a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

One of the biggest parts of the Pangaean theme is natural units relying on stealth over the use of standard armored armies. Probably seeking to use more guerrila warfare and avoiding conventional head-to-head conflicts. Hit and Run tactics, strikes of opportunity, spreading their strikes to make it difficult to pinpoint their center or operations (at least early in the game). Any effort to try and use Pangaea as a head-to-head army doesnt seem to work very well except possibly for late era.

Lord of the Wild
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Death 3
Nature 4
Blood 3
These allow for casting some important national spells. Also for forging some level boosting items for later on.


Turmoil 3
Same as Order -3. This raises the number of events, and increases the the number of maenads which will appear. A hit on money but thats a trade-off.

Sloth 1
Mostly these are purchase points since I dont tend to purchase heavily armored units.

Heat/Cold 0
For now I have it unchanged but it can be purchase points since Pangaea can easily take hits on income and supplies. Usually when I do I take heat since personally I hate cold. But its a topic of consideration of whether Pangaea can best stand up to cold or heat nations, and you should take the opposite scale.

Growth 0
No change but thats up to individuals.

Luck 3
Another way to cash in on the high turmoil. Increase the number of events even further (up to +30% now) and the chance of them being good (+39%). It can help offset the loss of money from Turmoil.

Magic 3
Pushing the research since there are spells that I really need to make heavy use of.

Dominion Strength of 3. Strong enough to make sure that I get the scale effects at home but not so strong that it spreads ahead of me. I want to be able to purchase troops outside of the dominion so I can get money and resource benefits.

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For the first turn I put everyone who isnt a mage on patrol and I turn taxes to 200%. Be sure to turn it back down on the turn that you move your armies out. Getting Mercs is of course very useful. Later using local units can be your front line for moving outward.
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It might be possible to use a bit of Dormancy. The large armies of maenads are more needed later on.

Initially I research Evocation, then Enchantment, then Alteration, then Evocation. This gives basic combat spells which work for the levels that most mages will operate on. The Enchantment level 1 gives access to Carrion Centaur which can create free units.

Then I pursue Conjuration, Conjuration, Conjuration. Vine men, Vine Ogres, Revive bane, and Call of the Wild.

Then Construction, Construction. By now I will need some food cauldrons and wine skins to move my large maenad armies out of my home province.

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Two types of armies are being built. Non-stealth armies just for taking and holding the local provinces. And stealth armies for deeper expansion. The maenads will help create the first one. So recruiting can concentrate on the second one. Usually its a choice between creating another Pan, or an army. The army usually consists of a Centaur Hierophant, as many Centaur archers as I can get and then I remove one to allow for, as many Harpy as I have space for. I send out scouts to find the other nations. Then I move my stealth armies in that direction.

I put my Hierophont on Bless, then fire at rearmost. I put my archers on fire at archers, and my harpys off to the right flank (low on the positioning image) with orders to Hold and Attack rearward. I find that archers tend to be assigned high on the battlefield (their right) which allows better access to the commanders from the low flanking unit (my right).

The stealth army is moving quickly to find targets of opportunity. Nations who do not put up Province Defense. Or battlegrounds between two nations where the winner might be damaged enough for you to take a province before PD goes up.

There are two choices for what to do with a province once taken.
A) Raze
B) Beachhead

With Raze you expect it to be taken back. You set the taxes to 200%, purchase minimal PD, any units which can help hold it or at least make it a problem to take back.

With Beachhead you turn taxes to 0%, put lots of money into PD, purchase as many local units as possible.

Either way, your stealth army should disappear into the wilderness. If you noticed enemy armies nearby you might want to move to the opposite side of your opponents area and attack the other side. If you are approaching that nation with your non-stealth armies then definetly attack the provinces on the far side from there in order to draw their armies that direction to handle your attacks and retake the provinces you have grabbed.

Try not to connect your provinces to theirs until you are sure that you can withstand their armies. Maintain the ability to do "free damage" for as long as possible. Hit them, ignore them for awhile, hit them again. They cant reach you without expensive battles thru indept nations until later in the game when there are no more indepts or the use of magic allows for far strikes.

You also might save your stealth army some wear and tear when you can use Call of the Wild. The stealth army or scouts can find likely weak points. Drop wolves on it to take it. Then do the recommended actions and sneak off the wolves as another stealth army in that area.

Obviously these tactics would work on a human player only as a surprise action. Their ability to change tactics to respond to it varies from person to person. It also has great benefits when used in alliance with someone who has more standard armies. They also work better vs AI's. And larger maps help it. All in all its a difficult strategy to use unless you just really like playing stealth surprise tactics.

Gandalf Parker

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Thank you for sharing this Gandalf.
If I ever finish my current epic game, I may have to give Pan a go with some of these techniques just for fun. Pangaea was one of my favorite nations in Dom2, but I never took full advantage of their stealth.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Ive never done any good with them except by using their stealth. Trying to use them in most other strategy makes them seem very out of balance. But since stealth seems to be at least half of their structure Im guessing that this is normal for them.

Except for late era Pangaea which does seem able to do better as regular armies (tho Im not sure if anyone is winning with them). But I havent really tried that one yet so I have no strategies for them.

In Dom2, originally, they were the obvious choice for strictly a stealth strategy. But in Dom3 there seems to be many that I should try.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Ah finally some good Pan discussion, time to return from hiatus. Thanks, that was an interesting read. I don't think the basic strategies will change too much from Dom2, so I'll focus on some changes in gameplay (mostly talking about EA/MA), sorry in advance for going bit OT. I've only played SP tesbeds in Dom3 so far, but here goes:

About the pretender. How do you cope with the lack of air magic? I've found it essential for some items and later Domes and Queens (with Pan research speed someone already has Wish before that, though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif). Mind you, I've mainly used order/misfortune since Dom2, I found order builds with lots of CWs better, so you might actually get Arcopythera in time with Luck3. I need to run a Turmoil/Luck -testbed first, though.

Scales truly are a matter of preference, but I agree that Magic 3 is pretty much mandatory for Pan now that Sages are very rare.

Interesting unit choices. I've always felt Centaur Archers aren't worth the cost as you pay a lot for "unnecessary" stats (heck, I only used them for stealth armies in Dom1 and only because CWs didn't exist then http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif). I buy map move 2 indep. archers instead.

Besides, every PD seems to be loaded with missile weapons now, so light troops will go down fast. Couple of CWs on 'Fire closest' seem to be much more reliable at taking out PDs. I find CWs more useful when you need to partake in traditional warfare, too. Matter of preference and tactics, I suppose. I'll give the archers an another chance, though.

Same goes for Harpies, I find them more useful as patrollers even though they work against "soft" PD commanders. They rout far too easily, cause little damage and are a pain logistically, imo.

Now that Vine Ogres are 2gems per cast and Lamia Queens went up both in casting reqs and gem cost (25 gems, ouch), I find the carrion guys/gals (I absolutely loved the theme back in Dom2 too!) by far the best nature summon for Pan. They pay for themselves in about 10 turns or less and you get a nice commander on top of that (Carrion Lord is a 53hp 3N3H(!), 10% chance for 1D). The Carrion Beasts are also more powerful (Sagittarian Carcass, mmm) and actually keep up with your armies in forests.

I still believe the Mass Protection is a key spell for Pan and try to research it fast - especially since the Alteration school has a lot of other good stuff for Earth. Having that 10+ prot on Maenads/Manikin helps a lot as you'll eventually end up fighting properly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

I like the 1N Vine Arrow too - now your every Dryad is a sniper, why bother with Hierophants http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif. Actually, since it's now easier to get good blessings, the Hierophant might be a very good thug/assassin chassis. They might actually work decently with just a Stinger, Weightless Kite and some mage buffs.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Keep in mind that my choices are totally based on being able to move the army fast and stealthy. Its true that other choices make sense for local expansion.

However my Pangaea and my Caelum strategies (among others) rely on skipping the more difficult indept provinces and covering the map in a dotted pattern with unconnected provinces. I find that Pangaea does badly if they do the usual march thru the provinces. As soon as they connect to someone, that nation simply marches back thru the provinces Ive taken. Pangaea's PD and purchase power doesnt hold up well altho maybe others can hadle it more efficiently than I can. But putting PD and purchase power into every 3rd province (thats mostly a Caelum rule to allow travel) allows me to stand up fairly well since they are fighting indepts twice for each time they meet me. Of course this is a large map and early game tactic to fight the rush expansion used by others.

Air magic is a good question. I have some Pangaean plans that use air. Especially putting flying boots on Pans. I can quickly put them into someones territory and all they have to do is move around. Its much faster that way. The maenads automatically attack the province each turn even if you moved him that turn. Just moving a pan around forces a nation to invest in PD or maintain multiple moving armies.

But in a choice I prefer being able to give them Black Hearts. Making Pan assassins. That works so cool. I dont have to check to see if I assassinated the last commander so I can attack. Each turn he assassinates, and then tosses maenads that attack the province. On the last commander I automatically take it.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Yes, I remember we had a similar discussion couple of years ago. I usually try to find Woodsmen or Villains, cheap and stealthy. I'm kind of interested to know why you prefer Centaur Archers over Centaur Warriors.

I've found I eventually end up fighting some decisive battles and CWs really shine on the flanks - especially if you back them up with some archers to pepper nmy missile troops with arrows.

Good point about the provinces. Btw, Illwinter seems to have done something about the random events, I just started a testbed and get a lot more gold rewards than in Dom2 (or maybe I'm just imagining things). I can understand why one doesn't need to take every single knight/hvy cav (bah, I don't touch those anyway) province with rewards like that.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Good point on the warriors. I probably should make more use of the centaur warriors. I should push myself out of my usual purchasing patterns to include it. I think I developed it that way because I was purchasing the things that werent covered by having a maenad frontline during the early expansion, and then I just sent the armies onward on their own. Also I was operating on low money and low resource scales.

I also should make a strong effort to develop a blessed strategy since the white centaur unit is stealth and blessable. Along with white centaur leaders and dryads it could be quite formidable if I can pay for it by taking harsh scales.

There is also the taking harsh scales so that you can stealth-pray them onto others. Pangaea can handle some harsh scales in temperature, lack of food, death, low resource, turmoil, low money and even low magic (though Im not sure if it could survive low luck at the same time) in order to use stealthy priests and shove it at other players. Im not sure if it could be used to win, but it might be used to make sure that cocky "I have the perfect formula" players DONT win. Good for an alliance. Of course the only place to use the points you gain by it would be in a rainbow (many magicked) pretender. That might work nicely into a mega-blessed strategy. Hmmmmmm I might have to explore that concept.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Sounds like it would help greatly with maenad hordes. You could postpone researching Construction, perhaps.

Strong dominion would probably be terribly annoying for all the Order lovers. Good synergy with cheap temples and Turmoil. Just thinking aloud.

Just wondering... does anyone EVER bother to pillage ? I'm a long-time forum lurker, and I can't seem to find anyone considering Pillage order. Is it so much unplayable ? I know it slows you down because you need an additional month, which makes you easy target for artillery spells. But still..
How about units with Pillage bonus ? Does it make the situation better ? And in general, how much (gold, I assume) do you get for pillaging ?

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Pillage kills people. You also get a little gold. Usually, when you wage war, you want to have your raiders survive, and while momentarily crippling your enemy is nice, getting to enjoy from his 30000+ pop capital's income is even better. 200% taxes rises unrest quite fast, doesn't risk your own men, and gives you more gold than pillage would.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Then something is seriously wrong, don't you agree ? I guess both developers should've spent more time making sure that existing options are viable and interesting. Why keep an order that is, esentially, unnecessary clutter ? It's like these spells no one ever bothers with. For example, I searched both Dom2 and Dom3 forums for hellpower and found only several results. No one ever commented on hellpower, either. Which is a shame, because it looks like a great fun on paper.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

B0rsuk you seem very quick to take one opinion as an extreme fact. he didnt say it was worthless, just that it had drawbacks.

But to answer the question, there are times that I recommend pillage. Also blood search. Both can be part of a "salting the earth" tactic. Such as any of these:
A) Im far away from my home territories
B) Im unlikely to get long-term use of the province I took
C) he is likely to take it back and use it against me
D) he is exceptionally stronger than I am and makes strong use of local units
E) he is the last enemy

Then using "burning the fields and salting the earth" tactics can be very useful. If you drive the unrest over 100 then he cant recruit there even if he gets it back. Forcing him to chase you with his one original army or stop to patrol is handy.

And doing it to his capital can be devastating. Even if he gets it back, he cant recuit for long enough to let you return with another army? And his taxes dont yield much? Very useful. And if you gain his castle for a short time, raze his lab so he cant even summon for awhile.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Pillage is useful. Only for killing population fast, when you can afford a turn or two, but for that it works very well. It's situational, but some nations and strategies benefit more from it than others. Good raiders and death nations come to mind.


Re: Hellpower.
It was used. I've seen few HUGE battles, with dozens of tartarians and other nasty things against huge force of demons, big battlefield-wide spells being cast on both sides - and Hellpower used to power up.

Hellpower comes with a risk. There are many situations in which casting it could be worth the risk. LA Ulm with few communicants comes to mind. +2 Astral VERY nice, especially as it allows the casting of Light of the Northern Star. Mictlan could also use it to get access to some nice spells. Mass Protection, perhaps. Of course, it might also be possible to have some mages casting Horror Mark, and hope that the appearing horrors will attack the ENEMY first, and the Hellpowered mage only after that.

There are lots of other spells that haven't seen much use, and perhaps won't see much use in Dom3 either, but are still good. Hand of Death is deadly; you can't really script or plan for it, but when your mages decide to cast it, it can be devastating.
Then there are those that aren't worth the mage-time or cost. There's been some discussion about Eater of the Dead. He might be one such creature. Of course, it has been mentioned that he is currently slightly bugged.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Interesting discussion Gandalf http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

In blitzes dual blessed white centaurs are very popular.
They usually stealthraid in a similiar way you described above in your strategies and eventually they unite and defeat the enemy main army.

Centaurs and white centaurs are imho very formidable als normal armies too, they are only expensive.

In dom2 Turin and Jeffr very often played Pan in longterm games too, usually with a dualbless.

Because of the higher gold income and some other changes like summonable carrion wood units i think Pan is even a bit better in dom3 than it was in dom2.

I find Pan to be a very interesting nation because they are flexible, but need to be played very differently to other nations because of their rather unique national troops + commanders.

Some vague thoughts for a bless strat, many parts are old Dom2 strats that should work as well or even better in Dom3:

Mother Oak is only Alteration 5, so if you research it asap you can usually keep it a while before it gets dispelled.

Destruction, Iron Warriors, Invulnerability and Wooden Warriors are also Alteration 1-5 spells.

Turmoil 3 is a bit more attractive because of Maenads.

I personally would invest most of my nature gems then in Carrion Reanimators.

A combination of Carrion Beasts with Maenads and centaurs/centaur warriors, all enchanced with some spells like Iron Warriors/Weapons of Sharpness/Regneration etc. etc. casted by Pans sounds imho scary in Midgame.

But the main problem i have with Pan is money. Centaurs cost a lot, Pans cost a lot, White Centaurs long for a strong bless, Maenads make Turmoil 3 somewhat attractive ... .

So i have always severe Research- and Moneyproblems as Pan compared to a nation like late era Argatha or Pythium http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

I greatly appreciate the comments that show Im not alone in my thinking here. Other threads had me beginning to wonder. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Boron: thanks for the comments on Pangaea in blitz games. Very appreciated. I particularly like this..
Thats exactly how I feel about it. Too often when people put down Pangaea (not always, but often enough) I see that they are trying to play it like Ulm. Obviously they would suck at that. Im bugged when people rate a nation like Jotunheim, Caelum, Arcoscephale, Tien Chi without trying to use what is obviously a central theme to their design.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

I'm a big fan of Pangaea, and there's many interesting points in your strategy Gandalf.

With maenads I think alteration is a priority (mass protection et Mother oak). Swarm and ants could be fun I think with a Pan assassin (or in a deathmatch).

I think there is many ways to play Pangaea:

1 - High bless white centaurs: centaur warriors are awesome, white centaurs are even better. Many high bless (not nature) suit them well. They can even fight in a more classical way against other nations (not using stealth, expanding around capital).

2 - Death woods: take a Carrion dragon, reasearch enchantment, spwan carrions, cast Haunted forest and/or carrion woods... Use Banes with items as thugs. Very nice thematic, reminds me Princess Mononoke http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I prefer to use this strategy with late era, as undead-boosting holy spells are available and D2 Pans.

3 - Blood nation : Lord of the wild, many *cheap* temples with sacrifices, mix of nature summons with blood leaders. Take turmoil so your blood slaves hunters will spawn free maenads while searching. Access to blood magic also gives you interesting items to use leaders (pans, minotaurs, pretender, blood summons, firbolgs) more offensively.

4 - Lamias! I use a N7W2D2 Mother of monsters. W2 allow her to summon bog beast before lamias (to have a poisoned battlefield). Put poison ring on firbolgs and/or pans. Take high dominion, cast Gift of Health, Haunted forest, research mass protection.

I also use kithaironic lions in games with Demo players. On the first turn I like to recruit just minotaurs to power up my firts army. The trample skill gives an edge over non-cavarly indies.

I think I dont use enough the stealth abitity of Pangaea. I like the idea to have a strong dominion to use the Globals spells (haunted forest, GOH, etc) with high growth to cast tune of growth in battle.

I dont use entaur archers with turmoil 3 as they are gold intensive. I prefer minotaurs or centaur warriors. I should try fire and flee tactics with centaur archers... I got the idea to put air magic on my pretender to create many flying minotaurs. These trampling flyers could be fun (backed with harpies) with the Hold and attack rearmost ennemies order.

I have some questions about your strategy:

- With set tne taxes to 0 in the beachhead option?
- Do you use minotaurs? I find them very useful mixed with maenads.
- Do you use Charm? Is this spell very useful in late game MP? can it be easily countered?
- How do you use Blood magic?
- What evocation spells do you use? why use vine arrow instead of tangle vines?
- Do you use tune of growth?
- How do you use maenads in late game? How can they face larges armies of archers? the blade wind spell?

Thank you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Harpies are also extraordinary patrollers if you just get an indie commander and set your capital to 200x tax while patrolling if you're doing a dual bless. You get a huge gold boost which makes up any poor scales you'll have to take for the strat. Most people dislike the population loss from such strats but the extra provinces you'll conquer from the extra troops generally makes up for it.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Yeah this makes Dominions so great imho http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Dominions is very deep. I think the famous magic the gathering card game is most similiar to dominions.

In both games there are nearly endless options and most units(cards in MTG) are at least in a certain situation/strategy great. So there are almost no useless units at all (and those few units/spells that seem useless can be fixed via creative modding imho).

But because the game is so deep most players will focus on parts of the game only and develop certain specific stragies and specialise on some nations. This is okay of course http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But in this specialization the problem is that potentially there is the rub:
After you have discovered a playstyle you love and "mastered" one or a few nations you might think that you have mastered dominions. But you are too focused on some nations/strats and this can then hamper you more than you think when you try to play other nations that need very different approachs.
If you are used to blue counter/control/combo decks in MTG you might have difficulties making a good green/white rush deck.

Dominions goes even a step further than MTG imho, because MTG is a card game, so it has to be kept simple in some aspects to be playable at all. But Dominions is a PC game, so the PC does the dull work like calculating battles.
And thus Dominions is imho even deeper than MTG.
Many nations have unique national troops that require different approaches, and god design and national mages/spells make every nation unique.

But humans often think in schemes. But Dominions you have to try to play as open minded as possible. Nothing is completely useless, instead everything is useful in some situations and not so useful in other situations.
But these situations can change every turn.

This is imho the most important factor (in a no-diplomacy game) in a Dom MP game. The player who sums up the situation best during the whole game and then reacts accordingly usually wins. This is true for most strategy games, but in no pc-strategy game i know as hard to do as in Dominions, especially because the situation needs to be revaluated every turn and you have to try to be as open minded as possible.

This makes Dominions so unique and great, but everything has it's pros and cons, so occasionally this deepness can also be frustrating or leads to the situation that you say nation XYZ sucks, but it sucks probably only with the approach with which you tried to play this nation.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Heh Boron, this is a complete 180 from what I would expect you to say. You're possibly more powergamey than me!

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

A Pan Strategy i have been fantasized about, but never used successfully so far in MP (iirc i have never played Pan in a Longterm MP at all because always when i wanted to try them i was already in too many games and when a new MP started i rather tried another nation then with another strat ...):

Pan: Carrion Doom

Keyspells: Haunted forest and creeping doom/swarm

Dominion is very important for this spell too.
If you buy lots of PD in your provinces, because of the manikins you get your provinces are much harder to raid.

IF you manage to spread your dominion into enemy territory too, and with the help of dryads stealth preaching this should be somehow possible, you could then use Pans and Dryads offensively who cast creeping doom and swarm.

Those manikin hordes are then a big problem for many enemy strats. The sleepvines can be even dangerous for SCs.

And because most of your stuff is stealthy you can combine this with your usual stealth strats too.

You could also try to massproduce Harpies.


Main Problem: DISPEL

Astral gems are unfortunately easier to get than nature gems. And there are other promising globals, mainly GoH and Gift of Nature's Bounty, and the ants+dragonflies need lots of nature gems too.

But hoarding is harder in Dom3, and you could get lots of extra nature gems via trading and via rushing to mother oak.

So my casting idea for haunted forest would be to cast the first haunted forest with a really high, but weird number of gems, like 583 extra nature gems.
Such an unorthodox number makes your opponents likely waste lots of pearls i think.
How would you try to dispel such a haunted forest?
Eventually it will get dispelled nontheless probably, but you can try to fool your opponents then by recasting haunted forest, sometimes with no extra gems, sometimes with like 2xx extra gems. This way they likely waste many more pearls for dispelling than usually.

If you only use nature gems for searching but save up all of them otherwise i think we can assume that we would get about 15 nature gems per turn from turn 20 on at least usually.
Till turn 20 you can at least save 100 nature gems too i think.
So at turn 60 you would then theoretically have at least 100+40x15=700 nature gems.

The 3 main questions are then:
1. How much did this slow down your progress till turn 60 if you would have used the nature gems for short-term gain investments like Ivy King Vine Ogre factories, Lamia Queens, Faery Queens, Firbolgs, Carrions etc. etc.?
2. Would you probably profit even more if you decided to save up your nature gems by casting GoH instead?
3. How many astral gems will your opponents have around turn 60? And how soon will they be able to dispel?

They might have used their astral income for short term investments, and thus have to save up for dispelling. But there might also have been someone who hoarded or has arcane nexus running.

So what do you think? Is it worth to try to include trying to "abuse" haunted forest in a pan strat?

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

I agree with KissBlade. Boron you surprise me. I thought you were one of the "mp blitz is the whole game" people. I apologize for that.

I totally have no problem with that. I recommend people find their niche. As long as they dont declare that to define the game and start talking in hard "facts" about what is broken and absolutely must be fixed. Im old, and diplomatic in the way I word things. The closest to an absolute I will let myself get in this game is "in my opinion", or maybe "for the way I play" something seems less than useful. If something works, I dont declare it broken just because it doesnt work the way I want. (there are some map commands and command-line switches I consider broken though)

Yeah I try to warn about that. Find the nation that matches your style and you will kick tail. But dont be surprised when you go into multiplayer games to discover that other people settled just as comfortably into nations you thought were weak.

Ive had mixed results with that. Some people have so memorized the formulas and perfected their strategies that they simply HATE surprises. And others start out with no strategy at all but a large toolbox of tactics based on what shows up. Of course, abit of both is probably best, but I admit that Im more tactics than strategy.

THANK YOU
I admit that some things "break" MP blitz games abit. And Im not against fixing those if its possible as long as it doesnt improve that game by poisoning others. Im also all for settings and map commands that can help balance MP games. I know that some prefer to KNOW that their game was won by strategy and not luck so something to turn down or remove events, maybe heroes, and then create chessboard-balanced maps for those games. (that way it wont affect my playing)

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Just as the game, Dominions is way deeper than M:TG. However, in the context of metagaming and winning tournaments, Magic is more complex because there are more people playing it. On the highest levels, Magic isn't only a game about resource control and making the right tactical decisions, but also an information war before you even begin. With better balancing (counters for diverse strategies) and more players, Dominions could reach that level of complexity as well.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

I really like i think almost any way to play Dom3.
In SP i usually play huge maps and with mods. Currently i love Amos mods.
In MP i like both blitzes and longterm games.

But when discussing about balance i usually focused on blitzes, because imho there potential balance issues are most problematic.
In a longterm MP game there is always diplomacy, and there is research.

In SP imbalances are imho even beneficial, because they imho enchance it by adding more variety and they can help the AI http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

But in blitzes if there are early game imbalances you eventually discover them. And if you do not have research and diplomacy as potential weapons against them they are annoying then.

Now modding seems versatile enough though to "rebalance" those problems especially for blitzes http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.


I like usually to be very straightforward though. I can understand now that this can lead to misunderstandings.
It might be somewhat related to national mentality.
Generalizing is always bad, but it is indeed somewhat true that germans like to criticise.
And they are usually more straigthforward, political correctness is not very popular here neither.
Most important though is that if we criticise something it has to be interpreted also as indirect praise.
Because we usually only criticise stuff that we care about.

So thank you for your apology Gandalf and i also want to apologize if i often sound either too harsh or too "whining". To some degree it is really a cultural issue probably.

If someone would do a survey about the various posts so far in this forum which "criticised" dom3 i think the majority of these posts would be from european users.

And sorry for the OT post.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Only to see someone dispel your Carrion Woods, or simply accidentally overwrite it because all global spots were full. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif As someone who _loved_ playing CW Pangaea, I'll be very curious to see if anyone, ever, uses it in MP. And if it's successful, or simply gets wiped out rapidly.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

*bump*
But for a reason. In light of a mega-scenario concept I have in mind Im curious if anyone has any other hints about Pangaea

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

I claim the 5th, because of the current mega-game that I am in.

I can comment later on this, but it will concern LA Pangaea, whose strategy is a bit different.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

That is true. I rarely play Late Age Pangaea because it steps out of the usual Pangaea mold. If any Pangaea was made to be played in an Ulmish head-to-head manner it would be LA Pangaea. The logic of it for late era does make sense but its not the Pangaea that Ive grown to love.

I have a mega-scenario in mind which will ally all 3 Pangaeans and both Oceanians as AI's. I will need to build effective god/scale builds for each.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

But unfortunately LA pangea is the only that can easily approach Carrion woods spell, that, imho, is very unthematic in la and is very thematic for ea Pangea.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Gandanlf, I know you like to play large maps but how many nations do you put up in thoses games? Basically what is frequency of nations/provinces. If I try your tactics, I always overrun by many nations because you appear weak with having relative few provinces and low troop counts with all the stealthy high end units. I guess I put to many nations in my games (existing maps with max nations) to wreck havoc on them all to keep them in control. Is the patchwork enough to keep nations away?

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Good question. I often tell people that discussing map size is not has helpful as they think. Its the province to player ratio which affects how the game will be played.

I started defining things that way on my Dom2 site. Dom2 maps


TINY less than 5 each, or less than 85 total provinces. Best done as 45 land and 8 water.

SMALL 5 each, or 85 total provinces. Best done as 75 land and 10 water.

MEDIUM 10 each, or 170 total provinces. Best done as 150 land and 20 water.

LARGE 15 each, or 255 total provinces. Best done as 225 land and 30 water.

HUGE 20 each, or 340 total provinces. Best done as 300 land and 40 water.

EPIC 25 or more each, maybe to the maximum 500 total provinces. Something like 450 land and 50 water.

But that needs redone for Dom3. In the game the devs has defined Small, Medium, Large; as 10, 15, and 20 per player. Even with all players of an age on a large map, that doesnt reach even 500 provinces.

I guess I will have to have Epic 50/player (1000 province map) and Xtreme 65/player (1500 province map)

Im sorry, I wander. To answer your question I often play up around the 50 province per player setting. Or with all the nations it would be a 1000-province map. It gives a real "wilderness" between the nations. It makes the path you travel to get there important. I also like to turn up the border mountain setting to give lots of chokepoints. Such as Tri-Mega Map
which can be downloaded here... download TriMega

Gandalf Parker

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

Province/player is important, but so is map size (or given a set # of provinces/player, number of players)

Small map, few players, even with 20+ provinces each games will be short, ending well before the most powerful late game magic. Blitz rush strategies might not dominate, but midgame will.

Few provinces per player, but lots of players, you'll need to worry about rushes, but you'll also need a good late game strategy.

Re: a difficult Pangaean strategy
 

OK this is kindof a parting shot. Probably the last little tidbit to throw this direction.

The Carrion Dragon's alternate form is a Carrion Pan. Which is stealth, and leads 40 (also 10 magic and 140 undead).

In the right game for this tactic (not too crowded) you can try this just for the surprise. Load the carrion pan with stealth followers. Maybe use a fast leader to add more support to the marching army. Then stealth-march straight to the enemy. Change the form of your pan to dragon and it will automatically unstealth meaning it will attack along with all of its followers on the following turn. This saves you using one of the scripted lines for form change which can mess some people up. And, its kindof funny when the other guy complains that you cant have snuck up on him with an unflying dragon.

If you put lots of dominion into your build then you can often keep him as your strong frontline buffer for quite a distance as your dominion keeps up with your movements. You can pay for it with things that dont affect EA and MA Pangaea much such as -3 order, -3 productivity, a touch of heat or even death. Centaur archers back him up nicely, and black harpies with harpy followers can be a steady stream of flack-troops to keep archers and infantry from surrounding him.

The standard guerrilla tactics apply to this strategy. Maybe surprise him with an attack on his castle. Crank the taxes, pillage, blood hunt, whatever to drive up his unrest over 100. Then if he takes it back he still cant build for awhile. Your god, heck your entire army, can go stealth immediately or after the unrest is high enough. Let him take it back then immediately attack again. Or not. Make him nervous.

Or, take a province right next to his castle. Crank the PD, purchase troops and mercs. Make him nervous wondering when you are coming.

This action during the initial "expansion and get comfortable" stage can vastly change the game for one or two of your neighbors. However, like most of this thread its very hard to maintain to a winning strategy. It can however be an important factor along with other Pangaean skills in making you a worthy addition to an alliance.

As always, just my humble opinion.