EA Pangea carrion dragon bless and scales.

[Mardagg]

great posts there Jarkko.
Makes me wonder why I have never ever bothered to play Pangaea in SP before.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by rdonj

Actually, one good thing about minotaurs is they're very good at expanding. I'm not sure pangaea can expand faster than with minotaurs, or at least they've done the trick quite well for me.

The minotaurs of EA are not too hot IMO. Their price as a general unit is too high because they die too easily and don't put out enough damage. IN LA the minotaurs with heavy armour are a totally different beast, but there they get shadowed by the dryad hoplites and black centaurs (but I still do recruit bunches of them in LA)

Imagine a normal situation while you are expanding. Minotaurs rush in trampling. First impact (on round two of the combat) is massive, unless of course there are size three defenders. The battleaxe is great with berserking strength of about 20, but they still get off only two attacks from each square (assuming the minotaurs aren't separated, which sadly happens often) each round. If the opponent was size two, the minotaurs will wade into enemy ranks, but if they dont rout from first impact, the minotaurs now get whacked by lots of enemies. If you are storming a fort this is great because it opens up the gate for your other troops to storm through, but in a field battle this is not too cool actually.

Centaurs are size three too. They will chuck the javelins on round one, and from round two on they will get off two attacks each; that is four attacks from each square. Grantedly with lower strength than minotaurs, but with slightly better attack skill, and they don't get separated but fight in blocks (so they do not get surrounded by lots of smaller enemies), and they have shields. Centaurs live much longer than minotaurs. Still, I use them against AI and indies mostly on the flanks in small blocks (six seems to be the number I like for them on flanks, don't know why actually, but I've learned to like six on the flanks) with orders Attack Rear

Now lets take a look at the revelers. Size two, two attacks each. That is six berserking attacks at skill 15 and strength 16 against each square. Sure, less protection than minotaurs and especially centaurs, but they put out much more damage than centaurs (and if fighting size 3 enemies, much more damage than minotaurs) one might consider when looking at the unit first time. As a bonus, you can recruit three revelers for the price of one centaur (and in vanilla, three per each minotaur -> in CBM minotaurs are slightly more affordable, but still IMO not the choice of troops you should recruit most of the time; you *need* minotaurs to take forts, but that is about it).


This is not to say you can not expand fast with minotaurs at the early game. Fast early expansion is what Pangaea is good at You can expand just as fast, or even faster actually, with Revelers

[Jarkko]

I did some tests with CBM 1.82 and the Carrion Dragon. For those who are not aware, in CBM 1.82 Carrion Dragon got a Vine Shield like ability.

To be honest, that ability didn't sound too sexy to me. Still, I wanted to check if it helps against missiles. It doesn't. The Carrion Dragon ah so slowly wading to melee sucks just as much as ever before, although in actual melee his survivability is much increased (because the opponents in melee get all tangled up).

Another change that happened with CBM 1.8 is that Pangaea can cast Panic at research level 0. So I had to try this too.

I took an awake D4N4 Dom9 Carrion Dragon (for EA). Sent out the CD solo, scripted with Panic*5, Attack Rear. Results varied from absolute disasters to absolute successes (wonderful against barbarians as they rout before getting any hits, while a lizard shaman leading indies succeeded to actually kill the CD).

I then tried the CD with 10 javelin chucking satyrs, and this proved to be a true killer. With the CD starting 3 steps left (ie just outside of the range where light infantry and barbarians would reach on round 2) or 5 steps left of front line (ie just outside of range in which cavalry would be able to charge on round 2) with the javelin throwers set as far back as possible with Fire Closest. The Carrion Dragon gets of 2 Panics, the closest enemies are well within the range of the massive fear the CD causes, and then the javelins fall on the closest enemies. Went through 10 provinces (attacking blindly on turn 1, and attacking each turn until turn 10) without losing a single satyr or the CD gaining any afflictions (a few times somebody actually got to hit the CD, but Awe and the Vineshield effect protected him just fine). The only downside was that he got cursed by a lizard shammy (really, I have a very hard time to remember the simple rule: "DO NOT ATTACK LIZARD SHAMANS WITH A PRETENDER!").


Does CBM 1.82 thus make Carrion Dragon a good SC choice for Pangaea? Well, not really, at least compared with a Great Bull, who just plows on like a duracell bunny from turn one, without needing any help). Then again, as EA Pangaea it easy to empower into blood, and there are some very nice combos one could come up with a DNB mage, the Carrion Dragon could perhaps have some use later on too (just remember to pull him to lab duties early enough).

[WraithLord]

Interesting observations.

One comment. Said great bull would be useless against enemy SC pretender such as Wyrm or if the enemy summons size 6 critters just to tie him up. In this scenario the CD shuld perform better.