.com.unity Forums - Guide MA Pangaea strategies

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.