LA Pythium Hydras

[Lingchih]

Just started a game with the Serpent Cult. Wow, want a variety of magic paths? It's a bit mind-boggling to come up with a strategy with this much to choose from.

I'm wondering about the Hydras though. They cost 250 gold, and they only have 6 hp? That seems to be a lot of money for something that could easily die from a stray arrow, or one hit from a broadsword. Is this a mistake, or are they really meant to be that weak?

[Jazzepi]

I think the point with those hydras is to get body etheral, and luck to cast on them.

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

-sigh-

6hp is just for the first head.

They have several forms, all with different hps. If they 'die' they switch to the next form. So the total hp from the 9 forms is more like 80 or so. They're actually very durable units.

Be aware that they currently have two bugs. Firstly if they lose heads they will grow them back after combat, but no longer be sacred. Only the very first form is sacred.

Secondly if they are reduced to a certain number of heads (3 is it?) they will not grow them back ater combat.

[Lingchih]

Ahh, I see. I sent a troop of them into combat though, and (without any buffs), they still died very quickly.

I think they're crap. I won't recruit any more of them unless someone tells me how to use them effectively.

[Zylithan]

wow. thats a very cool mechanic

[Jazzepi]

Lingchih said:
Ahh, I see. I sent a troop of them into combat though, and (without any buffs), they still died very quickly.

I think they're crap. I won't recruit any more of them unless someone tells me how to use them effectively.



I just did!

Jazzepi

[Baalz]

I was pretty impressed, I played around with them and a group of 4 hydras didn't run into an idie province they couldn't take without a loss (I'm sure there are some, I didn't play around that long) and I didn't do any buffing at all. Granted that's not the cheapest expansion force but they certainly have their uses and they're practically resource free. That fear plus 9 initial attacks plus area poison damage seems to be pretty effective at routing units and the multiple forms give them enough survivability to last a couple rounds. When I tried just 2 they died pretty quick, but 4 were able to spread the damage enough and hit hard enough round one that everybody ran away (the fear aura stacks to).

[Lingchih]

Well, I did send mine (2 big Hyrda, 7 little Hydra) up against a couple of dozen Knights, so I guess I should give them another try under more favorable circumstances.

[Juzza]

Knights are probably the worst thing you can send hydras against, 'd give them another try.

[Sombre]

Actually I think hydras are good vs knights - the lance hit can only take one head off them, they have multiple attacks to overcome the def and they have poison to overcome the armour. Almost a classic counter in fact.

[Folket]

I find that the strength of the hydras is their regen. But knight do much more damage a round then ordinary soldiers and are able to overcome the regen.

[Saxon]

Being on the receiving end of a pair of them right now, I can assure you they a pretty powerful. I don't even want to think about what would happen if they were buffed...

[LDiCesare]

Does anyone have good ideas about how to use LA Pythium?
Hydras are very nice, but no troop resists to poison, so you're stuck with hydra only armies until you have researched quite a bit.
Then, comitatenses, palatines, theurgs and the good priests are all capital only, which means you only get limitanei and the minor mages in other forts. I find that early expansion is easy (alteration 1 to give resist poison to a minor mage, bringing him to 100% Poison resist, build 4-6 hydras depending on indep strength, and you've got a force that can take all indeps without stopping). But then the hydras strategic move of 1 comes in and hampers mobility a lot. Bringing reinforcements is almost impossible unless you're having a stable front in a long war. You end up relying on a variety of weak mages who may have found one site to give them the needed gems, and a choice of armies that's very limited (milite, limitanei and solaris who are expensive due to fire resistance).
So does anyone think of a strategy for LA Pythium? I think for a small map, going all-hydras with nature/death/fire magic support might be worthwhile?

[Meglobob]

Just with a W9 bless the hydras are awesome. I have not had a problem with knights or anything else. I have been using 1-2 big hydras with 18-19 small hydras. You occassionally lose 1 or 2 of the small hydras but thats it.

The only drawback is you only have 1 mage/priest with 100% posion resistance to lead/bless them. He needs armour to protect him from missile fire. Your prophet can of course lead some but he needs a ring of posion resistance.

[thejeff]

Good positioning should be able to protect a prophet or mage from the poison clouds pretty reliably.

I haven't played with Serpent Cult yet, but didn't have any problems losing mages to poison with Sauromatia. Troops, yes, but not mages.

You can also back them up with archers with little risk.

[VedalkenBear]

Strategy with the Serpent Cult?

I can think of several.

One is to ignore the Hydras and go with 'national troop rush'. Their troops are quite possibly the best human troops in the late era.

Another is to use the sacred Hydras. I've done it with a Fire-9 Bless, and troops just evaporate when facing them. Water-9 is another possibility, I guess, but I prefer the 'point blank annihilation' factor of Fire. (Your Serpent Priests are the natural commanders for them.)

Either way, your mages are amazingly diverse and deadly against opposing dominions. Sure, the heretics can't stealth into an opponent's territories like the Skeptic, but it's useful to eliminate opposing dominion from your territories (particularly newly conquered ones). Perhaps it was just my curiosity, but I really wanted Blood Magic, and so I recruited a _lot_ of Revelers trying to get it. That gave me an excess of, basically, auto Holy-3 preaching every turn.

Another point is that you have two Assassins. The Serpent Assassin has good stats and a good weapon, but needs some armor. The Orgy national Blood spell gives you, for 1 Blood slave, a stealthy berserking Satyr _seducer_ that can summon Maenads.

All in all, the Serpent Cult has to be one of my favorite nations to play.

[Sombre]

I really wouldn't go with hydra bless tactics, because if the hydra loses a head it won't be sacred any more. This is a bug, but something to bear in mind. It would only take an arrow to turn them into a regular hydra from that point on.

[Morkilus]

This nation sounds awesome. Tonight will involve some Serpent Cult and perhaps some thematic music from Carmina Burana.

[VedalkenBear]

Sombre,

I have Endo's mod to fix this. Even if not, the Hydras can be an immense amount of fun. And it's not like the Hydras are the only thing the Serpent Cult has going for it.

[LDiCesare]

VedalkenBear said:
One is to ignore the Hydras and go with 'national troop rush'. Their troops are quite possibly the best human troops in the late era.



I think their Enc is a bit high, and they are gold expensive. Plus the comitatenses and palatines are capital only. Although I confess I didn't try the cataphracts.



Another is to use the sacred Hydras. I've done it with a Fire-9 Bless, and troops just evaporate when facing them. Water-9 is another possibility, I guess, but I prefer the 'point blank annihilation' factor of Fire. (Your Serpent Priests are the natural commanders for them.)



Yes, but they don't work well alone to take forts. I tried to buy lots of gladiators for the sole purpose to bring down the fort. 8gp for 12 str is great, but you must avoid fights.


The Orgy national Blood spell gives you, for 1 Blood slave, a stealthy berserking Satyr _seducer_ that can summon Maenads.


Yikes! I never thought to look for Blood national spells for Pythium! Must try that...

[Taqwus]

Problem with using gladiators for sieges is that they fix you in location for the duration of the siege, and if any third-party casts a remote summon on the siege, your gladiators will vanish after the battle. Same result if a single scout popping his head out and screaming, "Come get some!".

Haven't played 'em yet, but I've SP'd against them. The heavy infantry's strat-2 makes them quite interesting for a low-magic situation.

[VedalkenBear]

Their troops are on the pricey side, but IMO worth the price. Also, their non-capital only troops are not that much worse than the Comitatenses.

Regarding the siege issue, I don't know what to tell you. If you have a pretender with Earth, then you can make Gate Smashers or something. In my games, I normally play with Luck and so I have random troops hanging around to help.

And yeah, I never noticed Orgy until after I had a Blood Reveler and looked at the Blood spells to use. That might be another possible use for the Satyr is to produce the Maenads to pull down walls.

Another option is to wall the player inside his forts, and bring in your heretics to dominion kill him. It is surprising how fast the dominion drops.

[Ironhawk]

I was mulling over LA Pythium last night and liked all the Heretic flags on thier mages. It occured to me that you could really easily take full drain with this nation and still be ok. Since your researchers are pretty good just on thier own and would negate your own bad dominion in a research center. Has anyone tried that?

[KissBlade]

huh ... wait heretics auto preach your dominion? I thought they decreased it instead?

[Meglobob]

KissBlade said:
huh ... wait heretics auto preach your dominion? I thought they decreased it instead?



Its kinda the same thing, heretic 3 is the same effect as a enemy lvl3 priest preaching.

I wonder if anyone has been brave enough to take virtually all negative scales with a low dominion of lets say 4 and use those heretics to stop your own very nasty dominion spreading beyond your capital, a couple of adjacent provinces?

It would allow you to take a triple+ bless, you have 3 sacreds to use them with and you only suffer the negatives at your capital plus a couple of adjacent provinces.

Would it work or will you die of dominion death?

[Shovah32]

Well a very low dominion score and a high bless aren't exactly good together, even if Hydras are expensive.

[Meglobob]

Shovah32 said:
Well a very low dominion score and a high bless aren't exactly good together, even if Hydras are expensive.



Oh yea, that will teach me to write before I think! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

Perhaps 6 or 7?

[Shovah32]

It could work in a rush maybe. Eventually it would probably either just get too difficult to keep your dominion completely under control(making temples to get more sacreds) or you would be left with a small number of sacreds(6-7 per turn) and, at best, completely average scales.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah you dont want to go full negative since you can only negate your own dominion in a few choice provinces. To try to do something systemtic or empire-wide would risk dominion death. The reason why drain is so attractive in this one particular case is because it wouldnt ruin your economy when spread over your nation but is (almost by default) negated for free by your researchers.

[VedalkenBear]

KissBlade said:
huh ... wait heretics auto preach your dominion? I thought they decreased it instead?



The important part, from my perspective, is that they auto-decrease _anyone's_ dominion, every turn. So yes, if they are in your dominion, they decrease it. If they are in enemy dominion, they will decrease that. I have found them to be useful in rapidly converting provinces from enemy control (dominion-wise) to neutral.

[Dhaeron]

While Hydras are nice, imo they're a lot worse than before. Since their HP are capped at the HP of the individual head on top of the stack (yeah, i'm thinking of HOMM too :p) their regeneration is now basically worthless.

[VedalkenBear]

I wouldn't say 'worthless'. It does definitely cut down on Afflictions. Also, the final head has roughly 40 HP, so at that point regeneration is quite useful.

I highly doubt this, but does anyone know if giving them more than 100% regen (Nature Bless)allows them to regenerate heads in battle?

[Sombre]

No, that wouldn't allow them to regrow heads in battle.

I think the bonus of not taking more than 6 damage from a single hit in many cases makes up for the weakening of their regen. They laugh at soul slay now.

[VedalkenBear]

So, basically, the Hydras have come a little more vulnerable (sort of) to massed attack and less vulnerable to insta-kill effects. Sounds good to me. :p

[Shovah32]

My only real complaint would be about how easy it is to remove the 6 health heads with missile weapons.
As has been said they are now much more resistant to insta-kill/high damage attacks which really helps. They can be swarmed, but with many attacks and the poison cloud they can atleast take alot of enemies down with them.

[Baalz]

Air bless? Assuming you can keep them holy....

[Taqwus]

...it seems that the extra stat bonuses incl. the +50 hp from wishes for 'power' act on all forms, not just the first shape.

Of course, if somebody's burning so many pearls that the Daughter of Typhon is casting 'Wish', well... there's probably something more pragmatic (if perhaps less perversely amusing) than that.

/credit goes to the Debug Mod which made this bit of silliness easily testable

[Edi]

The extra bonuses are tied to the unique identifier of the unit (the invisible one), not the monster ID number. That's why they affect all the forms, since though the monster ID changes, the unique ID does not.

[Edi]

Link to more detailed explanation (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=559256&Forum=f 187,f194,f195&Words=unique&Searchpage=0&Limit=100& Main=559183&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=4380&da terange=1&newerval=5&newertype=y&olderval=&olderty pe=&bodyprev=#Post559256)