ea pangaea vs tienchi

[Maerlande]

Pan sucks.

[Squirrelloid]

So, from the sounds of things, he's moving around with a single big army, and camping somewhere occasionally to build forts? Lol.

Ok, its obvious that a head-on fight is unwinnable. So don't fight his army. At all. Avoid it. Take all his other provinces from him. Push for his capital and siege it. Let him chase you around the map. Push a research advantage fueled by the gold advantage this gives you.

If he sieges one of your forts, so what? Your maenad-generating pans make your forts unbreakable - let him sit out there while you keep researching. He's just wasting his time with his army. And of course your other forts are still producing mages and armies of maenads to go plunder his lands while his army is occupied.

At some point he's forced to either break up his mega-army or hemorrhage cash and thus troops like mad as his income plummets.

Basically, when confronted with a large monolithic army, raid the hell out of him.

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Eventually you research some useful remote attack spells. Spells which single out commanders can help break his army up, and spells which attack his troops can whittle down his numbers. The best for you is probably Beckoning because its a nature spell (in thaumaturgy) for which you'll have plenty of gems and casters, and its on the way to Charm, which you'll want anyway.

Also, use summons. You should be able to Dragonmaster some Pan and mass Cave Drakes (although this is harder in vanilla because dragonmaster is punitively hard to research), which should absorb archer fire reasonably well. Ivy King thugs, troll kings with retinue, kithraonic lions, fall bears, and eventually Faerie Queens can probably all find a role in your armies, with paths you have easy access to.

I'd strongly consider breaking into one of death or blood (if your a Pan era that has plenty of blood access, do that) to add some variety to your options.

Tactical: Use archer decoys! Put some troops with shields up front with orders to guard a commander in the back, watch his archers run into your hordes of screaming women while trying to fire at the withdrawing troops.

When you manage Faerie Queens, make arrow fend routine.

[Jarkko]

Pan is not bad for sure

Pan has lots of options available. It is the options which makes it difficult to me. Basically you have to decide before the game which way you want to go, and then have to stick to that. If you try to change tracks in the middle of the game, you crash.

Plan your pretender along the lines you intend to play.

You want Pan thugs to rule the game? Design your pretender so that he can craft the gear, also it might make sense to have Order scales (for increased income, because those Pans cost a ton).

EA Pans don't have deathmages, so what? If you want to get carrion critters, give your pretender D2 and you get all the carrion critters you want, first summon a Revenant and empower him to N1 -> Carrion Centaurs and Carrion Ladies all over the place. Or better yet (in CBM before 1.6), take D6N5 on your pretender and get Carrion Woods rolling on turn 10 (not possible in vanilla or CBM 1.6).

You want to have sneakers all over the place? Go for it. Get A3 on your pretender, and craft Flying carpets for Harpies who can then take 7 revellers along; two such squads will eat any PD20 or less just like that. Meawhile have your centaurs sneak in the regular way. Call of the Wild on first turn of war with all your pans. If War opens up with you taking 20+ areas on turn one, it will be very intimidating (and it will be something you can pull off during the second year of the game).

Or go with minotaurs and centaurs in a more traditonal warfare. Focus on Alteration, buff your armies to all new levels. Again, you have to plan for this, and get for your pretender the paths you need.

Or (in EA) go with a Dom10 SC pretender at start (the White or Black Bull being the obvious choice in CBM), and blood sac everywhere, with dryads rush-building temples. It is evil if you can dominion kill your closest neighbour during first year, but quite doable with Pangaea. If we are not talking of very big maps, it is quite easy to even get critical mass with your dominion rather fast, and the dominion roll becomes unstoppable. You thought LA Ermor dominion roll was evil? Hah! EA Pan with blood saccing, stealthy H2 preachers and temples costing just 200 gold is *evil* if you plan for the dominion kill.


If you don't have a plan, then I agree Pangaea will suck. It is easy to fail with Pangaea because it can be so easy to get lost amongst all the options. Make a plan and stick to it, that is my advice

[Ragnarok-X]

Well its definitly funny how ppl have different opinions. I dislike pangaea because they basicly stay the same throughout all eras. They dont get different units, they just lose some earth/nature and get a bit of death in later eras, of course they get heavier armor as well, like all nations. Flavourwise, the white/black centaur/dryad theme is a decent idea, though they still feel the same to me, there should be 3-4 REALLY new units over the different eras instead of only black/white and death-pan.
All their national summons require death, so early era you are really disavantaged because you dont have natural death at all.

I most dislike the fact that they use cavalry (i.e. units that move fast and have good hp) for archers, because it seems like a waste to have "melee" stats on a longbow-archer.


What i enjoy about them is really maenad-hording, using a couple of pans with turmoil its really easy to get huge mobs of maenads. Decent AoE buffs would be cool though.


About the Lord of the Wild: I basicly always play with nation-specific pretenders who fit the theme because flavour is kind of important to me You are probably right in that the Lord is a bad choice. Last game i had a N/B 8 lord of the wild but unfortunally blessing is kind of stupid if you only have the white centaurs to bless.


EDIT: yes, Dryads stealths and temple cost is a big plus, agreed.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Ragnarok-X

I dislike pangaea because they basicly stay the same throughout all eras. They dont get different units, they just lose some earth/nature and get a bit of death in later eras, of course they get heavier armor as well, like all nations.

Dryad hoplites is perhaps the best heavy infantry in the game. Excellent stats, good gear, Awe+2, sacred, they really truly are excellent babes.

Revellers are bloody marvelous, but for totally different reasons from dryad hoplites. Suprisingly revellers and dryad hoplites are not available in same eras, one would almost to like to believe there is a reason

Centaur archers worthless? Well, I never recruited them true, but oh boy do I love them in PD's Longbow with good accuracy, and when/if the enemy gets through to them (or they go out of ammo), they just go into town with melee with damn good stats (and they get there fast, having cavalry speed and all that).

For me EA Pans are a clear Turmoil3/Luck3 nation, while LA requires Order scales. MA Pans have to choose either way, and plays differently based on the Order scale you took (with Order you get more of the heavy armoured troops, but with Turmoil you get all those nice&free maeanad.... decissions decissions; usually I take something like Turmoil 1 in an attempt to get the best of both ).

EA Pangaea is the only one with blood-saccing, and that makes them totally unique from the other era Pans.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Calahan

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.

And a lot find them boooooring. Me included.

Monotony of the spell casters - ie, few choices, little variability. The national paths give you a rocky road on summoning. Monotony of heros. And without bloodstones, whats your endgame: almost purely defined by your pretender, ie, less interesting than many other nations.

As for the plethora of strategies: who cares how many bad strategies a nation has? Stealth <<< Military might. Magic carpets for harpies? Are you kidding? building a strategy around air, based on a pretender and/or getting obscuro?

Pangeae usually devolves into micromanagement hell: ferrying massive amounts of maenids to their deaths. And wondering if you'll be able to build any units next turn, due to the huge upkeep on your pans.

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As for the OP's comment about thugs: Man you are overspending on your thugs WAY too much.

you want more units of lower quality - which is the general pan approach to everything.

definitely do not waste gems on armor. your target should be 5-15 gems per thug.

Items I would consider: Vinesheilds, snakebladder, firebrand, snake rings....

So for example: V = vineshields, F = firebrands

V
F
V
F
V


Cast the usual summon earthpower, invulnerability, attack. Or alternately give them all snakebladders, cast iron, and have some way of dealing with poison.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

As for the plethora of strategies: who cares how many bad strategies a nation has? Stealth <<< Military might. Magic carpets for harpies? Are you kidding? building a strategy around air, based on a pretender and/or getting obscuro?

Pangaea has access to air magic (Faerie queens, the Harpy Queen) other than pretender too, although if you want to have magic carpets fast, you'll want air on your pretender. It is not a mass strategy, but crafting even four carpets will give you two-four kick *** stealthy flying raiding forces (7 revellers can take any below 10 PD (and probably without any losses too), while 14 is enough to take a PD 20). The problem of the sneaking armies is the low mobility, so adding a few with high mobility takes the stealth strategy to all new levels; your opponent knows the sneaking centaurs will hit neighbouring provinces or disappear from sight, but where will those flying sneakers go?

Claiming stealth is much less useful than pure military power is rather short-sighted: When your opponent lose most of their provinces on turn one of a war, what will their big kick-*** army do? Take back one province at a time, or split up the army? If you split up, the evil sneakers can form up and fight as a big army, if you stick to one army only, you'll run out of provinces pretty fast. If you go with the stealth strategy, you don't go hitting your head against their sledgehammer, but you should focus on kicking them where it hurts most.

If you dont build your pretender to be part of your strategy as Pangaea, then you will indeed suck. You can't do all the things you could with Pangaea, you have to choose which way you want to go, and go for that all the way. Yes, it may be boring for people who like to switch strategies mid-game, as that just doesn't work with Pangaea; you have to choose what you intend to do *before* the game.

[chrispedersen]

Faerie queens are conjuration 8. Pan is usually low on the research charts. and access that late in the game counts as no access - especially as you have a lot of other paths crying for earlier exploitation. Enchantment, home of most of the Pan national spells, for example.

I don't agree that 7 revellers will beat any pd.
But even if that were true, the cost to station a decent garrison is *way* less than your cost to build a decent raider.

And, even if it *were* true, 1 arrow of seeking will generally kill said harpy, costing you your carpet. Send 2 if you want to be sure. Most nations will have *far* better access to air than pan will, again since you will be relying on your pretender to find it.

You're far better off just building forts on the border - preferably in forest.

[thejeff]

Don't Seeking arrows ignore sneakers?

They're stealth raiders. The cost to station *a* decent garrison is way less, but the cost to station decent garrisons everywhere is high.

Not that I think it's a tactic to build a game around, but it's not that bad. Of course, if you're building the carpet anyway there's no need to put it on a flying unit. How about 6 revelers and a dryad?

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Not that I think it's a tactic to build a game around, but it's not that bad. Of course, if you're building the carpet anyway there's no need to put it on a flying unit. How about 6 revelers and a dryad?

I (as EA Pangaea) used against chrispedersens Tien Chi (in the Magellan game) a Dryad with decent equipment (including flying boots) and a flying carpet to carry along 7 revellers. I had previously tried with a dryad and 6 revellers against Marverni PD, and I lost that force, so I decided to slap on flying boots too. With revellers I was able to kill even a TC PD which had a mage helping the PD, deep inside Mictlan lands (never quite figured how there could be TC province so deep inside Mictlan lands, but I found it and I was able to sneaky fly in there in two turns through the Mictlan lands). Later on 1 Harpy with carpet + 7 revellers proved to be just what the doctor did order to take out Mictlan PD (although that experiment stopped too soon, as flying became impossible with eternal storm going on for I don't how many turns).

I hadn't planned for flying sneakers in that game, but as Arcopythera happened to join me in the game, so it became rather natural. Flying sneakers + conventional sneakers + gazillions of manikin+maenads proved to be very nice in that game