EA Pangaea strategy

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renojustin said:
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The primary thing that Luck scales is dependent on is luck. You only have a chance for these events to be good. Luck 3 = 39% more chance that the event will be good. 50% (1.39) = 69.5% chance of a good event. So you have a 30.5% chance of a bad event; nearly 1/3 of your events will be bad.
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Testing (and experience) gives around 90% good events with Turmoil3-Luck3 scales. I'm pretty sure "event is good +39%" means you get 89% good events.

Also, comparing Order3 with Turmoil3-Luck3 is unfair. That's a difference of 120 design points.

[Renojustin]

You're definitely right, but it has to be compared because those are two of the main ways to set up your EA Pangaea. Figure what you'd do with those points and for what reason, and plug it into the equasion [+53% gold VS Maenads + 1 more good event per turn + (?)]. I have to admit that Maenads look a lot better after they've been tested as having no upkeep. It's probably the same for LA R'yleh too.

I don't think that 90% good events is accurate. I get a heck of a lot more bad events than 1 in 10 with Luck 3.

[vfb]

I'm counting events where all the provinces are Turmoil3-Luck3. If you're counting total events in a real game, you'll get different numbers, depending on how fast your dominion and scales spread. Let me rephrase that ... you'll get more accurate numbers.

Later in the game your scales should have stabilized, but if you invade enemy dominion, then you'll get bad events in those provinces while waiting for your scales to catch up.

[Lingchih]

Luck 3, even with Turmoil, is temperamental. I always play with luck for Pan, but rarely get the good gold events. Still, the 3000 gold event is nice when it comes along.

[Endoperez]

It's really hard to tell what's going on with luck on big games. The maximum of 3 events probably isn't hard-coded any more, but I have no idea how Luck scales.

I think I'll have to do a custom map for testing. Some ~100 province map with no/few seas, remove terrain and small/large tags, set two nations to start with 25 provinces, a temple in all of those to spread dominion and PD of 21 in all to lessen the effect of invasion events and perhaps a mapmove 10 flying supercombatant for both sides to get conquered provinces back in few turns.

[Valandil]

Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

[Dedas]

Endoperez said:

You only say that because it happens to coincide with your strategy.

Of course!

But besides that it is a good analysis.

renojustin said:
Sloth also does decent damage to resource hungry nations, and stealth preaching is the best thing you can have your dryads doing besides research.

The spellsongs are pretty tough to implement with 15 range, for me personally, and aren't as useful as even, say, Storm of Thorns, which hits and discomfits units regardless of Air Shield or MR. Sure your dryads can do them too but Sermon of Courage is more useful.

I agree that you could use a few dryads as stealth preachers in some cases, but I think you are missing out big time if you don't use the spell songs. Initially you don't have access to storm of thorns, SoT is level 7! It also costs three times more fatigue and has less effects. Yes it does damage as well but if it didn't it would be one lousy level 7 spell. The nice things about the spellsongs is that you have them early on and can spam them in different combinations, like growth, then tune of dancing death... finishing with some tune of fear. Or why not just tune of fear. I had four dryads, a bunch of satyrs and some maenads rout a 4-5 times bigger army just by spamming ToDD in close combat. The enemies morale hit zero instantly and fled the next turn just, to be clawed to pieces by the maenads. Why not watch the replay in my first post to get the idea (I forgot to use barkskin though).
Needless to say both tune of growth and storm of thorns is positively affected by the growth scale, also by terrain if you didn't know. So if you want to take those spells to the enemy you want growth. But as explained above this is not the prime reason to choose it, it's just a very good and thematic bonus.

Pangaea is also a favorite of mine. Thank you for sharing your interesting and intelligent views on the nation.

[Lingchih]

Valandil said:
Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

Holy Cows Udders Batman! Look at those numbers! Can I hire you for training?

[Renojustin]

You said:

I agree that you could use a few dryads as stealth preachers in some cases, but I think you are missing out big time if you don't use the spell songs. Initially you don't have access to storm of thorns, SoT is level 7! It also costs three times more fatigue and has less effects. Yes it does damage as well but if it didn't it would be one lousy level 7 spell. The nice things about the spellsongs is that you have them early on and can spam them in different combinations, like growth, then tune of dancing death... finishing with some tune of fear. Or why not just tune of fear. I had four dryads, a bunch of satyrs and some maenads rout a 4-5 times bigger army just by spamming ToDD in close combat. The enemies morale hit zero instantly and fled the next turn just, to be clawed to pieces by the maenads. Why not watch the replay in my first post to get the idea (I forgot to use barkskin though).
Needless to say both tune of growth and storm of thorns is positively affected by the growth scale, also by terrain if you didn't know. So if you want to take those spells to the enemy you want growth. But as explained above this is not the prime reason to choose it, it's just a very good and thematic bonus.

Pangaea is also a favorite of mine. Thank you for sharing your interesting and intelligent views on the nation.

Ok, this paragraph combined with an earlier Dryad thug post you made has convinced me to give their songs a shot. You do have an awful lot of dryads around midgame because they're so darn easy to produce as you expand.

Maybe I'll even give Maenads one more shot by going with Luck/Turmoil, Pans, and rush to mass protection.

I find the opponents to be fairly competitive with their AI set to Impossible; they have a huge bonus to production and vast armies of average combatants can be really difficult to beat when they're hammering at you turn after turn, so I find a medium-sized map in SP with 9 opponents set to Impossible a pretty fair assessment of the usefulness of a tactic.

Thanks to you too. I've greatly enjoyed talking about EA Pangaea in this thread, the nation I just stomped over one of the aforementioned games with.

[kasnavada]

Valandil said:
Kasnavada:
Often I must speak other than I think. That is called diplomacy.
* Stilgar

Wasn't that Javid?

Wiki

Oh yeah, and I forgot. Some events give permanent bonus to gold production in a province... in the long run, it also amounts for a lot. I just love those.