EA Pangaea strategy

[sector24]

Can't you use the indy tribal shamans with Death/Nature? Although some of them are only like 10% which is not worth the effort.

[kasnavada]

If you find them yes. They cost as much as dryad do and have the same research, and need only a lab to build. If I can, I build a second lab instead of my second fort and use those shamans to research instead of dryad, and if I get enough money for it, buy pans in the capital.

[Renojustin]

I find several problems with your strategy, most of which come down to this: Maenads aren't really useful enough to base a strategy on.

-They are only worth 1/10th of a unit patrolling
-Don't they cost upkeep? If that's the case, this alone means that they barely pay for themselves even when patrolling.
-They have no armor, so it's tough to buff them with anything except Protection.
-Almost every turn with each archer shot = 1 dead Maenad, which means your tougher units are at risk of an automatic rout and become less in overall worth. You don't get Faerie Court for a good while, it's almost easier to wait for your harpy champion and give her a ring of wizardry. Till then, they get slaughtered everywhere like nobody's business if you don't blow an air gem on arrow fend.
-They're about as good as militia when you DO get them in melee... they are pretty useless against anything with good defense OR protection.
-They're just annoying - they pile up everywhere and I enjoy micromanaging as much as the next guy, but you have to draw a line somewhere. It seems like even LA Ermor isn't as bad.

I just take Order scales so I don't have to micromanage them all. When I do get maenads, I simply assign them to guard commanders, and they'll sometimes get sent out to sortie via berserk spells. Satyr warriors are superb units; you can build a massive army of them in no time at 13g/5r. They benefit nicely from armor buffs, and their high hps with good attack and spears means they can hold a line.

Maenads are fine to guard your bladewind/storm of thorns spamming Pans with. Using this strategy I just finished a medium-sized random game against 9 AIs set to Impossible. They'd be throwing 300-400 man armies at me each and every turn from midgame on.

Minotaur Warriors for early game, all the while building the fantastic Dryads... at Magic 3 you get some insane RP/upkeep. Not to mention you can get stealth dominion kills with them, or build a strategy around dominion. +20 stealth is as good as it gets and you should only see them discovered once or twice a game if you're careful.

With Order scales, your income goes absolutely off the charts once you can cast Nature's Bounty. With a third of the map that size you get about 10,000 gp income per turn. That's pretty much unbeatable.

My pretender had something like 4 astral/4 death, Order 3, Sloth 3, Growth 3, Magic 3, Luck 3, Dominion 4. Just some nice scales to go out and let your land bask in. It works well with Pangaea's 200gp temples and excellent Dryads. And you can get a nice death economy going with skelly spams or the almost frightening Nether Blast thingy. Death Cloud is also an extremely impressive and damaging tool.

Globals you want to get are Gift of Health (huge hps and very fast affliction heals for Pangaea), Nature's Bounty (a truly shocking gp income), and Mother Oak. The nice thing is that these aren't offensive in nature... they'll think twice about dispelling anything except Bounty.

A last note - Ivy Kings make very impressive SCs. 0 encumbrance, non-undead, regenerating, high MR, HP, strength, morale. Rat Tail (you can repel with whips, right?), Eye Shield, Black Steel Armor, Boots of Quickness, Flying, or resists, Cats Eye Amulet, and Amulet of Luck, set to cast Personal Regeneration and attack, and they are first rate.

[Dedas]

Whom are you referring to? I'm not basing my strategy around maenads, if you read what I wrote you will see this. What I'm saying is that maenads could be used for various roles including patrolling.

[OmikronWarrior]

Just did a quick check, Maeneads DO NOT cost upkeep. Hence, they're free chaff, other than the supplies they consume, that is.

[AlgaeNymph]

From my experience in the Feohtan game, a minotaur rush works wonders...

[Dedas]

Yes, but they are a quite easy prey for massed archers with the "fire at large creature" command. Combine them with javelin equipped skirmishers with shields to damage and fatigue them some and you will see the critical hits rack up. Also, as they cost 40-50gp a piece you can't afford that many and still have a chance at building fortresses to expand your research and economy. Practically you only got one shot, if you fail that you will be far behind the competition and also wide open for an attack. Another thing, if you rush, go all way, you don't want to sit with a plentorae of high upkeep units that you can't effectively attack with.

[Renojustin]

Dedas said:
Whom are you referring to? I'm not basing my strategy around maenads, if you read what I wrote you will see this. What I'm saying is that maenads could be used for various roles including patrolling.

Taking Turmoil 3 gives you something like, what, 15% more random events? Really doesn't make up for the 40% or more difference in gold. Especially when you can still jack up your taxes to 200% with Order and patrol with harpies.

The issue I had with the maenads patrolling is that they are worth 1/10th of a unit when they do so, and they need a commander to even be that bad. So say you use a Dryad or indy commander with 40 leadership, you've got effectively 4 patrol points there for the use of your commander and his upkeep cost, instead of using them for a cheap and highly effective harpy patrol. (due to flight bonus)

So if you can afford the scales, Order helps a lot more than turmoil, obviously, even for Pangaea. Even luck isn't all that great when compared to Order effects, and you can still get your leaders (who aren't very good in EA), so sacrifice that if anything.

You don't really need Luck for gem income either - with a death and astral pretender, the gem income you'll be lacking is Fire, Air, and Water... Water you can get with 25% of amazon sorceresses (and I think water bracelets only take W1 to build), astral pearls are easy because it only takes lizard shamans with 1 astral to Astral Probe, you get air with Faerie Court and your harpy commander, but fire is very problematic so don't expect to be hurling flaming spheres of death or making any fire items with EA Pangaea.

So I think your best bet would be to drop the luck and go for more gold on your Order/Turmoil scale. Nature's Bounty is freaking amazing if you have Order scales and you're missing out on a heck of a lot of gold without it. It's so powerful you'll find yourself recasting it as soon as possible after a dispel.

I admit that the idea of armies of naked wild women is pretty much one of the reasons people like us play games like this to begin with, and for that reason alone it should definitely be considered valuable. Just not enough for me to put my scales into Turmoil with Bounty jacking your income about 400%.

[kasnavada]

Turmoil is worth it, even more so for pangaea than others.

First of all, you will miss the large amount of maenads. You obviously underestimate them. Yes, they get beaten fast by units with high protection / defence and arrows, but with spells to protect from arrows, they litterally tear any low protection-unit with their bare hands with they do get in range. Furthermore, they work really well with the battlefield-wide spells like mass protection and growing fury that your pans are naturally able to cast.

When a few pans generate 60 - 80 (an army) every few months, you don't need to buy arrow catchers, enabling you to cut down on something that crucial for pangaea : maintenance costs. More money ? good, but if you need it to buy even more of the really expensive few good troops that can make a difference, you'll spend it in maintenance... But then, you'll be playing pangaea like ulm : forgetting that most of those good troops are stealthy. Being stealthy, you don't need those troops in large number, you need them to be strong enough to beat up PD, lone mages, and the commanders that (try to) bring reinforcements to your main opponent armies.

Yes, the point of maenads isn't to be the frontal attack unit. They are meant to be a distraction while your other units do the work. A way to make your opponent(s) believe your strength in number is much more than it seems. And thankfully, they make a wonderful distraction, since they are powerful, in their own way. Also, since they are not mindless, it means that as long as there is pans in a castle (they can leave that castle when they want), your opponents need to bring a few more troops every turn, because a dozen more of your units are repairing the walls every turn.

However, making them patrol sure doesn't sound useful when you speak about 40 of them. But you will have hundreds of them if you have turmoil. Given the choice, I'll have 400 maenads with 10 indy basic 30 gold commander in a few choice provinces (total cost / turn : 20 gold) than lots of armies of 40 harpies (I believe the cost is rounded up ?) that cost me 42 gold per turn, and costed 310 initial gold instead of the 300 gold with maenads + commanders, that is completly useless outside of gold collection purposes, and easily beaten by guerrilla tactics.

Routing with pangaea is really a non-problem. The dryad can spam sermon of courage, and I rarely see maenads retreat, especially when they are berserk.

Luck, well, luck is a vast subject. It brings in a lot more than a few gems. It brings you untracable wealth (not shown on the graphs), castles, free troops, castles, magic items...).

Finally, you will look much more vulnerable with a high order scale than with a turmoil one : lots of maenads are intimidating, and rightly so.

The point being, going for turmoil works very well. But it's another way to play that work probably more in MP than SP, since it rely on surprises, stealth, luck.

[Dedas]

Thanks for writing that comeback, kasnavada! Very well put, and in my opinion all valid points.