New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage, Etc
 

Hello World,

I'm a new player messing around while waiting for my second box to arrive (the first one got lost in the mail http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif) and I've got a few questions.

I've currently fallen in love with EA Pangaea. My reasons are:
Minotaurs
Pans (For the powerful Nature magic, not maenids)
Summoning Undead heroes that constantly raise dead

1)The only real weakness my minotaurs seem to have is dying via archers before they arrive at the enemy. What kind of magic paths should I be researching so that my Pans can keep them alive?

2)My pretender. I want him to have enough nature/death magic to be able to summon the various undead national summons. I've been building him on the archdruid chasis, as 4N/3D and two in the other magics so that he can effectively magic site search.

It ends up looking something like this:
ArchDruid pretender
4N/3D/2 Everything else
3 Order/1 Magic Scales
4 or 5 Dominion

Advice appreciated!

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Not much you can do with the Pans, except research Construction until you get Legions of Steel, it will help their protection somewhat. You should also use Satyrs as decoys to draw fire away from the minotaurs.

The pretender thing... That's a mighty colorful rainbow you've got there. I'd advice taking less order and maybe dropping magic paths you can get nationally (e.g. Earth, unless you intend to construct Earth/Astral combo items in which case you do need a point or two of both).

But just try things out. There are several different strategies you could use with Pangaea, especially EA. I also suggest checking the stickied Strategy Index thread on the top of the forum. It has several links to various threads where there are tons of Pangaea advice, as well as links to guides to almost all otehr nations too. Not to mention generally useful threads like the newest site searching discussion.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

The types of magic that will help your Minotaurs are unfortunately not paths that you naturally have. With water magic you can cast quickness on the minotaurs so they can get across the battlefield faster. With air magic you can cast Arrow Fend, Mist, Storm, etc. to hamper ranged attacks.

Edi's suggestion to put Satyrs in front is your best bet. It doesn't have to be a lot, just enough for the archers set on fire closest to target them first. Once they choose a target they stick with it for the whole battle.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Well, as was suggested Legions of Steel should help. Minotaurs have some armor, right?

Protection, or Mass Protection are an alternative. Haste isn't generally worth it, but if it gets them close faster it might be nice. Haste doesn't add attacks, but trample is based on AP. Is Haste worthwhile on tramplers?

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Haste doesn't add to AP, sadly. It does reduce the cost to move though, which may allow more tramples.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

I've been using those tricks to prevent my troops from being hit by arrows :

Idea 1 :
The best armored unit EA pangaea has access to in my opinion is the demon knight. Ir requires Earth 2 and Blood 2 to cast, blood 4 research (so not too difficult to get), which all of your pan can cast with any blood booster or a earth booster, which all of your pans with 2 earth can make : earth boot. Note that blood 3 earth 2 also enables you to make blood stones, which produce 1 earth gem per turn. This unit is pretty much immune to most arrow barrage with 22 protection and 19 defense, it also prety effective to kill your ennemies, is cavalry, so it moves fast enough to keep up with your centaurs. As a finishing touch, it's also immune to what is one of the main spell for archers, fire arrows, since it's immune from fire.

The problem is that it takes about a game year and a half to set up the required blood economy, research, boosters, and after that it takes some time to amass more of those troops.

Idea 2 : using flyers to prevent arrows from hitting you. Either recruiting lots of harpies (early in the game) set on "attack archers" or use a flying SC or thug (later on) to attack archers. The archers AI will attempt to kill the troops with their knives and will not aim at your troops. Using harpies means that the casualties can be pretty high and cause a rout though, so be careful. Having 2 sets of flyers, one set as "attack archers" and the other one set as "hold and attack" works the best for me. I often have a significant part of archers blocked during 4 turns with this idea.

Idea 3 : centaur archers. They have lots of HP and aim pretty well. Setting them on 'fire archers' will kill the archers pretty fast.

Idea 4 : using maenads as arrow catchers. They come free with pans anyway. Place maenads like this :
___Min___
______Mae
______Mae
___Min___

Default orders for archery is "fire closest", so the maenads will get hit while the minotaur close in. Againt, be careful, getting too many maenad killed hurts your morale in the end.

You were already told about spells that give bonus to armor, and quickness spells... so I won't had stuff on that.

There might be other ways, but I can't think of any at the time.

About rainbow :
The pretender I use for a rainbow strategy is somewhat different, but I have not found a "perfect" set-up yet. I plan to use her for site searching, elemental king summoning, to forge boosters and gem-producing items.

Since I like the blood economy and royal court, I make her able to cast those. Your objectives might be different though, so feel free to modify it.

4F/4A/3W/3S/1E/2D/3N Enchanteress. It enables her to forge enough magic boosters to cast nearly anything she wishes, and helps diversify your magic, since she can cast most elemental royalty spells with few boosters, or "regular" boosters. You can got to. As a bonus, you might give her 3 blood magic and 2 earth for an easier access to blood stones.

I didn't give her Earth and nature more than necessary on purpose : a pan can searth those sites, and points cost a lot.

I hope that helps.

EDIT typos and :
Also : in the event you are using dryads as thugs, nature 4 could be interesting since dryads can bless themselves, are sacred, and therefore gain regeneration.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Regeneration on dryads isn't so great: they have rejuvenation and lowish hps to begin with. And the main use of the harpies will be for patrolling with high taxes, MAYBE an attack on some light rear PD. Even against dagger-wielding leather-armored archers with the bare rudiments of melee training, they do not fare well at all.

Protection/Wooden Warriors works very well, as does Army of Steel.

The problem with Minotaur Warriors in EA is that they don't wear much armor compared to MA and LA, BUT you can use this to your advantage as they don't have as much encumbrance.

Here's a tip: take Sloth scales. Pangaea in no way needs production. While you're at it, take another look at Maenads and Turmoil/Luck; I did, and I'm very glad of it. Freespawn, upkeepless average troops (albeit no armor) makes full use of your Pans. These two changes will give you TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY POINTS more AND Maenad freespawns. While Maenads might not look too impressive at first glance, Pangaea has great access to the two best protection buff paths in the game: Earth and Nature. They have very good morale as a bonus.

So place a heavy emphasis on Alteration school for research, for sure... that will help you protect all your troops, those nice Minotaur Warriors included. And for arrow catchers, go ahead and throw in your Satyr Warriors... you are going to miss them a lot in MA and LA. Still, opponents can script Fire Large Monsters on their archers, which is why I don't use them in pvp until I can buff them, unless against a rushable foe.

Mostly I just recruit full blocks of Satyr Warriors and Pans, and once I've researched a bit, throw in buffed Minos. Luck is a great relief to have in games after taking Misfortune scales, and the Turmoil/Sloth dominion can hurt an opponent's economy badly, especially with your stealthy H2 preachers, adding yet another weapon to your arsenal.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Regeneration on dryad works great if you give them mistform with some item. Otherwise, they do tend to die in 1 turn when a blow strucks them, so it's not that great I agree, but giving your rainbow pretender 4 nature is not that mch of a cost anyway.

About harpies, I've been misunderstood. The point is not to kill the archers with the harpies, but to send them to die so other troops are not shot by arrows !

Here is the reasoning behind my logic : archers shoot my army. They would kill dozens of my units per turn ! By giving them an alternate melee target, the units I save are : maybe satyrs, maenads, centaurs and minotaurs (worth more than 30 gold each).

In EA, your troops are very weak to archery. I'd rather decide myself which of my troops die from them. Furthermore, if you do get the harpy hero, she generates harpies every turn, reducing their "cost".

As a bonus, if the opponent meatshield is set on
- attack closest, his entire close-range units will actually move back toward the archers to go kill the harpies, desorganising the ennemy ranks. If your opponent army is not too large, your attacking minotaurs or centaurs will find some archers on the "front" and dispose of them quickly.
- hold and attack : they won't move for the first 2 turns, then some will move back as you attacking force engage them in their back. That make your opponent close range and archers close to each other, which in turn boosts a lot the efficiency of the offensive spells Pangaea has access to : the poison and sleep clouds, vire arrows, breath of the dragon, destruction, panic, banishment (in case of undeads), which are all much more powerful if the ennemies are grouped.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

The archers on the inside of the block still fire and wipe out your harpies in one turn, resulting in much gold (and troops for that combat towards autorout) lost for one turn of archer soak. I mean, yeah I use a VERY light screen of harpies (like the ones generated from the harpy hero) from time to time for just that purpose (maybe even getting opponent to shoot themselves) but I personally won't be spending too much on them outside of patrolling. They're not even good for sneak attacks on PD; your other troops can do that with a much higher degree of proficiency. Harpy leaders, on the other hand, are a totally different story. They are scary good for moving many items and scouting.

Satyr Warriors can take arrows and you don't even have to worry about afflictions afterwards. Mix them up with Revelers and you have a bonus to enemy archer fire, even... higher offense from that group of units when they berserk.

If you're really all that worried about archers just get some Centaurs, they are superior to even Man's archers, just more expensive, but they'll win archer duels against them if they're not outnumbered more than 2:1 with their great hps and higher morale. Of course when you look at the costs, it's entirely possible you WILL be outnumbered by that much... but if they're shooting up your minos, the centaurs will have time to work.

Gold for gold and resource for resource, I think Satyr Warriors are probably the best non-sacred unit in EA. They can take hits; they can hold a line; they're very mobile, strong, and skilled. And cheap as all get out.

The only time I could see you using totally unbuffed Minotaur Warriors against archers would be in a rush, and I definitely wouldn't want to be blowing gold on harpies there. With Protection, they can soak up the archer fire just fine. JUST FINE, I say!

But... I like the two waves model when you're just looking to distract their archers. That's a nice trick.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Rereading your comment, I find I use them exactly as you say : a very light screen of harpies, so I don't cause auto-rout and in order not to spend too much. It's far from begin the ultimate strategy that will win the day anyway !

I'll have to try Satyrs too.

Anyone else has any other ideas that could work ?

PS : I'll recommend this thread in the strategy index.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Oh man those Satyr Warriors, you don't even get anything like them in MA or LA... you actually LOSE army strength there because of it. EA is the best age for Pangaea's troops, barring the weakly-armored Minotaur Warriors, simply because of them. (The lesser encumbrance just doesn't make up for the punishment-taking capability of the armored Minotaurs, even when buffed)

Welll.... LA Dryads are pretty nice too. Awe on recruitable troops? Wow. They're good to go right out of the box without a strong bless. Still, pretty sure they're capital-only so they would be an underwhelming strategy. Satyr Warriors are recruitable everywhere and you can really get an asston of them between their low resource cost, rejuvenation, and heavy nature provisioning.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Ah just did a run-through and came up with the following:

Dormant Gorgon with E9, N8. Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Heat 2 (Your troops have very little encumbrance), Luck 3, Growth 3, Magic 1, Dominion 5, 0 points left over!

While this doesn't give you a whole lot of magic diversity, which can really come back to bite you bigtime, it plays to your strengths, really buffs your Dryads and Centaurs, and gives you a great SC. Too bad there's no way to get Air or Astral in there without really bombing your scales. If anything, drop your Nature bless to N4 and try for as much Astral as you can manage. Looks like a VERY solid build.

Edit: hm, E9N4S6 with Growth 1 works too. That lets you add Ethereal and some other nice endgame stuff. Still you're paying for it bigtime with 2 less growth (your income will be quite low with the temperature scales even considering 3 Luck) and 10% less regeneration... eh, it's worth it.

Ok that gives away a little much but hey, Pangaea is pretty strong however you play her I think.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

I did some testing with the gorgon too but I prefer those magic path to the one you use : awake with A4E4N4. Any build with E9 works quite well too, since sending her "naked" and is enough to take care of most indies !

The reason is I find her much more powerful with some air magic is because she can cast cloud trapeze, mistform, and invulnerability, and you have easier access to air items. Which are great for the gorgon, since they improve defense by a lot, and high protection can be taken care of with invulnerability. That gives her easily 30 or more defence and protection. I usually use her to search for the few necessary air sites that you will need to forge the air items though, and take her awake.

The gorgon is a very strong pretender, and there is little you can do to get a wrong build with her. The downside is that she locks your magic diversity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

I'm thinking I'd rather have the E9 and 6 Astral over Air, just for endgame and Ethereal/Luck. She's a 3 movement flier anyway, and so can be used to cover a very wide area without Trapeze, (not counting Teleport which is the same thing for S3) and yeah Mistform is great but not worth 6 Astral imo.

She's a very tough SC and you don't really want to be sending her against anything TOO hard since she's not immortal, and anything that can give her much of a threat will be taking down the Mistform in short order with a magic weapon anyway... so I think I can forego the Air in favor of the superior Astral magic.

And she can definitely be used awake as well, but you risk an early death, and you get the points which are not insignificant, so I feel that getting a little beauty sleep and waiting for some half-decent equipment isn't so bad at all - Earth and Nature have some really excellent gear, and the Astral equipment isn't to be sneezed at either. A Lucky Pendant (I suppose you can just script in Luck, but the extra turn is pretty nice with the plethora of self-buffs she has at her disposal) and possibly Amulet of Antimagic will go a long way in your miscellaneous slots in the time it takes to find some S1 indies. And you can go right up against players with that without having to count on it.

Lastly, Air 4-6 won't help your sacreds as much as the Astral and Earth. Centaurs can definitely take the extra arrows with their shields, berserk, Earthbless, and regeneration, and the extra MR means quite a bit on top of their already-high resistance. I feel that they're just too vulnerable when berserking without the extra +4 protection.

I like Air for combat casters for the Precision, so maybe I just don't see it gelling as well for a melee type outside of Mistform.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

A or S are big benefits for the Gorgon, for Cloud Trapeze/Teleport. No amount of flying strat move is as valuable as the ability to pop in before army movement... if she's flying, you have to anticipate enemy movements, but if you jump her with rituals,

Similarly, having her Awake is key- she's a huge boon to early-game expansion and rush attacks. Therefore, you can't afford to get S/A very high... and low Astral is a surefire way to get killed by Mind Duels in MP. Therefore, I prefer Air. (I have actually seen the AI send a lone mage with mind duel in SP, shockingly; they won't do it consistently/spamming though.)

My favorite is E4,A4,N4; Dom 9; Turmoil-3 Sloth-3, Growth-2 Luck-2, Drain-2. You get magic screwed in late game with the Drain, but you can often expand hard enough early to make it worthhile.

This build doesn't do a lot with the sacreds, though you might recruit a handful- your early expansion is mainly Gorgon, especially if you spend turn 1 building her a Hide Shield for your initial 5N gems. The main reason for A4 instead of A2 is to build crucial Air boosters and Staff of the Elements.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Total coincidence the AI using a single mage with mind duel.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Giving her air instead of astral also make her more vulnerable to mind hunt. In my opinion, it doesn't matter much, the point is the petrification ability, all the rest is mainly stuff you give her to increase her life expectancy, and both air and astral work quite well for that.

Another build I gave her was a dormant gorgon with 3 turmoil, 1 growth, 3 luck, 1 magic, dom5, A4W2E4N4. The point was to give her easy access to water breathing item and invade the seas early.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

I played another game with a Turmoil 3 scale and ended up with a never-ending supply of maenids pouring out from my research base. Indie commanders filled with maenids proved effective for capturing lightly defended territories without forcing me to divert my main army.

I am having a problem with my upkeep though with the turmoil scales. Should I be patrolling harder to make up for the lost income? I found myself going many turns without gold, albeit I was in a very exposed location and next to an aggressive AI playing Vanheim.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Tumoil three gives you a -21% gold income, and most players go for ORder-3 for +21% income. When they do go Turmoil, its usually matched with Luck-2 or 3 and Magic-1 for income and gem generating events. There is no trick though, you're just going to have less gold unless you do a lot of expansion.

Also, keep in mind that the upkeep for Pans is quite high.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

The upkeep for Pans is very high, but at the same time they generate Maenads, so taking Turmoil 3 allows you to make the most of them.

If you use Turmoil-3, use Luck-3. It's synergistic. And you don't necessarily have to expand greatly, just get some good dominion spread going, and your Luck tends to take care of the rest. Once you have around 10 provinces with Luck 3 on them, you'll be very pleasantly surprised at your income.

Luck-Turmoil is actually more conducive to a smaller map than a larger one, and a smaller territory than a larger one. Once you pass 20 provinces or so, it's quite obvious that Order is the real money maker. BUT... upkeepless, freespawn Maenads are definitely worth it in my opinion, with the added benefit of having 120 more points to work with. Especially if you're playing in a smaller game and those points go straight into your Gorgon.

You can do some fairly heavy patrolling if you've got Growth scales if you find you're hurting on funds. Harpies are quite good at patrol. Avoid patrolling with Maenads. They are easily bribed with raw meat and sexual favors.

And from earlier, Ewierl is absolutely right about the Trapeze-Teleport abilities over Fly... being able to hurl your Gorgon into battle before the enemy has time to move is completely invaluable. This way you know exactly what he's going to be fielding on the other end, especially if they just attacked one of your provinces, and script accordingly. This becomes even more obvious if you're using her alone and can never push back the enemy force so as to attack their greatest concentrations instead of just tagging behind them like a forlorn camp prostitute.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

About maenad generation : I did one test in another thread about EA pangaea (it is referenced in the strategy index) and found out the ratio for maenad generation between order 3 and turmoil 3 is 3 to 1. That is, you generate 3 times more maenads with turmoil 3 than with order 3.

I haven't made the test for order / turmoil 0.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

It seems kind of odd... I used to take Order 3 with Pangaea just to AVOID the Maenads. In that game, I remember that I got very, very few Maenads, and only when my Pans wandered out of my Dominion. Are you sure that Pans generate them at all in an Order dominion?

Edit: Just played 10 turns with about 6-7 Pans and didn't get a single Maenad in EA with Order 3. Looks like Pans don't generate Maenads without Turmoil.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

I did the test for 30 turns and using the lord of the wild in EA. It seems pans behave differently. In that case, sorry for being misleading.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

I think it depends on both turmoil/order and dominion in the province. Thus the lord of the wild will likely produce more of them since he will often have a nice dominion where he resides.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Interesting... now I have to somehow add in high dominion with a well-magicked Gorgon to get the best of all worlds with EA/MA Pangaea.

I never thought Pangaea needed much in the way of dominion strength - between its excellent Dryad priests and 200 gp temples - but here's a great reason to work it in. Or you could just start with a lowish one, then generate Maenads at an exponential rate as your Pans start to pile up, combined with the dominion bonus from extra temples being constantly built.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Yup. But a dom10 E9N4 gorgon looks much more powerful now than before.

I'll run a few tests once I come back home to see the effect of dominion and scales on pans.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Order 3, Luck 3, Dominion 10 = no Maenads. So it definitely seems as if you MUST have Turmoil (and alcohol) to make naked women.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Did you try that with Lord of the Wild though? Maybe he just domsummons maenads rather than turmoilsummoning them?

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Hum, I'm unlucky or something. I ran 5 tests with the following common parameters :
- monolith god.
- buying a pan a turn until I get 5 when the nature gem count goes to 25
- stopping the test when it hits 100.

Here are more detailled results :
Test 2 : 473 maenads, 5 pans bought, dom 10 turmoil 3 monolith
Test 3 : 598 maenads, 5 pans bought, dom 5 turmoil 3 monolith.
Test 4 : 471 maenads, 5 pans bought, dom 10 turmoil 3 monolith (forest + farmland has no effect ?),
Test 5 : 464 maenads, 4 pans bought (short on money...), dom 5 turmoil 3 monolith.

Now, I've got no problem with those results if they are intended. From KO's comment it would seem it's intended to be the opposite ?

Second series of tests : lord of the wild. All default, stopped when the nature gem counter hit 100.
Test 6 : 148 maenads, 3 turmoil, 5 dom.
Test 7 : 200 maenads, 3 turmoil, 10 dom (in a forest).
Test 8 : 179 maenads, 3 turmoil, 5 dom.
Test 9 : 138 maenads, 3 turmoil, 10 dom.
Test 10 : 0 maenads, 3 order, 5 dom.
Test 11 : 216 maenads, 3 turmoil, 10 dom (in a forest).
Test 12 : 135 maenads, 3 turmoil, 10 dom.
Test 13 : 0 maenads, 3 order, 5 dom (in a forest).

Errr. My earlier test was version 1.14 though, something changed ?

Well, it would seem that :
- pans and lord of the wild don't seem to have the same mechanics behind them ? Not sure how forest affect pans.
- I confirm renojustin's test. Order 3 = no maenads with pans, nor lord of the wild. Something changed with 1.14 ? I was pretty sure that I got some during my last test... well.
- pans generate more maenads when dominion is lower ?!?
- lord of the wild is affected strongly by forests.

Attached : the tests.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Nice tests Kas. I have the information I need for min/maxed pretenders for EA and MA Pangaea now.

I believe that the only thing affecting Maenad generation is Turmoil.