LA Pangaea: Destination of Species

LA Pangaea is a nation with diverse options, given relatively unimpressive magical depth. This guide is meant to describe as many of those options as possible, allowing the player to pick and choose between them.

Introduction

I recently had an enjoyable game with LA Pan, and decided to write a guide for a nation that has several strengths, as well as several limitations.

This guide is structured as follows:

First, I look at the commanders and units available to Pan, and briefly describe their abilities, and how those abilities correspond to their roles they can take.

Second, I discuss the earliest part of the game- expansion and research priortization. This ties into the next section, which discusses the strategy and tactics that are available, given our units.

I break the strategy and tactics section into three parts- basic army composition, magic (mostly battlemagic), and raiding.

The last "guide" section discusses pretender design. There is an additional "misc" section contains some additional notes that didn't necessarily fit into any given part.

Commanders

Commanders:
Generally, as with all nations, you'll want to recruit mages most turns, especially as your mages can fulfill any of the roles your commanders can, but a look at the available commanders may still be valuable. Since all of your mages can be recruited at any fort, it can be worthwhile to take a turn to recruit a national commander - if for no other reason than they can do the job for less.

Black Harpy
-Black Harpies are your basic scout. They have two useful characteristics - stealth 60, which is signficantly better than most scouts, and flying, which makes them incredibly mobile. They also can lead 10 units, which has a potentially useful application. Sadly, a fort turn is probably better spent elsewhere.

Satyr Commander
Your basic leadership 40 commander. Saved from mediocrity by stealth, they are still inferior to all of your other commanders in every way except price, but they do make solid inexpensive commanders for stealthy raiders.

Cataphract Commander
A basic leadership 80 commander with decent stats. Some thug potential, thanks to decent stats, but primarily useful as a solid, mobile leader. Cheaper than using a Pan to cart troops around.

Minotaur Commander
60 leadership commander. Inferior to your cataphract commander for leadership purposes, which is really what matters for a magicless commander, and probably not much good as a thug, either.

Keeper Of Traditions:
Expensive, and takes a fort recruit, but is your best leader that can bless. Potentially usefully, he can also bless himself, and with the right bless, might even make a decent thug.


Mages:
Odds are good that you will primarily want to recruit centaur sages, but dryads and pans both have extremely useful niches, and you will want several of each.

Centaur Sage:
These guys are by far your most cost effective researchers. You'll want them for that reason alone, but if that weren't enough, they are phenomenal communion material. They make excellent communion slaves due to high HP, and solid masters due to decent diversity. Lots on them later, as this will form the cornerstone of a corestrategy.

Dryad:
N1H1 stealthy seducers who can lead 40 units makes your Dryad a multi-use workhorse. We'll be talking about their uses later. Downside? Multiuse units can be expensive for any one of those uses. You can recruit 10 light satyrs for the gold difference between the dryad and Satyr Commander.

Pan:
Reliable N3E2 mages. The 10% random will rarely come up on this StR mage, so it is not worth worrying about. You'll want them for sitesearching, buffing, and certain rituals. They also make great leaders in a pinch.

Units

Fliers: Pan has access to two harpy variants: Regular and armored. Both have uses.

Harpy:
Cheap, flies, stealthy. Not terribly useful in combat for a variety of reasons, in combat these are mostly useful for things like harassing archers/mages and interrupting buff cycles. Out of combat, they make good patrollers and seigers/defenders, as they can sneak into your seiged forts, and get a flying bonus to either seige or wall defense.
Stymphalian Bird:
Very, very useful, for only 8 gold. Pair them with black harpies, and they can raid the crap out of light PD provinces for only 105 gold per raiding party, making them astonishingly economical. While they will never be mainline troops, they can also fulfill battlefield roles by effectively harassing lightly armored archers/mages, disrupting enemy scripting, and chasing routing troops.
For fun, combine with Iron Bane, and watch them be shockingly effective vs. heavy infantry. Stealth and a lower resource cost are the only reasons to purchase harpies instead.

Light Satyrs: Raiders. All undisciplined and fragile, their stealth is their primary use. To be fair, they are mostly interchangable, with sneaks being better at unrest, but worse at combat.

Satyr Sneak:
Passive unrest generation is their gimmick, but it can be very helpful in causing damage in enemy turf even without attacking.
Satyr (Javelin):
Better than sneaks at fighting, but still pretty bad at it. Use as you like.
Satyr (Buckler):
Better than sneaks at fighting, but still pretty bad at it. Use as you like- I prefer this variant.

Heavy Satyrs: Your cheap, tough troops, you will probably recruit a lot of these to add bulk to your armies, especially as you shift focus to magical support as forts go up and gold gets scarce.

Satyr Sniper:
High precision crossbowmen with good protection and maneveurability for only 12 gold? What's not to love? Mostly, a lack of synergy with other units due to a high resource cost. Most of your units are resource intensive, and you don't have the paths that would make crossbowmen excellent. Still, in a slow map, these are a viable choice to add some kick to your satyr phalanxes, or as anti-archer archers, as they easily win most archery battles.
Satyr Hoplite:
Gold cheap and resource expensive, these guys are likely to be your mainline infantry. Usefully, and unlike most enemy heavy infantry, they are mobile. Additionally, with good HP, morale, MR, protection, defense, and a length 4 weapon, they are very good at holding the line, but spears vs. LA armor means that they need help doing damage. Many of your tactics will focus on satyr infantry holding the line while other units do the serious damage.

Specialist Species: Too expensive to easily mass, they are nevertheless vital in support of your satyr blocks - and in expansion.

Centaur Cataphract:
Your heavy cavalry, they have respectable stats, a reasonable cost, and good movement. Solid flankers, but high encumberance can make them less useful at holding the line, and without being buffed they don't hit hard compared to most heavy cavalry. Legions of Steel, Wooden Warriors, and Strength of Giants make them tougher and hit much harder. Haste is also useful.

Minotaur Soldier:
Minotaur soldiers are nice. High protection, HP and trample makes them ideal for crushing enemy heavy infantry formations. They do have the lowest MR of your units and the highest HP, which makes them a target for enemy magic. Second, they are expensive, which means they can get surrounded easily, and their high fatigue gets them cut down. Use them in combination with other troops. Mapmove 2 is their sole advantage over Grove Guards.

Grove Guard:
High HP, high protection, berserk, decent stats, and trample, these guys are very difficult to stop without casualties. They have two major drawbacks. First, like minotaur soldiers, they are an expensive investment that is vulnerable to magic and being surrounded/cut down, so relying on just them will result in a poor casualty ratio. Second, they are your only mapmove 1 unit, meaning they aren't always where you need them.
If buffing your minotaurs, go for durability spells- wooden warriors and legions of steel. Haste may also be useful for trample.

Dryad Hoplite:
The dryad hoplite has fantastic defensive power out of the box, with decent protection, better than human stats, and awe. She benefits from the minor water and earth blesses in this role. However, as a cap-only sacred without a great deal of offensive punch, she may be limited in use- especially later in the game.

Expansion - Early Phase

You can expand at a solid rate. You'll want at least one pan to site search, but you should probably mostly focus on centaur sages for research. Dryads are nice, but not cheap.

For now, you'll want to use your elite units, as they fully outclass indies, and we don't have to worry about gold efficiency as much.
Expansion armies:

1. Dryad hoplites, if they have an appropriate bless, can expand vs. nonarcher provinces pretty easily, especially if given some backup via smites or spellsongs.

2. Centaur Cataphracts really shine in expansion. They don't eat up much gold, and 10-12 is sufficient for an expansion force v. most indies. You should be able to recruit an army like this every other turn or so.

3. A handful of minotaurs will do great vs. most indies, because, generally speaking, indies don't script or use very powerful units, and you can use your starting light satyr army to back them up. Make sure to avoid cavalry, unless you are using grove guards and you let the satyrs eat the charge.

As you prepare to build a fort, you may want to shift production over to satyr hoplites as gold-cheap alternatives. I like to recruit satyr hoplites alongside 2-3 minotaurs to produce balanced armies without as much micro, but it doesn't much matter.

As with any nation, you ideally want to place your forts on high-income provinces surrounded by high-resource provinces to maximize both benefits.

Research priorities:

As with any nation, this varies based on your planned midgame strategy.

A communion strategy will want Conjuration 3, Evocation 4-5, Thaumaturgy 1, and Enchantment 2 to be fully useful.

Buffing/Debuffs? Conjuration 3, Alt 5, Construction 3, Enchantment 3.

Construction 4 will open up other options more thoroughly, and is necessary for some of the midgame "tricks."

Primary Tactic 1: Fighting - just the troops, ma'am

Most opponents won't fold simply due to effective raiding. You're going to have to take the fight to them at some point. This should help.

1. Hammer/Anvil - this works best vs. the heavy infantry formations that are common in Late Age.\

Satyr Phalanxes: Satyr hoplites are relatively cheap, and better on defense than most other infantry. However, on their own they will be outmatched toe-to-toe by abysians, pythians, and frankly many other nations due to a relatively low damage output and "only" 15 protection. However, they remain good blockers for the reasons discussed previously in this guide. Deploy them in the most appropriate formation, and they should stop whatever it is you wanted to stop for some time. You should use these to "catch" enemy formations.

Minotaur auxilaries. Groveguards and minotaur soldiers supplement Satyr Anvils wonderfully by acting as a sort of hammer. They break apart enemy formations, and satyrs come in to support them. Groveguards are better, but minotaur soldiers are cheaper and allow your armies to be more maneveurable. Use as you see fit.

Centaur Cataphracts can also be helpful here. Minotaur soldiers may struggle with high-defense cavalry, but centaur cataphracts seem to fare just fine. They provide less punch than minotaurs vs. enemy infantry formations, but don't get stopped by size3 units and are much more durable.

2. Anti archers!
Satyr snipers can fill this role pretty well. However, as implied by their name, they may be difficult to mass if you want a decent number of other units. Still, high precision crossbows will drive off enemy archer formations relatively well. You can also use centaur cataphracts on attack rear or attack archers if some fool is leaving his or her flanks open. Finally, Stymphalian birds on attack rear or attack archers are (obviously) great for killing/distracting low-armor archers and mages.

3. Anti Cavalry:
I try to soak lances (one time use per battle!) with harpies, satyrs, or indie militia before engaging them. Berserking groveguards are fine vs. them, minotuars are not, but centaur cataphracts tend to do well, especially if the cataphracts get the charge. Dryad hoplites may also be okay at catching the charge, but you may not want to use sacreds v. high-morale lancers, which most cavalry are.

4. Anti Tramplers:
Your dryad hoplites may be most useful in this niche, as awe stops most tramplers cold. Your minotaurs are not good in this role, due to low defense, but centaur cataphracts should do fine.

Primary Tactic 2: Adding Magic to the battlefield

There are four main approaches here.

1.) Buff/Debuff.
Your useful spells here will mostly be in alteration. Construction 4 equipment and conjuration 3-4 will make your life easier via higher paths. You also have useful spells at construction 3 (convenient!) and in enchantment. Arguably, Panic at Thau3 is also in here.

Pans are likely to do the heavy lifting here, but communioned sages could also do it- but best leave them to evoking.

Buffs:
Wooden warriors is useful on most of your units to make them tougher. Legions of steel is usually better at this, given that you already have natural prot, and it doesn't give fire vulnerability, but will exhaust you much more rapidly. This added protection is useful for all of your troops, but especially your minotaurs.
Strength of giants is wonderful on centaur cataphracts, and haste is useful as well. It can also be useful on satyrs and humorous on stymphalian birds.

Debuffs: Sadly, most of your good debuffs are earth, and will be more exhausting. Still, destruction and clouds can be helpful in lieu of a minotaur hammer for your satyrs, and earthmeld will let your minotaurs crush whatever is now stuck to the ground with 0 defense. Panic will make them run even if they would win, and at higher levels, polymorph and such can be fun.

Buffing/Debuffing does not require many mages, but also doesn't add much punch. However, it will result in very lopsided ratios at a low cost if your opponent does not deploy good battlemagic.

2.) Communion: Take a bunch of centaur sages. Set most of them to communion slave. Have your masters cast personal regeneration/strength of gaia and summon earthpower. Because fatigue is converted to hp at ~10-1 ratio, and your sages regenerate 2hp/turn, you now have communion slaves that recover the equivalent of at least 29 fatigue/turn. Each. Use your communion masters to rain down hell - Air centaur sages can thunderstrike, earth sages can spam Gifts from the Heavens (personal favorite), water sages can rain falling frost, and I guess nature sages can make very big panics or something. You can also use this point to cast powerful battlefield spells - I liked windguide, to reduce friendly fire from evocations. Just make sure to not cast them while slaves are exhausted. Relief may also be helpful, if you have it researched.

This tactic will crush many midgame opponents, especially if they aren't expecting it, and all you need is a satyr screen and a bunch of centaur sages. The problem is the high opportunity cost - centaur sages could be researching - and the vulnerability to mind duel to astral nations. (Mostly ulm, jomon, and arcoscephale). However, your sages are 90 gold and can be recruited at any fort, so minddueling is going to be a painstakingly expensive counter. If it is a risk, make sure your sages are spread out.

3.)Thugs and SuperCombatants. These refer to individual commanders that can take on significant numbers of enemy troops. There are two key parts: The chassis, which is the unit itself, and the equipment, which is what makes the unit so difficult to fight. Certain buff spells can substitute for equipment (Body Ethereal, Ironskin, and Personal Regeneration are common picks). The trick to making SCs work is stacking defenses until they are hard to kill, while retaining sufficient offense to eventually cause a rout, and the trick to thugs is doing so on a budget.

LA Pan has decent thug chassis in several of its units. Centaur sages can follow thugs around and buff with spells like Body Ethereal, and thugs can easily be equipped with frost brands, lightening spears, and eye or tangle shields with your native paths. Cataphract Commanders make viable thug chassis, and it is possible that Keeper's do as well, although you may want to give Keepers a more defensive weapon, such as one of the spears, the water sword, the parrying dagger, or even a second shield. On both, fatigue management is important. Hypothetically, Centaur Sages and Pans make ok thugs with self-buffing, but they don't have great combat stats and have fatigue issues. Still, Summon Earthpower, Personal Regen, Temper Flesh, and Ironskin can turn a Pan into an excellent thug if he doesn't get hit with an early critical. Thugs can also be useful in countering specific problems that are giving you trouble. For example, a high MR thug with a lightening spear was useful in killing a certain Gorgon god that had a lightening vulnerability due to its buff cycle.

An alternative route is to take a pretender with some death magic and summon banelords, which will have better stats than any, and no fatigue problems at all, but will be more gem-expensive in a gem-poor age. Lots of death magic and gems might allow you to summon proper SC chassis - such as tartarians or wraithlords - if your game ever gets there, but this is strictly a lategame tactic.

You can also turn your pretender into a Super-Combatant. More on that when we discuss choosing pretenders.

4.) Gimmicks: Gimmicks are tricks you can pull off once or twice, but shouldn't build a strategy around.
Gimmick 1: Ironbane+stymphalians. If your opponent is fielding heavily armored elites, ironbane+harpies set to attack said elites will let you do a shocking amount of damage at low cost. The 3 aoe melee attacks + 6 claws per square will stack up quickly once the first hit disposes of all of their armor. Your opponent can counter this via screens to absorb your aoe-feathers.
Gimmick 2: Earthquake + Centaurs/Minos
Get a couple of Pans, and give them earthboots and 3 earthgems each. Script them to summon earthpower -> earthquake. Two castings will kill most human mages, and rout many armies. Your centaurs, minotaurs, and pans all have the HP they need to absorb the hits. Human mages will almost never survive 2, and even heavy human infantry will take casualties. The main problem with this is that it only works against human-hp units (not giants), and is very gem expensive. The last can be alleviated somewhat if you have access to bloodstones as your boosters (provide temporary gems). Bloodstones + earthboots will let you get off first-round earthquakes. This tactic can be especially useful by switching it with your conventional army before being attacked (Defensive movement), or to crack mage-filled forts.
Gimmick 3: Charm: If your opponent is raiding with low-MR solo thugs, they are yours now. Can be countered with higher MR, or not leaving thugs unaccompanied. Can also work if those low-MR thugs are near the front of their armies, and they don't have higher HP units to act as decoys.

Primary Tactic 3: Being Obnoxious

Pangaea in any age can be frusturating to play against. LA Pangaea is arguably less so, due to much lower quality in stealthy troops, but most of the tactics are fundamentally there. Almost all of these tactics are useable throughout the game, although you should beware mindhunting.

Raiding:
LA Pan has some of the best raiding and mobility in LA. 10-40 light satyrs lead by a satyr commander or dryad hitting low-defense provinces can quickly cause unrest to add up and lower enemy income. Higher unrest makes it harder for patrollers to see you. Make sure you have good intelligence before hitting a province- try not to collide with high-PD provinces without substantial armies. This will force your opponent to either bring his troops back from the front, or invest lots of gold in PD - all while his income is dropping. Once lots of gold is invested in PD, feel free to break up those PD blocks with your heavier, nonstealthy blocks at virtually no losses and a very favorable goldloss ratio. PD is generally a terrible investment vs. actual armies.

Rituals:
In early/midgame, consider casting monster boar (conjuration 5) at tough, high income targets - such as capitals. A few castings of this spell, left unaddressed, will not only severely reduce income, but shut down recruitment if unrest climbs over 100 - and boars continually generate unrest. This is very, very good. For you. While conjuration may not otherwise be a research priority, this can be a useful spell to sap an enemy's ability to fight.

Seduction:
Your dryads are n1h1 seducers with awe. Seduction is basically assasination, but with a chance at a free commander/mage. This is because seduction turns into an assasination attempt if it fails. You can give your dryad an item (e.g., thorn staff) so they can fight it out - with awe, odds are solid, especially with a decent bless. However, it's probably best to give them a single nature gem and have them cast Swarm, which will kill any unprepared commander and most unprepared mages. Even bodyguards may have difficulty dealing with Swarm. Swarm is alteration 4, so it's on your way to Mother Oak and Wooden Warriors anyways - as well as several other useful nature battlespells. Seduction is an excellent way to disrupt enemy movements, and can usefully capture enemy mages. Happily, your dryads are protected from patrolling by high unrest.

Very usefully, it can be very difficult to effectively seige a fort with several seducing dryads inside. Not a bad idea to recruit a few in any fort that is likely to get seiged.

Pretender Design

There are a number of different options when choosing your pretender, and it is easy to get overwhelmed, so focus on 2 things:

What does your nation need?

What would you like your pretender to do?


Scales:
Now, Pangaea has some pretty good troops it can expand with, so an awake super combatant is probably not necessary. Instead, we'll want to focus on scales - which will control how useful our land is. Most of our troops are resource expensive, so we generally want positive production. I would go so far as to say that LA Pangaea needs positive production, so taking sloth will not be an option.

Second, many of Pangaea's optimal expansion troops are gold intensive, so we will want to take order and/or growth. Since Order provides a lot of gold early on, and helps reduce unrest and random events, it is usually a good pick. Turmoil is less helpful for LA pangaea than it is in other ages, since pans no longer generate maenad swarms - and they make less sense in the new pangaean armies, so there shouldn't be a problem with order. Of course, you can take both order and growth if you really like gold.

Pangaea does have good research, so drain can be an acceptable choice if points are needed- just be sure not to take it with misfortune, as it unlocks gemloss events you can't afford. Similarly, pangaea actually can deal with the side effects of death better than most nations - just don't take it with misfortune, as it unlocks some awful events. Some misfortune can be mitigated by taking order, which reduces random events slightly. Still, I prefer not to dip too far into these scales unless I need the points.

Dominion Score:
You can go two ways with this. First, Pangaea has half-price temples, so you can take a very low dominion score, such as 5 or 6. However, be careful, as you have weak preists. The other way is by using your dominion offensively - cheap temples and a high dominion score means your dominion will spread rapidly. With a scales build, and no blood sacrificing, this is less helpful than it might be, but it does synergize well with a SC pretender pick, as a dominion score of 9 or 10 gives him Awe. This will mostly be dictated by the type of pretender you choose - a rainbow mage will find it expensive to take a high dominion score, while it will be very useful for a supercombatant, and cheaper for immobile pretenders.

Magic Paths/Chassis:
What gap do you want your pretender to fill?
As discussed, we don't particularly need our god to be an awake expander, due to solid national troops. If we did, though, we have plenty of options, although they will need dom9-10 for the most part.
We also probably aren't going to rely on our capital-only dryad hoplites so much that a bless would make much sense - though we might wind up with one due to other uses for our pretender's magic. Daring players might try a nature 9 or earth 9 bless to turn their Keepers of the Grove into thugs, but I suspect that this will be more gimmicky than effective.

One potential pick is a rainbow searcher- lots of paths at level 2 or so. A crone is generally the best pick for this. I don't like rainbows in late age unless magic site frequency is higher than normal, but they can provide useful diversity and gem income. Searchers are best taken awake or dormant- I prefer dormant for the 150 points it provides, but awake does allow very early sitesearching (and researching) One potential build is a Dom-6 crone with Fire2Air2Water2Astral2Death4. This build gets +6 scales while dormant, or +2 while awake (and level 1 in an extra path).

Another is a high-path pretender. This can be point expensive, but can be very helpful, but should usually be taken with a specific purpose in mind - such as a global. An Astral-9, dominion 7 Oracle provides +7 scales while dormant, and high astral can be very helpful late game. It can be very helpful earlier on, too, if you are playing vs. an astral nation and don't care to have your communion mind-duelled to obliteration.

My personal favorite is the multi-path pretender. This usually takes the form of a dormant titan who can provides a credible SC threat when it wakes, and can wander around and site search before sitting back and casting useful rituals. Such a pretender might be chosen for magical dirversity, to allow us access to useful rituals, or for combat utility, or some combination of the above.

Some examples:
The Titan of War and Wisdom, Draikana, and Titan of Rivers all provide us with some combination of useful sitesearching and path access. The Draikana can get us underwater, and provides 2 paths, notably death, the Titan of rivers 2 paths with water income, and the Titan of War and Wisdom with deeper access to three useful paths, while making a ferocious, mobile SC chassis. By comparison, The gorgon and earth mother are excellent in terms of providing us with combat utility, but suffer from providing us with paths we already have decent access to - although they still might be helpful for high level rituals or forging.

You can a similar approach is a combat caster, such as an Astral4Death6 dominion 7 Demilich (+6 scales) - which is helpful for magic dueling and death access, or an Air2Death5 master lich for "wind of death" gimmicks.

My personal favorite so far has been a dormant Dom9 Carrion dragon with nature4death4 (+5 scales). This provided for a ferocious SC/deterrent around the time that indies disappear, became more dangerous once I researched Soul Vortex, and while the only 'new' access was death, (providing for Bane Lord summoning), and Nature 4 was enough with one booster to cast mother oak or gift of health.

Notes on creating an SC Pretender: An awake pretender must be able to do its job without spells or items. Give it a high (9-10) dominion score for Awe, and make sure it has other defensive capabilities - high protection, fear, and ethereal are all helpful. Dragons, Wyrms, Cyclopes, Great Bulls and princes of death are common choices for all nations. You may later research spells that help - personal regeneration is a low-research spell that is very useful.

For a dormant pretender - titans are common candidates- researching multiple buffs can be helpful. Most of these are in alteration, with a few in enchantment and summon earthpower in conjuration.
However, the trick to making Titan SCs a credible threat is protection/equipment. Brands, shields, and some armor are all valuable. The trick is having as many defenses as possible while minimizing fatigue. Undead pretenders only need to worry about spell fatigue, pretenders with earth magic can add 4 to recovery with Summon Earthpower, but all others will want fatigue-recovery items. With this in mind, the air magic armor and shields are useful, as are the nature shields (Vineshield and, to a lesser extent, Eyeshield are seen as stellar). A common Titan layout is vineshield + frostbrand + girdle of might/amulet of resilience, with maybe regeneration thrown in. Other items are added as useful.

Misc. Notes:

Certain strengths of Pangaea that didn't fit in anywhere cleanly:

Maneveurability: All but one of pangaea's troops are mapmove 2 with forest survival, giving them nearly unparalleled mobility. 3 of their commanders (two of which are mages) and 5 of their troops are mapmove 3, and of those, 1 of their commanders and 2 of their troops have flying.

This provides for excellent strategic opportunities, including good defensive movement, and the ability to get to your front lines more easily.

Recuperation: All of your troops recover from afflictions. This means your elites actually last a long time, and don't become useless. Expect to have signifcant numbers of 3-star vets, unless you manage to get them all slaughtered.

High battlefield movement: Most of your troops move slightly quicker than the average infantry unit across from them. Your losses in battle won't necessarily be as high if you rout.

Higher than normal MR: Part of the "better than humans" satyr suite, can be nice vs. certain battle spells - mostly death, nature, and astral.

Stealth preachers: Only H1, but can still cause problems.

Decent Maxage - don't have to worry about old mages. For added 'fun,' Pan doesn't notice burden of time for about 6 turns, which is when its mages first start to get old, and even then, recuperation helps with some of the effects. This provides a comparative advantage vs. human nations, and suggests a potential end-game strategy if human nations are all that are left.


NOTE: MA Pangaea notes:

Only 4 other nations have blood mages: Vanarus, Vanheim, Jotunheim, and Abysia. Abysia's are capital only (but excellent), Vanarus and Vanheim only get blood 2 on an expensive cap-only STR, and even then only 1/4 of the time. Vanheim's noncap blood mage is 285 gold for blood 1, Vanarus's noncap bloodmage only gets it 1/3.

Jotunheim is better than you at everything blood related.

Note that Bandar Log and Mictlan can bootstrap into blood but are very unlikely to succeed.

[runlevel0]

Thanks for posting! This is actually the first guid that I read. And I play this game since Dominion I... nope, Im not a smartass, I suck big time but I like _love_ the game. I think its about time that I start learning :)

[t0x1c_d0c]

Excellent Guide and well written! :)

[Bolverk]

Thanks for taking the time to write this. I found it very helpful.

[Dr. G]

Awesome guide for a faction I would probably otherwise have ignored!

[tus666]

Well written and thought out, nice one