With fear of repeating myself, try to use them in combination with magic; which in turn means do not use them alone early on.
When playing EA Agartha I see them only as "meat shields" in the beginning (before any defense reducing spells). They are there to let the Troglodytes (which are expensive) get to the archers and commanders. Later on I use them (as I wrote above) with "Weight of stones", "Terror" (they have good MR) and so on.
Without Troglodytes, as is the case with MA and LA Agartha, you should not use the pale ones early on. They do a much better job when they have some magic to back them up.
Some tips:
You could try an awake Risen Oracle who starts with both death and earth and let him deal out the damage whilst the pale ones protects him.
When I play I pretty much let him cast "fists of iron" which is devastating for almost any foe in close combat, especially when you have high earth magic. Combine this with a reasonable death magic skill (+ to fear) and you can rout a much bigger force. Which finally enables your pale ones to kill something easily (-4 to defense).
