Thoughts on New Era Pangaea

[st.patrik]

Has anyone tried New Era Pangaea? What do you think?
Here are my thoughts:

• The Grove Guards are really cool, though very resource-expensive. These guys have the highest prot rating of any Pangaea unit (18), lots of HP, good morale, and go berserk! Great against knights/HI - they trample the HI (which is armour piercing) and chop the knights up with those big 9 damage axes.

• The Satyr Hoplites are not so different from vanilla, but are a great complement to the Grove Guards - resource-expensive (19) but not too expensive in gold (13). As good at dealing with LI as the GGs are at dealing with HI.

• The Dryad Hoplites are way expensive (50 gold, 22 resources) given that their main advantage over their satyr cousins is that they are sacred. They have worse HP, prot, and str - only slightly better Magic Resistance and Movement, and the awe effect. This at about 4 times the gold cost.

• The Centaur Cataphracts are nice, but not so different from vanilla Pangaea.

• There are remarkably few units available for New Era Pangaea: only 5 commanders and 8 troop types. They lack a good scout, and a good ranged unit.

My suggestions for change:
• Make the Grove Guards sacred.
There is little incentive to buy Minotaur Soldiers right now - yeah they're cheaper, but their only advantage is a slight movement advantage. Besides it would fit perfectly with the Grove Guard theme - caretakers of the sacred groves. This would make me happy

• Reduce the price of Dryad Hoplites, and give them a strategic move of 2
They are simply too expensive to warrant use - they need some kind of boost to make them attractive, or a price reduction. Also since New Era has no good troops that can move 2 territories it would be a nice advantage to give the dryad hoplites.

• Bring back Black Harpies, or make a new 'Satyr Scout' commander
There isn't a good way to scout right now - dryads are too expensive, Pans are WAY too expensive. If there were either Black Harpies or a Satyr Scout for 50 gold or less it would fill this gap nicely.

• Add a better ranged unit
The only ranged troops New Era has are the satyrs with javelins, which aren't great. How about a Satyr Crossbowman? or a Satyr Hoplite variant that has a javelin but costs more? or else bring back the Centaur Longbows.


There are my thoughts - anyone else got any thoughts on New Era Pangaea?