EA Pangaea strategy
 

A SMALL GUIDE TO EARLY AGE PANGAEA

The main reason why I've begun writing this guide on Pangaea EA, is because after getting inspired by the recent MA Pangaea strategy thread, I decided to do some testing and experimenting on EA Pangaea. Now I want to share and discuss the results with you. And the reason it is in a new thread is because EA Pangaea may be similar to MA, but they are not the same – armor being one of the main differences.

Attached is a savegame meant as a demonstration of early game with this strategy.



THE SETUP

Pretender
As I'm trying to use EA Pan's every potential, I also tried to find a good pretender to use with spell songs. What I found was the ”The lady of love”. Now, this woman is ideal for the job of singing in front line battle. And the reason for this is that she has both high awe (+4) and the ability to craft herself a hide shield on the first turn. That shield and her pretty high HP will help her and her troops to deal with arrows to a less extent when expanding. Arrows that of course are deadly to any EA Pan unit. Other things she is even better at are sucking up cavalry chargers and staying alive singing. Her awe helps her with these tasks.
Also not to be forgotten is her nature and water magic that will strengthen her and her minions defensive capabilities later on when research really kicks in. But for start game she doesn't need any of that.

Scales
Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Heat 1, Growth 3, Luck 3, Magic 3.

Heavy on growth as you are going to patrol your provinces heavily to afford all those castles and pans.

Heavy on magic will help with spell songs (negating MR and less fatigue for the caster) and research.

The battle in the savegame:
It show effective use of the spell song as the small and lightly damaged starting army takes out a relatively big group of heavy cavalry.



STEP BY STEP

Early game general goals

Build a strong economy that will fuel a strong research base with pans as core. The cheap in upkeep dryads will soon become abundant and can be used as support troops in many various roles.

Early game – the first crucial turns

TURN 1
Recruit:
A dryad
40xharpies

Forge a hide shield with your pretender.
Make your black harpy prophet.
Put the minotaur with accompanying troops to patrol.
Set taxes to 200%.

Turn 2
Recruit:
A dryad
(no nothing else, save your gold)

Equip your pretender with hide shield.
Give all harpies to the dryad, set her to patrol (taxes still at 200%.)
With your pretender, prophet and minotaur:
Attack any province that is not a farm (too expensive fortress) but still produces a good amount of gold. For battle placement see savegame.

TURN 3
Recruit:
A dryad.
As many harpies as you can afford (not over 40).
If you don't have the money, try to alchemise a small amount of nature gems.

Build with your harpy:
A fortress in the newly taken province.

Attack another province with your pretender and minotaur.

TURN 4
Recruit:
A dryad
40xharpies

Put all free harpies on the newly recruited dryad. Move her to the fortress construction site.

Move your pretender and the minotaur to the fortress construction site.

TURN 5
Recruit:
A dryad
40xharpies

Build at the fortress construction site:
A temple with you prophet.
A lab with your pretender.
Continue construction with your minotaur.

Put all free harpies on the newly recruited dryad. Move her to one of the newly taken provinces that produces the most gold.

Set taxes to 200% at the fortress construction site. Set the dryad there to patrol.

TURN 6 AND BEYOND – Roughly

You should now have a new fortress to continue the dryad production in.

*Note*
The reason you are recruiting dryads is because they later can be set to various tasks including research, spying, defense and offense (singing and blessing), patrol, lab and temple building. Other commanders are either too expensive in both upkeep and price, or they have less uses.

Your old fortress should be set to spamming pans.
When you very soon have yet another fortress, much to the help of your income boosting patrol dryads, you should set the old one to pans as well.

*Note*
Pans are good but need a strong economy. The dryads can manage this. The pans will later help with free patrollers as maenads become abundant. A growth scale is needed to battle low supplies from patrolling.

Your pans should of course be set to research.

Middle game

Coming soon...

Late game

Coming soon...

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

Oh. so I see, the maenad factory.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

I think the gorgon is the must have pretender if you plan to have her awake. If I remember correctly, you have access to the centaur warrior in EA, and they are able to trash most of the opposition early on, and later on with buff spells (even in MA, CW are a force to reckoned).
I usually don't take turmoil or order, so as to have enougth gold to buy CW, and enougth maenads to end sieges quickly (in EA, you'll have ton's of pans (they're your only mage!)so you'll have lots of maenads)
I never tried it, but are maenads strong enougth to win battles alone ? It seems to me a big group of archers would trash them, even with mass protection (no shields+ low armor).

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

No, not really. As wrote above the maenads are mostly for free patrolling. This strategy isn't depending on any one unit. Instead you have to use all units (some more in different stages of the game) to build up a strong empire. When you have laid the foundation you can start pumping out any units you need from your many fortresses and with your excellent income.
In short:
Effective patrolling -> funneling cash into fortress building -> increasing commander recruitment -> driving your research -> plugging your units vulnerabilities (like low protection).

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

Yes, archers, fireballs and the like is Pangaeas worst enemies. Therefore you need a strong research base to get protection. Using pans as that base is powerful but expensive. Using centaurs at the same time as your main military unit is even more expensive. So how are you going to get the cash for that? Order? Not effective enough, and you will miss out on a lot of needed chaff from all your pans. So how can you both maximize chaff and get enough money for everything else you want? The answer is heavy patrolling.
But do you want to invest lots and lots in upkeep on common commanders on patrol duty? Of course not, you want a flexible, dynamic unit that can take any role, help in defense, research and offense, and you want it cheap in both upkeep and price. The name of that unit is dryad.
And also, heavy patrolling means loss of lives and thus loss of income, so you want the growth scale, which also goes hand in hand with the overlooked but powerful spell songs (that the dryad can use).

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

What you say makes sense, but I wouldn't try it on anything but a small map, as my lazyness makes me fear the micro your strategy implies. I think your strategy more than compensates the loss of money from bad scales.

Oh, I do use dryads as researchers, what I meant is that you need lots of pans for forging/spells/rituals, and that in EA basic pans are your only mages for this purpose, which means you'll get lots of maenads. But I do relly massively on dryads for research/preach/army commanders.

Why do you use lady of love ? Spell songs are efficient, no doubt about it, but it seems to me the gorgon is so much whatever as an awake pretender, earth 9 is a possibility, for nice rituals and a limited use of white centaurs, would require to abandon magic and maybe luck (I'm at work, so I can't verify rigth now). I'm sure dryads can carry on the spell song casting, while your gorgon is taking provinces alone. (petrify...)

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

Dedas, I like where this all is going, good work.

As you explore Pangaea, keep in mind that its a LA Ermor-type nation: both get lots-and-lots of free, crappy units.

Then remember that LA Ermor armies are (a) huge, (b) mostly chaff, and (c) heavily buffed...at least the successful ones.

So a successful Pan strat CAN focus on the same, with a few subtle differences.

First, Pan doesn't get the numbers of freespawn that Ermor does. Pan armies, therefore, need to be supplemented with a larger fraction of front-line thugs & thuggish troops than Ermor armies. A 10:1 maenad:minotaur ratio seems to be the sweet-spot, supported by your singing dryads. This means more $ spent on troops, but that's OK, because...

Second, Pan's freespawn is inherently superior to Ermor's. They're unbanishable, fast (makes archers unhappy), and can reliably hit opponents. Additionally, they aren't mindless, so they make GREAT fort defenders, and laugh at mind-burn/soul-slay spamming. They aren't poison-resistant, but feel free to Breath of Dragon all over them regardless, because...

Third, Pan is ready-made for the Whole-Battlefield Nature & Earth buffs. Mass protection early on, Army of Lead/Gold later. Serpent's Blessing opens poison evocations. Later, Mass Regeneration & Gaia's Blessing. And repeat after me: "Darkness is to Ermor what Growing Fury is to Pangaea;" throw it down, and your maenads & minotaurs become an unroutable offensive tidal wave.

Like Ermor, archers will be a problem. Unlike Ermor, you can readily cast Faerie Court, and voila, Air Fend.

Similarly, like Ermor, raid the crap out of everyone, take terrible scales to make your lands undesirable (+3 heat/cold especially, as your troops wear no armor), and spam (cheap) temples. Splash some Blood in there for good measure, spam blood stones, & think Forge of the Ancients (instead of Utterdark).

Like Ermor, be ready for a tough endgame, though you don't have to fear Purgatory.

Cheers,
cleveland

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

Another thing that's great / not so great for pans. They are not the same in EA than in MA.

They have a guaranteed blood and slightly lower earth magic. That means easy sabbath !

As far as chaff is concerned, I see a lot of ways for pangaea to make a lot. First is maenads. Second is carrions. However, you don't really have a lot of pans than can call them. Third is blood magic and cross-breed. Since it takes only a few blood slaves to make them I think it's worth it. Another one is going for wine men and wine ogres (not very practical in large numbers since they are magic beings). Finally, if you are desperate for even more chaff, you can summon animals.

The only problem for this strategy is that an army of 200 buffed armored units backed-up by magic can defeat an army of 1000 chaff. That's where I don't really know what would be better :
- concentrate on buffing my troops with spellwide spells ? especially since sabbath gives any of your mages (if empowered to 1) enough magic skill to cast nearly everything you need.
- creating SC / thugs to make up for the relative weakness of your chaff troops ? Does that work ? Easy access to regeneration, reinvigorisation will probably help in doing so.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

Thank your interesting feedback!
I will ponder what you've said and try to add it when time permits (hopefully tomorrow).

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

Actually, now that I look for it, there is no native death casters in EA for pangaea. Which makes their national summons rather hard to get. Well, you could use a pretender with 3 (or more) nature and 2 death especially for them and all those nature / death spells.

About the feedback : it's only educated guess from 20 - 30 turn long games in SP... I'm still a newbie !

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

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.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy (not MA)
 

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.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

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.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

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.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

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

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

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

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

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.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

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%.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

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.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Thanks for writing that comeback, kasnavada! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Very well put, and in my opinion all valid points.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

You're welcome !

It's just passing thoughts I had after analysing the graphs of a MP I just started. With turmoil 3 / luck 3 of course, and lord of the wild as a pretender !

In that particular game I happen to be have the third with the largest armies, largely thanks to maenads (but also other units... I'm not that foolish). Even though it's an MA game, maenad and stealth related strategy have a lot in common. I also noticed that the (rather copious) amount of gold in luck event didn't show on the graph, which make me look like one of the poorest ones on the map.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif I just noticed that I wrote castle twice. The fact that I had a 1200 gold one free with luck just this turn must have influenced me somehow...

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

One more thing to say is that the later the game is the smaller the difference between an elite heavy infantery and a maenad becomes.

If you cast Army of Gold, Fog Warriors and Mass Regeneration and Weapons of Sharpness and Giant Strength of your maenads, they are quite strong. (and pans are supposed to cast these spells in battle [the fog warriors will be done by a farie queen])

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Well, I wouldn't be that sure about that. I'm herding those minotaurs that are giving DryaUnda so much trouble and he's done pretty close to what you suggest as it turns out. He's playing EA Ermor and his very capable infantry armed with tower shields, javelins and good defense just destroyed my initial reveler forces I was using for indie expansion (to save gold for fortresses). Seeing where that was going I switch to minotaur power and B-lined to enchant-4 massing up my minotaurs out of my two castles over a couple turns while my stealthy revelers raided and stalled him. It's sick how effective it's been. The really decisive battle we had was something close to 200 javelin equipped Ermorian infantry (counting PD) plus 10 or so Aurgur elders vs around 50 minotaurs backed by a few pans casting haste and then panic. (going from memory here so the numbers may be a bit off but that's about the right scale)

Round 1 - Ermor's mages cast phoenix power and the infantry advances (out of range of javelins yet)

Round 1 - Pans cast haste and minotaurs charge all the way across and into the front ranks of Ermor's infantry, causing minor casualties as they used most of their movement to close rather than trample.

Round 2 - Ermor rains down fireballs and whatnot, doing almost as much damage to his own troops as the minotaurs are now mixed into them. A seriously large javelin volly causes moderate damage, but because of the minotaur's hp few of them go down and friendly fire is significant.

Round 2 - Minotaurs trample straight through all the way to the Ermorian mages destroying close to 1/3 of the Ermorian army. Just devastating damage to deal to fairly elite infantry.

Round 3 - another volley of javelins and evocations causing most of my casualties of the fight, though again friendly fire is high as the minotaurs are now deep inside the Ermorian forces.

Round 3 - Another massive trample and cumulatively about 50% of the Ermorian army is now destroyed including several of their mages. They break and I take a few more casualties as the routing forces are trampled for a total casualty rate around 75%.

I don't really think that would have played out any differently if he'd had a large mix of archers - other than the first round pretty much every one of the javelins was launched at my minotaurs every turn, the battle was just over too fast to overcome their hitpoints. He probably could have fared a bit better if he anticipated me charging straight across and gotten another turn to rain fireballs down but those hasted minotaurs are faaaast!

I guess we'll find out though as his capital is now seiged and he massed some archers inside in anticipation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Guess I'll just have to say it again, Order is 100% better than Turmoil/Luck for Pangaea. We're talking something along the lines of 4000gp MORE PER TURN if you own 1/3rd of a medium map. That's enough to buy every unit in every castle you own. You get MAYBE one or two 200-400gp events and a few gems from Luck, MAYBE 1000, or maybe you get a few indy attacks or curses. I know which one I choose. You have access to Nature's Bounty, and I cannot imagine not using this spell to its fullest possible capacity.

You're totally overestimating the Maenads. With Maenads in front, your real units can't engage and kill enemy. They have no armor to start with, so it's very difficult to buff their protection. And I'm not even sure that Weapons of Sharpness works with Claw. Growing Fury often causes your mages to go charging in, and even with Pans fuelling your army, you're going to have supply issues eventually with waves of Maenads. Well, good thing they die in megadroves. Which heavily increases the chance of an automatic rout. When you lose 75% of your standing army, everything else that you have left except Gone Berzerks retreats. Just not seeing where you can countenance a swarm of Maenads over a swarm of satyr infantry, with spears, shields, armor, high movement, high MR, spears, high hps... and like you said, you don't have to worry about them breaking. You DO have to worry about autorout with a maenad attack.

Patrolling: 10 commanders with 400 maenads = 50 patrol points? 1 commander with 40 harpies is at least as much for 310gp, and can be assembled in one place in one turn.

Your point on the siege is well taken and I hadn't considered that. That could be a nasty surprise for enemies trying to crush your walls, and I like the idea of naked wild ladies moving stones around and getting all dirty.

The only use I can see for Turmoil-Luck scales is for the drain it will put on an opponent's lands, except that you say that luck makes up for it. Well, it doesn't and you will hurt their economy by pushing your dominion on them.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

If order cost the same as turmoil then probably noone would go turmoil. But the difference is 240 pretender points!

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

This is a longstanding and fairly widely held belief, so much so that I'd say the majority of experience players almost always take order-3 and some level of misfortune. I think luck is fairly underrated though.

With luck you:

Get an income boost regardless of the population of your provinces. The gold bump from luck scales starts looking a lot better if you're stuck with mostly wasteland and mountain provinces.

Barbarian/knight attacks can be strategically crippling on top of the gold impact.

With Luck you can also take a death scale - something that isn't usually a realistic choice if you're taking misfortune.

You get bonus gems, bonus items, and bonus chaff. The usefulness of this is generally marginal, but can be quite good if...er...luck is with you.

National heroes can be quite good from giving you much needed magic diversity to giving some solid thug chasises.

Anway, I have to disagree that order is 100% better...

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Don't forget things like cross breeding that Pangaea is good at, as luck also governs its success.

Another thing, if you are going to patrol the *beep* out of your country when playing Pangaea, you don't want:

*Death, because it will kill your population too quickly.

*Order, because it is too expensive. Plus, when your population is low enough it won't give you that much in return as the gold bonus is based on a percentage.

What you do want however, is this:

*Luck, as you can both patrol happily AND get nice rewards like extra gold when you are lucky. Plus, it is cheap.

You might want:

*Growth, because it will feed your ever growing armies (very high supply bonus) in the provinces where you do not patrol (why not in the forests to stay thematic?), and it also goes well with several Pangaean spells and songs. As a bonus to this you can also patrol longer, and the forests where you dwell in will grow in size more rapidly to support the ever increasing size of your army.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Going from turn 10 onwards, with 9 provinces, Dedas' Pangaea got:

21: 10 000 gold, with starting income 970 and 10 random gems, 1 +15 PD event, one +temple event and a random constr 4 item (Dwarven Hammer). Pangaea's upkeep was 44 on turn 21, increase of 11 from turn 10.

30: 22 000 gold with income of 970 (same), total of 51 random gems from events, another +15 PD event, and items from Constr 4 (Winged Helmet) and Constr 2 (Lightning Rod, Hammer of the Mountains). Ended up with upkeep of 99, thanks to some militia.


Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat 1 Growth 2 Misfortune 2 Magic 3 Bandar Log with similar pretender (125 point, 2/1 path titan with starting dom 3 upped to 6) got:

21: 10 000 gold with starting income 1000, 3 random gems, +15 PD. Upkeep 29, same as on turn 10.

30: 18 000 gold with final income of 955, due to losing one province for barbarians. Got total of 8 random gems, no items, no further PD events.

Final numbers: Luck got 4k more gold, 43 more gems, 2 Constr 4 and 2 Constr 2 items, lots of militia and some flagellants than Order. Ended up with upkeep of 56. Also, Luck nation had 1 more hero, but she appeared before turn 10.

Notes:
Order nation started with two wastes, while Luck had none. If the 10g income Wastes had been 60 income Forests, Order nation would have netted 100 more gold/turn (without unrest from events), so +2000 more gold, evening the difference into just 2k. The loss of one province doesn't matter, because Luck 3 Pangaea's upkeep made up for it - Pangaea's upkeep was higher throughout the test.
Both nations had PD 21 in all of their 9 provinces, so weaker event attacks were repelled if any happened. I didn't count any gems/gold from before turn 10, because dominion wouldn't have spread to all 9 controlled provinces.

In my earlier tests, most builds had 30k gold on turn 30, whether they had Order or Luck. Starting income 200 gold higher wins, whether or not good scales add ~+17 % to it or not. Notable exceptions started with either much higher or much lower income than the norm. I think that means that successful initial conquest is more important than scales as far as early economy goes. The extra gold from Order or maenads from Turmoil might help in this conquest, but the provinces conquered define the amount of gold you get. Fast expansion -> more gold. I do my all tests by setting each nation to 9 provinces and amount of sites to 0.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Very good test, kudos Endoperez!

Based on your test it seems to me that in Pangaeas case it would be better to go with turmoil and put those 240 points on something useful instead, maybe a good pretender or boosting other scales. That would boost early expansion even further.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Another thing to consider is that Order and Growth are synergistic whereas Luck and Growth isn't nearly as potent a combination. And with your order vs luck-turmoil test, you didn't take into account your Nature's Bounty... that will give you 40% more gold on an Order vs Luck-Turmoil scale, which is absolutely massive. 10,000 gold vs 6,000 gold. You are the master of the map at that point. It's so extremely difficult to make up the difference in pure production power when your units take so little resources. This allows you an amazing tactical flexibility; for instance, if your opponent doesn't have air shield, that's pretty much all she wrote right there; pump out those amazing centaur archers. If not, you can go with a vast minotaur army, or just overwhelm them with satyrs holding the line for your Pan battlemages. Pans are WONDERFUL mages, easily pumpable to 3-4 earth, 5 nature with earth boots and summon earthpower, strength of gaia. And you can get one for every castle you own as they're non-capitals.

Regarding the vast minotaur army, they're one of the best units in the game, let alone EA for their gold/resource cost. They die a lot, but they die a lot less with Gift of Health, with 50hps each, and recover nearly instantly from afflictions, one of the best things about Pangaea. They really do a number infantry right up to elites, and you get 20 per turn in a lot of castles. Imagine a 400-minotaur warrior army... they do great damage against large beings as well, and have very high attack rating when berserk; there aren't many units with 15 atk at size 3+ trample. they have trouble against high def cavalry, but then who doesn't, and they have the hps, attack, and damage to beat them. That's pretty awesome for the cost.

You're right to want to get everything you can out of the Pans, but Luck 0, Order 3 is more than worth the 120 point difference from Luck 3, Turmoil 3, because of Nature's Bounty.

Sloth also does decent damage to resource hungry nations, and stealth preaching is the best thing you can have your dryads doing besides research.

The spellsongs are pretty tough to implement with 15 range, for me personally, and aren't as useful as even, say, Storm of Thorns, which hits and discomfits units regardless of Air Shield or MR. Sure your dryads can do them too but Sermon of Courage is more useful.

The heroes are almost not worth a mention, with the A2N2 harpy being your best one. That basically allows you to search air sites a little faster, and maybe Wind Guide one army if you have a lot of archers... meh.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

You only say that because it happens to coincide with your strategy. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif
My earlier test had Order 3/Misf 2 nations, and I think they had more gold by turn 10, because the provinces weren't under the full dominion before that or something. Luck only pays off when you get event with the scale, order pays for whenever there's scale and that's it.

You two should really try out how fast the early expansion is in reality, e.g. do maenad patrollers help as much as harpies, and how much sloth is affordable before your resources limit you too much. Well, they can limit you in later ages, not so much in Early. Any way, Order 3 Misfortune 3 is probably even worse than Turmoil 3 Luck 3. I didn't try it, even for the test, because I didn't even think of it. It's just nasty.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

I think both Order and Turmoil have merit. Also if you take Order 3/Misfortune 2 you cut the scale gap down to just 40 points.

I think the weakest part of renojustin's argument (if anything) is the reliance on Nature's Bounty to supercharge Pangaea's economy. You never know if all the global slots are going to be full or if Astral Corruption is going to be up or something. Pangaea doesn't really have the astral income to fight for a spot on the list.

But even without Nature's Bounty, Pangaea and Order is a valid strategy. It's part of what makes it a cool nation.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

It's true that dispelling is often problematic for Pangaea, but with your huge nature gem income, you can often overpower other globals, get yours up first, and/or recast if necessary. Still, astral gems are easier to come by than any other except perhaps Death, because you only need Astral 1 which is easily achievable with many indy mages, so your territory should be covered by Astral Probes in relatively short order... and you definitely need a pretender with Astral 4 or better for starters just to construct necessary items and cast Dispel.

Just a few turns of Bounty puts you way ahead of the competition. Way, way ahead, with Order scales. With the amount of gems you camp pump it with, it often becomes tough-to-ruinous to dispel. Think 200 nature gems or more on a cast.

And you should probably have Growth with Pangaea, which Order goes very well with indeed, even without Bounty as you say.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

With all due respect renojustin, I think you need to learn basic statistics, and not to repeat things that have been proven wrong...

6000 + 40% = 10000 ? Woah. In case you do not know, A has 40% more income than B means B got 29% income less than A, not 40%. Then again, you are considering you've already won, since your assumptions take into account 1/3 of the map under your control. By that point most of the game is past and luck can't keep up, only because of the limit of 3 random events per nations. Some other thread about luck had shown that you needed about 15 to 20 provinces for the event to "max out" on most turn, if I recall correctly. That's plenty enough to have a decent magic economy that reduces the influence of gold in the game. Magic can and will reduce armies to rubble, no matter what they cost, in late game.

If that limit of 3 events was raised, however, the results of a test would probably be around what endoperez has shown : there is not much difference, no "better way" : the game is meant to be balanced after all, as much as it can be, and scales are fairly easy to balance...

Another thing, you keep repeating 40% ? Nope, it's more than that actually. Yeah, basic math again... (100 + 21) / (100 - 21) ~= 153%, that's 53% more income. At least, if you're going to say the same argument over and over again, at least check that it's true. Same for events, it's not 15% more events you have, but (100+15) / (100 - 15) = 135% : 35% more events (only considering order / turmoil, not adding 15% more from luck, since I don't know if they add or multiply).

Your failure to recognize turmoil / luck as a more or less equal path than order in my opinion caused by that you either fail to recognise the effects of luck and events, or that you need a predictable environment to play. Both of which are fine, but in that case, say "it's the way I enjoy playing most", not "it's the best way".

For high level magic, especially nature's bounty, a spell that I can't see ever working in a MP game (for several reasons, one of them being that it's a lvl 9 spell, the other one being that no one is going to leave this spell for long). And there are much better uses for 70 nature gems than a spell dispelled in 2 turns, especially since you already seem to think you can easily have others...

You're probably right in thinking that your strategy work, but I can't stand seeing blatant lies like "it's the best strategy", when that statement is just an "educated" guess, based on nothing but some personnal opinions.

Now, if you really want to prove your point, either test completely it and prove it, or just do like all other participants to this post have : show one or more ways to play, the strategies you've thought of, and let them decide whether it's effective or not.

Thank you in advance.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

There is no limit of 3 events. I have gotten 5 good random events per turn with Turmoil-3/Luck-3. Has anyone ever had 6?

In games where I have Order-3/Luck-3, I've only gotten a max of 3 random events per turn. Has anyone ever had more than 3 with these scales?

Perhaps the max number of events is linked to the order scales?

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Kasnavada:
Often I must speak other than I think. That is called diplomacy.
* Stilgar

Wasn't that Javid?

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

vfb, could those events have been in provinces you took ownership of on that turn? Whoever owned them would have had the events taken from their 3/turn limit, but you would have recieved the events.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

I no longer have a save game with 5 events I think, but I do have one with 4. I do remember getting 5.

In the save game with 4 good events in a month, there were no battles or change of ownership in the provinces receiving events, I owned them at the start of the turn and at the end of the turn. All 4 of the the events were good. Turmoil-3/Luck-3 scales.

Edit: Attached save file with 6 random events in one turn for one nation (Caelum). 4 events per turn were somewhat common, 5 were very rare, and this is the only one with 6. No battles or provinces changing hands at all.

Edit Again: Damned mods starting themselves without my permission again! You need the Kitchen Sink to view the turn, it can be found here:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...ev=#Post582302

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

kasnavada said:
(100 + 21) / (100 - 21) ~= 153%, that's 53% more income.

Nitpicking. Yet it proves the validity of my argument. Here's some more math: 6000 (1.53) = 9180, close enough, even though my initial percentage assessment was 40% or more. Well, the OR MORE happened to be correct, yippee, even better!

The primary thing that Luck scales is dependent on is luck. You only have a chance for these events to be good. Luck 3 = 39% more chance that the event will be good. 50% (1.39) = 69.5% chance of a good event. So you have a 30.5% chance of a bad event; nearly 1/3 of your events will be bad.

Let's pretty safely assume that the Event bonus is additive. So you have a 30% higher probability of an Event with Turmoil 3, Luck 3. (100 - 15 / 100 + 30)... 65%. You have 2/3rds the number of Events with Order 3 as you do with Luck /Turmoil, or 150% as many events with the Luck-Turmoil scales.

Out of 100 rolled Events:

+3 Order gets 85 of them, 42.5 are good, 42.5 are bad.

Luck/Turmoil gets 130 events, 90.35 are good / 39.65 bad.

So in effect, you're getting twice the amount of good events, but the SAME amount of bad ones. An average turn with Order would look like: 1 good event, 1 bad event. With Luck/Turmoil: 2 good events and 1 bad event. Luck/Turmoil will have a smidgen better odds than that, but that representation is extremely close.

You really think that getting one more good event per turn outweighs 53% more gold? You'd need to be getting something like a +1000 gold event per turn above and beyond what the other one is getting. And as anyone who's taken Luck 3 would know, it just doesn't happen that way.

Having 1/3rd of the map is something that occurs regularly. Eventually, it comes down to two or three nations. This is an eminently probable situation. If you're in the running at that point, and you pop a Bounty, it either unites your enemies against you or it wins you the game, or both.

In defense of Nature's Bounty, not that it really needs it, it is a N7 spell, which is pretty straightforward to cast with a Pan once you do achieve Enchantment 9. Many strategies benefit highly from their requisite level 9 spells... this one happens to be probably the most effective one you can cast in EA Pangaea. As I said earlier, with your huge nature gem income, you can almost always afford to pump this spell past an even impressively charged Dispel. It can change the magical momentum when someone puts 100 astral gems into a dispel and it fails, especially against something that is purely beneficial to yourself and not inherently harmful to other players.

All in all, I think the reason that more veteran players prefer the Order scale is that it's more... well, orderly. You can plan your strategy without having to rely on randomness, and be fairly confident that you can execute it in nearly any given map... barring a Knight/Bogus party on your front lawn, of course!

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

In conclusion, I'd just like to say that EA Pangaea is one of my favorite nations in the entire game to play, and here's why:

Recuperation. It's a great relief to not have to worry about getting afflictions, confident that they will heal over time. I only ever worry about losses, not crippled, maimed, diseased, oozing pustules of units. You can concentrate them beyond any other army with your Pan nature mages, and even beyond that, knowing that even if they starve and get diseased, they'll be fine in another month or two.

Units. From the lowly harpy to the mighty minotaur, from the satyr warriors to the centaur archers (the best in the game beside poison bows), this army can do almost anything. And they do it with so little resources that you are almost compelled to take Sloth 3, which is great for your scales. Add to this Stealth AND forest survival, and you have a fast, sneaky, powerful force that is absolutely first rate.

Mages. Both Dryads and Pans can be recruited outside your capital. Dryads are super sneaky H2N1 units that you will find many, many uses for... and Pans are battlemages of the highest caliber. When I first encountered a Storm of Thorns-spamming Pan, I was annoyed. So I fielded 10 of them.

Magic. Earth and Nature are by far the most powerful buff magics, but they can be used for some pretty potent destruction and offense, giving them a lot of versatility. The items are effective and fun to use.

Concept. Old Nature rises to claim the age. Wild, naked women are compelled to join the Pans in their revelry. Pangaea can be anywhere, the dominion can be anywhere. The children of the groves and dark bowers of the land will consume everything in their anger and lust!

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Testing (and experience) gives around 90% good events with Turmoil3-Luck3 scales. I'm pretty sure "event is good +39%" means you get 89% good events.

Also, comparing Order3 with Turmoil3-Luck3 is unfair. That's a difference of 120 design points.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

You're definitely right, but it has to be compared because those are two of the main ways to set up your EA Pangaea. Figure what you'd do with those points and for what reason, and plug it into the equasion [+53% gold VS Maenads + 1 more good event per turn + (?)]. I have to admit that Maenads look a lot better after they've been tested as having no upkeep. It's probably the same for LA R'yleh too.

I don't think that 90% good events is accurate. I get a heck of a lot more bad events than 1 in 10 with Luck 3.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

I'm counting events where all the provinces are Turmoil3-Luck3. If you're counting total events in a real game, you'll get different numbers, depending on how fast your dominion and scales spread. Let me rephrase that ... you'll get more accurate numbers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Later in the game your scales should have stabilized, but if you invade enemy dominion, then you'll get bad events in those provinces while waiting for your scales to catch up.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Luck 3, even with Turmoil, is temperamental. I always play with luck for Pan, but rarely get the good gold events. Still, the 3000 gold event is nice when it comes along.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

It's really hard to tell what's going on with luck on big games. The maximum of 3 events probably isn't hard-coded any more, but I have no idea how Luck scales.

I think I'll have to do a custom map for testing. Some ~100 province map with no/few seas, remove terrain and small/large tags, set two nations to start with 25 provinces, a temple in all of those to spread dominion and PD of 21 in all to lessen the effect of invasion events and perhaps a mapmove 10 flying supercombatant for both sides to get conquered provinces back in few turns.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/5729/gemsfk3.th.jpg

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Of course! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

But besides that it is a good analysis.

I agree that you could use a few dryads as stealth preachers in some cases, but I think you are missing out big time if you don't use the spell songs. Initially you don't have access to storm of thorns, SoT is level 7! It also costs three times more fatigue and has less effects. Yes it does damage as well but if it didn't it would be one lousy level 7 spell. The nice things about the spellsongs is that you have them early on and can spam them in different combinations, like growth, then tune of dancing death... finishing with some tune of fear. Or why not just tune of fear. I had four dryads, a bunch of satyrs and some maenads rout a 4-5 times bigger army just by spamming ToDD in close combat. The enemies morale hit zero instantly and fled the next turn just, to be clawed to pieces by the maenads. Why not watch the replay in my first post to get the idea (I forgot to use barkskin though).
Needless to say both tune of growth and storm of thorns is positively affected by the growth scale, also by terrain if you didn't know. So if you want to take those spells to the enemy you want growth. But as explained above this is not the prime reason to choose it, it's just a very good and thematic bonus.

Pangaea is also a favorite of mine. Thank you for sharing your interesting and intelligent views on the nation.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Holy Cows Udders Batman! Look at those numbers! Can I hire you for training?

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

Ok, this paragraph combined with an earlier Dryad thug post you made has convinced me to give their songs a shot. You do have an awful lot of dryads around midgame because they're so darn easy to produce as you expand.

Maybe I'll even give Maenads one more shot by going with Luck/Turmoil, Pans, and rush to mass protection.

I find the opponents to be fairly competitive with their AI set to Impossible; they have a huge bonus to production and vast armies of average combatants can be really difficult to beat when they're hammering at you turn after turn, so I find a medium-sized map in SP with 9 opponents set to Impossible a pretty fair assessment of the usefulness of a tactic.

Thanks to you too. I've greatly enjoyed talking about EA Pangaea in this thread, the nation I just stomped over one of the aforementioned games with.

Re: EA Pangaea strategy
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Wiki

Oh yeah, and I forgot. Some events give permanent bonus to gold production in a province... in the long run, it also amounts for a lot. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I just love those.