EA Pangaea strategy

[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...)