LA Pangea - a rotten way to go green

[Baalz]

Unsupported, manikin are not fabulous against regular troops, but with an early focus on alteration they rock something fierce. After the very early stages there's no reason to ever fight without mass protection and you should really have darkness for the big battles shortly. Those spells change the equation something fierce. You can often just overwhelm the bad guys 10:1 and not worry about it, but you don't need to count on it when you've got access to such fabulous force multipliers.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Unsupported, manikin are not fabulous against regular troops, but with an early focus on alteration they rock something fierce. After the very early stages there's no reason to ever fight without mass protection and you should really have darkness for the big battles shortly. Those spells change the equation something fierce. You can often just overwhelm the bad guys 10:1 and not worry about it, but you don't need to count on it when you've got access to such fabulous force multipliers.

True, but it is also true that the other players have access to weapons of mass-destruction after a while, and they all pretty much negate or ignore Mass Protection and/or Darkness. Banishment by massed indy H1 is always dangerous (and not very expensive) even during Darkness, Wrathful skies will keep on killing stuff no matter if there is Darkness or not, access to lowbie Astral mages means massed Solar Rays (late in the game (communed) Astral mages have Arcane Domination and it is a killer vs manikin), there is no defense vs Wither Bones, several mages casting Blade Wind is a killer even when the manikin have mass-protection and Darkness in effect, Falling Fires or slingers/archers + Flaming Arrows are the usual killer vs anything with barkskin (even during Darkness and storm, massed slingers with Flaming Arrows will cause horrible carnage against anything with barkskin), Cleansing water with its very nice AoE is deadly to undead, etc etc.

Ie while Mass Protection is very nice, it also means others have reached spells that basically ignore their effect or vs fire spells make the manikin actually hurt more. Darkness *is* good, but then again it is quite hard to miss anything when half the map is full of undead manikin. Yes, there are counters to these counters, but there are counters to counters of the counters

If the opponent is caught flat-footed with a mass-protected and Darkness shielded manikin force, so much better. But I think it is fair to assume it won't happen on a regular basis. Early on there are few counters to manikin (massed archers is nice, but as mentioned, minoutaurs will laugh themselves sick when they berserk trample through archers), and the manikin really get to shine vs early game tramplers, thugs and SC's (one unresisted hit is usually all you need, and you'll have loads of attempts).

Thus I personally feel Carrion Woods is an excellent tool to help Pan survive through the early game, but from mid-game and on one should consider CW a nice bonus if it stays up, but rely on the more "conventional" tools. Still, very late in the game, if you succeed to "ambush" enemy SC's (tooled to meet other SC) with a humongous manikin force one might pull a final stunt. And as mentioned, those centaur manikin are very nice always, if one just gets a big enough force of them

[Alpine Joe]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

True, but it is also true that the other players have access to weapons of mass-destruction after a while, and they all pretty much negate or ignore Mass Protection and/or Darkness. Banishment by massed indy H1 is always dangerous (and not very expensive) even during Darkness, Wrathful skies will keep on killing stuff no matter if there is Darkness or not, access to lowbie Astral mages means massed Solar Rays (late in the game (communed) Astral mages have Arcane Domination and it is a killer vs manikin), there is no defense vs Wither Bones, several mages casting Blade Wind is a killer even when the manikin have mass-protection and Darkness in effect, Falling Fires or slingers/archers + Flaming Arrows are the usual killer vs anything with barkskin (even during Darkness and storm, massed slingers with Flaming Arrows will cause horrible carnage against anything with barkskin), Cleansing water with its very nice AoE is deadly to undead, etc etc.

But as Pan you are focusing exclusively on alteration research, so you are getting that stuff pretty quickly, where as an opponent has probably not devoted their research exclusively to Pangea counters. By the time they have firestorm, you are using army of gold/lead instead of mass protection. Banishment from priests takes a while to mass....once again, army of lead helps here i think. Wrathful skies kills stuff, but you can afford to take huge casualties as long as you win battles. Massed solar rays and arcane domination are a problem, but take a lot of astral mages/ astral power. Wither bones is deadly but you aren't looking at too many nations with that much death power in LA. Standard arrow stuff can be countered by the air magic of fairy queens (minotaurs cause massed archers problems earlier on). Cleansing water is great against Pan and there are a lot of LA nations that can make good use of it, so I agree that is a strong counter.


Really this is one reason I think carrion woods would be even better for EA pan, as the best counters for massed manikens are different than those for massed maenads. Just switch up your masses of buffed chaff depending on who you are facing.

I wonder if someone could make a companion guide to this one dealing with carrion woods for EA/MA pan?

[Aezeal]

hey does carrion woods only produce critters in forests (is what I deduce from the reply on my previous post) I've not played this race or strat so I'm a nubbie on pan and carrion woods.. but this gives me a lot to work with

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

hey does carrion woods only produce critters in forests (is what I deduce from the reply on my previous post) I've not played this race or strat so I'm a nubbie on pan and carrion woods.. but this gives me a lot to work with

No, it creates the normal very basic manikin everywhere in your dominion. They have the sleep-vines so they are excellent to take out elephants, cavalry, thugs and lone SC's. In every other aspect they basically suck just like undeads do (but as Baalz have noted above, with good buffs when the opponent is unprepared, they are great, because there are *lots* of them).

In forests however random manikin are created. Most are still the basic manikin, then there are the even crappier wingless harpy variation (an undead harpy that can not fly, so it hops around with a massive tactical speed of 4 IIRC), the same chaff manikin as you get everywhere else but with different looks (probably so that you get some additional micromanagement hell as you can't select them all with double-click) awesome looking minotaur manikin (they look great, but they actually are just as crap as normal manikin, they just have a bit extra HP), wolf-manikin (fast manikins, good for flanking) and horse manikin (fast too, and they have half decent stats, so they actually are good). In forests you also have a chance to get the "I did just pee in my pants because of happines" -quality Elephant manikin (basically same stats as the Behemoth you can summon with Death magic) and Centaur manikin (sacred, Vine Bows, fast, good stats).

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

In forests however random manikin are created.... the same chaff manikin as you get everywhere else but with different looks (probably so that you get some additional micromanagement hell as you can't select them all with double-click)

That's not entirely fair... they have better defence, strength and MR as well.

And I think you left out the boar manikins (like standard ones but a little faster and with appalling MR) and bear manikins (huge HP and strength but dreadful MR again). Both are okay for sieging castles, but don't let them anywhere near a battle if the opponent can cast control undead.

[swapoer]

Oh.It cost 90 gems to cast the CW spell now which make this strat hard to follow.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally Posted by swapoer

Oh.It cost 90 gems to cast the CW spell now which make this strat hard to follow.

It has always cost 90 gems to cast CW. CBM does not change the cost of casting it, it moves CW from enchantment 8 to enchantment 0 and give it a bonus income of gems.

Scraping up 90 nature gems with Pangaea in the early game is very easy.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen

Scraping up 90 nature gems with Pangaea in the early game is very easy.

Untrue, especially for LA Pangaea. 90 gems, especially for LA, means you will be able to get Mother Oak up way before 90 nature gems have been collected. Mother Oak at 50 nature gems is *much* more useful, especially for LA Pan (nature gems are needed to summon the carrion commanders).

Just because Carrion Woods in vanilla is possibly the worst global in the game does not mean just moving it from Ench8 to Ench0 would have made it good When the price was 50 nature gems it was worth it, at CW at 90 gems makes Mother Oak the sane mans choice.

Carrion Woods destroys the economy, so saying you get free units is untrue. You pay through your nose for those manikin created by CW. The extra gems is *the* reason to get CW up. If you want manikin troops, then the correct route is to summon the carrion commanders and let them reanimate masses of manikins.

[swapoer]

Nod.
I have tried out one of my SP game.To collect so many nature gems in early is too hard.I even have the bad luck of no finding any nature site in the first year.But rather i find out many earth sites.
Using so many nature gems to cast a GE which need a long time to take effect and will easily be dispelled make it a choice very unappealing.