standard pangenea : usefulness of maenards ? or rely on blood ?

[Boron]

i discovered pangenea once again .
there was a great pangeneadiscussion here some months ago which i read .

the maenard idea is basically nice since they are upkeepfree . but the pans are damn expensive and turmoil 3 is very bad with that .

so when you most need them for early expansion you won't get enough to rely on them .
but later if you have e.g. 5 pans i think you get ~50 / turn .
so since they don't have recuperation you will run into supply problems quite soon then. forging cauldrons of broth just for them is gemwasting . with your quite lousy research researching con 4 early for the cheaper bags of vine is perhaps no good idea too .

but supply issues will prevent you from making the hordes in which they would be really useful i think
they are just worst cannon fodder like basic ermorian undeads but you can't use them in great enough numbers .
they can't be banished but almost each missile hit kills a maenard and supplies are a real problem.
question : if other supply using troops are in the same area is there a system which troops aren't feed or is it randomly ?
e.g. that the first troops who getting nothing to eat are the maenards ?

i guess i try them as a blood nation but a 320 non sacred blood mage is damn expensive
for early expansion i most likely use the revelrers they aren't very good but at least cheap

another question : is there any race which has mages with blood 2+ earth 2+ or at least picks in both able to summon demon knights ?
has perhaps one of the amazon sorceresses these 2 pathes ?

[Vynd]

Pangaea does seem to be set up to encourage taking Turmoil and Luck. The Turmoil gets you lots of Maenads. The Luck compliments the Turmoil and makes the blood spell that Pandemoniacs are particularly good at, cross-breeding, more effective. The Turmoil is definitely a heavy price to pay, though, especially considering all the negatives you've pointed out about maenads.

[Gandalf Parker]

I use maenads for patrolling and bolstering he morale of other units. If I get too many I send them off to attack someplace to raise the experience of some of my commanders.

The really fun thing about Maedads, and why I hope they NEVER go away, is what happens when Pans (or Lord of the Wild) sneaks. If you have NO troops already assigned to you, then the maenads dont showup on the troop line, but up in the assign queue. If you are sneaking then they attack the province.

As a harrassing tactic its great. No two-step (move, do something, move, do somthing). All you have to do is move around. Every province you just left will have an attack report. If an opponent isnt spending money on defense it can be very irritating.

Also fun if you give the black heart that gives assassin skills to them. Do an assassination, see a probing attack on the province, do another assassination, see a probing attack. You dont have to guess about when you got the Last commander. And its really funny to see that Last army run away from a few wild naked women.

[ July 05, 2004, 17:49: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Boron]

very naugthy tactic gandalf

i think i didn't fully understand though how your maenad attack works
is it a leaderless attack of the summoned maenads ?
don't they rout immediately too because they are leaderless too ? or is the pan the leader of them ?
do you get control of nodefense enemy provinces with which you did this naugthy trick ?

and may i ask how you design your scales ?
do you take turmoil 3 or something smaller ?
cause i am always tempted to take sloth 3 with pangenea too because of their very resourcecheap units ( expect the war minotaur / centaur cataphract ) .
but on the other hand i always feel a strong need for taking magic 3 with them and as vynd said for pangenea luck 3 is very attractive too
but in general for the first 10-20 turns you won't build many pans and especially then i think the maenads would be most useful

[Gandalf Parker]

They are leaderless but they do have a high moral. I seem to have a percentage chance of getting the province. In any case I at least know its safe to attack with the pan on the next round if need be. I think one of the "spread-sheet/rules" players said it had something to do with attacker vs defender. What I seem to see is that it seems to boil down to whoever actually leaves the field first loses. When both rout it seems to be a race.

I dont like turmoil with Pangaea. The money is a big need, and I really need to use every independent troop I can make. So Id rather have Order for gold and less need to leave patrols behind in the provinces I make them in. Most of my uses of Maenads dont call for big numbers, or happen outside of my dominion anyway.

I also play alot of stealth so I tend to take low dominion, and lots of painful negatives, so my scales probably wouldnt work well for you.

With Carrion I take turmoil.

[Boron]

gandalf do you try to bloodhunt with pangenea too or do you try to strengthen them later on by conjurations like lamia queens and so on ?

i myself tried to rush first to crossbreeding and make an impressive force with this because 20 units for 15 blood slaves is nice .

but setting up a blood economy is much more difficult with pangenea than with abysia or marignon df . i even tried a FoB pretender + high economy scales and patrolled with harpies .
with growth your population still growth and you don't lose taxes but annoyingly the fob gets in average only 10 blood slaves / turn.
with a normal blood hunter like a demonbred i get about 6-8 in average so almost the same return.

a small drawback from the cross breed spell is that if you are unlucky you only get 20 foul spawns and most of them cost even 0.67 upkeep so almost the same as a revelrer but are worse fighters . it's a big gambling .

guess i try a blood hunting jotunheim next since the gygias have n1 bl1 so i can use crossbreeds + frost fiends .

may i ask what pretenders you normally choose with pangenea gandalf ?