New Player Questions, EAPangaea, Rainbow Mage, Etc

[Vellon]

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 ) 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!

[Edi]

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.

[sector24]

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.

[thejeff]

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?

[Gregstrom]

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

[kasnavada]

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.