ea pangaea vs tienchi

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Sombre

This sounds like a recipe for fatiguing out and getting killed horribly, to be honest.

In vanilla yes, in CBM no.

[13lackGu4rd]

another option is to ditch the mass maenads idea and go for neutral order/turmoil and focus more on Dryads than Pans in the early game. you won't get as many maenads, but than again TC is fielding mass archers against you... instead you can afford your more expensive troops, be it centaurs(archers+warriors) or minotaurs. both of them are very good against TC's infantry forces. put some centaur warriors at the front with hold and attack orders(they have shields and high hp, so they can catch arrow fire just fine) than put some centaur archers behind them to take out TC's archers and the trampling minotaurs on the flanks on attack rear so they trample through TC's forces.

[earcaraxe]

many thanks for the ideas guys!

[earcaraxe]

btw we play in vanilla, so cw is not an option, and - if cbm is any indication - my troops are still quite expensive. I tried thugging with pans: ironskin, blessing of gaia, summon EP, and snake bladder, vine shield, regen. ring, snake ring, balck steel amror and helmet, boots of messenger. they were quite succesful vs armies 20-30ish in numbers (this whole experiment was in SP), but in every battle with at least 40 soldiers they got hit with 28 hp by a single strike (from something like a spear). I know critical strikes exist but i thought they just halve protection.
so how is it possible?

Is there an economical way to make them even better thugs, or thats all i can expect from a (pan) thug, and use them in pairs vs greater armies? i also wonder if those 30 gems and 320 gold could be spent more efficiently, for instance 1 nature gem can be converted into 1 vine ogre with ivy crown, thats about 30 ogres, and not counting the gold.

Do i think correctly that when planning melee thugs it pays to sacrifice the high defense in favor of great protection?

thanks

[Dimaz]

Probably you have fatigue issues due to heavy (black steel) armor. If you have ironskin or invul, try to use lighter armor (hydra skin seems the best, or perhaps rainbow if you can forge it), use boots of messenger. Your total reinvigoration (with 4 from EP) should be at least 1 more than melee encumbrance, that way you'll be able to avoid crits after initial fatigue dissolves (scripting couple of hold orders after buffs helps here).

[Psycho]

You want your pan to enter the combat with fatigue as closer to 0 as possible. Try putting him to the far back, change summon EP to the first place in script, put hold x 2 at the end before attacking. If he still has too much fatigue when entering combat, try a different combination of armor, spells or more reinvig items (girdle of might).

[Ragnarok-X]

Pangaea is just so bad. And boring. There national summons require death, which you cant get on your national casters unless its late era. The Centaur Archers cost so much gold and arent sacred and their speed if of no use since they meant to use their bows. Satyrs suck. Minotaurs are hard to come by and even though they are powerful, they cost much.

What works good for me is to mass pans and use lord of the wild (attracts manaeds) and just swarm the enemy with hordes (you can easily get 150 or 200) maenads. Unfortunally there is no AoE buff available unless you get to the E3 (unlikely without a E pretender).
You can easily buy Turmoil 3 since you dont need ressources that badly, which will greatly increase the amounts of maenads you receive per turn. Then you can use the points you gained to power up your Lord of the Wild even more and/or buy Growth 3 to get the supplies needed.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Ragnarok-X

Pangaea is just so bad. And boring. There national summons require death, which you cant get on your national casters unless its late era.

MA Pans have a 1/4 chance of getting D1, and a very long-odds chance of D2.

And a lot of players find Pangaea to be one of the more interesting nations due to all the different strategies available. You can go for Maenad hordes, Minotaur tramplers, dual blessed sacreds, Pan Thugs, heavy stealthy, annoyance with Satyr Sneaks/Revelers and Venom Charm carrying Harpy's, undead hordes via Carrions. Plus several others I've probably missed out from this quick hit list.

Out of all the nations in the game, Pan are probably just about the most interesting due to their variety. So if you find them boring, you either haven't discovered all the tricks they are capable of yet, or perhaps you've just not learnt to appreciate them. There are several nations in Dominions that can play a bit boring and repetitive on times, but Pan certainly isn't one of them.

Also I'd expect Gandalf or Jarkko to come along soon and defend this attack on their favourite nation

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Calahan

And a lot of players find Pangaea to be one of the more interesting nations due to all the different strategies available. You can go for Maenad hordes, Minotaur tramplers, dual blessed sacreds, Pan Thugs, heavy stealthy, annoyance with Satyr Sneaks/Revelers and Venom Charm carrying Harpy's, undead hordes via Carrions. Plus several others I've probably missed out from this quick hit list.

And a lot find them boooooring. Me included.

Monotony of the spell casters - ie, few choices, little variability. The national paths give you a rocky road on summoning. Monotony of heros. And without bloodstones, whats your endgame: almost purely defined by your pretender, ie, less interesting than many other nations.

As for the plethora of strategies: who cares how many bad strategies a nation has? Stealth <<< Military might. Magic carpets for harpies? Are you kidding? building a strategy around air, based on a pretender and/or getting obscuro?

Pangeae usually devolves into micromanagement hell: ferrying massive amounts of maenids to their deaths. And wondering if you'll be able to build any units next turn, due to the huge upkeep on your pans.

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As for the OP's comment about thugs: Man you are overspending on your thugs WAY too much.

you want more units of lower quality - which is the general pan approach to everything.

definitely do not waste gems on armor. your target should be 5-15 gems per thug.

Items I would consider: Vinesheilds, snakebladder, firebrand, snake rings....

So for example: V = vineshields, F = firebrands

V
F
V
F
V


Cast the usual summon earthpower, invulnerability, attack. Or alternately give them all snakebladders, cast iron, and have some way of dealing with poison.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

As for the plethora of strategies: who cares how many bad strategies a nation has? Stealth <<< Military might. Magic carpets for harpies? Are you kidding? building a strategy around air, based on a pretender and/or getting obscuro?

Pangaea has access to air magic (Faerie queens, the Harpy Queen) other than pretender too, although if you want to have magic carpets fast, you'll want air on your pretender. It is not a mass strategy, but crafting even four carpets will give you two-four kick *** stealthy flying raiding forces (7 revellers can take any below 10 PD (and probably without any losses too), while 14 is enough to take a PD 20). The problem of the sneaking armies is the low mobility, so adding a few with high mobility takes the stealth strategy to all new levels; your opponent knows the sneaking centaurs will hit neighbouring provinces or disappear from sight, but where will those flying sneakers go?

Claiming stealth is much less useful than pure military power is rather short-sighted: When your opponent lose most of their provinces on turn one of a war, what will their big kick-*** army do? Take back one province at a time, or split up the army? If you split up, the evil sneakers can form up and fight as a big army, if you stick to one army only, you'll run out of provinces pretty fast. If you go with the stealth strategy, you don't go hitting your head against their sledgehammer, but you should focus on kicking them where it hurts most.

If you dont build your pretender to be part of your strategy as Pangaea, then you will indeed suck. You can't do all the things you could with Pangaea, you have to choose which way you want to go, and go for that all the way. Yes, it may be boring for people who like to switch strategies mid-game, as that just doesn't work with Pangaea; you have to choose what you intend to do *before* the game.