Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

It seems the type of unrest caused by revelers would attract the maenads in great numbers if a pan is in the province.

But in my provinces with no turmoil, the pans plus revelers do not attract them.

Balance issues aside, I think if you have unrest in a province due to wild revelry, and pans present, that should be sufficient to cause them to shed their clothes and join the party!

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

There are some problems though: If you make maenads attracted by unrest them taxing/blood hunting/battles ect are all thats required to attract them(and a pan of course) where-as making revelers increase the turmoil scale would have no effect on players who already took turmoil.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

I always take 3 order when i play Pangaea. Their troops are expensive. It is a tough choice to pass on free troops, but being able to buy many more high end troops is the choice i make.

That said, the reveler's description is such that would thematically work with attracting the wild naked women, if and only if a pan's flute is present. general unrest would not work. it would have to be unrest caused by a reveler, and you would have to have a pan present.

And, you are "paying" for these free troops, the same as when blood hunting. Unrest means less gold and production from that province. And if you patrol, it kills population.

So, I think even if revelers did produce maenads, you would have to sit a pan in a low pop province to collect them. But I doubt i would make that effort. Where they could be useful, is in your capital if you know you are going to be sieged. Buy some revelers and generate some troops while seiged to buy time for the calvary(if you have any) to arrive.

I would not want to lose the income and production from my capital unless it was an emergency. Maenads are not great troops, and they should not be, they are chaff. But they would help on sieges. Although Pangaea can typically summon a ton of stuff to help with sieges anyway.

BTW what is the upkeep cost of a Vine Ogre?

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Don't know for sure, but probably 0.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

turmoil != unrest


maenads come in turmoil.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

The maenid gathering is based on the turmoil scale in the province the Pan is in.

Vine ogre upkeep is zero.

Pangaea is tailor made for turmoil 3/ luck 3. The good events many times more than offset the loss of income, especially early on in the game. There are several events that give you a lot of money (over 1000), and if you choose luck 3 they are easy to get after you expand a bit.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

I disagree. For my small(aran map) map mp Pangaea, my set up is this:

Imprisoned Gorgon, 9e9n, 6 dom, 3 order, 3 sloth, 1 heat, 2 drain, 3 luck.

This set up allows for me to buy many white centaurs in 1st 3-4 turns. If a human player's castle is 3 squares away, you need elite troops right off the bat.

Luck is good, and i take it, but i do not want to rely on it for gold in 1st 5 turns. With a flying scout if a human is close, you can get blitz him early with white centaurs.

with 3 turmoil, you may not get a lucky money event in 1st few turns(may get gems etc) and that chance to quickly kill off a human player may be lost.

With 3 order, 3 luck, i get enough lucky events over time for it to pay off. With the events set on default, i typically get 1 a turn early on, and 2-3 a turn as i get more provinces.

I like the 3 luck as much for preventing a really bad event on my capital at the start of a mp game. Nothing worse than starting game off with lab gone, or worse, half your population dying.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Pangaea has lots of gold-heavy important recruitables; centaur warriors, pans. Turmoil is painful, the cut in basic income is huge.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Why? Maenads are next to useless.

From actual tests, the average amount of gold from events is only going to bring you close to how much gold you would have had with order. It will probably be less than what you would have with order 3, however, since order 3 allows you to expand far faster than turmoil 3.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Maybe the gold only just averages out but then there are the gems, items, free troops/mages and less common bad events/invasions. I personally almost never go turmoil/luck(order3 misfortune2 for me) but i can see its uses.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

I think that like many things DOM3 the answer depends on strategy, map size and other game settings.

I have succesfully used a maenid heavy strategy. In my experience they are not "next to useless." In fact, I think that the designers put in the extremely annoying maenid death scream to discourage us from using them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Maenids definately have their uses in combat. They are free and cost no upkeep, and they are berserkers. They are great for tiring out and eventually routing enemy troops. Fire at enemy troops with longbow centaurs while the maenids are engaging them. Use a bless strategy (nature for regeneration and earth to help with defense) and hold and attack with the white centaurs and other supporting troops.

If I remember correctly, a Pan in a turmoil 3 province attracts 9 maenids per turn, so if you can get a decent number of Pans in a province (I know they are expensive) you can quickly generate hordes of maenids. Properly equipped, your Pans can simulteneously summon lots vine ogres (also free and upkeep free, and they don't rout). That's two armies for the price of nothing.

As far as the money problem but consider the following. First, Pans are expensive but they can generate free armies (see above). Also, by having turmoil 3, you make it much more likely that a random event will occur in a province. This means that you'll hit the max number of random events much earlier in the game. I think everyone here agrees that random events are a good thing when you have the luck 3 scale. Also consider that temples are cheap for Pangaea (which leaves more for troops). If you buy temples aggresively your dominion will spread quickly. This feeds right in to the bless strategy mentioned above and the berserking nature of the maenids (and Pangaea in general). Berserking troops are at a great advantage if the are fighting in their own dominion; they will take initial losses, but they eventually rout most armies, even when outgunned. Finally you can use other scales to mitigate some of the income loss. Take magic drain 2 and growth 1 or 2 with a captive pretender. The growth scale gives you a little extra income back directly and a little more back by increasing the population.

This strategy won't work as well on larger maps, but I think it should work very well on a small mutiplayer map. Of course, as I said above, there are many ways to skin a Pan.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

troops that have protection zero do not seem to benefit from e9 bless.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Troops that don't wear armor don't benefit from e9. Just like they don't benefit from Legions of steel.

Troops that don't have both armor and helm benefit less, since only one is boosted.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Anyway,

I think the reveler plus pan=maenads would be nice for Pangaea. It would give the order minded pangaea players a chance to get maenads in a pinch. And it seems to fit thematically if both the reveler and Pan are present in a province.

The units are not free, as you will have unrest.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Then just do it in an extremely low population province. Basically the same as free.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

True,

But you still tie up an expensive unit making chaff. Sort of like having an expensive ermor mage sit and reanimate skeletons. It does produce free units, but I personally would not make it a high priority.

Pangaea, by nature, gets these free units as a racial bonus.
Even with 3 order, the turmoil created by battle generates them, so why not a reveler?

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

Mass Protection will let you improve the durability of Maenads fairly early on.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

If you're going to go with an order 3 scale the maenads won't occur.

Someone please correct me if the following is wrong.

I'm not sure how maenads give you unrest or how they cost anything (except they do eat).
The turmoil scale dosn't create unrest, just turmoil.
The turmoil scale spreads turmoil across povinces.
The maenads appear beacause of turmoil, not unrest.
The maenads themselves don't create turmoil or unrest.

The revelers create unrest, not turmoil.
Unrest reduces a province's income.
The revelers cost money, both to create and through home province unrest.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

You don't tie up the Pan. Attracting the maenids is not an action. The Pan is free to perform any action, and the maenids will still appear, provided the Pan is in a province with turmoil (not unrest). I wish I were so lucky.......except for those darned claws.

Re: Revelers=unrest, but not maenads
 

By the way in my game I mentioned above I used nature 9 or 10, and earth 4. The earth didn't help with defense (my bad), just reinvigoration. The goal was for my troops to go berserk and then outlast the opponents as they wore out and panicked.