Newbie Pythium Questions

[Kortank]

Hello!
Well, Me and my friends have just found this game and have downloaded the demo for 2. I basicly use pythium, my friends use citis and abysia. Since Im new here, I still don't know any strategys yet. I basicly rely on serpent preist and emerald guards, trying to swarm the opponents by build lots of cheap fast forts. I use serpent cult but I don't know if its good or not. My friend already has this undead thing going on with desert tombs with citis and have obilerated me. Im just asking about strategys for Pythium to beat undead citis and abysia. I really like Pythium, but have heard it is one of the worst in the game. Still, any advice? thanks!

[Wish]

a bunch of priests set to banish take out priests pretty effectively.

additionally, learn some thaumaturgy and get some of those astral mages set to cast mind blast - it won't target mindless troops (like most of the cheap undead)

Pythium has the advantage of really getting a lot of gem income, and powerful mages. they don't really get archers, so you have to research some evocation and use those spells. Unfortunmately in the demo, you can't really reach the good evocation spells.

[KissBlade]

Haha even though Serpent Cult isn't bad thanks to quickness/eagle eye banishment for undead and demons, Serpent cult is one of the worst in the game while Pythium base is one of the strongest nations. =)

[Kortank]

Okay, so I should start using the default for pythium?
What should my god be? Stats ansd stuff? And how do I use my units specificly to take out undead citis and abysia?

[Nerfix]

Yes, yes you should start using def. Pythium. The Cult is a lovely theme and it oozes with hydra flavour but it really just doesn't cut it.

As for regular Pythium...never played them that much but here goes:

Masses of weak undead are easy peasy since you have priests with Water magic. Research Quickness and spam Banishment with them.

You also have a pretty easy acces to Astral battle magic, namle Soul Slay and Enslave and Air battle magic like Thunder Strike and Orb Lightning. OL is wonderful since it scales in a sweet, sweet manner with your air magic level but early on TS and even regular Lightning Bolt is very good.

Don't forget Quickness. Use it. Feel the power of shooting two spells per round with a quickened caster.

Don't forget communion either. Recruit Communicants or those 1 S Theurgs. Communicants have no magic skills but they have Communion Slave autocast on them at all times. The S1 Theurgs need to use the spell Communion Slave but can also do something useful on the field. Well, semi-useful.

Communion allows you to increase the power of mages who have cast Communion Master by 1 for every two mages who have cast Communion Slave. The fatigue from the master's spells partially goes to the Slaves, but the buff spells are also transfered to them. So if you cast Summon Earthpower and Bless on a Master the Slaves will get the Earthpower effect and Bless if they are sacred. This, as you can imagine, is very useful.

You can easily rack up amazingly high Holy magic levels and magic levels in general while easening the fatigue burden. But keep in mind that the fatique can quickly become deadly for the slaves. A pro way the fight fatigue is the have a Nature Theurg as one of the Masters and then have him cast Relief.

A more demo friendly way is taking enough Earth magic to get some of the Earth bless and then have an Earth theurg be a master and have him cast Summon Earthpower and Bless. This will help a bit with the fatigue.

Setting up a big Communion with multiple Slaves (some have used up to 16 or so slaves) and with several Masters can be difficult but it pays off.

Emerald Guards are very good units but they are too resource intensive for start in my opinion. Regular troops (I believe Princes are where it's at) with Standards mixed in are good enough for start I believe. Support them with mages and summons. Emerald Guards become useful if/when you enough resources to build them in proper numbers.

[Kortank]

So can communicants raise all the magic by 1 for the master? Or just the astral? And how many princes per standard?

[Daynarr]

All magic including holy.

[Kortank]

So how does communicant work? Can the communicant guys automatically give power to arch therugs? Because I tried with 3 slaves and 2 arch but they didn't seem to have any extra powers.

[quantum_mechani]

Kortank said:
So how does communicant work? Can the communicant guys automatically give power to arch therugs? Because I tried with 3 slaves and 2 arch but they didn't seem to have any extra powers.

It doesn't actually display the extra magic when you use communion, but it's there.

[Agrajag]

Nerfix, you said communion increases magical power by 1 for each 2 slaves, but IIRC it increases by N for 2^N slaves.
I could be mistaken though, I don't use communion much.