Pythium: newbish Vestals question

Teraswaerto · #1 February 12th, 2004, 06:14 PM

Nature blessing is a poor choice for Vestals. They are unarmored but have high defense , so astral 9, water and air are probably good choices. Not that they'd be very good even then... Having no armor is bad for survival.

[ February 12, 2004, 16:14: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

fahdiz · #2 February 12th, 2004, 06:40 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by licker:
Typically I think of a duel bless strategy as one with 2 9s, not with 2 4s... if you are serious about the blessings you will need to spend more points in magic to make them worthwhile. I don't play pythium at all so I'm not great at talking about their strengths, but seemingly you'd be better off with nature9 or water9 for your blessings (and then one or two at 4 for minor effects). Nature9 would make the berzerk much better, and water9 would up the def and make them 50% faster so they'd get to the rear that much more quickly. Air4 is kinda useless only a 20% missle protection, Air6 is probably where you need to go if you really need the missile protection...

Great, thank you for the advice. I can see that Water (at a higher level than 4) would have been a much better choice than Air. As I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure why I chose Air, since the Vestals are faster than the archers anyway...doh.

licker · #3 February 12th, 2004, 07:03 PM

If you are going to go with water I'd really suggest going all the way to 9, the added speed for your flaking sacred troops is very nice. Also if you have sacred mages (priests are all sacred arn't they?) They will occasionally (50% of the time) get 2 spells per turn. This does lead to fatigue problems, but you can ease those in a variety of ways. Take some earth for reinvig, equip them with reinvig items, or get some nature mages to cast relief... As pointed out in some other thread, quickened lvl5 priests (typically your prophit if you chose it) that smite 2+ times a turn are quite useful, and being able to get all/most of your buff spells off in the first turn speeds up your mages ability to rout the enemy, or just hammer them before they close on your own troops.

geo981010 · #4 February 13th, 2004, 03:14 PM

Licker-
Water 9 is great on most holy mages, but that blessing and Pythium mages doesn't add up to the sum of the parts. Water 9 gives 50% quickness like you mentioned (2 spells/attacks 1 round, only one the next), but the quickness spell gives quickness 100% (2 attacks every round). Since you have to be blessed to get the Holy bonus, any non-prophet mage should be quickened anyway on the same round as the Divine Blessing is cast on the battlefield. Very little gain for their mages...

For holy mages that don't get Water magic like Marignon and Vanheim (especially Vanheim - no feet and no random magic on the Vanir, so that's the only real way to get them quickened), the bonus is really powerful

Wendigo · #5 February 13th, 2004, 03:45 PM

To the original poster:

Taking 4+ Nature in the pretender of a nation with mage-priest such as Vanir or Arch-Theurgs is not a good idea IMO.

Do you really want to see your mages charging forward into hand to hand combat with their fists as soon as they suffer a scratch? The results can be painful!

Pocus · #6 February 13th, 2004, 03:52 PM

for quality troops, if you have astral mages, etheralize them. Thats not specific on vestals though, but it works rather well with them too.

fahdiz · #7 February 13th, 2004, 04:04 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Wendigo:
To the original poster:

Taking 4+ Nature in the pretender of a nation with mage-priest such as Vanir or Arch-Theurgs is not a good idea IMO.

Do you really want to see your mages charging forward into hand to hand combat with their fists as soon as they suffer a scratch? The results can be painful!

/smacks head

Excellent point - thank you Wendigo. What would you have chosen for a dual-bless in such a scenario as I described? As an aside, my pretender in that game was the Divine Emperor.

Or would you not have bothered with dual-bless at all?

It seems like because the Vestals are such cheap Sacred units (good gold cost, perfect resource cost), I want to utilize them in the best way possible - but maybe a bless strategy isn't the way to play it at all. Any thoughts?

By the way, thank you Pocus for your insights as well. Hopefully I'll have my full copy of the game today (crossing my fingers for UPS to pull through) so I'll be able to test things more thoroughly this weekend.