the additional security SC god provides. Sun god is the fun god.

So there you have some tips. I find it very hard to give good well formatted advice because this nation is so tangled, everything affects everything.

[Kuritza]

Man... just tell me, how are you going to cast bone melter without a water bracelet, which is construction 6?

[Zenzei]

I said it is hard to make well formatted.
But you are right, construction 6 should be in fact researched before alteration 5 because you want the bracelets. So let's try this again, assuming a decent water gem income: alteration 3 -> construction 4 -> enchantment 5 -> construction 6 -> more alteration & enchantment. Make quick dips into other schools when you have enough research points to get the first two or three levels in one turn.

[vfb]

Here's what I tried with LA Pythium:

Awake Prince of Death, Dom 10, E4D5,
Order 3, Sloth 3, Heat 1, Misfortune 2, Growth 0, Magic 1

Heat and Sloth are for Hydras. Neutral growth is for blood hunting. You could try a Dom9 PoD instead, with Growth 1.

E4D5 gives you hammers, early site searching, and a little reinvigoration for your Hydras, plus all the benefits of pretty good death for the late game.

Hydras or the PoD will kill everything except undead. Use H2S1 priests and 8 H1S1 theurgs in communions for killing undead with Banshment. Use Milites and Comitats for catching arrows with their tower shields. Use the Guard Commander order, plus Hold x 5/Attack Rear on the commanders, and strategic commander placement, to keep your tower shields from getting poisoned. Indy commanders with shields are best because archers continue to target your tower shields even after they have retreated past your hydras.

Holdx5, Attack Rear is critical (and place the commanders at the very top or bottom). Commanders on 'Stay behind troops' will end up in the poison cloud. That's okay for them if they've got a ring, but the tower shields will die.

Early research goals:
Const 2 (PoD gear), Thaum 1 (communion), Evo 2 (arcane probing), Const 4 (rods, more PoD gear, and path boosters),
Alt-4 (body ethereal, luck, quickness).

Turn 1:
Tax at 150, Patrol, research with the PoD.
Hire a Serpent Acolyte, 4 Milites.
Don't hire Hydras yet, to save upkeep.
Prophet scout.

Turn 2:
Forge a Hide Shield.
Tax at 150, Patrol.
Hire a Serpent Acolyte, 4 Milites.
Don't hire Hydras yet, to save upkeep.
Preach with prophet.
Attack with PoD and one skelly archer chaff.

Turn 3:
Alchemise 2 S to N and forge a Serpent Ring.
Move an Acolyte with Shield to PoD.
Search with PoD, recruit an indy commander with a shield.
Tax at 150, Patrol.
Hire 5 Hydras, 110 Gold D1 or N1 mage, Comitats.
Preach with prophet.

Turn 4:
PoD wields Shield, continues attacks.
Centurion wields Serpent Ring just in case.
Start hiring Theurgs, or the 110 Gold mages.
Don't use the Comitats, they can patrol, expand into weak indies or handle barbarian invasions if the PoD is busy.
Attack with 5 Hydras and Milites, prophet and Centurion.

Hydras in the center on hold and attack. Centurion in the top left on hold x 5, attack rear. Milities at the top right on Guard Commander. The Milites will run away from the enemy to the Centurion, the indies will follow and be killed. Archers will fire at range at the Milites.

Turns 5 and up:

Build another squad of 5 Hydras, then a cheap castle with temple and lab. Continue taking provinces with the PoD, and searching for earth/death sites. Make gear for the PoD as it becomes available, and have him craft a hammer as soon as you have enough earth. Cast Arcane Probing at Evo 2.

You've got 2 armies of 5 Hydras, 1 army of Comitats, and 1 PoD to expand or fight a war with.

At Const 4 hire some Revelers to get into blood, and make Earth boots with your PoD so he can stop wasting his time site searching. Revelers without blood can all research at your second castle, so that your dominion is only negatively impacted in one province. Revelers with blood should make thorns armour for better hunting and toads.

What you do next depends on who your neighbors are and your state of war. Don't forget to build lots of Serpent Priests and Theurgs for Banishment communions if Ermor is on the map.

Your Theurgs can also cast Body Ethereal and Luck on your hydras if you give them a serpent ring. Forge lots.

[Lingchih]

Wow, you just wrote the definitive guide for LA Pythium. Someone should add this to the strategy guide post.

Thanks vfb