ea pangaea vs tienchi

[earcaraxe]

many thanks for the ideas guys!

[earcaraxe]

btw we play in vanilla, so cw is not an option, and - if cbm is any indication - my troops are still quite expensive. I tried thugging with pans: ironskin, blessing of gaia, summon EP, and snake bladder, vine shield, regen. ring, snake ring, balck steel amror and helmet, boots of messenger. they were quite succesful vs armies 20-30ish in numbers (this whole experiment was in SP), but in every battle with at least 40 soldiers they got hit with 28 hp by a single strike (from something like a spear). I know critical strikes exist but i thought they just halve protection.
so how is it possible?

Is there an economical way to make them even better thugs, or thats all i can expect from a (pan) thug, and use them in pairs vs greater armies? i also wonder if those 30 gems and 320 gold could be spent more efficiently, for instance 1 nature gem can be converted into 1 vine ogre with ivy crown, thats about 30 ogres, and not counting the gold.

Do i think correctly that when planning melee thugs it pays to sacrifice the high defense in favor of great protection?

thanks

[Dimaz]

Probably you have fatigue issues due to heavy (black steel) armor. If you have ironskin or invul, try to use lighter armor (hydra skin seems the best, or perhaps rainbow if you can forge it), use boots of messenger. Your total reinvigoration (with 4 from EP) should be at least 1 more than melee encumbrance, that way you'll be able to avoid crits after initial fatigue dissolves (scripting couple of hold orders after buffs helps here).

[Psycho]

You want your pan to enter the combat with fatigue as closer to 0 as possible. Try putting him to the far back, change summon EP to the first place in script, put hold x 2 at the end before attacking. If he still has too much fatigue when entering combat, try a different combination of armor, spells or more reinvig items (girdle of might).

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

1) A Bull with E4 and N2 (one of the skins, personal regeneration, resist elements, attack rear) together with minotaurs will trample through TC troops

This sounds like a recipe for fatiguing out and getting killed horribly, to be honest.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Sombre

This sounds like a recipe for fatiguing out and getting killed horribly, to be honest.

In vanilla yes, in CBM no.

[Ragnarok-X]

Pangaea is just so bad. And boring. There national summons require death, which you cant get on your national casters unless its late era. The Centaur Archers cost so much gold and arent sacred and their speed if of no use since they meant to use their bows. Satyrs suck. Minotaurs are hard to come by and even though they are powerful, they cost much.

What works good for me is to mass pans and use lord of the wild (attracts manaeds) and just swarm the enemy with hordes (you can easily get 150 or 200) maenads. Unfortunally there is no AoE buff available unless you get to the E3 (unlikely without a E pretender).
You can easily buy Turmoil 3 since you dont need ressources that badly, which will greatly increase the amounts of maenads you receive per turn. Then you can use the points you gained to power up your Lord of the Wild even more and/or buy Growth 3 to get the supplies needed.

[Graeme Dice]

What you've outlined above doesn't make too much sense. The lord of the wild doesn't give you anything that you don't already have with your national mages. You will already have hundreds or thousands of maenads if you take turmoil three, so you really don't need a few more of them with your pretender. Nor do you need to worry about feeding them, since they will be surrounded by nature mages and aren't valuable enough to care whether they are diseased. Take growth because it synergizes with carrion woods, and gives you more gold income, not because you want to feed throwaway troops.

One half of your pans will have E2, which means that one half of them will have E3 in battle. Sloth makes sense, turmoil or a neutral order scale makes sense. Getting a lord of the wild who is completely redundant does not.

[13lackGu4rd]

also it's not that hard to get death mages rolling, all you need is some death on your pretender for specters, mount fiends, liches, etc. if you combine some water on your pretender than you can use streams of hades and that other spell that gives you W3D3 mages. the problem would be to combine death with nature on the same mage, but with so many nature gems you should have, affording a few empowerments won't be too hard, and pretty good for what you'll get if you choose to focus on the carrion path...

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Ragnarok-X

Pangaea is just so bad. And boring. There national summons require death, which you cant get on your national casters unless its late era.

MA Pans have a 1/4 chance of getting D1, and a very long-odds chance of D2.

And a lot of players find Pangaea to be one of the more interesting nations due to all the different strategies available. You can go for Maenad hordes, Minotaur tramplers, dual blessed sacreds, Pan Thugs, heavy stealthy, annoyance with Satyr Sneaks/Revelers and Venom Charm carrying Harpy's, undead hordes via Carrions. Plus several others I've probably missed out from this quick hit list.

Out of all the nations in the game, Pan are probably just about the most interesting due to their variety. So if you find them boring, you either haven't discovered all the tricks they are capable of yet, or perhaps you've just not learnt to appreciate them. There are several nations in Dominions that can play a bit boring and repetitive on times, but Pan certainly isn't one of them.

Also I'd expect Gandalf or Jarkko to come along soon and defend this attack on their favourite nation