Guide: MA Pangaea strategies

[quantum_mechani]

RamsHead said:

Expanding undies!

Ah, right to the heart of the issue, an inescapable point (at least, barring stealth edits).

[Dedas]

Well, putting all your money into research in the early game is one viable strategy.
Another is to put it in military units (if you have good ones as Pan does) to expand your economy by grabbing as many provinces as possible and still be able to defend them from early rushers.
Yet another, and a more common one, is to try doing everything at once. This will of course make your error marginal smaller, as one unlucky event (like losing your pretender) can cost you the game.

Which way you choose depends of course on the situation at hand, like your own nation, the psyche of your opponents, the map size and so forth.

The point I'm making is that there isn't just one "best way" to begin the game. There are a lot of difficult questions to answer and decide upon. Yes research is important, but so is expanding, not to forget defense or offense against other players. Should you balance all these or will one lead to the other in a more stable and powerful way if you maximize it? Indeed difficult questions, not easily answered.

[Gregstrom]

kasavada: There are a couple of evocations that Pans can cast, although most will need Earth Boots or Summon Earthpower to do it. Firstly, there's Blade Wind, which isn't too shabby a spell. Then there's Earthquake - a bit of a stretch for most Pans, but if you're using lots of armoured centaurs then you can get away with casting a couple in a fight, causing much more suffering to the enemy than yourself.

[edit] Added some notes on early turns.

[kasnavada]

Gregstrom said:
kasavada: There are a couple of evocations that Pans can cast, although most will need Earth Boots or Summon Earthpower to do it. Firstly, there's Blade Wind, which isn't too shabby a spell. Then there's Earthquake - a bit of a stretch for most Pans, but if you're using lots of armoured centaurs then you can get away with casting a couple in a fight, causing much more suffering to the enemy than yourself.

Ah thanks. It's really a big stretch though, since about 1/4 of pans start with 3 earth .

[Torin]

pans are not so stealthy when the leaderless maenads attack the province he is in. So the lord of the wild.
Why you even want to patrol? to catch spies? or you are blood hunting with more than four bood mages?

[llamabeast]

Ah thanks. It's really a big stretch though, since about 1/4 of pans start with 3 earth .

Well, Summon Earthpower takes E2 up to E3 for Bladewind, and Earthquake is enough of a niche spell that 1 in 4 being able to cast it is plenty.

[Peacekeeper]

Torin said:
pans are not so stealthy when the leaderless maenads attack the province he is in. So the lord of the wild.
Why you even want to patrol? to catch spies? or you are blood hunting with more than four bood mages?

quantum_mechani said:
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.

[kasnavada]

pans are not so stealthy when the leaderless maenads attack the province he is in. So the lord of the wild.

I just tested it, it sounded like fun : imagine if you could move from places to places generating chaff and taking over provinces that way... But leaderless means that they rout instantly, so it doesn't work . Furthermore they are generated at the end of the turn, so it's too late to try to give them a leader and hope they'll join.

This would work if maenads came with leaders though...

[quantum_mechani]

Dedas said:

The point I'm making is that there isn't just one "best way" to begin the game. There are a lot of difficult questions to answer and decide upon. Yes research is important, but so is expanding, not to forget defense or offense against other players. Should you balance all these or will one lead to the other in a more stable and powerful way if you maximize it? Indeed difficult questions, not easily answered.

I'd say this only goes up to a point. Putting aside somewhat degenerate/special situations (very odd game settings, some duels), most front runner players follow rather consistent paths. There are many things you will almost never see such players use, and others that will almost always get abused at the slightest opportunity. So I suppose my point is that while a true and ultimate "best way" is unlikely to be agreed upon, it is in general possible to classify a particular tactic as useful or suboptimal with a significant degree of accuracy.

With this particular tactic what I'm getting at is I believe you can expand just as fast or faster without it while maintaining faster research.