New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage, Etc
 

Hello World,

I'm a new player messing around while waiting for my second box to arrive (the first one got lost in the mail http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif) and I've got a few questions.

I've currently fallen in love with EA Pangaea. My reasons are:
Minotaurs
Pans (For the powerful Nature magic, not maenids)
Summoning Undead heroes that constantly raise dead

1)The only real weakness my minotaurs seem to have is dying via archers before they arrive at the enemy. What kind of magic paths should I be researching so that my Pans can keep them alive?

2)My pretender. I want him to have enough nature/death magic to be able to summon the various undead national summons. I've been building him on the archdruid chasis, as 4N/3D and two in the other magics so that he can effectively magic site search.

It ends up looking something like this:
ArchDruid pretender
4N/3D/2 Everything else
3 Order/1 Magic Scales
4 or 5 Dominion

Advice appreciated!

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Not much you can do with the Pans, except research Construction until you get Legions of Steel, it will help their protection somewhat. You should also use Satyrs as decoys to draw fire away from the minotaurs.

The pretender thing... That's a mighty colorful rainbow you've got there. I'd advice taking less order and maybe dropping magic paths you can get nationally (e.g. Earth, unless you intend to construct Earth/Astral combo items in which case you do need a point or two of both).

But just try things out. There are several different strategies you could use with Pangaea, especially EA. I also suggest checking the stickied Strategy Index thread on the top of the forum. It has several links to various threads where there are tons of Pangaea advice, as well as links to guides to almost all otehr nations too. Not to mention generally useful threads like the newest site searching discussion.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

The types of magic that will help your Minotaurs are unfortunately not paths that you naturally have. With water magic you can cast quickness on the minotaurs so they can get across the battlefield faster. With air magic you can cast Arrow Fend, Mist, Storm, etc. to hamper ranged attacks.

Edi's suggestion to put Satyrs in front is your best bet. It doesn't have to be a lot, just enough for the archers set on fire closest to target them first. Once they choose a target they stick with it for the whole battle.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Well, as was suggested Legions of Steel should help. Minotaurs have some armor, right?

Protection, or Mass Protection are an alternative. Haste isn't generally worth it, but if it gets them close faster it might be nice. Haste doesn't add attacks, but trample is based on AP. Is Haste worthwhile on tramplers?

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Haste doesn't add to AP, sadly. It does reduce the cost to move though, which may allow more tramples.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

I've been using those tricks to prevent my troops from being hit by arrows :

Idea 1 :
The best armored unit EA pangaea has access to in my opinion is the demon knight. Ir requires Earth 2 and Blood 2 to cast, blood 4 research (so not too difficult to get), which all of your pan can cast with any blood booster or a earth booster, which all of your pans with 2 earth can make : earth boot. Note that blood 3 earth 2 also enables you to make blood stones, which produce 1 earth gem per turn. This unit is pretty much immune to most arrow barrage with 22 protection and 19 defense, it also prety effective to kill your ennemies, is cavalry, so it moves fast enough to keep up with your centaurs. As a finishing touch, it's also immune to what is one of the main spell for archers, fire arrows, since it's immune from fire.

The problem is that it takes about a game year and a half to set up the required blood economy, research, boosters, and after that it takes some time to amass more of those troops.

Idea 2 : using flyers to prevent arrows from hitting you. Either recruiting lots of harpies (early in the game) set on "attack archers" or use a flying SC or thug (later on) to attack archers. The archers AI will attempt to kill the troops with their knives and will not aim at your troops. Using harpies means that the casualties can be pretty high and cause a rout though, so be careful. Having 2 sets of flyers, one set as "attack archers" and the other one set as "hold and attack" works the best for me. I often have a significant part of archers blocked during 4 turns with this idea.

Idea 3 : centaur archers. They have lots of HP and aim pretty well. Setting them on 'fire archers' will kill the archers pretty fast.

Idea 4 : using maenads as arrow catchers. They come free with pans anyway. Place maenads like this :
___Min___
______Mae
______Mae
___Min___

Default orders for archery is "fire closest", so the maenads will get hit while the minotaur close in. Againt, be careful, getting too many maenad killed hurts your morale in the end.

You were already told about spells that give bonus to armor, and quickness spells... so I won't had stuff on that.

There might be other ways, but I can't think of any at the time.

About rainbow :
The pretender I use for a rainbow strategy is somewhat different, but I have not found a "perfect" set-up yet. I plan to use her for site searching, elemental king summoning, to forge boosters and gem-producing items.

Since I like the blood economy and royal court, I make her able to cast those. Your objectives might be different though, so feel free to modify it.

4F/4A/3W/3S/1E/2D/3N Enchanteress. It enables her to forge enough magic boosters to cast nearly anything she wishes, and helps diversify your magic, since she can cast most elemental royalty spells with few boosters, or "regular" boosters. You can got to. As a bonus, you might give her 3 blood magic and 2 earth for an easier access to blood stones.

I didn't give her Earth and nature more than necessary on purpose : a pan can searth those sites, and points cost a lot.

I hope that helps.

EDIT typos and :
Also : in the event you are using dryads as thugs, nature 4 could be interesting since dryads can bless themselves, are sacred, and therefore gain regeneration.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Regeneration on dryads isn't so great: they have rejuvenation and lowish hps to begin with. And the main use of the harpies will be for patrolling with high taxes, MAYBE an attack on some light rear PD. Even against dagger-wielding leather-armored archers with the bare rudiments of melee training, they do not fare well at all.

Protection/Wooden Warriors works very well, as does Army of Steel.

The problem with Minotaur Warriors in EA is that they don't wear much armor compared to MA and LA, BUT you can use this to your advantage as they don't have as much encumbrance.

Here's a tip: take Sloth scales. Pangaea in no way needs production. While you're at it, take another look at Maenads and Turmoil/Luck; I did, and I'm very glad of it. Freespawn, upkeepless average troops (albeit no armor) makes full use of your Pans. These two changes will give you TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY POINTS more AND Maenad freespawns. While Maenads might not look too impressive at first glance, Pangaea has great access to the two best protection buff paths in the game: Earth and Nature. They have very good morale as a bonus.

So place a heavy emphasis on Alteration school for research, for sure... that will help you protect all your troops, those nice Minotaur Warriors included. And for arrow catchers, go ahead and throw in your Satyr Warriors... you are going to miss them a lot in MA and LA. Still, opponents can script Fire Large Monsters on their archers, which is why I don't use them in pvp until I can buff them, unless against a rushable foe.

Mostly I just recruit full blocks of Satyr Warriors and Pans, and once I've researched a bit, throw in buffed Minos. Luck is a great relief to have in games after taking Misfortune scales, and the Turmoil/Sloth dominion can hurt an opponent's economy badly, especially with your stealthy H2 preachers, adding yet another weapon to your arsenal.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Regeneration on dryad works great if you give them mistform with some item. Otherwise, they do tend to die in 1 turn when a blow strucks them, so it's not that great I agree, but giving your rainbow pretender 4 nature is not that mch of a cost anyway.

About harpies, I've been misunderstood. The point is not to kill the archers with the harpies, but to send them to die so other troops are not shot by arrows !

Here is the reasoning behind my logic : archers shoot my army. They would kill dozens of my units per turn ! By giving them an alternate melee target, the units I save are : maybe satyrs, maenads, centaurs and minotaurs (worth more than 30 gold each).

In EA, your troops are very weak to archery. I'd rather decide myself which of my troops die from them. Furthermore, if you do get the harpy hero, she generates harpies every turn, reducing their "cost".

As a bonus, if the opponent meatshield is set on
- attack closest, his entire close-range units will actually move back toward the archers to go kill the harpies, desorganising the ennemy ranks. If your opponent army is not too large, your attacking minotaurs or centaurs will find some archers on the "front" and dispose of them quickly.
- hold and attack : they won't move for the first 2 turns, then some will move back as you attacking force engage them in their back. That make your opponent close range and archers close to each other, which in turn boosts a lot the efficiency of the offensive spells Pangaea has access to : the poison and sleep clouds, vire arrows, breath of the dragon, destruction, panic, banishment (in case of undeads), which are all much more powerful if the ennemies are grouped.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

The archers on the inside of the block still fire and wipe out your harpies in one turn, resulting in much gold (and troops for that combat towards autorout) lost for one turn of archer soak. I mean, yeah I use a VERY light screen of harpies (like the ones generated from the harpy hero) from time to time for just that purpose (maybe even getting opponent to shoot themselves) but I personally won't be spending too much on them outside of patrolling. They're not even good for sneak attacks on PD; your other troops can do that with a much higher degree of proficiency. Harpy leaders, on the other hand, are a totally different story. They are scary good for moving many items and scouting.

Satyr Warriors can take arrows and you don't even have to worry about afflictions afterwards. Mix them up with Revelers and you have a bonus to enemy archer fire, even... higher offense from that group of units when they berserk.

If you're really all that worried about archers just get some Centaurs, they are superior to even Man's archers, just more expensive, but they'll win archer duels against them if they're not outnumbered more than 2:1 with their great hps and higher morale. Of course when you look at the costs, it's entirely possible you WILL be outnumbered by that much... but if they're shooting up your minos, the centaurs will have time to work.

Gold for gold and resource for resource, I think Satyr Warriors are probably the best non-sacred unit in EA. They can take hits; they can hold a line; they're very mobile, strong, and skilled. And cheap as all get out.

The only time I could see you using totally unbuffed Minotaur Warriors against archers would be in a rush, and I definitely wouldn't want to be blowing gold on harpies there. With Protection, they can soak up the archer fire just fine. JUST FINE, I say!

But... I like the two waves model when you're just looking to distract their archers. That's a nice trick.

Re: New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage,
 

Rereading your comment, I find I use them exactly as you say : a very light screen of harpies, so I don't cause auto-rout and in order not to spend too much. It's far from begin the ultimate strategy that will win the day anyway !

I'll have to try Satyrs too.

Anyone else has any other ideas that could work ?

PS : I'll recommend this thread in the strategy index.