Wisdom on Pyrithum killing?

#1 December 29th, 2003, 10:25 AM

The same way you beat down any good race. Kill them in pieces, or take away their strength. Pythium is particularly weak to assassinations, if you can get them through.

Cripple their economy; use things like Storms (by items or spells) to stop the use of so many javalins.

The problem with Pythium is they have no weak point so the longer you let them grow the better they get at everything.

Saxon · #2 December 29th, 2003, 11:08 AM

Assassins? Hmm, worth a try as I have them in my home castle and with Forge of Ancients coming, I can afford to deck them out a bit.

I also just bought a nice mercenary outfit that should be able to romp through some of their more isolated provinces and distract them. Hopefully, they will split their forces and I can break them down one at a time, as you suggest. As you say though, they get stronger with time and they have had a fair bit. The fun part will be to see if it is too late.

Any other suggestions are welcome!

Gandalf Parker · #3 December 29th, 2003, 04:07 PM

put lots of scouts in their area and if you find any provinces that are weakly protected then drop troops on them (sneak armys, call of winds, call of wild, horder from hell, arouse hunger, and many many more). If you take it and cant hold it then just crank the taxes to 200% and take another. If you can drive the unrest over 100 then it will be worthless to him for awhile even if he does get it back.

Break up their large armys by taking out commanders. Force them to leave large amounts of troops behind and bring them up later when they can replace the commander (assassins, seeking arrow, disease, sending in kakazes with things like Bow of Beotulf that makes mages unable to lead summons)

Send them things like that bladder on a stick (if their leaders arent protected from poison) They attack anyone and the leader uses it poisoning himself and all leaders near him, There are other items that can cause havok also.

Force him into war with someone else. One thing Ive found useful is to send any stealth units that can cause uprisings or preach to his borders on the OTHER side of you. If he borders someone else then send to both of them. Force him to beef up troops on someone elses border. Eventually, Im not sure if its mistrust from seeing a buildup or an attack of opportunity, (Ive never been able to see who starts it) war will break out.

[ December 29, 2003, 14:09: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

apoger · #4 December 29th, 2003, 04:19 PM

Learn Paralyze. Have the Grand Masters use this to lock up the Hydra.

Either learn Light of the Northern Star or construct Banners of the Northern Star. This gets your astral mages +1. Now your Witch Hunters can Paralyze, Grand Masters can cast Soul Slay and Astral Fires.

Mass crossbow.

Learn Flaming Arrows, and make the massed crossbow even more fierce.

Phoenix Power/Incinerate is a simple and effective battlefield spell combo for Witch Hunters.

Graeme Dice · #5 December 29th, 2003, 07:47 PM

Quote:

With the flying units, it is cheap to get a small group of effective patrollers and then max the taxes.

Maxing taxes for more than a couple of turns is almost a universally bad idea for any nation that relies on gold production. Maximum taxes kill very large amounts of population every turn, no matter how many patrollers you have.

Saxon · #6 December 30th, 2003, 06:32 AM

All sound advice, which I will use in my new game. Fought for three hours Last night, holding him with some success, but then another nation fell off the graph. The next thing I knew I had three armies coming at me, all bigger than my total forces. Then he outbid me on my mercenaries, so part of what little I had left disappeared. Then he ate my Last big force. Then I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD.

I am trying again with the same map and same pretender. I now know that I should have designed him differently, but I want to win with him, as he is. My tip for the day is not to mix a rainbow with a bless effects and researcher pretender, you spread him too thin.

Saxon · #7 December 30th, 2003, 06:53 AM

Graeme,

In your experience, what is the best figure for high taxes which will not gut a province? I like to take the sea provinces mid game and tax farm them, if no aquatic races are about.

Thanks!