Pangaeda: New Age - the redheaded stepchild of Dom2?

[Blitz]

This is my first in-depth strategy essay on Dominions 2. Having near-obsessively played this game since it's release, I'd like to share some of my ideas about one of the least played domains, that of Pangaea: New Age. It isn't the strongest (IMHO Emor is horribly unbalanced), nor is it the most versatile (probably Tien Chi), but it's infantry and cavalry units are second-to-none which make this a very good race for beginners.

Pangaea's biggest strength is probably the recuperation ability of its units. The afflictions that plague other armies simply don't affect Pangaea. No more limping infantries bringing up the rear. No one-eyed archers putting arrows in the backs of your cavalry. When you take into account the expense of some of the units you will field, this is a nice addition indeed. As with all things in this game, there is a counterbalance for this weakness. Your mages are only mediocre, and prohibitively expensive. You have no good researching unit, and your priests are only level 2. There are ways to overcome these weaknesses, however. We'll get into that later.

You have four recruitable satyr infantry to chose from. Three of them are complete garbage, but the fourth is certianly not. The Satyr Hoplite is a reasonably priced (13 gold), 14hp infantry unit with reasonable defensive capabilities. You won't need many of these guys, but they definately solve one of vanilla Pangaeda's biggest problems - no good cheap initial infantry. Make 20 or so of these at the start of the game and they'll stick around quite a while.

Your cavalry unit is the Centaur Cataphract. The unit description states that they are a match for the cavalry of man, and this is certianly the case. Not only do they have 20 armor and 14 defense, but 20 hit points and of course recuperation. When you consider their low cost (40 gold), this is one of the better cavalry units in the game, certianly stronger than regular heavy cav, and at half the price of Vans or other elite cavalry, perhaps your best bang for the buck flanker around. their biggest drawback is that they do not have lances for a shock charge. This is regrettable, but we'll have to deal with it.

Next we have two different Minotaur units. The first one is the minotaur soldier. While this unit is strong in its own right, it is inferior in every way except speed and cost to the second, the spectacular Grove Guard. For 50 gold and 57 resources you get a 25hp 18def 17str trampling recuperating berserking monster. Short of a hydra or Neifl giant, this is the single best frontline unit around, at a fraction of the cost. 10 minotaurs against 3 giants or 2 hydras isn't even close, and a horde of 20 will shred any front wall they come up against. Even better, unlike giants they stand 2 to a grid for a more potent frontline. If that's not enough, unlike the elites of most other nations, you can recruit these anywhere. Simply put, this unit is the reason to play Pangaeda New Age.

Finally we have our bless unit. The Satyr Hoplite is a medium infantry unit with awe. If you want to go with a bless strategy, I'd suggest not playing this theme. These guys might be a nice unit for another race, but with Pangaeda's weak priests and mages and superior heavy infantry, there are better strategies out there for sure.

Keeping with the ground-pounding theme, Pangaeda again has some of the best melee commanders out there. All three are upgraded Versions of their respective units. Notable is the Centaur leader. As my prophet, he did a real nice job of flanking the initial independants. Prophet bonuses boost him to as high as 40-45 hit points, good enough to solo most backlines and win his share of arena fights.

Unfortunately, Pangaeda has some of the poorest choices for spellcasters around. Dryad priests are only 2 power, with 1 point of nature magery. the Pan is not a bad caster at GGGE?, but costs 350 gold and is far too expensive to use as a researcher.

With a little thought and some luck, these weaknesses can be overcome. The Pan is the only spellcaster that is guaranteed to be able to cast Strength of Gaia, which is a really nice buff spell (GGGE +barkskin +regeneration +nature magic). Throw some earth boots on a pan and you can open with Gaia and Summon Earth Power, giving you 4G and 3E, plus barkskin, regen, and recuperation. Nice. This also allows the casting of the really nice third-sphere earth spells. I like to research Conjuration for these two spells (as well as Summon Kithaironic Lion, one of the better summons). Higher up the conjuration tree we have Summon Couatil, which would solve our priest problems nicely.

But the biggest problem we have is the lack of a decent researcher. The answer is obvious. Find sages. Fast. One of the most common special sites, I've only failed to locate one in a couple of games, and in those cases I found some other independant researcher. The key of course is a rainbow mage as pretender. You can build up insanely strong combatant leaders in this theme anyways, so a supercombatant isn't really needed. A wraith-sworded trampling berserking minotaur isn't a VQ, but then again nothing is. Get some independant mages to back up your forces and your weaknesses are covered. Even if you can't find sites to compliment your army, you can always summon a mage leader to fill in the gaps. Any of the royal court summons are nice additions, another reason to shoot the conjuration tree.

Hopefully this inspires some people to play this theme a little more. I think it's one of the more interesting ones out there. It's sometimes easier to find a few good mages and priests than to find a whole new army halfway through the game. Minotaurs are never obsolete!

[ April 27, 2004, 23:44: Message edited by: Blitz ]