Pythium strategy advice

[Epaminondas]

How do folks generally play Pythium. I am about to start a game with them, and I am not sure how to approach it from a strategy viewpoint.

I am a huge fan of Bless strategies, but Pythium's sacred units are very fragile and do not exactly pack a punch either. So that's a no go. The heavy battlefield magic option, another among my favorite, is also problematic because the top 2 battlefield mages for Pythium also has Old Age problems. So is my option basically cranking up Order and Production scales and try to amass a lot of Pythium's above-average regular troops like the Emerald Guards and Serpent Cataphracts?

[calmon]

In Dom2 i play a 3 bless strategy with the pythium battle vastals and it worked quite good. Try out Water/Fire/Astral 9 and an imprissoned oracle.

The vastals are cheap and good in melee defence and with fire bless good in attack as well.

You need some shield troops in front to defend arrows.

[Teraswaerto]

MA Pythium.

Principes are excellent. Beyond that, Pythium is about Astral magic and communion. That's my view anyway. Growth is probabably a good idea due to the old age problems.

[PDF]

Ditto
I'm not sure Prod is very useful, even with Prod-0 you can crank 200 res a turn per castle, largely enough for legions of Principes
I'd rather go for Growth to alleviate aging, and maybe a Nature-5+ pretender for GoH (plus the mages will regenerates.. hum yes it's nearly useless)- even if getting the gems won't be that easy.
Also I'm not a fan of a Bless strategy with the capitol-only and rather weak Vestals, rather an all-out Astral magic strategy using Communions to unleash the real nasty spells such as Arcane Domination and Master Enslave.
With that in mind an Astral-9 Nature-5 Oracle would be a good choice, and you'll even get a nice bless eventually

[Shovah32]

Try a sleeping, dom5 divine emperor with e3s5d3n5. It gives you good access to death, earth and nature which your nation lacks aswell as a decent researcher and astral mage. For scales try:
turmoil3 prod1 growth2(maybe growth1 magic1) luck3.

Early game expand with your strong national troops and good indies while you research alteration and thaumaturgy. Early into the mid game start sending some lesser mages along to buff your best units(knights, emerald guard ect) with body ethereal, luck and maybe quickness. Later into the mid-game add some soul slaying communion groups into the mix along with some summons, possibly including national harbingers. Late game you will need more of what you had in the mid-game, add in tougher and more versatile units if possible aswell as some thugs and SC's, decently equipped angels of fury are great with armies for support or solo/in groups(blood vengance rocks).

[Ironhawk]

Principes are great, but I like Velites and Legionaires, myself. Like the principe, they have great defense and a tower shield but cost 50% less.

[Epaminondas]

Teraswaerto said:
MA Pythium.

Principes are excellent. Beyond that, Pythium is about Astral magic and communion. That's my view anyway. Growth is probabably a good idea due to the old age problems.

Wouldn't you prefer Emerald Warriors over Principes?

[Teraswaerto]

They cost too much IMO, both resources and gold. Also, Principes have strategic move 2, Emerald Guards have 1.

[Jack_Trowell]

The earth blessing can be very useful for pythium : more reinvigoration is always nice with sacred mages, and more so if you try to use communion.

[Shovah32]

Yes, an earth blessing is amazing with large communions, it helps to stop your communicants from dying .