Revelers=unrest, but not maenads

[Nick_K]

Xietor said:
BTW what is the upkeep cost of a Vine Ogre?

Don't know for sure, but probably 0.

[Wish]

turmoil != unrest


maenads come in turmoil.

[Actuarian]

The maenid gathering is based on the turmoil scale in the province the Pan is in.

Vine ogre upkeep is zero.

Pangaea is tailor made for turmoil 3/ luck 3. The good events many times more than offset the loss of income, especially early on in the game. There are several events that give you a lot of money (over 1000), and if you choose luck 3 they are easy to get after you expand a bit.

[Xietor]

I disagree. For my small(aran map) map mp Pangaea, my set up is this:

Imprisoned Gorgon, 9e9n, 6 dom, 3 order, 3 sloth, 1 heat, 2 drain, 3 luck.

This set up allows for me to buy many white centaurs in 1st 3-4 turns. If a human player's castle is 3 squares away, you need elite troops right off the bat.

Luck is good, and i take it, but i do not want to rely on it for gold in 1st 5 turns. With a flying scout if a human is close, you can get blitz him early with white centaurs.

with 3 turmoil, you may not get a lucky money event in 1st few turns(may get gems etc) and that chance to quickly kill off a human player may be lost.

With 3 order, 3 luck, i get enough lucky events over time for it to pay off. With the events set on default, i typically get 1 a turn early on, and 2-3 a turn as i get more provinces.

I like the 3 luck as much for preventing a really bad event on my capital at the start of a mp game. Nothing worse than starting game off with lab gone, or worse, half your population dying.

[Teraswaerto]

Actuarian said:

Pangaea is tailor made for turmoil 3/ luck 3. The good events many times more than offset the loss of income, especially early on in the game. There are several events that give you a lot of money (over 1000), and if you choose luck 3 they are easy to get after you expand a bit.

Pangaea has lots of gold-heavy important recruitables; centaur warriors, pans. Turmoil is painful, the cut in basic income is huge.

[Graeme Dice]

Actuarian said:
Pangaea is tailor made for turmoil 3/ luck 3.

Why? Maenads are next to useless.

The good events many times more than offset the loss of income, especially early on in the game.

From actual tests, the average amount of gold from events is only going to bring you close to how much gold you would have had with order. It will probably be less than what you would have with order 3, however, since order 3 allows you to expand far faster than turmoil 3.

[Shovah32]

Maybe the gold only just averages out but then there are the gems, items, free troops/mages and less common bad events/invasions. I personally almost never go turmoil/luck(order3 misfortune2 for me) but i can see its uses.

[Actuarian]

I think that like many things DOM3 the answer depends on strategy, map size and other game settings.

I have succesfully used a maenid heavy strategy. In my experience they are not "next to useless." In fact, I think that the designers put in the extremely annoying maenid death scream to discourage us from using them

Maenids definately have their uses in combat. They are free and cost no upkeep, and they are berserkers. They are great for tiring out and eventually routing enemy troops. Fire at enemy troops with longbow centaurs while the maenids are engaging them. Use a bless strategy (nature for regeneration and earth to help with defense) and hold and attack with the white centaurs and other supporting troops.

If I remember correctly, a Pan in a turmoil 3 province attracts 9 maenids per turn, so if you can get a decent number of Pans in a province (I know they are expensive) you can quickly generate hordes of maenids. Properly equipped, your Pans can simulteneously summon lots vine ogres (also free and upkeep free, and they don't rout). That's two armies for the price of nothing.

As far as the money problem but consider the following. First, Pans are expensive but they can generate free armies (see above). Also, by having turmoil 3, you make it much more likely that a random event will occur in a province. This means that you'll hit the max number of random events much earlier in the game. I think everyone here agrees that random events are a good thing when you have the luck 3 scale. Also consider that temples are cheap for Pangaea (which leaves more for troops). If you buy temples aggresively your dominion will spread quickly. This feeds right in to the bless strategy mentioned above and the berserking nature of the maenids (and Pangaea in general). Berserking troops are at a great advantage if the are fighting in their own dominion; they will take initial losses, but they eventually rout most armies, even when outgunned. Finally you can use other scales to mitigate some of the income loss. Take magic drain 2 and growth 1 or 2 with a captive pretender. The growth scale gives you a little extra income back directly and a little more back by increasing the population.

This strategy won't work as well on larger maps, but I think it should work very well on a small mutiplayer map. Of course, as I said above, there are many ways to skin a Pan.

[Xietor]

troops that have protection zero do not seem to benefit from e9 bless.