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| 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.
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:
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. 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). 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. Comments: -> 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. -> 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? -> 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. -> 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). -> 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. -> 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.) -> 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. -> 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. I like to give 2 shields to my Gorgon : a Charcoal and MR or Luck one. -> rmored 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. response: 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. counter: 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. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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