Help! Need some strategy advice in my game...

[LintMan]

Howdy,

I'm looking for some strategy/tactics advice for how to handle the situation I'm in, in my current game...

Embarassingly, I'm still playing the "Walkthru" game I started in the demo, 2 full weeks after having receieved my full Version. (Why? ...It's a long story*)

Anyway, I'm in a pretty good position in many ways, but I'm getting my butt kicked in battle by Pangaea and I'm not sure how to counter it.

If you're unfamiliar with the Walkthru game:
I'm playing Jotunheim, with Son of Niefel 8W, 4E.
If I understand it correctly, my dominion's cold scale is set to 0, so I'm actually at a fair disadvantage economically. Is that correct - Jotuns have some penalties at anything besides Cold 2?

I'm currently at around turn 51, and control aproximately the right third of the map (Aran), plus most of the oceans, and have eliminated Ulm and Machaka, and am seiging Pythium, who only has 2 other remaining provinces. My nation is ranked first on all charts (Pangaea in second, Abyssia third) except as a fairly distant second to Pangaea for army size.

My land border was entirely shared with Pangaea, in a peaceful fashion, up until my Frost Brand/Lucky Coin-equipped Herse killed Pangaea's Cyclops god in combat in the deathmatch Arena.

Pan took offense to killing their god (that they stupidly entered into the deathmatch), declared war, and it's been downhill since.

My problem is that Pangaea's armies are proving far, far tougher opponents to my giants than Ulm's, Machaka's, or Pythiums ever did. Perhaps it's because they are so large, but even accounting for that, it seems like my front line of spearmen takes far more losses than his front line of satyrs, revelers and militia does.

For example, Pan attacked a province I had pumped up to 22 pd. Pan had 2 commanders, and 76 units including a few harpies and a mass of experienced satyrs, militia, and revelers. My army totalled 22 Jotun miltia, 1 hurler, 1 hearse, and 1 jarl.

My miltia hit his mass of satyrs and revelers, and stared dropping like flies while making virtually no dent in his forces. I certainly expected to lose, but the end result was my entire army being destroyed except for 5 militia managing to escape. His losses? Just a mere 10 units total, mostly harpies.

In other battles, where I've had a mix of Jotun spearmen, some assorted summons (ie: vine ogres and water elementals), assorted cheapish undead, and more leaders, have proven to be either nearly as costly in defeat, or almost pyrrhic in victory.

I think that if I was to just start cranking out masses of giants I might be able to prevail, but the provinces in the disputed area are extremely low on supplies. I have a number of endless wines, but not enought to even enable my entire existing forces to combine in one province, nevermind any masses of new Jotuns I cranked out. But using giants as mass fodder strikes me as quite extremely inefficient and the wrong way to go about things.

Obviously, I need to adjust my balance of forces to counter Pan batter, but I'm not sure what I need to do...

Hence, this post looking for suggestions about how best to counter Pan. I feel like I'm in good shape and I *should* be winning, without such attrition, if I knew how to better apply my resources.

Here's my resources:
Income: 1700, Upkeep: 800
Research points available: 323 (but many used to summon/forge/site search/etc)
Gems:
F: 17 +8
A: 15 +9
E: 23 +17
W: 62 +10 (not including some clam income)
S: 62 +13
D: 18 +18
N: 13 +12
B: 3 +1 (from a site, I'm not doing any hunting)

Spells:
Conj: 7 Alt: 4
Evoc: 4 Const: 6
Ench: 4 Thau: 4
Blood: 2

Only 2 mages currently travel with my armies (they haven't proved necessary there previously). The majority of my mages are sages and Vaetii hags, with a maybe a total of 4 each Skratti and Gygjas. I also just summoned a Coatl, which I just empowered +1S up to 4S/3N. (I'm planning to summon a harbinger, and would love to summon an angelic host). Lastly, I have two spectral mages (2D/1N, 1S/2D).

My prophet, Hgne the Gode, has heroic protection +7 (to 18), +4 Holy, and 3 exp stars. He is currently commited to leading the pythium siege and hasn't been involved in the Pangaea war.

In the battles with Pan, I noticed that the group of independent archers I had actually managed to inflict more casualties in one attack than my front line spearmen did. This makes me think it's a potential tactic, but I have a lot of trouble positioning those archers to be at all effective, or even getting them just not to rush into melee and get wiped out. Worse, Jotun seems exceptionally weak on ranged attack in its native units... Hurlers stink, and I haven't had much luck with Javelinists as ranged units (they usually immediately close on their targets to melee, and when they do throw, they usually miss by a mile).

None of my frontline forts have independent archers of any sort available, so I either need to build them in a distant province and slowly march them over, or I'd have to build new forts overlapping my other ones (ugh - pricey, slow, and would kill my production at both!)

I've got Gift of Health researched, but no mage to cast it (the Coatl was my hope, but surprised me in that it only has misc slots, so I'd have to empower it and I don't have the nature gems to spare). Any easier way for the Jotuns to get a 5N nature mage? My second best Nature mage is a 1S/1D/3N/1B Gygja with a Thistle Mace.

So, any ideas? Will any other Jotun units fare substantially better against Pan's masses than my Spearmen (with a few huskarl and javelinists) have been?

Thanks!
-LintMan


* If you really wonder why I'm still I'm still only at turn 51 of my first real game after playing it for 3 weeks, it's because I don't get much actual playing time, and because I detoured and spent a week experimenting and trying things out just to get a feel for them, without playing seriously, before I decided to return to my Walkthru game in progress.