New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage, Etc

[kasnavada]

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.

[Renojustin]

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.

[Ewierl]

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.

[Sombre]

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

[kasnavada]

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.

[Vellon]

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.

[OmikronWarrior]

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.

[Kristoffer O]

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.

[Renojustin]

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.

[kasnavada]

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.