Pythium's Magery

[Huzurdaddi]

When you want to deal damage you have two spells: Thunderstrike ( which is great ), and Falling Frost ( decent ) and that is about it.

Enslave mind is decent aginst SC's but not usually worth it when you are facing larger armies.

OTOH you can buff your army with quite a few spells: Anti-magic, Astral Healing ( which your theurges will cast by themselves, and quite often in some battles. Leading to some comical communicants ), Arrow Fend, Mass Flight, Doom, Will of the Fates, Fog Warriors.

[Cor]

TwoBits said:
Off the Theurg topic, but does anyone make any use out of the Battle Vestals? Seems that if they could be massed, with a decent light bless, they could do some damage (they're plenty cheap). But is it worth it going that route, with pretender design and all?

I have played with a triple bless and found them stellar. 9W9D6air they do some serious damage.

[Shovah32]

Almost any sacred unit would do serious damage with that bless. To put it simply you shouldnt plan a bless strategy on battle vestals because they are fragile and not particularly adept at dealing damage. If they recieve a bless from your pretender thats fine but you really shouldnt make your strategy around them as your already have a passable military and your nation benefits from good scales very strongly(a bit of a bless for theurgs/angels such as nature, earth or astral is another nice bonus but i dont reccomend planning a strategy around it).

[Trumanator]

What would be the optimal bless for the angels? I have played Pythium only rarely and don't recall what sort of stats they have. I have seen some hints that earth and nature blesses are good, but I would like to know more specifically what some different bless advantages would be.

[OmikronWarrior]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

What would be the optimal bless for the angels? I have played Pythium only rarely and don't recall what sort of stats they have. I have seen some hints that earth and nature blesses are good, but I would like to know more specifically what some different bless advantages would be.

The question isn't what's a good bless for angels, but should you even develop a bless strategy around angels? The answer is no. The earliest you can summon them is Conjuration-6 to get the Harbringer (A3H2 @ 25 pearls). Then you're going to want some Construction and Alteration to help them work as thugs. Angels are essentially a sideshow for Pythium (I'm actually working on a guide for them that I'll finish as soon as I wrap some games up with them). The real story and aresenal a Pythium player should focus on is Theurgs and communions, which are all sacred and benefit greatly from even a small Earth Bless (which incidently helps out Angels as well). Also, Pythium has some bad magic diversity and could really use a rainbow... and positive scales to boom with... and an awake SC for expansion... and production to build Principe with... you get the idea. I'd start with Growth-3 to keep my Theurgs alive and some Earth to revig my Communions.

On a somewhat unrelated note, does anyone have an opion on the viability of casting Thetis's blessing the same turn as numerous Arch Theurgs teleport into water provinces to take on some PD single handedly?

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by OmikronWarrior

On a somewhat unrelated note, does anyone have an opion on the viability of casting Thetis's blessing the same turn as numerous Arch Theurgs teleport into water provinces to take on some PD single handedly?

I'm thinking that if you try to tele on the same turn you cast Thetis, they'll all need water breathing items anyways, because the global hasn't succeeded yet.


As to the rest, I'd think that unless you were going with an awake pretender, you could just go a straight E9 and call it good, as far as global, full game benefit. If you wanted an awake pretender, going E4 at least should be worth it, and if you were going to do E4/N? then it may be worth pushing from N2 to N4, just to leverage the self buffing into a better bless, if you can afford it.

There are plenty of other things you can do to enhance angels (and/or sacred mages), but those are likely the two routes most applicable to MP, most others would just be fun to play with in SP a bit (like a W9/E4 or something).

Well, S9/E4 if you wanted an Imprisoned Oracle, could be a pretty cost effective and versatile MP pretender - as long as you aren't one who is highly reliant on the awake SC.

[Agema]

Earth and nature is where it's at for Angels: regeneration is obviously useful, and reinvigoration because they do take fatigue. Earth is doubly useful because all your mages are sacred, so you get to reduce fatigue, and if (non-seraph) angels have a weakness, it's low protection, so that's also worth buffing a bit. However, they'll still be lethal enough with no bless at all. I've got a game running where I ignored bless completely, but otherwise I'd probably take something like E9N4.

[Agema]

Agreed with Omikron.

Ultimately, you'll never be able to summon enough angels to make a bless strategy for them that useful, and MA Pythium's recruitable sacreds surely aren't worth particular effort. As Pythium's mages and troops are both very capable, you can view your SC more as a support and a rainbow is a good idea. Death, Nature, Earth are all good things to have at least skill 2 in. They're easily boosted (particularly as arch theurgs can make rings of sorc. & wiz.), and easy summons or common indy mages sort the rest out.

Fire is trickier as it's hard to boost, you might just want to wait until you can summon a seraph. I guess you can give a ring of wizardry to an arch theurg with F1 to get some searching spells going, but it would be late on and slow going. Otherwise you'd want F3.

[Gregstrom]

If you're going for a rainbow pretender and have D2+ already, you could splash 10 design points for F1. Then you can make flaming skulls for the +F boost.

[vfb]

E4 reinvigoration is good for Pythium's sacred mages, N4 is good for their old age (shrouds). And E4N4 is good diversification for Pythium.

I don't see a need for an SC god when you've got hydras. So a rainbow with N4E4, and whatever other paths you want to round it out with sounds good to me.

The N4 regen cuts down on angel afflictions, and E4 reinvig is good for them too.