I've just chosen to play Pangaea in a MP game, pretty much at random, so I thought I'd look for strategies in the forum. So far I've seen evidence of three, and I thought I'd outline what I understood of each in the hope of being corrected where I've gone wrong and getting some in-depth explanation of bits I don't understand. Or of course be told of new strategies I've missed.

Pretenders: Most options for Pangaea strategy are covered by three pretenders - Lord of the Wild, Carrion Dragon and Gorgon.

The Gorgon is a highly capable SC due to its Petrify ability - every unit attacking it in melee will have to make a MR check or be turned to stone, generally causing instant death. The flip side to this is that the Gorgon has relatively few HP for an SC, making it fragile (especially against archers). Workarounds for the fragility can include adding Awe by taking 10 dominion, having a dormant pretender who can be equipped with good armour as soon as she awakens, and simply taking Earth 9.

The Gorgon has E and N innately, and extra paths cost 80. Taking more than one extra path is probably ill-advised. Air can be a good path to take, allowing the Gorgon to forge armour like the shining chainmail for Air Shield.

The Carrion Dragon is a slight oddity - a dragon that isn't a great SC. It lacks a breath weapon and 8 Prot instead of 18, and lacks in Defence also. Having 200 hp instead of 125 doesn't make up for it. In compensation it has a huge +10 Fear and extra magic paths cost only 50 points instead of 80. Despite this, it probably won't survive solo against indy provinces with more than average strength.

Carrion Dragons have D1N1 innately, which makes it relatively cheap for you to make them capable of casting Carrion Woods (N4D4 is enough, if you use boosters).

If you're determined to use one in combat, Dominion 10 for Awe +2 is probably advisable.

The Lord of the Wild can be thought of as a Titan with a domsummon of many Maenads. It's okay in combat but not exceptional. Its paths are Nature and Blood, so if you're going to do a lot of blood hunting, it'll let you get the bigger Blood summons more easily. Taken awake, it can help with early conquest due to its Maenad generation.

Paths:

Pangaea has access to Earth, Nature and Blood in reasonable degree. It also has a tiny scraping of Death, but not enough to do much with beyond carrion summons - hardly even enough for site searching with. You can get a national hero with Air (the harpy queen), so the lacking areas are Fire, Water and Astral.

White Centaurs, Pangaea's sacreds, are very competent and will benefit from any combat bless. They aren't quite top rank sacreds and they're capital only, so there's not much motivation to go for a big bless at the expense of other areas. If you're doing a Rainbow strategy it might be worth the points to go for F4W4 rather than F3W3, say.

Going for B4+ could help you make good use of your potential blood slave income to summon the more powerful demons, and if you want to be able to cast Carrion Woods in the late game then it may be worth getting N4D4.

Scales:

Turmoil is thematic for Pangaea and provides a nice boost to Maenad production. Since you probably don't want to be putting up heavy PD everywhere or keep reaction forces around against berbarians, Turmoil/Luck is a good idea.

You'll probably want either some Productivity or a lot of Sloth, depending on what units you plan on using (see below).

Growth benefits Blood hunting (in the long term) and Carrion Woods, so if you want to focus on one of those it's a priority. Otherwise, you could gain points here from taking Death.

Magic - Either Magic 1 or Magic 3 is a very good idea. Dryads should be your primary researchers, and they really benefit from the RP boost.

Units:

As an overview, MA Pan has faster units for their class then most land nations. They also have higher defence than most, and there's a lot of stealth available. You're not an Ulm, TC or Ermor, but you're pretty good.

Satyrs first. The 3 resource satyr is fairly pointless, as you get rather better ones for 4 resources. The 4 resource satyrs have a spear and either javelins or a buckler, and are competent in melee. They don't have much armour, and even the buckler satyr is pretty vulnerable to arrow fire.

Centaurs: The Centaur archer is very nice indeed - a high precision longbowman with the hits to survive an archer duel or even beat a light force on attack rear orders. However, they're size 3 and cost 30 gp each. Centaur warriors are good medium cavalry with great hits.

Minotaurs are size-3 tramplers, which is probably the best use for them. They don't have much by way of attack or defence scores to help them out in a melee, although they're pretty quick. Their battleaxes and strength would make them nice against Wooden Constructs, I suppose.

Also, Pangaea gets armoured troops. I've put these separately because if you're making serious use of them you're likely to be using a strategy focussed on their use. The armoured troops are pretty much elite heavy units.
Satyr Hoplites are heavy infantry, but faster and with high defence.
Centaur cataphracts have the armour of heavy cavalry and more speed. Importantly, they have 20 hit points. This and their massive armour makes up for having lower defence than kite shielded heavy cavalry.
War Minotaurs have a high protection to let them trample more humans before dying. Their defence is pitiful, but if they berzerk they get 13 attack and 21 protection, which is quite bearable for attacking creatures of size 3+.

Leaders:
The Black Harpy has 10 leadership, +20 stealth and flies. Now that's a good scout.
Other leaders are, well, leaders. Normally your forts will be recruiting Dryads or Pans, and you'll recruit the odd indy commander instead.

Spellcasters:
Pangaea don't have many casters, but it's easy to know what to do with them.
Pans are good battle mages, with access to some great troop buffs and Blade Wind (albeit with Earth Boots). They also have leadership 80 out of the box, which is rather nice. The ones that get D1 can be used to create Manikins and Carrion, and I guess the ones with B1 could make Sabbaths and use Reinvigoration. They also have a massive upkeep cost of 24, leading to:

Dryads. These should be your principal researchers - they have an upkeep of 3.6 rather than 24, and are a far more efficient research spend. You'll need several castles making them to keep your research rate reasonable, but it's cheaper long term than using Pans. They also do blesses for your sacred troops.

Finally, Pandemoniacs. They're sort of optional, as you may decide not to go into Blood. If you do want to go this way they're good blood hunters, but like Pans they're very expensive in upkeep. You aren't going to get a full-on blood economy out of Pangaea with these guys. What they can do is ramp up their blood level easily. Empower one to B3, make Armour of Twisting Thorns and wear it, then make the other Blood boosters and laugh nastily. With Blood you can get Cross Breeding and Dark Vines easily, and dropping a Blood booster onto a B1 Pan gives you Demon Knights. Woo.


Broad Strategies:

There are a variety of ways Pangaea can focus its national efort over the game, and I'll try to cover a few of them. You may end up using bits of each of these - they're not mutually exclusive.

1. Maenad hordes
You'll always have Maenads floating around when playing Pangaea, but with this strategy you focus on making and using them.

Maenads are generally chaff, but when you have 500 of them and a set of the mass buffs that Earth and Nature do so well they can be an effective fighting force. Early on Mass Protection is a big boost, and Strength of Giants helps too. If you can branch into air, Arrow Fend is a given. Worried about armoured troops? Pans can spam Destruction, bringing things rapidly down to the Maenad's level.

Back the Maenads up with archers and a couple of squads of Centaurs or Satyrs to crack tough nuts. You'll need anti-thug/SC power in some instances too - buffed Maenads will get through mose defence scores thanks to weight of numbers, but high prot can cause problems.

Turmoil 3 is a requirement here, and you're likely to be buying quite a few Pans as well. Luck 3 will probably help with the costs. Research focus should be for Alteration, Enchantment and maybe Construction to get the buffs you'll be wanting to use.

Post-play note:
Turmoil 3 generates real hordes of Maenads, and quickly. In combat, they die like flies. Kamikaze flies. As Pan, you're likely to get and keep Gift of Health. With that and Mass Protection on them, they still die like flies.

Luckily, they're berzerkers so they don't flee. And they often have crushing superiority in numbers. And you can make up the losses quickly.

Bottom line: they can win battles for you, and will absorb a lot of enemy spells in the process. But you'll be trailing a supply chain of fodder behind you.

Also, Turmoil 3 makes cash really tight. You'll be relying on your Maenads more than you like to think.

2. Carrion Hordes

Pangaea gets a trio of Carrion summons, which among other things are undead priests. They don't get the regular reanimation ability though, but instead get to create Manikins. You might look at the stats on a Manikin and think it's like a poor Soulless, but closer examination shows the big difference - Sleep Vines. These guys start off their attack routine with 3 attacks doing 33 stun damage. First off, this makes it pretty likely that their follow-up claw attack will get through. Secondly, your opponent's front line are going to be heavily fatigued very quickly wherever they hit a squad of Manikin types.

Carrion animators also get random non-standard manikin types when they reanimate. These are generally better than ones you get by casting the spell, but won't show up in great numbers. Some are pretty horrifying though - great big things with 50+ hits and and 3 sets of vines, and so on. You can even find carrion centaur sacreds who can fire vine arrows.

Carrion Woods generates lots of these carrion creatures across your domain, with better ones coming up in forests and near temples.

Reanimation is a slow way of generating Carrion, but you will have the Nature income to set up a factory if you want. The higher level summons (Carrion Lady and Carrion Lord are better efficiency reanimators. Carrion Centaurs make good leaders.

As well as this, Pangaea gets to add to the corpse-y goodness with a set of national buffs for undead, giving regeneration and haste to help your shambling masses of roots slaughter the opposition.

Research focus for this strategy would be Enchantment (for summons and buffs) and Construction (for Create Mandrake and Mandragora, in order to boost troop numbers).

Play notes:
Carrion animation piles up well if you're willing to pour gems at it. If you want carrion early on, expect to get yourself 10-15 Carrion Maidens. Later on, Carrion Lords are as efficient gem-wise so they're probably better to use. They also seem to create more of the high-quality carrion creatures.

Most of the Carrion units could be lumped together into one unit when it comes to a fight if you liked, but there are two exceptions. Carrion Elephants are slow but very tough tramplers, and deserve their own placement. Saggitarians are a sacred unit, and get to fire Vine Bows. Their range isn't great, but so what? Save them up till you have a good-size squad, then put them near the front of your forces and enjoy the sight of massed Vine Arrows disrupting the enemy lines.

If you want to get fancy, the carrion horses and wolves have 18-20 AP and could be used to Attack Rear. Lots of vine attacks on enemy spellcasters sounds like a good idea to me.

3. Armoured Troops.

These guys get their own heading here, as you want a different approach to play if you're going to use them extensively. Take Productivity 2 instead of Sloth, maybe even less Turmoil or some Order, and start cranking out Satyr Hoplites, Centaur Cataphracts and War Minotaurs. Research for good troop buffs (Alteration, Enchantment), and let your armies roll over the opposition. You'll want Pans for battle mages and leaders, of course. Best of all, your troops aren't going to be hopelessly crippled by the time they have *** experience thanks to recuperation.


Early turns:

How these are spent is partly up to your long-term strategy, of course. However, here are a few thoughts.
1. You don't necessarily need an early prophet, as you don't really need blesses or smites early on. That said, the starting scout is a flier with +stealth. Nice for early anti-dominion work.
2. Satyrs are fast and perceptive, making them good patrollers. Your starting force can easily patrol away 180% tax on the first turn.
3. To minimise troop losses in the first couple of turn's conquests, there are a couple of options. You could buy a Pan on turn 1, then use him as a leader to produce a constant stream of Maenad chaff who will absorb the brunt of the enemy charge. Or use most of your starting money on Centaur Archers, placing your entire force near the back of the grid on fire or hold and attack orders as appropriate. You'll lose Satyrs doing this, but not very many. Either way, expect to be running extra troops out to your army after a couple of turns.
4. Spellcasters. You can go for Dryads as cost-effective researchers and afford lots of troops. You can buy Pans and very few other troops, getting strong but costly research (if you have a dormant SC, this will help get them on the road quickly) and some good site searchers. Going for Pans may negatively affect early expansion.


Gameplay tactics:

A collation of ideas from this thread and maybe even elsewhere.

1. Fever Fetishes.

Pangaea, once it has made the initial breakthrough into Fire, has a certain edge in F gem generation. Fever Fetishes disease their wearers in order to produce gems. Normally a good way to run yourself out of leaders, but if you're using Pangaea's national troops you get a bit of an edge. Once the fetish bearer is down to their last few HP, transfer the fetish to a new bearer and let recuperation do its job. Hey presto, the previously diseased and dying leader is ready to hold a new fetish! As the holders aren't going to die, you could even do this with your Dryad researchers.

2. Stealth armies.
There aren't that many stealth units available to most nations, and generally they're not that capable in combat (barring the glamour nations, that is). Not so Pangaea. All but their most heavily armoured soldiers have stealth +0 (minotaurs aren't stealthy either, come to think of it). This means you can build stealth armies of medium cavalry and longbow archers - a bit better than Villains, really, and better balanced than the forces the glamour nations can produce. This means Pangaea can really go to town with stealth.

A potted explanation of the stealth mechanism may be in order. It's basically an opposed die roll between patrolling forces and stealthy commanders. Hiding units get an innate bonus on their roll (and add their +stealth value to this), and patrollers get a bonus based on how many units are patrolling and how fast and perceptive they are. It's important for stealthy commanders to note that if they're leading units with less than stealth +10, they'll get penalised for every troop they are leading beyond the first 10. This is why, if you sneak in with a Centaur Heirophant and 80 Satyrs, your army is detected by the first light patrolling force it comes across.

Things aren't hopeless, though. They'll just require resources that could be used elsewhere. What you need is a commander with +stealth, and luckily enough Pangaea has one. It's called a Dryad. Dryads have stealth +25, can stealth preach, and even cast small buffs if you need them to. They're also likely to be your primary researchers, so you'll have plenty around. Yes, you want to research with them, but think of things this way: you'll need to build a stealth leader for your army anyway. That means using a fortress, and making one less Dryad. This way, you still make the dryad but don't research with it.

Basic stealth doctrine for Pan is this: One dryad leader can lead 20-25 troops and still be almost undetectable by most patrolling forces. So that's what you do. Send out Dryads with squads of 20-25 of whatever units you're using. 25 centaur archers and 25 centaur warriors (white centaurs if you have a good bless) can take out most provinces that don't actually have a campaign army in them. Even 50 Satyrs will take out an awful lot of defences. 25 Satyrs will beat light to medium PD in many nations.

If you don't want to attack the enemy directly, then Dryads can go out as stealth preachers. To really annoy them, have them leading groups of Revelers and cause unrest as you go.

You could in theory domkill someone with enough dryads preaching in their territory, but it'd take an awful lot of dryads who could be researching instead.

3. Dryad Thugs.
This may not seem like an obvious choice, but Dryads are actually quite competent as thugs. They have innate Awe, which is a great piece of protection. Kitted out with some decent equipment (vine shield/eye shield, good armour/cloak of shadows, luck/regen/other buffs from misc slots, and of course a good hitty stick), they can solo most indys and upset enemy PD no end. They can be scripted with those nice spellsongs, too. Arrows can be a weakness though, as they don't have very many hits.

4. Haunted Woods.

With this up, spells like Swarm within your dominion get a whole new significance. The dragonflies you normally get certainly inconvenience the enemy a little, but when they turn into Vine Men after being hit it's a whole new problem. Creeping Doom is pretty fun this way too.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

It's best not to have your MP strategy rely on a Global, by the time you're able to cast it someone else will be able to dispel it.

Also I highly suggest taking Gorgon with any nation that can, you can still go Maenad swarm strategy, but she'll boost your early expansion through the roof.

A Gorgon with Dom 10 can beat weaker indeps handily from turn 2 on, especially with a smiting prophet and some distraction chaff.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I'll second that there is little reason not to take a Gorgon if you are able.

In addition to her utility with any strategy, the e9n4 bless is also a strong option for any Pan era.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I play MA Pangaea almost the same as EA Pangaea, except you get those unbelievably awesome Centaur Cataphracts. I think your best bet is a dominion 10 awake Gorgon. In single player I take Turmoil 1, Sloth 1, Growth 1, Luck 1, Magic 1 and that leaves you with 8 points. I'm sure there's a more ideal setting for MP.

I actually don't bother too much with Hoplites and Minotaurs, Cataphracts and Maenads should take you through all the indys no problem. I don't think the undead angle is strong enough either.

I'm not sure what you do with ALL your nature gems, but since you don't have astral you'll probably Faery Trod a lot. You can also forge Vine Shields, Eye Shields, and Rings of Regeneration en masse. Lamia Queens help you diversify your extremely limited magic paths. Alchemy? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I like the money from order, so i do not take turmoil. I also like growth for the blood magic.

Gorgon is a must, but she is somewhat fragile with the low hps. So id take a dormant gorgon with 2 air, 4e and 5n. When she gets some alt buffs, she will be tougher than nails.

Expansion is easy with castle bought troops. Alt 5 is a good goal so you can cast mother oak. Since you have no real thugs, unless you can branch into death magic, i would do blood.

id blood hunt early and research blood 1 early and crank out some spine devils. they are tough and cheap.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Its highly unorthodox but i have won a game (by proxy) where I took good scales Order 3 Production 3 and an imprisioned Monolith and just cranked out the war minotuars.

War minotuar rush was so effective I took out two of my neighbors and controled 1/3 of the map before I had to switch tactics. Do not underestimate them, even against Hydras and Elephants and Giants they won.

I got bored and really busy and had to sub the rest of the game out, but Pangea ended up winning under the leadership of Baalz (who is a much better player than I).

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I've only played EA Pangaea in MP, but I think that much of the same stategies apply. And I agree with the consensus.. Gorgon is a must.

Recruit a lot of Pans. They are expensive, but they are good researchers, and they summon a lot of Maenads. You cannot discount the power of freespawn Maenads. They don't hold up well against archers, but they have a very good attack, and they hardly ever rout.

Your easy Nature gem income can be applied rather quickly, if you take a Gorgon with E9, N5, sleeping, by casting Mother Oak and then Gift of Health. These are not usually dispelled by the other players, since they are not seen as very powerful Globals, and don't cause any harm to the other players.

Late game is tough. Hopefully you have found some indy mages that can round out your forces. Otherwise, you will fall to Tartarians and Astral summons.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Pan also works very well with a Rainbow with F4W4S4 and wathever else you want, as magic diverity wont hurt, especially later on.

Then i would use white cenataurs and CWs, cataphracts just get fatigued and get killed easily, also cataphracts thend to tire out while storming fortresses, when you use CWs with relieve your fatigue will stay down at 0, and you can go sloth 3.

And after you have army of gold, the protection does no longer matter anyway.

And i would do my research with dryads, if you use magic 1, you pay 1 gold upkeep per RP with dryads, as opposed to 2,6 per RP with pans, and with pangaea you will have high upkeep anyway (pan costs 24 gold per turn.)

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Man, all the games I've played with Pan, and I never noticed that the Pans cost that much upkeep. No wonder I'm always broke when playing Pangaea. Thanks Hadrian.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Is it just me or is there a bunch more holy manikin spells in enchantment with the latest patch? Soem gret buffs for them (primarily regen).

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

They are listed in my manual, so the spells have existed from the release. It might be that they have only been available for LA Pangaea, or you just never noticed them.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I always keep this in mind when massing units.
Normal units cost equal to their gold cost divided by 15.
Whilst all sacred units cost half that (divided by 30).

So lots of pricey mage researchers with no holiness (unlike Dryad) will empty your coffers in no time.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Time to alter the top post.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Gorgons are very powerful, no doubt, but are they really the only option? They limit you to earth and nature, the paths that Pangea get anyway, so you are very limited in magic diversity throughout the game.

Surely there has got to be something to say for increasing magic diversity.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Thanks for the equation. I will keep that in mind in the future.

The thing with the Pans though, is they bring the freespawn. If you are going with a massed Maenads strategy, you want quite a few Pans to fill out your armies.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Top post has been substantially altered, making it more of a strategy guide.

Comments would be welcomed.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Fever fetishes might also be an option. You've got plenty of nature income and the fetishes supply the fire gems. You also have rejuvenating researchers to juggle the fetishes around on. Remove fever fetish when a casters health becomes too low and switch it to another, allowing the first to heal.

A couple of harpy scouts juggling a bane venom charm can also be used to damage opponents. I did some tests a while back and bane venom charms seem to disease 5% of an enemy army of normal troops each turn.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

As an addition, keep in mind the viability of dominion victories: you have stacks of high-stealth H2 priests. to use I won a MP game once with a N4E4A4 Dom9 gorgon; I believe my scales were Turmoil 3 Sloth 2 Growth 3 Luck 2 Drain 2. I got into a pair of protracted mid-game wars with two nations (Ermor, Caelum) in far more magically-powerful positions, and they both went like this:

Fight holding actions with Maenads and various Centaurs to slow down their armies. Use Cloud Trapeze to drop the gorgon on really powerful armies, slaughtering them mercilessly. Meanwhile, sneak 2 dryads into every single enemy province and start preaching like mad. Eventually, they will throw in the towel in frustration with the gorgon, or get dom-killed.

Most of the time, I think my gorgon was kitted out with Rainbow Armor, Weightless Tower Shield or Shield of Valor, Frost Brand, Birch Boots, Amulent of Antimagic, and Amulet of Revig or Pendant of Luck. High dominion and sporadic control of Gift of Health gave her enough HP, and her MR was ~32 in dominion (don't forget Iron Will!), so my only real fears were Drain Life/L4L spam and Gifts from Heaven.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I like to give 2 shields to my Gorgon : a Charcoal and MR or Luck one.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

More has been added to the top post again.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Nice job Gregstrom. I think you have summed up Pangaea nicely. I wish I had the dedication to write up such a treatise. I am too busy playing though, to spend time writing something like this. That, and perhaps, I don't want other players to see my stategies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Ah well, I don't play Pan so much yet. And of course the real power of any strategy is in its execution http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif. Writing this has been a learning experience for me, actually. I find that putting all this onto paper has really added to my comprehension of how Pan works. And there's more to come, including more of the contributions by other people on this thread.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Hum, some questions, about armored units... I've been trying a few games with pangaea against the Ai and am about to start a multiplayer game with it. The main problem I faced is that I'm always having trouble against armored units.

The only things I've found that can actually hold the line without suffering huge losses are the armored units you control (I mainly used centaurs), and manikins (probably due to the stun effect). Manikins are rather hard to get though... a few times I got them with independant shamans (the ones that costs 110 and have 10% chance of death, since they are sacred, they are as good as dryads for research purposes and spellcasting), the other times I used a pan to summon them (but it seemed like a waste of time for a 350 gold unit). So I can't really rely on that. Using my pretender seems even more of a waste. Finally, armored units don't come cheap when you try to max out maenads numbers (turmoil 3, building forts in forest if possible).

What I actually want to ask is, apart from destruction, mass protection which are given in the opening post, what other spells or units can be used to handle them in early game and later, relying on national units mostly ?

What I currently do is giving the armored units something to waste their attack on (either the armored centaurs or maenads) while the bulk of my forces attack the archers behind, eventually causing enough killing to rout them, surrounding them in the process, and pelting them with centaur archer fire. That works well with independants but against human players or AI, obviously, this leads to an army of armored troups I won't be able to handle later on, and won't work against a army with high defense.

Another idea I thought of was making minotaur thugs. They seem best suited for it since the white centaurs commander already have a bow and don't need to go melee... other commanders are mages, and expensive ones. I've got little experience with making thugs since I just got the game though, so I'd like some advice on that. Again, only relying on national capabilities if possible. But since Pangaea has good access to earth, and access to nature magic goodies like ring of regen and invigoration, it looked like a good idea.

So... any advice on that ?

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Armored units are quite easily dealt with the nice tune of dancing death and tune of growth that your dryads can sing. Now, now, I know you will all say it's too risky having mages up front but stay with me.

First let's look at "Tune of Dancing Death":

Area effect 15, stun damage 31+, fatigue 5, armor negating, magic resistance negates.

"Tune of Growth"
AoE 15, entangles enemies, depends on growth scale

The clever thing is that these tunes comes in harmony with comman pangean scales and strategies.
Growth adds to ToG
Magic +3 helps ToDD negate MR on enemies
200gp temples makes it very cheap to spread dominion
The dryad is cheap in initial cost (110), cheap in large numbers due to holiness, and is also a priest able to build temples.
Dryad has Awe +2 and no encumbering armor + able to cast barkskin with her N1 + able to forge a hide shield with the same to protect her from arrows.

The plan
Take three or four dryads (no less for best effect).
Forge a barkskin shield for each one (easy with 6N gem income from start)
Research alteration 1
Attack where dominion and scale is on your side to help with awe and magic negation.
In battle, place some chaff first (satyrs or maenads) and behind them the dryads mixed with satyrs (almost same movement). Script: 1 barkskin 2 attack one, ToDD, ToDD, Tune of Fear.

That is it. It really does work and the dryads thanks to awe, chaff, barkskin and shield. I always use this strategy when expanding and the results are more than often great. Of course you will rarely lose a dryad now and then but it is worth considering how many troops you would lose otherwise.

Try it. Experiment with placement as that is key.

Oh, tune of growth is just ridiculously effective on barbarians because of low MR (against growth) and low morale (against awe). Also, they have no bows to shoot the dryads with. That is one reason I always buy a dryad on the first turn so that I can claim any province defended by barbarians much easier.

I just want to add that the trick is really to use multiple dryads to sing the tunes as the three songs scale nicely.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I'll have to try that. It sounds pretty useful !

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

A little off topic, but what other nations have the Gorgon?

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Here is a small demonstration of what I am talking about. Note that the dryads do not use the barkskin spell as it isn't researched yet. They could of course also benefit from any blessing you like.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

Sauromatia is the only one I believe.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif
Thanks for the replay. One more strategy I need to learn to use.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

While I greatly admire the creativity of this tactic, I just can't see it being much use in competitive MP.

First of all, Pan is ironically one of the nations least suited for growth scale, with no old mages and very optional blood hunting. As I recall the growth effect on the vines is pretty minor in any case.

The biggest problems though are simply how long it takes to get this rolling, and the lost research by not having those dryads researching. On average indy settings, you can more or less recruit an expanding army every turn just from revelers, without losing the research or spending the gems. Not to mention being more all purposely useful when you run into another player.

On an unrelated note, one very important Pan tactic I have not seen mentioned here is the turn 1 harpy buy. If you buy a full pack of harpies the first turn, you can usaully set them to patrolling with taxes at 200%, even while your starting army goes off to conquer. This can lead to a huge leg up in the early game, with all of Pangeaea's effective but gold intensive troop options. It also helps with affording those early Pans and pretty much everything else, the catch of course is lower income late game from your capital. With the additional gold, though, you have good chance of capturing additional capitals anyway.

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Growth is not needed of course, as the tunes work very well even without it (perhaps death is too much though).

Yes you are losing some research, but as dryads are also pretty good commanders (40) they can lead small armies. With tunes they can cut down on troop amount directing money to fortresses leading to faster research.

I can agree on that dryads are not the best unit to use initially, though later on you will have loads of them as you hire them as researchers as well. Some of them could be used behind enemy lines accompanied with revelers and cause some damage. You might have noticed that they now have +25 stealth making them ideal stealth preachers whom are also capable of defending themselves.

Harpies are good for scouting and patrolling, that is for sure. Thanks for the tip.

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I think any effective Pan strat must utilize their amazing ability for stealth and cavalry raids. They simply have the best troops for such a strategy.

However, this nation is always been vexing for me to play. I try and get a grasp on the options they have available; but the requirements for pursuing any given strategy are often very contradictory to each other (high turmoil for Maened, but gold intensive troops, for example). Pan is the essence of chaos, and it is always hard for me to get a handle on this unusual nation.

Also, I think their nation specific pretenders are next to useless (with the exception of the Gorgon). LotW? Why would I want to spend actual design points on a glorified Pan? The Carrion Drag seems like a reasonable choice, but if you are serious about a carrion strat, you can pursue one as LA Pan without the dragon; thus in relation making this pretender in any other age a questionable investment.

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I'm still unclear if you are recommending it for expanding vs indies, or actually employing it against other nations. Expanding seems doable, though rather suboptimal, due to research troubles. Applying it directly against human players, the tactic strikes me as risky in the extreme, there are any number of counters from sacreds to mindless units to archers to damage spells.

I'd also advise against wasting time with stealth preaching in all but the most niche of situations (mostly after all research has been completed and you have many weak mage priests with little else to so).

Scout harpies I consider a whole other matter from early patrolling, even though harpy scouts have ten leadership, I wouldn't bother giving them harpy troops.

Anyway, I don't mean to be argumentative, just fostering some lively debate.

EDIT: I wholly agree on the lord of the wild being a quite poor choice (and the carrion dragon being by and large overshadowed by other choices), but it's not really an issue specific to Pan or national pretenders.

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Expanding undies!

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Well, I like him.

Because you can skip recruiting pans in the first few turns of the game, get loads of maenads anyway, and concentrate on dryad / research, and have a few more centaurs / minotaurs / satyrs in the first turns. Which can also help a lot in getting provinces. Because in my opinion, pans are mostly useful for maenads or diversifying magic path (useful in mid game).

Also, if you take some blood magic with him, you can completly skip the use of pandemoniac and concentrate on commander summon with blood magic / pans.

Finally, he's stealthy. That means that you can also use the one automatic dominion increase in enemy territory.

While it may not be competitive enough or not suited to your tastes, maybe... but he's not useless. Far from it. Even if I got little doubt that other pretender surpass him in all the function I see him do, he can, like most pangaea troops, adapt to a lot of situations.

Actually, if it were not for the maenads possible access to blood magic (allowing sabbath and reinvigorisation) and death magic (carrions), I'll skip pans altogether. Quite often, getting 3 dryads will be more useful than a single Pan. Dryads are better for preaching, researching, stealth, their price means you don't care much if a few die (which isn't the case for pans... 3 dead is 1k gold gone to waste). In my opinion, pans are useful for advanced casting of earth and nature spells (with boosters), to start a death magic and blood magic economy, and to generate troops. I rarely want them on the front lines. However, they are very useful behind generating maenads, creating items and casting spells. Which means you don't actually need that many of them.

Speaking of which, another use for dryads and carrion commanders are wine arrow firing platform... however you need to research evocation 2. For me, it looks like evocation is not the most useful path to research, since the nature spells are mostly useful with poison-resistant troops, and since there is no spell in it that can be casted with pans (nor any other native units for that matter). That said, wines and carrions are immune to poison and summoned commanders have varying amounts of nature magic, so spamming poison cloud in combinaison with those troops could lead good results, but evocation 6 is a big drawback for that.

One last thing for carrion summons. AFAIK, the carrion lords are the only units you have with 3 level in priest magic. They are also stealthy, and got 3 in nature magic too. That make it interresting to summon a few with pans empowered or boosted in death magic.

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Ah, right to the heart of the issue, an inescapable point (at least, barring stealth edits).

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Well, putting all your money into research in the early game is one viable strategy.
Another is to put it in military units (if you have good ones as Pan does) to expand your economy by grabbing as many provinces as possible and still be able to defend them from early rushers.
Yet another, and a more common one, is to try doing everything at once. This will of course make your error marginal smaller, as one unlucky event (like losing your pretender) can cost you the game.

Which way you choose depends of course on the situation at hand, like your own nation, the psyche of your opponents, the map size and so forth.

The point I'm making is that there isn't just one "best way" to begin the game. There are a lot of difficult questions to answer and decide upon. Yes research is important, but so is expanding, not to forget defense or offense against other players. Should you balance all these or will one lead to the other in a more stable and powerful way if you maximize it? Indeed difficult questions, not easily answered.

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kasavada: There are a couple of evocations that Pans can cast, although most will need Earth Boots or Summon Earthpower to do it. Firstly, there's Blade Wind, which isn't too shabby a spell. Then there's Earthquake - a bit of a stretch for most Pans, but if you're using lots of armoured centaurs then you can get away with casting a couple in a fight, causing much more suffering to the enemy than yourself.

[edit] Added some notes on early turns.

Re: MA Pangaea strategies
 

I'd say this only goes up to a point. Putting aside somewhat degenerate/special situations (very odd game settings, some duels), most front runner players follow rather consistent paths. There are many things you will almost never see such players use, and others that will almost always get abused at the slightest opportunity. So I suppose my point is that while a true and ultimate "best way" is unlikely to be agreed upon, it is in general possible to classify a particular tactic as useful or suboptimal with a significant degree of accuracy.

With this particular tactic what I'm getting at is I believe you can expand just as fast or faster without it while maintaining faster research.

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Ah thanks. It's really a big stretch though, since about 1/4 of pans start with 3 earth . http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

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pans are not so stealthy when the leaderless maenads attack the province he is in. So the lord of the wild.
Why you even want to patrol? to catch spies? or you are blood hunting with more than four bood mages?

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Well, Summon Earthpower takes E2 up to E3 for Bladewind, and Earthquake is enough of a niche spell that 1 in 4 being able to cast it is plenty.

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I just tested it, it sounded like fun : imagine if you could move from places to places generating chaff and taking over provinces that way... But leaderless means that they rout instantly, so it doesn't work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif. Furthermore they are generated at the end of the turn, so it's too late to try to give them a leader and hope they'll join.

This would work if maenads came with leaders though...

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Damn you, QM, for being (I believe) correct.

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Notes added on Fever Fetishes and stealth.

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Slightly off-topic, but LA Ulm's vampire counts have the same problem as Pans: although they're stealthy, they can generate unstealthy troops.

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I was messing around with Pangaea commanders in order to find out what possible thugs to make with them. And testing them against PD only (not other SC or thugs).

All tests I made failed but one : the only commander i found capable of taking PD by herself (by now, you might have guessed), is the wonderful dryad. Well, I'm probably bad at making thugs anyway... so if you guys have any idea for other build, let me know.

Ok, here is the build :
Frost brand : Obviously other weapons might work just as well.
Eye shield. Cheap, and easy to make since you have loads of nature mage running around.
Horned Helmet. I had nothing better to use... yeah I know.
Robe of shadows. Being ethereal works wonders against PD...
Boots of the messenger. Because fatigues is bad.
Regen ring.
Luck amulet.

This dryad can take most indy province on her own. However, a single shot can take her out, so it's probably not so great. I had trouble only with heavy cavalry provinces though, everything else is fair game. Using more or less the same items I tried with the other non-mage units, and it failed. The thing is the dryad is sacred and has awe, and that's the reason she lives after most fight. She can self-bless, so with another pretender you can probably drop the regen ring and possibly the boots to use something more useful.

PS : this was with construction 4.

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@kasnavada: In my last game, it was core of my early strategy.
Dryad with any weapon + Eye shield + Luck amulet buff herself with NE-minor bless + barkskin + Holy Avenger + Elemental fortitude. This girl easy take even Pithium PD. Try to build as many as possible and raid like crazy...

PS : this was with construction 2