Guide: MA Pangaea strategies

[kasnavada]

Well I planned to use an heavy blood way for this. It's rather easy to give a pandemoniac an high level in blood magic, and some of the high-level devils have blood and death. Or you could give your pretender the necessary magic paths.

The point is that Pangaea has cheap temples and large amount of dryads, so you should (will) nearly always fight in your dominions. That's why I think it's a rather good idea to use them, since even for border skirmishes they will not die. Since they fly, they move everywhere with little to no problem, allowing for raids (even if they retreat it doesn't matter, they will be back eventually). Finally, your opponent after a few battles will have to do something about them and change his strategies to handle them, and that is where you move in with other troops.

[kasnavada]

Well, after some testing, none od that work. Harpies can't take enough items. Vampire can be used with a pretender with the required magic path, but it is not practical to aim for them with pandemoniacs or pans. The good thing is, once you have the first of them, a simple death booster (and a lot of blood slaves) will be enough to summon others.

[Renojustin]

It's always good to get a carrion factory going... those things are just plain menacing when set to Guard Commander with Pan support. Enemies charge across the screen and just sort of pile up like, well, a compost heap. Sleep Vines is a super effective attack.

This means that you're going to have to beg, borrow, and steal for death magic... get a death economy going as soon as inhumanly possible. This pretty much means that you need at least Death 1 on your pretender... more helps, but really isn't necessary.

Minotaur Warriors during MA are fantastic. There's not a whole lot that can face them when buffed. Satyr infantry in general is extremely worthy. With high MR, high movement, stealth, forest survival, high hps, low resource cost, spears, REALLY good morale from the ubiquitous druids casting Sermon of Courage... heck, they even have armor so you don't have to Protect and give them fire vulnerability, just slap on some Legions of Steel and they're good to go. And don't get me started on Revelers.

Harpies are very good for patrolling, which works really well with a thematic Growth scale.

And centaurs... centaurs are peerless archers with 12 base precision on top of longbows. Huge hps, especially with Gift of Health which is quite simple to manage in any era with Pangaea.

Afflictions, pish. Old age? Here, let me cast Burden of Time myself and watch enemy skeleton hordes crumble into dust over the aeons... ok I think I just got carried away there.

[kasnavada]

The best bet I've found for carrion factory is one of the indy shaman priest. It costs 110 gold (same as dryad), is sacred, gives the same research (by now you get what I mean) and has 10% chance of death magic. Just get some until you get death with one, and set the excess ones to research (that frees dryad for other tasks or more research).

The carrion lady is the best carrion generator / nature gem spent to summon them, but she doesn't have have access to 3 holy magic and can't lead too many undead. I rely on summon king to lead my undead carrion armies anyway (easy to get once you have the shaman I speak of above), since it cost so few death gem (which are not really useful anyway in early game and mid-game).

The last carrion summon is, however, a strong spellcaster and a good priest to boot. You can also use him to make a prophet and get 4 holy.

[Gregstrom]

Carrion Centaurs get 80 undead leadership, and are therefore very useful for commanding carrion, just as the Ladies are good summoners. I think the best chance for starting Carrion work in MA (unless you set up your Pretender for it) is a Pan - you'll be buying some anyway, and the 25% chance of Death will likely come up while you're recruiting Pans for other purposes.

[Renojustin]

Oh geez, yeah of course you get a 25% chance of Death on Pans here. Not necessary to have on Pretender at all. Good point, Gregstrom. I was thinking of using it to start off your death economy by summoning the D1 mage, but I guess you can do that by just trading for a Skull Staff and putting it on a random deathpick Pan.

[kasnavada]

I personally feel bad when using a 8 or 9 research pan to summon a carrion. I feel I'm wasting my time. But you may not have access to another death caster, so...

I will be more specific on the reason why summoning centaur is a waste of time for me.

1 in death magic lets you recruit the mound king. It requires enchantments 2 which is needed for other carrion spells and summons, and also for the more powerful enchantment spells (gift of health, or the foul vapor spells that makes a nice combo with manikins since they are immune to poison). The mound kind is in my opinion vastly superior because :
- one in priest level is not that powerful.
- both have immunities to poison.
- 40/80 standard leadership compared to 10/80/10 let him move maenads (or other troops) around,
- is still immune to poison,
- move 4/25 instead of 3/20 (but no forest walking),
- costs 3 death gems instead of 10 nature gems you could do something else with (like summoning a lady) !

The centaur reanimates 1 carrion per tur, the lady 2, and the king 3 (for 10 / 16 / 25 gems respectively). There is, once again, no point in using the centaur to reanimate them.

[Renojustin]

Right, I always use Ladies as they only require D1N1 to summon, same as the Centaurs. The Lords require N3D2 I think, which is awfully hard to pull off, and as you say, not as efficient for 25 gems/3 carrion/turn as the Ladies are for 16 gems/2 carrion/turn.

As far as what to use to summon the Ladies, it's certainly not a bad thing to allocate that job to a Pan who is useful by his mere existence, partying and debouching Maenads into existence. I'd rather have 2 extra carrion per turn than 10 RP for THAT turn only. In 10 turns you can create 10 Carrion Ladies who will produce 20 carrion monsters per turn for the low price of 160 nature gems.

The Carrion Ladies themselves are probably your best bet for leading your carrion into battle, as they can buff them and control 120 each at 0 experience.

At first glance, carrion doesn't seem too impressive at all. However, they can make a solid wall of defense for your battlemages. They don't rout, they use Sleep Vines which puts the front lines of your enemy to sleep, preventing them from attacking or even retreating so the next wave of enemies can attack you. They're immune to poison and they can be buffed to quite tough proportions by your national priest spells. Quickened, protected, regenerating Elephant carrion, or any others for that matter, are not to be sneezed at by any troop. And they just keep piling up like a compost heap, not taking any upkeep or supplies.

[kasnavada]

In 10 turns you can create 10 Carrion Ladies who will produce 20 carrion monsters per turn for the low price of 160 nature gems.

I agree : I meant that if you have the choice of using indy mage instead ! But for carrion armies, I would suggest taking a few carrion lords in, or your prophet. Because of the specific spells to carrions needing holy 3 are just too awesome to be forgotten...

I mentionned immunity to poison because of the easy combinaison with poison spells (poison cloud and the like), which can all be spammed easily with Pans. And you can hit some of the maenads with the poison, when you get hundreds of them, it doesn't matter much anyway

[Dedas]

The maenads will also go berserk from the poison, win - win.