[AreaOfEffect]

Sauromantia has many little advantages and a few big ones too. I'd personally say that the faction is capable of being competitive without Hydras at all, which makes their inclusion overkill.

1) An undead profit can generate longdead horsemen. Most other factions can only generate regular longdead, ghouls, and soulless with an undead profit. I start my games with research into Conjuration so that I can start a hoursemen factory. When mixed in with your normal calvary you avoid possible routing.

2) You can effectively use a bless strategy with them. Their sacred lizard riders are one of the fiercest blessable units of the age as they have a second life to fall back on. They also have a combat summon that uses no gems and generates a sacred unit. They also have dirt cheap mages capable of spamming the spell. Research into conjuration plus a death gem allows the same mage to generate a horde of the sacred summons. Let's also not forget that it's early age, sacred amazons are all over the place.

3) Take a look at your calvary again.

4) The Witch King. Sacred mounted mages that allows Saurmantia to generate everything that is great about death magic without needing your pretender god to help. That includes summoning Tartarian. Also, communion via blood magic (with cheap astral mages as your communion slaves) combined with the rejuvinate spell to wipe away the fatigue.

5) Let's not forget the Daughter of Typhon. Take a Hydra and give it more protection, more then double the hit points, +5 on it's fear, make it sacred, and make it immortal. Also, since it can be summoned, it can easily get to the front lines. Yet again, the whole Hydra thing is virtually overkill.