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| LA Pythium???; Da fuq do I do with these guys? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Aug 2 2014, 07:53 AM (13,206 Views) | |
| Rejakor | Mar 8 2016, 05:46 AM Post #46 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Why are people still engaging the account created purely to lie about how pythium works. |
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| GlointheDark | Mar 19 2016, 06:18 AM Post #47 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I've won a couple of blitzes and MP games with LA Pythium. I consider them one of the stronger LA nations. A point of view likely to be controversial. All that talk about hydras, however, is complete and utter blather. There is, essentially, one right way to play pythium. Awake Myrmaechelon. Man eater or similar will work in a pinch, but.. I drop about 6 points into E. But you could use awe if you really wanted to. The strength of pythium is the ability to recruit troops and mages without castles. The troops outside of castles work well with your fire mages; your capital troops with map move two are quick response. With this super cheap expander, you will have great scales. +magic to add a research boost to every mage. If you go maneater, you have an easy path to break into blood to go revelers, but not necessary. Be aggressive. Your troops spawn forward. You have great battlemages, you can spawn mages witout forts, and you can dom push via heretics as necessary. Gladiators compliment and supercharge your initial expansion (great vs cav), and are super useful as fort defenders. With their super low resource cost - its poof instant army. In fact rather in the mid game, rather than garrisoning all your forts, maintain a slush fund of 500 or whatever that can be used to defend ALL your forts should an enemy approach. Troops you won't be spending upkeep on... |
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| Ohlmann | Mar 19 2016, 07:50 AM Post #48 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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I have seen that strategy several time now. Each time it worked to have a good expansion, then the LA Pythium was utterly crushed and scattered to the wind because, in fact, their legionaries don't cut it against mid games army, and don't cut it against good sacred in early game either. Part of the problem seem to be that the milite is still 9 ressources, and anything better is 26 ressources, when your non-fort provinces don't have a lot of ressources. So it's a lot less explosive than one would believe at first ; it work well enough for expansion, but you can't replace your losses very well. And then, you have mostly no battlemagic to speak of, so people cut through your troop with glee. |
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| LDiCesare | Mar 19 2016, 08:11 AM Post #49 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Yes, early expansion is rather easy, and for a blitz, LA Pythium can certainly do well. But mid-game is hard. You certainly need lots of mages and can have good research as you have many labs, but the mages aren't good researchers. The revelers would be awesome is there was a higher likelihood of Blood. Being able to produce one satyr commander per blood slave is great except you have no mage to cast them. |
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| GlointheDark | Mar 19 2016, 06:05 PM Post #50 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Magic 3 helps with the the research question. 8 rp for 40 gp isnt' bad or 8 for 2.33 maint. In fact greater than 3>1 rp:maint is great. If you were to start with a sage, 9 rp for 2.33 |
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| Rejakor | Mar 20 2016, 10:48 AM Post #51 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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If you build enough labs, you can be as good at research as a nation with actually good mages, sure. No-one thinks that is a problem with the nation. The problem is the mages are so weak that they can't cast anything. And the things they can cast, that's all they can cast, and some of the things you want to cast, you need a random to cast, and so on. And the troops are not great and cost all the res in the world and are gold expensive to boot. Not to mention the mages are expensive for the utility they give. Everything you put on the field is sub-par. |
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| Admiral_Aorta | Mar 20 2016, 01:07 PM Post #52 |
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Suddenly a troll appeared in the laboratory!
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that's sort of an eccentric troll |
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| GlointheDark | Mar 20 2016, 07:53 PM Post #53 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Huh. Well we have completely different experiences. Early game, my troop builds from non forted locations are almost always militae. An 8? cost unit with a 15 defense is really good for holding the line, and can be intermixed wth standrds or other troops as necessary - especially when lead by a magister. You can mix in a stack of solanis if you have a good resource province (typically mts). Fire in a jar are good items for you - but if you use my disease strategy (below) you can also use fever curse for the mages that arent f2. What I see, when I look at this nation is a nation full of nature mages; there are a bunch of ways to play of course, but this is one of the few natons I think can play with death scales. You can use your heretics to surpress your dominion in important provinces, and kill populace in other provinces. Your nature mages and forts (defensively) will provide you supplies. You have pretty strong disease healers as well, so sacred hydras with a death bless set forward and set to guard commander so that your enemy comes forward into their poison cloud works pretty well. You can combine that with bane venom charms, and decay/doom effects which will very rapidly (a few combat turns) kill all diseased units. |
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| suppenit | Mar 20 2016, 08:10 PM Post #54 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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no way, these are undisciplined |
| aka olli!, bumpjack | |
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| LDiCesare | Mar 20 2016, 08:12 PM Post #55 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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How are you actually be able to disease units in the first place? Banes charms need 10 death gems, you then have to equip someone, go through the enemy territory without dying of your own disease until you reach the target province, and hope you actually disease some enemy mages/unitswithout being spotted and killed or dying of your own disease. I can't see this as an effective strategy. It requires a lot of D gems, D2 mages, scouts and enemiesboth vulnerable to disease and unable to readthe upcoming bane venom charm invasion and intercept it through patrolling. Seriously, how long does it take you to destroy an enemy army with these tricks? How often are you able to pull such a trick before the enemy counters it? I don't think it can surprise anyone more than one battle, at the very best, but I may be mistaken. |
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| Ohlmann | Mar 20 2016, 08:30 PM Post #56 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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I would be very surprised if the poison cloud could actually disease people via D9, or even simply do additional damage that way. As someone have said, hydras are undisciplined, so it's a trick actually impossible to do. Not to mention the fact the cloud dissipate so fast that even against indy it would be hard to time. Militias are fine for expansion, but they are very fragile. The def 15 is a bit of a stinker : by LA, a lot of units can kill them in one parried hit, and they are def 9 without the shield. And crossbows hit for about 2 damage even when parried. So they are a lot less sturdy in melee than, say, markatas, and not that resilient to crossbow (but relatively fine against regular bows). Bane charms aren't able to disease a lot of people, and they are very visible, so quickly your bane charm bearer will have to change province or be caught by patrol. Decay isn't easy to apply as LA Pythium, because the nation don't have F/D. So it need to rely on Decay, who is range 20, target only 1 person, and is castable only by 125+g mages you only recruit in forts. Domkilling yourself with heretic is still domkilling yourself. Given your capital is your higest income province, you certainly want to remove your scale on it ; however that mean your dominions will be perilously low. Even if you abandon your cap to your death scale, efficiently removing your candle from your other high income province is a good game to play to lose to domkill. Sometime without your neighbor really trying it. |
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| Zonk | Mar 20 2016, 09:40 PM Post #57 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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I'm 99.99% sure D9 doesn't work like that. If it did, we would also expect the poison cloud to trigger BV - and that doesn't happen. Clouds aren't 'real' attacks. |
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NATION MODS Spoiler: click to toggle OTHER MODSOni Spectral Weapons Zonkmod | |
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| LDiCesare | Mar 20 2016, 10:48 PM Post #58 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I confirm that the cloud does not deal any extra disease damage. The bless just doesn't work that way. Of course, the many bite attacks can cause some disease, but they'd better just kill the opponent outright. And if they don't and the enemy routs, the poison will kill them. If the bites don't kill and the hydra routs, the hydra usually dies so it's not very good either. The point that is problematic is how to use the mages,not about the units. |
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| Rejakor | Mar 21 2016, 04:21 PM Post #59 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Don't underestimate how bad the units are. You have EA infantry, in LA. Everything you have dies to crossbows quite horrendously, and you have the privilege of paying more gold and res for them than most nations do. The units are trash, and Gloin saying 'use the milite' is correct - you might as well use the cheapest of them, because they are all trash. Exception to gladiators, but that relies on enemies not anticipating the glad movement. Trash units is okay if you have good mages but you do not. Fireball is not a good spell. Renatus are okay once you have the rp, but they are fortrec, and typically you do not have the RP because you have capability to survive long enough to get the RP. Note that when I say 'are okay', I mean 50% of them are usable, at all, in battle. The other two randoms are labrats who can burn gems to still suck at best. Half of your heliodromii are use-impaired as well, at best taking 5 entire gems to be able to cast the powerful 'fireball' spell (or 1 gem for an emergency use). Everything you want to cast is in different trees and too few of your mages can cast it. Those mages are heretics, generally, and you're buying temples to keep your domscore not dying and undercutting any good scales you've taken. Your troops are no help and at best can poorly hold a line while costing around twice what they should. Not that you can even buy that many due to the res-costs. They aren't totally screwed as a nation but to suggest a nation with zero wins in sum1's spreadsheet is 'one of the strongest in LA' is farcical. They are one of the weakest nations in LA. For a multitude of reasons. |
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| Ohlmann | Mar 21 2016, 04:26 PM Post #60 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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Not really actually. They look like identical to the EA legionary, but they aren't identical to them. In particular, the res heavy one are exceptionaly resistant to crossbow, due to protection 18 + a tower shield. They also all use a broad sword instead of a shortsword, which is only +1 damage, but it do help quite a bit actually doing damage. Not that it make that infantry really good. It's just not quite as trashy as you say. |
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1:02 AM Jul 11