Quote:
Originally Posted by Baalz
Unsupported, manikin are not fabulous against regular troops, but with an early focus on alteration they rock something fierce. After the very early stages there's no reason to ever fight without mass protection and you should really have darkness for the big battles shortly. Those spells change the equation something fierce. You can often just overwhelm the bad guys 10:1 and not worry about it, but you don't need to count on it when you've got access to such fabulous force multipliers.
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True, but it is also true that the other players have access to weapons of mass-destruction after a while, and they all pretty much negate or ignore Mass Protection and/or Darkness. Banishment by massed indy H1 is always dangerous (and not very expensive) even during Darkness, Wrathful skies will keep on killing stuff no matter if there is Darkness or not, access to lowbie Astral mages means massed Solar Rays (late in the game (communed) Astral mages have Arcane Domination and it is a killer vs manikin), there is no defense vs Wither Bones, several mages casting Blade Wind is a killer even when the manikin have mass-protection and Darkness in effect, Falling Fires or slingers/archers + Flaming Arrows are the usual killer vs anything with barkskin (even during Darkness and storm, massed slingers with Flaming Arrows will cause horrible carnage against anything with barkskin), Cleansing water with its very nice AoE is deadly to undead, etc etc.
Ie while Mass Protection is very nice, it also means others have reached spells that basically ignore their effect or vs fire spells make the manikin actually hurt more. Darkness *is* good, but then again it is quite hard to miss anything when half the map is full of undead manikin. Yes, there are counters to these counters, but there are counters to counters of the counters
If the opponent is caught flat-footed with a mass-protected and Darkness shielded manikin force, so much better. But I think it is fair to assume it won't happen on a regular basis. Early on there are few counters to manikin (massed archers is nice, but as mentioned, minoutaurs will laugh themselves sick when they berserk trample through archers), and the manikin really get to shine vs early game tramplers, thugs and SC's (one unresisted hit is usually all you need, and you'll have loads of attempts).
Thus I personally feel Carrion Woods is an excellent tool to help Pan survive through the early game, but from mid-game and on one should consider CW a nice bonus if it stays up, but rely on the more "conventional" tools. Still, very late in the game, if you succeed to "ambush" enemy SC's (tooled to meet other SC) with a humongous manikin force one might pull a final stunt. And as mentioned, those centaur manikin are very nice always, if one just gets a big enough force of them