EA Pangaea strategy

[Dedas]

A SMALL GUIDE TO EARLY AGE PANGAEA

The main reason why I've begun writing this guide on Pangaea EA, is because after getting inspired by the recent MA Pangaea strategy thread, I decided to do some testing and experimenting on EA Pangaea. Now I want to share and discuss the results with you. And the reason it is in a new thread is because EA Pangaea may be similar to MA, but they are not the same – armor being one of the main differences.

Attached is a savegame meant as a demonstration of early game with this strategy.



THE SETUP

Pretender
As I'm trying to use EA Pan's every potential, I also tried to find a good pretender to use with spell songs. What I found was the ”The lady of love”. Now, this woman is ideal for the job of singing in front line battle. And the reason for this is that she has both high awe (+4) and the ability to craft herself a hide shield on the first turn. That shield and her pretty high HP will help her and her troops to deal with arrows to a less extent when expanding. Arrows that of course are deadly to any EA Pan unit. Other things she is even better at are sucking up cavalry chargers and staying alive singing. Her awe helps her with these tasks.
Also not to be forgotten is her nature and water magic that will strengthen her and her minions defensive capabilities later on when research really kicks in. But for start game she doesn't need any of that.

Scales
Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Heat 1, Growth 3, Luck 3, Magic 3.

Heavy on growth as you are going to patrol your provinces heavily to afford all those castles and pans.

Heavy on magic will help with spell songs (negating MR and less fatigue for the caster) and research.

The battle in the savegame:
It show effective use of the spell song as the small and lightly damaged starting army takes out a relatively big group of heavy cavalry.



STEP BY STEP

Early game general goals

Build a strong economy that will fuel a strong research base with pans as core. The cheap in upkeep dryads will soon become abundant and can be used as support troops in many various roles.

Early game – the first crucial turns

TURN 1
Recruit:
A dryad
40xharpies

Forge a hide shield with your pretender.
Make your black harpy prophet.
Put the minotaur with accompanying troops to patrol.
Set taxes to 200%.

Turn 2
Recruit:
A dryad
(no nothing else, save your gold)

Equip your pretender with hide shield.
Give all harpies to the dryad, set her to patrol (taxes still at 200%.)
With your pretender, prophet and minotaur:
Attack any province that is not a farm (too expensive fortress) but still produces a good amount of gold. For battle placement see savegame.

TURN 3
Recruit:
A dryad.
As many harpies as you can afford (not over 40).
If you don't have the money, try to alchemise a small amount of nature gems.

Build with your harpy:
A fortress in the newly taken province.

Attack another province with your pretender and minotaur.

TURN 4
Recruit:
A dryad
40xharpies

Put all free harpies on the newly recruited dryad. Move her to the fortress construction site.

Move your pretender and the minotaur to the fortress construction site.

TURN 5
Recruit:
A dryad
40xharpies

Build at the fortress construction site:
A temple with you prophet.
A lab with your pretender.
Continue construction with your minotaur.

Put all free harpies on the newly recruited dryad. Move her to one of the newly taken provinces that produces the most gold.

Set taxes to 200% at the fortress construction site. Set the dryad there to patrol.

TURN 6 AND BEYOND – Roughly

You should now have a new fortress to continue the dryad production in.

*Note*
The reason you are recruiting dryads is because they later can be set to various tasks including research, spying, defense and offense (singing and blessing), patrol, lab and temple building. Other commanders are either too expensive in both upkeep and price, or they have less uses.

Your old fortress should be set to spamming pans.
When you very soon have yet another fortress, much to the help of your income boosting patrol dryads, you should set the old one to pans as well.

*Note*
Pans are good but need a strong economy. The dryads can manage this. The pans will later help with free patrollers as maenads become abundant. A growth scale is needed to battle low supplies from patrolling.

Your pans should of course be set to research.

Middle game

Coming soon...

Late game

Coming soon...

[Torin]

Oh. so I see, the maenad factory.

[Humakty]

I think the gorgon is the must have pretender if you plan to have her awake. If I remember correctly, you have access to the centaur warrior in EA, and they are able to trash most of the opposition early on, and later on with buff spells (even in MA, CW are a force to reckoned).
I usually don't take turmoil or order, so as to have enougth gold to buy CW, and enougth maenads to end sieges quickly (in EA, you'll have ton's of pans (they're your only mage!)so you'll have lots of maenads)
I never tried it, but are maenads strong enougth to win battles alone ? It seems to me a big group of archers would trash them, even with mass protection (no shields+ low armor).

[Dedas]

Humakty said:
I think the gorgon is the must have pretender if you plan to have her awake. If I remember correctly, you have access to the centaur warrior in EA, and they are able to trash most of the opposition early on, and later on with buff spells (even in MA, CW are a force to reckoned).
I usually don't take turmoil or order, so as to have enougth gold to buy CW, and enougth maenads to end sieges quickly (in EA, you'll have ton's of pans (they're your only mage!)so you'll have lots of maenads)
I never tried it, but are maenads strong enougth to win battles alone ? It seems to me a big group of archers would trash them, even with mass protection (no shields+ low armor).

Yes, archers, fireballs and the like is Pangaeas worst enemies. Therefore you need a strong research base to get protection. Using pans as that base is powerful but expensive. Using centaurs at the same time as your main military unit is even more expensive. So how are you going to get the cash for that? Order? Not effective enough, and you will miss out on a lot of needed chaff from all your pans. So how can you both maximize chaff and get enough money for everything else you want? The answer is heavy patrolling.
But do you want to invest lots and lots in upkeep on common commanders on patrol duty? Of course not, you want a flexible, dynamic unit that can take any role, help in defense, research and offense, and you want it cheap in both upkeep and price. The name of that unit is dryad.
And also, heavy patrolling means loss of lives and thus loss of income, so you want the growth scale, which also goes hand in hand with the overlooked but powerful spell songs (that the dryad can use).

[Humakty]

What you say makes sense, but I wouldn't try it on anything but a small map, as my lazyness makes me fear the micro your strategy implies. I think your strategy more than compensates the loss of money from bad scales.

Oh, I do use dryads as researchers, what I meant is that you need lots of pans for forging/spells/rituals, and that in EA basic pans are your only mages for this purpose, which means you'll get lots of maenads. But I do relly massively on dryads for research/preach/army commanders.

Why do you use lady of love ? Spell songs are efficient, no doubt about it, but it seems to me the gorgon is so much whatever as an awake pretender, earth 9 is a possibility, for nice rituals and a limited use of white centaurs, would require to abandon magic and maybe luck (I'm at work, so I can't verify rigth now). I'm sure dryads can carry on the spell song casting, while your gorgon is taking provinces alone. (petrify...)

[Dedas]

Torin said:
Oh. so I see, the maenad factory.

No, not really. As wrote above the maenads are mostly for free patrolling. This strategy isn't depending on any one unit. Instead you have to use all units (some more in different stages of the game) to build up a strong empire. When you have laid the foundation you can start pumping out any units you need from your many fortresses and with your excellent income.
In short:
Effective patrolling -> funneling cash into fortress building -> increasing commander recruitment -> driving your research -> plugging your units vulnerabilities (like low protection).

[cleveland]

Dedas, I like where this all is going, good work.

As you explore Pangaea, keep in mind that its a LA Ermor-type nation: both get lots-and-lots of free, crappy units.

Then remember that LA Ermor armies are (a) huge, (b) mostly chaff, and (c) heavily buffed...at least the successful ones.

So a successful Pan strat CAN focus on the same, with a few subtle differences.

First, Pan doesn't get the numbers of freespawn that Ermor does. Pan armies, therefore, need to be supplemented with a larger fraction of front-line thugs & thuggish troops than Ermor armies. A 10:1 maenad:minotaur ratio seems to be the sweet-spot, supported by your singing dryads. This means more $ spent on troops, but that's OK, because...

Second, Pan's freespawn is inherently superior to Ermor's. They're unbanishable, fast (makes archers unhappy), and can reliably hit opponents. Additionally, they aren't mindless, so they make GREAT fort defenders, and laugh at mind-burn/soul-slay spamming. They aren't poison-resistant, but feel free to Breath of Dragon all over them regardless, because...

Third, Pan is ready-made for the Whole-Battlefield Nature & Earth buffs. Mass protection early on, Army of Lead/Gold later. Serpent's Blessing opens poison evocations. Later, Mass Regeneration & Gaia's Blessing. And repeat after me: "Darkness is to Ermor what Growing Fury is to Pangaea;" throw it down, and your maenads & minotaurs become an unroutable offensive tidal wave.

Like Ermor, archers will be a problem. Unlike Ermor, you can readily cast Faerie Court, and voila, Air Fend.

Similarly, like Ermor, raid the crap out of everyone, take terrible scales to make your lands undesirable (+3 heat/cold especially, as your troops wear no armor), and spam (cheap) temples. Splash some Blood in there for good measure, spam blood stones, & think Forge of the Ancients (instead of Utterdark).

Like Ermor, be ready for a tough endgame, though you don't have to fear Purgatory.

Cheers,
cleveland

[kasnavada]

Another thing that's great / not so great for pans. They are not the same in EA than in MA.

They have a guaranteed blood and slightly lower earth magic. That means easy sabbath !

As far as chaff is concerned, I see a lot of ways for pangaea to make a lot. First is maenads. Second is carrions. However, you don't really have a lot of pans than can call them. Third is blood magic and cross-breed. Since it takes only a few blood slaves to make them I think it's worth it. Another one is going for wine men and wine ogres (not very practical in large numbers since they are magic beings). Finally, if you are desperate for even more chaff, you can summon animals.

The only problem for this strategy is that an army of 200 buffed armored units backed-up by magic can defeat an army of 1000 chaff. That's where I don't really know what would be better :
- concentrate on buffing my troops with spellwide spells ? especially since sabbath gives any of your mages (if empowered to 1) enough magic skill to cast nearly everything you need.
- creating SC / thugs to make up for the relative weakness of your chaff troops ? Does that work ? Easy access to regeneration, reinvigorisation will probably help in doing so.

[Dedas]

Thank your interesting feedback!
I will ponder what you've said and try to add it when time permits (hopefully tomorrow).

[Renojustin]

I find several problems with your strategy, most of which come down to this: Maenads aren't really useful enough to base a strategy on.

-They are only worth 1/10th of a unit patrolling
-Don't they cost upkeep? If that's the case, this alone means that they barely pay for themselves even when patrolling.
-They have no armor, so it's tough to buff them with anything except Protection.
-Almost every turn with each archer shot = 1 dead Maenad, which means your tougher units are at risk of an automatic rout and become less in overall worth. You don't get Faerie Court for a good while, it's almost easier to wait for your harpy champion and give her a ring of wizardry. Till then, they get slaughtered everywhere like nobody's business if you don't blow an air gem on arrow fend.
-They're about as good as militia when you DO get them in melee... they are pretty useless against anything with good defense OR protection.
-They're just annoying - they pile up everywhere and I enjoy micromanaging as much as the next guy, but you have to draw a line somewhere. It seems like even LA Ermor isn't as bad.

I just take Order scales so I don't have to micromanage them all. When I do get maenads, I simply assign them to guard commanders, and they'll sometimes get sent out to sortie via berserk spells. Satyr warriors are superb units; you can build a massive army of them in no time at 13g/5r. They benefit nicely from armor buffs, and their high hps with good attack and spears means they can hold a line.

Maenads are fine to guard your bladewind/storm of thorns spamming Pans with. Using this strategy I just finished a medium-sized random game against 9 AIs set to Impossible. They'd be throwing 300-400 man armies at me each and every turn from midgame on.

Minotaur Warriors for early game, all the while building the fantastic Dryads... at Magic 3 you get some insane RP/upkeep. Not to mention you can get stealth dominion kills with them, or build a strategy around dominion. +20 stealth is as good as it gets and you should only see them discovered once or twice a game if you're careful.

With Order scales, your income goes absolutely off the charts once you can cast Nature's Bounty. With a third of the map that size you get about 10,000 gp income per turn. That's pretty much unbeatable.

My pretender had something like 4 astral/4 death, Order 3, Sloth 3, Growth 3, Magic 3, Luck 3, Dominion 4. Just some nice scales to go out and let your land bask in. It works well with Pangaea's 200gp temples and excellent Dryads. And you can get a nice death economy going with skelly spams or the almost frightening Nether Blast thingy. Death Cloud is also an extremely impressive and damaging tool.

Globals you want to get are Gift of Health (huge hps and very fast affliction heals for Pangaea), Nature's Bounty (a truly shocking gp income), and Mother Oak. The nice thing is that these aren't offensive in nature... they'll think twice about dispelling anything except Bounty.

A last note - Ivy Kings make very impressive SCs. 0 encumbrance, non-undead, regenerating, high MR, HP, strength, morale. Rat Tail (you can repel with whips, right?), Eye Shield, Black Steel Armor, Boots of Quickness, Flying, or resists, Cats Eye Amulet, and Amulet of Luck, set to cast Personal Regeneration and attack, and they are first rate.