Pangaea advice

The biggest Pangaean advice that is more than often overlooked is:

Stealth Preachers. Cheap, easy Temples thrown up and stealth preachers allow you to take a generally lower domain than you would using most other nations. While letting you focus your Domain where you need it most (in offensives).

[Saxon]

This thread got my interest in this race fired up again, so I started a new game. I built a Pretender with Death five, which gives blessed units lesser fear. I have been using a nice horde of holy centaurs in combination with the Panic spell and some archers to good effect.

I put the centaurs on hold and attack nearest, the archers fire at nearest and script Panic for a pair of mages. By the time the enemy troops get close, they have reduced moral due to spells and arrow fire. The centaurs charge in, deal out some more damage and their lesser fear effect adds to the total “fear factor”.

Perhaps not a game winning strategy, but it is a nice combination of small things adding up to turn a lot of battles for me.

My Pretender is the Carrion Dragon, Stinky, and he also has a good fear effect. The thing is that he got cursed in his first battle and spends most of his time with massive battle afflictions. I mostly use him for searching and the occasion battle when healthy, but were he not cursed, he would fit nicely into the fear combination listed above.

Any suggestions on how to boost this strategy would be welcome.

[Vynd]

Hmm, well doesn't Pangaea have a N1 "spell song" for causing fear? You could maybe throw some Dryads into the mix, casting that one. They have Awe, which combined with the fact that you're lowering the morale of all your enemies ought to make them tough to hit.

Just watch out for those evil undead.

[Scott Hebert]

While probably not a MP-viable strategy, I have considered two strategies for Pangaea, one that I've tested.

1) Maenad hordes. Under this strategy, you don't use Pangaean national troops. You just hire Pans, who attract Maenads, who make up your army. As others have said, it doesn't take long for the Maenads to get completely out of hand. 20 Maenads aren't much of an issue, but 200 of them are.

2) Maenad Blood. With this, you use the same strategy as above, but instead of attacking with all of them, you use the Maenads to patrol to control the unrest from Bloodhunting with Pandemoniacs. Probably a better long-term strategy, in that you'll have Blood summons as the core of your army instead of endless hordes of Maenads.

Just an idea or two.

Scott

[Gandalf Parker]

Pangaea is one of my favorite nations. And of course everyone can come up with their own methods of play. But Im always amazed at how many people want to play Pangaea as though it was Ulm.

Im sorry but to me the built-in advantage of Pangaea is its sneak ability. All of my strategys are built around the sneak ability. I might be playing them offensively, defensively, magic push, items push, assassination push, or strong alliance; but it will still be making major use of the sneak ability.
Just my opinion.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
While probably not a MP-viable strategy, I have considered two strategies for Pangaea, one that I've tested.

The flavor text mentions that Maenads are crummy patrollers. Whether or not this is actually true is subject to interpretation. They are, however, certainly MP-viable: A tendency to produce Pans bolsters your research, and Maenads can actually inflict some serious damage in large numbers, and are entirely expendable. A horde of Maenads, with enough Pans around, can grow to a size that rivals an Ermorian horde, and there ain't nothing better than something free, especially since Pan's other troops are either crummy or overly expensive and difficult to produce. When it comes to regular troops, I find that quantity outweighs quality, as the quality regular troops can achieve is limited by their lack of serious hardware.

Originally posted by Vynd:
Just watch out for those evil undead.

Heh, the dryads are P3s and don't really fear the rank and file of the undead all that much either.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
The flavor text mentions that Maenads are crummy patrollers. Whether or not this is actually true is subject to interpretation.

That should be true since Dominions PPP. The huge income you could gather when setting taxes to 200% and patrolling with free & upkeep-free Maenads was insane. Maenad were nerfed in this respect in an early patch.

They are, however, certainly MP-viable: A tendency to produce Pans bolsters your research, and Maenads can actually inflict some serious damage in large numbers, and are entirely expendable.

Even more so when they can raise again as Manikins ;-)

[Vynd]

Besides, its not thematic for Maenads to be good patrolers. They like Turmoil! Send them out to patrol, they'll probably start breaking stuff and setting it on fire. Furthermore, they're naked. How, I ask you, can a bunch of naked women prowling around make things calmer? Especially when they start running into their families, ex-boyfriends, etc.

Oh, and regarding my comment about watching out for the undead... I was thinking in terms of how none of this fear stuff will do anything to units that know no fear. But of course Norfleet is perfectly right, the Dryads are powerful priests. So all the more reason to throw them into the mix.

[Vynd]

Is the right side the front and the left side the back in your diagram, like in the troop deployment screen?

[WraithLord]

Is the right side the front and the left side the back in your diagram, like in the troop deployment screen?

yes.