Guide to playing Patala competitively

[KissBlade]

Just as a note first off, I don't usually play SP unless it's for testing reasons. You can get away with almost anything against the computer anyway because the AI is retarded. This guide is for Patala in MP, enjoy! ^.^

Description
Patala is a nation of Nagahs who uses a few primate minions to do their biddings. But they're mostly Nagahs =). You can read the manual for most of their descriptive stuff not to mention right click most of the units to see what they cost, etc. I'm assuming you know how to read when writing this guide so I'm not going to bother with menial details.

Units:

Markata: I have no idea why these are in the game. Those clubs aren't going to deal much damage (read: none) and they die like flies. Actually no, they die way easier than flies. Damn buggers. Never recruit this unit. Even if you need a archer decoy. VERY lame version of lobo guards.
Markata archers: Oh god, I've never even SEEN small bows before. Oh jeebus these suck *** too. Because they suck so much and are cheap, great for sacrificial lambs though as archer decoys, lance soakers. Most good players will use "target archers" against you, so use these to mess up their script. I don't build much of these since your initial squad of them should last you awhile but reinforce with these every so and often to save your more valuable troops.
Atavi archers: they can move pretty fast on the map and have stealth. They have bows too and aren't too expensive. Still they because they're pretty much like villains. And villains suck. Unless they're super villains. Which these certainly are not.

Update: Alright they're not THAT bad in second thought. They have great raiding potential with a nagini leader (change shape for stealth) who can script quickening. Since raiding is pretty much the bread and butter of early to mid game wars, it's a good deterrent against trigger happy players. Of course, I'd probably just bluff that I have these during negotiation stage and avoid recruiting them altogether that way. =)
Vanara Archer: Atavi archers without the stealth and more armor and more resource cost. Needless to say, they suck too.
Vanara Infantry: Like Vanara archers except they get a buckler instead of the bow. Average cost. Pretty much a crappy version of heavy infantry indies. So ... you won't be buying much of them either.
Vanara Swordsmen: Their stats aren't terrible. A bit better than Vanara Infantry. Their gold to resource ratio isn't bad if you have little gold. But generally if you have no gold you shouldn't be buying subpar troops anyway because heavy infantry from indies are still better. Not a terrible choice for the first few turns if for some unknown reason you took prod: 3 for this nation.
Light Bandar Archers: Wow, the first serviceable unit of this line. Good hit points and an awesome range attack with above average morale. Expensive as hell but the longbow is a ridiculously good weapon. Oh yeah they have no protection whatsoever so be sure to get some archer decoy and screens for them. Try to get heavier bandar archers for archer decoying because smart players will script their archers to fire archers or large monsters if they see you massing these. You'll be spending most of your gold on these units a lot unless you have a lot of resources ...
Bandar Archers: In which case, these are a better buy. Same as above but they won't pop to opposing fire so quickly.
Light Bandar Warrior: Pretty meh. Think of them as bootlegged light infantry (the javelin variety). In other words, not too great.
Bandar Warrior: Comes in two varieties, the cudgel isn't horrible, still subpar prot and prone to getting hit a lot but they have 18 hit points. Still too expensive and the mace one gets a buckler which is better. I use these for screens a lot early on or the vanara swordsmen. Actually, I take that back. I usually don't build any of these since early on I just build the bandar archers.
Elephant: Not bad units especially if you bring along a yogi to ethereal them. Too bad their morale is so poor that you need to balance them out by grouping them with Bandars. And bandar troops suck. You can group them with nagahs too but those troops are even worse.
Naga: Sacred but bad. Read above about nagah troops being even worse. If you're bored and no one's taken the seas yet late game, you can grab about fourty of them and maybe take on thirty tritons. Oh wait, they're poor amphibians. Ok ten tritons.
Nagah Warriors: Eh I guess it's workable with an e9/n9 bless. But so does a lot of other sacreds that aren't overpriced in both gold and resources. Like fourty of these will be able to break underwater first. You can body ethereal them too with one of your naga mages to make things easier. Still not very recommended.
Markata Scout: You start with one of these, and you'll never need to recruit another one since you should be buying indie scouts. Oh yeah buy a lot of indie scouts.
Atavi Chieftain: If you ever feel the need to mass atavi and go for a stealth run, you should play vanheim or Pan. Not Bandars.
Vanara Captain: Yeah these suck. Buy indie commanders.
Bandar Commander: See above. You start with one of these too.
Brahmin: I recruited one of these by accident. And that's the only time these should make it into your army.

All your mages are sacred which leads to a possibility of e4 bless. Too bad your priests suck though. But there's always indies!
Yogi: Uber cheap s1 researchers, communicants, and horror markers until they fix the spell.
Guru: Not bad, s2 lets you start soul slaying en masse once you get a banner of the north star going or that light of the north whatever spell it's called. It's in the conjuration tree. I recommend spamming these later game in your fort/lab centers since your nagahs are capital only.
Nagaraja: I recruited one of these by accident. If you REALLY need sermon of courage (which you shouldn't since your troops suck besides Bandar archers) you might want to give these a whirl. Otherwise they're decent but naginis are way better in comparisant. You can pseudo thug with these but I don't like to.
Nagarishi: OWNAGE mage for late era. Really frigging amazing. Blade winder, falling frost, Rust Mist. Lots of nifty goodies. Watch out for astral duelers but you can fix those easy to spamming gurus out of your other forts. If you can afford these every turn, make sure to make them every turn.
Naginis: Decent assassination thanks to seduction but you need a bit of spells to get them to that status. I buy these as researchers and site searchers earlier if I can't afford Nagarishi's but don't want to stinge on yogis. They are really good just nagarishis are awesome and alas all the naga mages are cap only.

Pretender of choice: VAMPIRE QUEEN

Yes she's been nerfed to oblivion but the VQ is really good for Patala. Why? as you have already probably deduced, Patala's troops suck. Which means they need an uber pretender to help shore up their weaknesses. Yes you can go the boring Ghost King uber chassis rout but the VQ is recyclable thanks to her immortality and you can get lots of free points from negative scales thanks to Patala's heat: 2 preference and the imbalance between order/misfortune and being able to come out ahead even if you take sloth x3, death x3. Whee free points! Also high dominion synergies with patala's heat preference. And it really messes with other nations later on. Haha take that!

Build: Air: 2, Earth: 1, Astral: 3, Death: 3, Blood: 2
Dormant, Dom: 9, Order: 3, Sloth: 3 (or death 3 and sloth 2 with no misfortune), Heat: 3, Misfortune: 2, Magic: 1.

Edit: 1/08/09 3.21 patch cbm update: A dom 10 Destroyer of World with Order 3, sloth 1, heat 3, death 3, magic 1 works as well awakened. Take A4/d4 and then splash on either s4 for end game wishing or e4 for a stronger protection on your chassis.

ALTERNATE BUILD (Not discussed in this section of guide):

E8 Bless Cyclops
Dom: 10
Order: 3, Sloth: 3, Heat: 2, Death: 3, Misfortune: 2, Magic: 3
Significantly more effective for early expansion at trade off for later magic versatility and early mid game tends to be rougher than the VQ start. This build works for current metagame for LE games at indie: 5 strength. Also you'll want to choose evocation earlier to take advantage of the reinvig mage blessings. This strategy is discussed on page FIVE of this thread.

STRATEGY:

The first few turns, prophetize your commander and send your scout on MOVE to a juicy farmland and script him on retreat. I tend to mass bandar light archers and do your typical expand in the circle around my capital routine. My initial few researchers are usually yogis to save up money for a Nagarishi. Place a HUGE priority on investing in mercenaries since they'll cover the holes of your nationals. As soon as I start a turn with a solid 450, I recruit a nagarishi (assuming there aren't any mercenaries to recruit that turn) to put on site searching. Initial priority of research is alteration: 3. You'll want to get it before your pretender wakes. Also you'll want to target mountains preferably early on since it'll cover up the points from sloth. Plus mountains tend to have easier indies than farmlands. But go after farmlands as second highest priority since gold is always good. Keep an eye out for indie troops that you can recruit aka 22 resourced heavy infantries, indie scouts, xbows. You'll want one or two indie commanders to just run around and collect these as you recruit them every turn. Eventually you'll be able to mass a decent army of these to use either as a secondary army or to pad up your main army.

Speaking of your main army, the one you start out with sucks. In fact, you may even have to wait TWO turns instead of one to expand if your indies are particularly tough and may have to branch into the crappy vanaras on gold/resource needs. You may have to script a LOT of decoy squads if you don't have enough longbows or are facing like 60 xbows in a province. Yes these things can set you back but it's ok, keep in mind your VQ can take down the tough indies later on anyway. Still you should try to expand as much as you can. You will want to hire a second indie commander asap though to ferry the troops from your capital into your main army every turn as you travel. Your yogis can do this early on as well since you shouldn't be expanding too far from your capital. Think of your starting army as cannon/archer fodder while your bandar archers do all the work.

Also you want to get a Nagarishi to start site searching ASAP. In fact, sometimes I even get two for this since gems are very very important for this strategy. If you want to slack a bit on gold or you're just really poor, you can do a nagini + yogi pair but I highly recommend the Nagarishis instead.

After alteration 3, your pretender should awake. With Body ethereal, Personal Luck , Iron skin, mirror image, mistform attack rear as a script, she should be able to solo anything in her dominion. If there's a particularly tough indie province in your dominion that only has one candle in it, just attack a province close to it so your dominion spreads higher and then take it. With awe and the dominion bonus, you shouldn't have any trouble with this.

I switch to thaum 2 after alteration for remote searching spells but you may have found a nature site earlier. If so, switch to construction 2 instead. Why? This is the core of the Patala strategy. Ask yourself this, what's a race that has access to water/earth/nature/astral path and one of the strongest late era mages to do? The answer: CLAM HORDE LIKE A *****! Yes, we're using two overnerfed things now but hey shows you how silly this nation is right?

Anyway with a dwarven hammer you should be able to comfortably clam at least once a turn (maybe you'll need to alchemize at some points) and eventually move on to two ... then three ... etc. Make sure you build more hammers first for each additional clam forger.

Once const:2 and thaum: 2 are resourced, I tend to get conjuration: 3 and then evocation: 2 just to get all the remote spells out of the way so you won't have to send around your nagarishis to search anyway. Remote searching is a lot more practical than manual searching even with an awesome searcher like the nagarishi.

After all these are done, you'll want thaum: 3 for teleport on your Vampire queen to deter invasions. You'll also want a second castle and lab soon to spam gurus out of it. Most indie mages are not worth recruiting since your mages are so uber anyway but keep an eye out of any that offers you a chance to branch out your magic. Once you set up the castle/lab you'll want conjuration: 4 for light of the north star and thaum: 5 so you can first paralyze and then eventually soul slay with guru battle mages. Conjuration 4 is also interesting because it lets you cast the national summons: Contact Yaksha and Yakshini, both decent mages. Resist this temptation. They cost a LOT of nature gems and your nagarishis are better. As mentioned all your gems should be going towards forging hammers or clams.

After conjuration: 4 and thaum: 5 are done, you're entering the mid game. Try not to start any wars at this time, you should be hording most of the time anyway and can ill afford to lose your clam base/production to summon troops and send battle mages. Your Vampire Queen should convince most people that war against you is too costly anyway. Convince them to attack someone else. Like Vanheim or Pan for example =).

You have now a choice to either research construction to 6 (or higher) or more conjuration. Your end goal should be conjuration and construction both to 8 as your clam horde allows you to spam the world with devatas and golems. You can also choose to simply flood everyone with vine ogres backed up by guru soul slaying hordes as well.



Well this be the end of the guide and hopefully it'll strength your Patala game. Thanks for reading and drop by our mIRC channel anytime for more dom III goodness!

[PDF]

Beware, Markata archers don't have "short" bows, they have "SMALL" bows that do only *6* damage, worse than slings !
Markatas really s*cks *ss big time ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Else lots of good advices , but it seems the nation is quite weak and has to rely on ubernerfed overused old gamey strategies... Yet I've found Patala better than the previous Bandar Log ages, that have even crappier troops and no nagas !

[Twan]

Normal markatas (if they can reach melee) are probably more useful than Markata archers as having size 1 melee units is very good for reducing ennemy defence (-2 per attacker). As nagas are size 3, adding Markatas in a squad should make it more efficient against human sized opponents, and as Markatas cost only 5 gold there is no reason not to use them even if lots die in each fight.

[Nerfix]

Small bows + Flaming Arrows... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Boron]

PDF said:
Else lots of good advices , but it seems the nation is quite weak and has to rely on ubernerfed overused old gamey strategies... Yet I've found Patala better than the previous Bandar Log ages, that have even crappier troops and no nagas !


For LA it has imho incredible mages.
But their troops are rather poor, so i have severe problems with expanding fast enough in earlygame and defending vs. earlygame rushes.

In LE missile weapons are not too useful. In EA their light bandar longbow apes for 20 gold and 7 resources rock, but in LA where shields + heavy armor are common even longbows are rather weak.

The Bandars cost 20 gold but do performance only about as good as solid MI other nations have and which costs only half their gold.

Thematically i like Patala though a lot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
And good guide Kiss, i only disagree about your god choice, VQ is imho overkill and too expensive.

I suggest the following god for starters:
Awake Cyclops, Dom 6, Earth 6, Order 3, Heat 3, Prod 1, Growth 3, Magic 1, Misfortune 3.
The Cyclops can help with indy expansion and with some trinklet items he should serve well enough as SC and F9W9 bless defense god.
Your mages nicely profit from reinvigoration.

If the map is larger you can set him to dormant and use the extra points to buy productivity 3 and earth 8 or to reduce your misfortune a bit.

Your VQ has several weaknesses:
1. Dormant, someone might have bless/SC rushed you already and kill you before she awakens.
2. Earth 1. This makes buffing her problematic.
Ironskin gives you -75% shock resistence, thus even if you cast resist lightning you have only 25%.
Stoneskin gives her only 15 protection.
3. No fire, thus vulnerable to fire magic too.
So incinerate could easily kill her. Flaming weapons might be an issue too.
...

In short, your VQ is imho rather a papertiger and shouldn't protect you long enough till your hoarding pays off.

So you are not protected till she awakens from an early bless rush by e.g. Vanheim or Mictlan, and when she awakens she only protects you a short while but in the turn 20-40 range many nations should be able to deal with your vq rather easily and she will be your main defense in this timeframe.
Any nation with astral magic can kill your VQ with solar rays.
Some blesstroops might kill her too.
Atlantis+Caelum have magic weapons, they should handle the VQ too, Caelum with an attack fliers script, Atlantis Ice Guards and Arsartuts should do enough damage to kill her with their magic weapons.

Your Mages could forge a black steel full plate though, so you do not need earth magic on your VQ.
It will give you lots of extra fatigue though during buffing.

[Nerfix]

Arssartuts are suprisingly brutal. Those bone glaives with the weakness are the penultimate strong unit killer.

[KissBlade]

PDF said:
Beware, Markata archers don't have "short" bows, they have "SMALL" bows that do only *6* damage, worse than slings !
Markatas really s*cks *ss big time ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Else lots of good advices , but it seems the nation is quite weak and has to rely on ubernerfed overused old gamey strategies... Yet I've found Patala better than the previous Bandar Log ages, that have even crappier troops and no nagas ! ...



Hehe thanks for the correction.


Twan said:
... as Markatas cost only 5 gold there is no reason not to use them even if lots die in each fight.



Sure there is your uber mages cost gold. =) And mercenaries and indies!


Nerfix said:
Small bows + Flaming Arrows... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



Sure ... when you recruit those f3 mages, let me know.


Boron said:

Thematically i like Patala though a lot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
And good guide Kiss, i only disagree about your god choice, VQ is imho overkill and too expensive.

I suggest the following god for starters:
Awake Cyclops, Dom 6, Earth 6, Order 3, Heat 3, Prod 1, Growth 3, Magic 1, Misfortune 3.
The Cyclops can help with indy expansion and with some trinklet items he should serve well enough as SC and F9W9 bless defense god.
Your mages nicely profit from reinvigoration.

If the map is larger you can set him to dormant and use the extra points to buy productivity 3 and earth 8 or to reduce your misfortune a bit.

Your VQ has several weaknesses:
1. Dormant, someone might have bless/SC rushed you already and kill you before she awakens.
2. Earth 1. This makes buffing her problematic.
Ironskin gives you -75% shock resistence, thus even if you cast resist lightning you have only 25%.
Stoneskin gives her only 15 protection.
3. No fire, thus vulnerable to fire magic too.
So incinerate could easily kill her. Flaming weapons might be an issue too.
...

In short, your VQ is imho rather a papertiger and shouldn't protect you long enough till your hoarding pays off.

So you are not protected till she awakens from an early bless rush by e.g. Vanheim or Mictlan, and when she awakens she only protects you a short while but in the turn 20-40 range many nations should be able to deal with your vq rather easily and she will be your main defense in this timeframe.
Any nation with astral magic can kill your VQ with solar rays.
Some blesstroops might kill her too.
Atlantis+Caelum have magic weapons, they should handle the VQ too, Caelum with an attack fliers script, Atlantis Ice Guards and Arsartuts should do enough damage to kill her with their magic weapons.

Your Mages could forge a black steel full plate though, so you do not need earth magic on your VQ.
It will give you lots of extra fatigue though during buffing.



Eh I wouldn't worry about all those early rushers. Most early rushers you will have to outmaneveur, out diplomacy anyway but they ARE defeatable. In the event of the uber bless, well those strategies are imbalanced anyway and will probably be fixed. Hopefully. The VQ isn't as fragile as you think once she wakes up, she's stealthy AND flies with huge dominion spread and immortality. Too bad you can't really use the vampires she gives you for anything =). Also you get a lot of free points and you can't really bless anything worth a damn so why not spend them all in the uber SC chassis? An early game pretender isn't a bad pick like Great Bull, Cyclops, Wyrm and dragons etc ... but let's face it, if you can stop a VQ, you can stop those for sure. Also I think solar rays are magic resistable and you can script more defense into your VQ to make magic weapons not as effective against her. Otherwise you can pick off raiding parties of opponents with her easily and that REALLY cripples a midgame war. Like I said, she is meant to be the deterrent, not the threat. Most people don't like the thought of going up against a recyclable SC. =)

As for nations with magical weapons, caelum sucks militarily just as much as you do. And both caelum and Atlantis will have fatigue/armor troubles with your dom 9 heat 2 setting. =)

Edit: Corrected typo, undefeatable = defeatable. Hehe ... freudian slip there!

[Daynarr]

Patala is probably the nation I played most so far, even more then Kailasa.

I disagree with original poster on some points though. First off, god choice is completely off the mark. I mean, you can take VQ or even Ghost King but you are missing on Patala's main strength - sacred troops. Patala has amphibious buyable troops, all of their mages and priests are sacred and all of their summons (except tigers) are sacred. With so many sacred troops it's almost a sin not to take some bless strategy for them. What bless to take? Well they can try following:
- Nature 10: I'm using this in my current game to great effect. This bless allows you to take good scales with it as well. Makes naga warriors really hard to kill and route and they take much less afflictions in combat too. N10 pretender is also excellent to get Gift of Health global spell up. Won’t help mages directly though.
- Earth 9: Covers needs for both troops (increased protection and no fatigue problem) and mages (reinvigoration). However, with this bless alone your sacred troops won’t be that good in killing enemies so you will need to rely on mages to help them.
- Water 9: This one is almost universal for any bless strategy. It will make your nagas more deadly, harder to hit and faster on the battlefield. You can try to take earth 4 or nature 4(6) with it (or both) to increase their survivability. It’s not that good for mages though.
- Astral 9: Yes, this one gives them twist fate and you would be surprised how much this helps them in battle. It also allows your pretender to cast Wish easy. Nagas have 13 MR so +4 bonus to MR they will make them very hard to overcome with MR dependant spells. It helps mages too as it increases their MR against enemy spells and helps them survive some stray arrow or spell that would otherwise hit them.
- Fire 9: Purpose of this one is apparent - it turns nagas into killing machines. Downside of this is that mages will have little benefit of this blessing. Either this or Water blessing is suggested for people who are not familiar with nation.

Of course, you can take a combination of blessings but note that scales will suffer and Patala actually needs good scales. That is why both my pretender suggestions are imprisoned – only way to get blessing and good scales.

Ok, some of my remarks about Patala units:

Nagaraja is actually good commander (80 leadership) that can also lead magical units so if you plan to make combo army with archers, support troops (chaff if you will http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif) and sacred units, this is your commander. It's also sacred and has high protection and low skills in earth, water and nature magic. Nagaraja’s main problem is that its capitol only unit and you will always want to buy Nagarishis if you can afford.

Nagarishi’s are probably best mages in late era. Very strong water and earth magic with additional astral and nature magic and they are also holy 1 priests. They can shape shift into form that can wear boots but loses 1 point in water magic. Usually if you go land you make earth boots, shape shift them and script them to cast 'Summon Earthpower' first. This way they always have 5-6 in earth magic which means they can cast easily blade winds, petrify (ultimate anti-SC spell) and support spells for troops like 'Legions of Steel'.
Another important fact about them is that their magic skills allow them to forge clams (as mentioned later but it doesn't make them silly). With Nagarishi’s you can setup clam economy easy. Even in combat they aren’t bad with high hp's (for normal mages), good attack/defense values and ability to easily cast invulnerability and quicken self.

Naga Warriors are well protected sacred troops with good attack/defense values (for heavy infantry) and good morale/hp and MR. You can go on either fire, nature, earth, water and astral blessings for them and you won't go wrong. They are not overpriced either. With high protection they should cost more resources and as being sacred/amphibious GOOD troops they cost as much as they should. Maybe you have problem that original poster had with them was because he took sloth instead production scale and no bless strategy? Most sacred troops are overpriced if you don't have proper bless to give them and sloth is always bad idea for nation whose troops cost lots of resources.

Gurus are very useful mages even at the start of the game as they can cast Mind Burn which allows you to easily setup arillery group with them as support for your main forces to take out heavy indies (like knights and heavy cavalry) or for defences. Later on you can use communion or spells to increase their astral power and use soulslay. With items you can even use them to enslave mind. They are also nations most economical researchers.

Bandar warriors and archers are not bad at all. They have higher strength (which means they kill well protected troops more easily), higher morale then most human troops and more hp that makes them harder to kill then normal HI. If supported by mages that cast legions of steel on them they get protection 17 which is quite nice. They are good and reliable troops to protect your longbows.

Some mention about scales for Patala.

Order 3 and Production 3 is a MUST for them or you won't be able to recruit enough sacred troops and mages to make it really work. You simply need resource and gold bonus from Production scale. Take heat 3 scale as it will rarely stay at 3 and usually drops 1 or 2 points down (Patala prefers heat 2) so very often heat will be just right for them and you get 40 additional design points. Growth scale for them depends on what your preference is but since Patala has no problem with age and can produce summer swords/bags of wine they can take death scale. You can also take growth scale to get more income. For small maps I suggest taking Death scale and better blessings, though. You can take Luck/Misfortune scale to your personal preference with note that I wouldn't take more then Misfortune 1 for Patala. Size of barbarian hordes or knights that attack you from random events depends directly on misfortune scale. Since Patala has rather weak PD, you don't want to be attacked by too large forces from indies that even PD 20 or more can’t handle. Patala have easy access for cheap researchers so you can go drain 2 with them. Saves a lot of design points.

Suggested pretenders:

1.Mother of Rivers - imprisoned

Magic - Water 9, Nature 6
Scales - Order 3, Productivity 3, Heat 3, Growth 1, Misfortune 1, Drain 2.
Dominion strength - 6
9 points left.

With this setup you get both good blessing with good scales that will allow you to setup sacred armies fast and expand with no problems (tested with indy strength 9). It's good setup for people who are just starting to learn this nation. Your goal is to expand using your sacred troops so buy as many naga warriors as your gold allows you.

2. Cyclops - imprisoned

Magic - Earth 9
Scales - Order 3, Productivity 3, Heat 3, Growth 1, Misfortune 1, Drain 2.
Dominion strength - 10
15 points left.

This setup helps both mages and troops while still having great scales. However, with this setup you want to focus on mages so make sure you buy as many mages (Nagarishi's primarily) as your finances allow. Always have at least a couple of them escort your troops.

One last important thing about Patala - they have all national summons that Kailasa has. That means they can summon Siddhas and Devatas which are excellent mages/priests and Devata is good thug as well. They can also have armies of Gandharvas, excellent sacred infantry that guru's can summon with no problems. All this adds to their strength and all this should be used properly in game to fully utilize Patala's power.

[KissBlade]

Post deleted by Mindi

[Daynarr]

Post deleted by Mindi

[Endoperez]

I've seen KissBlade on the #dominions IRC channel quite often. I'd quess he has played many blitzes on small maps. In blitzes, it's rare to have enough research to get to Gandharvas, much less all of Mind Burn, Legions of Steel and Gandharvas.

[KissBlade]

Update: Oh yeah I wrote the guide at like 4am so I fixed some typos.

[Leif_-]

If there was one lesson Dominions 2 ought to have thaught us, it is that we should be very careful about dimissing anything in the game as useless too quickly. Some of the succesful Dominions 2 strategies emerged on the scene a surpisingly long while after release, and were often based on aspects of the game that had earlier been vocally denounced as no good.

[KissBlade]

Leif_- said:
If there was one lesson Dominions 2 ought to have thaught us, it is that we should be very careful about dimissing anything in the game as useless too quickly. Some of the succesful Dominions 2 strategies emerged on the scene a surpisingly long while after release, and were often based on aspects of the game that had earlier been vocally denounced as no good.



Fair enough.

[JaydedOne]

I remember when Mictlan was considered too weak for competitive multiplayer play. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Nerfix]

The Akashic archives remember a time around Dominions: PPP when Caelum was considered a weak...and a time when people didn't touch it with a 6-foot pike in Dom II because Air Elementals got nerfed...

And so on.

[KissBlade]

Stating a nation is weak is different than stating units are weak. The effectiveness of a unit that has no magic capabilities whatsoever is obvious. You can COMPARE the stats if not just watch them in outright result comparisant. Sacreds are slightly harder to measure but magic beings with average priests, cold blooded, average hit points are NOT a recipe for a good bless strat. Patala has promise because their mages are AWESOME.

[Daynarr]

Endoperez said:
I've seen KissBlade on the #dominions IRC channel quite often. I'd quess he has played many blitzes on small maps. In blitzes, it's rare to have enough research to get to Gandharvas, much less all of Mind Burn, Legions of Steel and Gandharvas.



Mind burn is level 2 thaumaturgy and you get that first. You can get that even in smallest games. Also, I wasn't posting this for such small games. I was posting this to point all Patala's STRENGHTS.

What I wrote is for both SP and MP - its general, to tell people how to play a nation. This isn't a guide how to play a nation in blitzes with 1 opponent. This game can be played many ways and my post is trying to address all those way.

[Twan]

I think the title of this thread may be confusing, a Guide to play Patala in Blitz Games is not necessarily a guide to play Patala competitively on real maps (especially when no big mp game has been finished).

Each nation may easily have 3 or 4 good guides saying very different things. I doubt there is for any nation one "competitive" strategy, best at the same time in sp, duel blitzes on very small maps, duels on big maps, 10prov/player maps with many nations and 30prov/player maps with many nations.

[KissBlade]

I have actually mentioned quite a bit of Patala's strengths and mentioned both a long term and short term strategy to them. In a blitz, it is a very poor choice to play Patala as their best feature, mages, cannot be really taken advantage of. I have mentioned that many of Patala's troops suck. This is actually after many strategic discussions from other players who's tried their hand with the nation. I have not played the dominions series for that long but I can safely say I have a good grasp of what are the important concepts to winning in multiplayer.

[KissBlade]

Twan said:
I think the title of this thread may be confusing, a Guide to play Patala in Blitz Games is not necessarily a guide to play Patala competitively on real maps (especially when no big mp game has been finished).

Each nation may easily have 3 or 4 good guides saying very different things. I doubt there is for any nation one "competitive" strategy, best at the same time in sp, duel blitzes on very small maps, duels on big maps, 10prov/player maps with many nations and 30prov/player maps with many nations.



I find no portions of my guide at all applicable for the current dom 3 blitz metagame. I have not declared this is the best guide, if you had read it even past the first few words, you'll realize it is simply my guide to them being played in MP settings. I am very thorough with my current strategy and I feel it's definitely one of the more viable options currently available to Patala. I have no idea why now people are setting up this premise that I'm writing this guide for blitzes.

[Leif_-]

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[quantum_mechani]

Blitzes are different than long term games, but not that different. This is because late game, everyone is more or less playing from the same bag of tricks, so what tends to matter is how well your nation did early game.

Now, I don't consider Patala weak, and I don't think that was Kiss's final conclusion either. They simply have - like almost every nation - a lot of troops that don't stack up to the others, or a few that are too good, depending how you look at it.

[Shovah32]

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[KissBlade]

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[KissBlade]

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[dirtywick]

I haven't tested this at all, but Markatas could be useful if you're using Rust Mist heavily. Removing the protection of a unit makes any hits they score likely to do a little bit of damage, and since they're very small they can swarm units causing them to accure defense penalties, especially against larger opponents, and the damage could add up quickly (if they don't all die first). Ideally I think that Rust Mist is best used with high strength units though, but it might work.

[Daynarr]

KissBlade said:
I have actually mentioned quite a bit of Patala's strengths and mentioned both a long term and short term strategy to them. In a blitz, it is a very poor choice to play Patala as their best feature, mages, cannot be really taken advantage of. I have mentioned that many of Patala's troops suck. This is actually after many strategic discussions from other players who's tried their hand with the nation. I have not played the dominions series for that long but I can safely say I have a good grasp of what are the important concepts to winning in multiplayer.



You suggested dormant VQ pretender with no bless and sloth scale. So for entire first year of game you get no bless, no pretender and no resources to buy enough troops. How exactly does that help early expansion you mention?


The only way you can bless your nagahs would be with your capital only mages since they are magical only and can't be ferried with non mage commanders. This is already a fault with them.



They have no more problems with blessing sacred troops then virtually any other nation with powerful sacreds (Vans and Helheim for example). Most of those nations don't have h3 priests to cast divine blessing on them. They can however make temples and hire normal priests to bless those troops and so can Patala. From GAMEPLAY experience you need 4-5 of them to bless a group of 40 naga warriors that are on hold/attack orders. It's no problem for them at all. No more then for almost any other nation that is. Do I need to mention that you also have prophet that can cast divine bless and is perfect for early expansion? And yes, you will use capitol mages to get your nagas around but then again, you want those mages in battle and gurus to do research. In worse case gurus can do it to as they can lead 25 magic units each.

Edit:typos

[KissBlade]

dirtywick said:
I haven't tested this at all, but Markatas could be useful if you're using Rust Mist heavily. Removing the protection of a unit makes any hits they score likely to do a little bit of damage, and since they're very small they can swarm units causing them to accure defense penalties, especially against larger opponents, and the damage could add up quickly (if they don't all die first). Ideally I think that Rust Mist is best used with high strength units though, but it might work.



Rust Mist is a good spell and could work with hordes of Markatas. However, as I've mentioned, at that stage of the game you should generally be supplimenting your forces with superior indies instead and/or mercanaries. if you have extra gold to dump, it should be invested in setting up another guru factory. When comparing effectiveness of troops, you need to take into mind oppurtunity costs. For example, why are loboguards more feasible than markatase? Well because they're not leadership heavy, they don't effect the amount of regular troops your commander should have, have better stats and are mindless allowing a more effective swarm tactic. Also ryleh works well with swarm tactics because most of the time you'll be fighting tritons and icthyids. Patala doesn't have this option.

[Endoperez]

Daynarr - pretenders don't cast Divine Blessing. Prophets do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[Daynarr]

Endoperez said:
Daynarr - pretenders don't cast Divine Blessing. Prophets do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif



Damn you are fast. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif
You saw it even before I managed to edit it.

[Nerfix]

Hmmm, I just tried out Patala with a E4 W4 Nataraja and some assorted positive scales.

All I can give you is a deep "Hmmmmm.". Those S2 1N mages are good. It's easy to forge neat trinkets for Nataraja. The troops tend to suck, but I think that missilespam with Rust Cloud/Destruction could work. Could. Not sure how competive that is. Propably not very.

Natarajas still own BTW.

[dirtywick]

KissBlade said:
Rust Mist is a good spell and could work with hordes of Markatas. However, as I've mentioned, at that stage of the game you should generally be supplimenting your forces with superior indies instead and/or mercanaries. if you have extra gold to dump, it should be invested in setting up another guru factory. When comparing effectiveness of troops, you need to take into mind oppurtunity costs. For example, why are loboguards more feasible than markatase? Well because they're not leadership heavy, they don't effect the amount of regular troops your commander should have, have better stats and are mindless allowing a more effective swarm tactic. Also ryleh works well with swarm tactics because most of the time you'll be fighting tritons and icthyids. Patala doesn't have this option.



I don't know, Rust Mist is Evoc 2 and with an awake pretender with a research score higher than 20, like a rainbow or bless Great Sage, you could have it by turn 5 or earlier so it would probably work good against indy knights at least.

Of course, there's probably better units for it in the game. But Patala doesn't seem to have too many options anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Morkilus]

These kind of strategy discussions are great. Keep it up!

[Nerfix]

Rust Mist actually helps to longbows too, since they allow those longbows bite into the sweet, sweet flesh of enemies even better. It also helps those naga warriors if you ever use them since two attack vs rusted armor = very good.

The Naga Warriors themselves don't look bad to me.

[KissBlade]

Daynarr said:


You suggested dormant VQ pretender with no bless and sloth scale. So for entire first year of game you get no bless, no pretender and no resources to buy enough troops. How exactly does that help early expansion you mention?


The only way you can bless your nagahs would be with your capital only mages since they are magical only and can't be ferried with non mage commanders. This is already a fault with them.



They have no more problems with blessing sacred troops then virtually any other nation with powerful sacreds (Vans and Helheim for example). Most of those nations don't have h3 priests to cast divine blessing on them. They can however make temples and hire normal priests to bless those troops and so can Patala. From GAMEPLAY experience you need 4-5 of them to bless a group of 40 naga warriors that are on hold/attack orders. It's no problem for them at all. No more then for almost any other nation that is. Do I need to mention that you also have prophet that can cast divine bless and is perfect for early expansion? And yes, you will use capitol mages to get your nagas around but then again, you want those mages in battle and gurus to do research. In worse case gurus can do it to as they can lead 25 magic units each.




I have already given a strategy to expand early with Patala so I have no idea why you're harping on that point. With the right unit scripting and archer decoying, you can take on most indies on turn 2. I typically play on indies setting 6 or 7. Second, I have already said and highlighted why sacreds are NOT Patala's strength. I do not tell people how to play turn by turn. Instead I offer a general guideline on what they should be doing if following THIS strategy. The variety of different strategies in dominions III comes from battle formations, scripting issues, horde vs. rush, etc. Choosing which units for these purposes generally tends not to deviate from player to player. When you watch good player's execute their first few turns, you will generally see the same pattern regardless of which nation they're using. The only rare exceptions to this are uber bless strats and those with odd awaken designs (aka dom 9 or 10 PoD for a second turn expander). But I digress, as I've said, I am open to other builds, I've responded to Boron's post earlier about his suggestion of awaken thug vs dormant SC pretenders. However, I don't find your current build viable.

Other nations with powerful sacreds like Vanheim and Pangaea (Helheim is not a late era nation and I'm keeping it out of this discussion for that reason) have exactly that. POWERFUL Sacreds, which nagas are NOT. Duel blessed Vans and Centaurs can easily take most indies, possess stealth and have enormous raiding potential. You work those sacreds into a strategy by themselves AND they have the advantage of being non capital only occasionally and are able to be troop ferried by indie commanders. The last part is VERY important as logistics makes and breaks your game usually. Also they're not encumbered like a *&%$! and you're able to mass them a LOT easier (thanks to the imbalanced ratio of gold vs. resource) cost. How can you even find Nagahs comparable to Vans and Black Centaurs is baffling to me! Nagahs are among the WORST sacreds in the Late Era!

You point to a lot of theories but there is NO way Patala can compete without research as opposed to certain other powerful sacred nations, leading four or five commanders to bless 40 - 50 nagahs is ridiculous since if you're moving out at that stage of the game, you're going to get overruned. SIX TO SEVEN Dual blesed black centaurs are able to take most indie provinces. Your gurus should form the bulk of your battlemages not your nagarishis which have SO many other uses! Nagarishis are really amazing battlemages yes but they're also going to be your main summoners, site searchers, forgers, etc.

[Zen]

KissBlade said:
Markata: I have no idea why these are in the game. Those clubs aren't going to deal much damage (read: none) and they die like flies. Actually no, they die way easier than flies. Damn buggers. Never recruit this unit. Even if you need a archer decoy. VERY lame version of lobo guards.


I like to mash them with across the front line. Since the targeting AI has fits with more target squads. They don't get enough time to rout anyway, so they are good for confusion and the right price. But as a unit that are any sort of real cost effective, they are not. If the Targeting AI was smarter, they would have no use.


Markata archers: Oh god, I've never even SEEN small bows before. Oh jeebus these suck *** too.



Use just like normal markata, but for people who like to "Fire Archers". I like to put them right in front of a weak flank, but make sure they are in front of your real archer block so they will get priority targeting. You can usually get away with 3 or 4 in a small squad and then do them in small clusters across your front line slightly behind your other markata decoys.

It's mostly the range on these. If they had shortbows, I'd buy them by the bucketloads initially then switch to Atavi Turn 10+


Atavi archers: they can move pretty fast on the map and have stealth. They have bows too and aren't too expensive. Still they because they're pretty much like villains. And villains suck. Unless they're super villains. Which these certainly are not.


I have to say they are pretty good across all three eras. They are in fact the most useful and ease to mass unit that this nation line has, suited to Sloth, suited to support, and you can save them from arty's until you are ready to lose them.


Vanara Archer: Atavi archers without the stealth and more armor and more resource cost. Needless to say, they suck too.


As an archer, this unit is not a top pick. Archers are defined by maximizing resources. Especially considering most of your resources are taken by either Sacreds or more cost-effective troops.


Vanara Infantry: Like Vanara archers except they get a buckler instead of the bow. Average cost. Pretty much a crappy version of heavy infantry indies. So ... you won't be buying much of them either.


I don't see any reason to buy these.



Vanara Swordsmen: Their stats aren't terrible. A bit better than Vanara Infantry. Their gold to resource ratio isn't bad if you have little gold. But generally if you have no gold you shouldn't be buying subpar troops anyway because heavy infantry from indies are still better. Not a terrible choice for the first few turns if for some unknown reason you took prod: 3 for this nation.


I see no reason to buy these.


Light Bandar Archers: Wow, the first serviceable unit of this line. Good hit points and an awesome range attack with above average morale. Expensive as hell but the longbow is a ridiculously good weapon. Oh yeah they have no protection whatsoever so be sure to get some archer decoy and screens for them. Try to get heavier bandar archers for archer decoying because smart players will script their archers to fire archers or large monsters if they see you massing these. You'll be spending most of your gold on these units a lot unless you have a lot of resources ...



This is probably my personal preference but: The Longbow is not worth 2 Shortbows at current IMO. Even moreso with mid-lategame use of bows (I.E. Flaming Arrows and Wind Guide). Stealth makes your units more survivable, so I stay away from these and buy Atavi 2 for 1.


Light Bandar Warrior: Pretty meh. Think of them as bootlegged light infantry (the javelin variety). In other words, not too great.
Bandar Warrior: Comes in two varieties, the cudgel isn't horrible, still subpar prot and prone to getting hit a lot but they have 18 hit points. Still too expensive and the mace one gets a buckler which is better. I use these for screens a lot early on or the vanara swordsmen. Actually, I take that back. I usually don't build any of these since early on I just build the bandar archers.



I only build any of these units to go with Elephants. It's mostly morale/resource dependant. Not on their own merits.


Elephant: Not bad units especially if you bring along a yogi to ethereal them. Too bad their morale is so poor that you need to balance them out by grouping them with Bandars. And bandar troops suck. You can group them with nagahs too but those troops are even worse.



Standard Trample tactics. You would be a fool in the current way combat works to not take advantage of this for heavy armored troops in the early game... if you happen to run into any. You will want to watch out if your opponent has a F9 blessing though, they drop damn so fast it's not worth the gold. Plus mid-game they get owned by spells first, I use them as decoys for Size 6 units I want to try to save (Pretenders without a full regiment of resistances).


Naga: Sacred but bad. Read above about nagah troops being even worse. If you're bored and no one's taken the seas yet late game, you can grab about fourty of them and maybe take on thirty tritons. Oh wait, they're poor amphibians. Ok ten tritons.
Nagah Warriors: Eh I guess it's workable with an e9/n9 bless. But so does a lot of other sacreds that aren't overpriced in both gold and resources. Like fourty of these will be able to break underwater first. You can body ethereal them too with one of your naga mages to make things easier. Still not very recommended.



Naga Troops are subpar, this is only an issue if the nation does not have enough other strengths to overcome this. Sufficed to say, if you are playing a bless strategy, this is not the nation to choose.


Markata Scout: You start with one of these, and you'll never need to recruit another one since you should be buying indie scouts. Oh yeah buy a lot of indie scouts.



This is true for all nations, all ages minus probably the giant*heim's, I don't know why you made this a point for Naga's in particular http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

My 3.5 cents.

[KissBlade]

I'm not an expert at quoting mechanics but I agree with most of your points save Atavi vs. Bandar. The short bows really don't puncture most late game indies very well compared to longbows. If we were talking about midgame or early game indies, I'd switch to Atavi archers instead. This nation doesn't have access to flaming arrows, though I can find Atavis feasible with Rust Mist/Destruction.

Also the Markata scouts were just a random point I tossed out there to be thorough and cover all their nationals. =)

Obviously I forgot to point out the primary use of Markata archers are archer decoys, squads to mess up cavalry, etc. I should insert that point though since some people might have missed it. =)

[Zen]

KissBlade said:
I'm not an expert at quoting mechanics but I agree with most of your points save Atavi vs. Bandar. The short bows really don't puncture most late game indies very well compared to longbows. If we were talking about midgame or early game indies, I'd switch to Atavi archers instead. This nation doesn't have access to flaming arrows, though I can find Atavis feasible with Rust Mist/Destruction.



Like I said, personal preference. If it's 2 for 1 and my 2 are stealthy. It might be that I prepare my army for people as I take indies for the most part. I have too often had to switch fighting indies in the first 6 turns to fighting real armies so I tend to think in terms of survivability/utility.

[KissBlade]

Zen said:

KissBlade said:
I'm not an expert at quoting mechanics but I agree with most of your points save Atavi vs. Bandar. The short bows really don't puncture most late game indies very well compared to longbows. If we were talking about midgame or early game indies, I'd switch to Atavi archers instead. This nation doesn't have access to flaming arrows, though I can find Atavis feasible with Rust Mist/Destruction.



Like I said, personal preference. If it's 2 for 1 and my 2 are stealthy. It might be that I prepare my army for people as I take indies for the most part. I have too often had to switch fighting indies in the first 6 turns to fighting real armies so I tend to think in terms of survivability/utility.



Fair enough, I'll add their possible raiding potential in my description for them then=).

[Daynarr]

KissBlade said:

I have already given a strategy to expand early with Patala so I have no idea why you're harping on that point. With the right unit scripting and archer decoying, you can take on most indies on turn 2. I typically play on indies setting 6 or 7.



I'm not ‘harping point’, I saying that you suggested bad pretender design and explained why. I'll repeat, you get no pretender, not bless and low resources with it. And until your pretender arrives you probably be facing more then just indies.

Second, I have already said and highlighted why sacreds are NOT Patala's strength.



And I have highlited why they ARE their strength. If you didn't manage to use them effectively and I did then by all means I won't accept your opinion on that as true.


I do not tell people how to play turn by turn. Instead I offer a general guideline on what they should be doing if following THIS strategy. The variety of different strategies in dominions III comes from battle formations, scripting issues, horde vs. rush, etc. Choosing which units for these purposes generally tends not to deviate from player to player. When you watch good player's execute their first few turns, you will generally see the same pattern regardless of which nation they're using. The only rare exceptions to this are uber bless strats and those with odd awaken designs (aka dom 9 or 10 PoD for a second turn expander). But I digress, as I've said, I am open to other builds, I've even responded to Boron's post earlier about his suggestion of awaken thug vs dormant SC pretenders. However, I don't find your current build viable.



I explained in those desings that they are meant for people who start playing with Patala. They won’t jump into blitzes immediately. Designs I posted are not blitz designs so your reasons for not finding them viable are off the mark.


Other nations with powerful sacreds like Vanheim and Pangaea (Helheim is not a late era nation and I'm keeping it out of this discussion for that reason) have exactly that. POWERFUL Sacreds, which nagas are NOT. Duel blessed Vans and Centaurs can easily take most indies, possess stealth and have enormous raiding potential. You work those sacreds into a strategy by themselves AND they have the advantage of being non capital only occasionally and are able to be troop ferried by indie commanders. The last part is VERY important as logistics makes and breaks your game usually. Also they're not encumbered like a ***** and you're able to mass them a LOT easier (thanks to the imbalanced ratio of gold vs. resource) cost. How can you even find Nagahs comparable to Vans and Black Centaurs is baffling to me! Nagahs are among the WORST sacreds in the Late Era!

You point to a lot of theories but there is NO way Patala can compete without research as opposed to certain other powerful sacred nations, leading four or five commanders to bless 40 - 50 nagahs is ridiculous since if you're moving out at that stage of the game, you're going to get overruned. SIX TO SEVEN Dual blesed black centaurs are able to take most indie provinces. Your gurus should form the bulk of your battlemages not your nagarishis which have SO many other uses! Nagarishis are really amazing battlemages yes but they're also going to be your main summoners, site searchers, forgers, etc.



Quite frankly, I have no idea what is all this directed to.
You said

The only way you can bless your nagahs would be with your capital only mages since they are magical only and can't be ferried with non mage commanders. This is already a fault with them.


And I responded


They have no more problems with blessing sacred troops then virtually any other nation with powerful sacreds (Vans and Helheim for example). Most of those nations don't have h3 priests to cast divine blessing on them. They can however make temples and hire normal priests to bless those troops and so can Patala. From GAMEPLAY experience you need 4-5 of them to bless a group of 40 naga warriors that are on hold/attack orders. It's no problem for them at all. No more then for almost any other nation that is. Do I need to mention that you also have prophet that can cast divine bless and is perfect for early expansion? And yes, you will use capitol mages to get your nagas around but then again, you want those mages in battle and gurus to do research. In worse case gurus can do it to as they can lead 25 magic units each.



That means following:
1. My post is about blessing sacred troops and all era's have them. Therefore for that point, era is irrelevant. Vanheim and Helheim were just examples for nations with sacreds, that need to use h1 priests to bless their sacred troops.
2. I have not mentioned any sort of comparison between Vans, Centaurs and Nagas. Where did you come up with :’ How can you even find Nagahs comparable to Vans and Black Centaurs is baffling to me!’ is baffling me actually. You are arguing something that I never said.
3. I did not say ANYWHERE that you will use 40-50 nagas to take indie provinces. I said that you need 4-5 h1 priests to bless 40 nagas. I also mentioned prophet for early expansion. That was example. It looked like example as well.
4. None of this is really response to anything I said.

Edit, typos.

[KissBlade]

I have NEVER even mentioned blitzes in any of my arguments. I've even stated this current strat and Patala as a whole is NOT A GOOD BLITZ NATION. I've also explained how to handle early game scuffles and your VQ arrives usually around the same time you find your first few neighbors anyway. Bandar longbows, indies + aggressive mercenaries are good to hold the defensive line from turn 6-12 against 95% of the MP players ESPECIALLY if you're adept at raiding and counter raiding. I can guarantee you this. If the player is good enough that he outwits you, your sacreds will DEFINITELY not save you. This is the difference between Patala and an actual sacred nation like Vanheim. Van's sacreds are actually GOOD.

[Graeme Dice]

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[JaydedOne]

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[Truper]

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[st.patrik]

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[PDF]

@Zen,
According to your analysis, there's just no good troops with Patala, just standard Atavi archers...
So what do you build when playing them ? Nothing ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Twan]

I've not played Patala sufficiently to have a definitive opinion, and Kissblade probably has far more experience and knowledge of the subject than me, but I find strange not to have a strategy allowing to give their full efficiency to national summons and mages, at least on big maps (if the nagas are not short terms good sacred, having a bless strat or semi bless strat for long term looks better than nothing, on paper at least, when you have access to many kinds of sacred summons including ones with 4 attack in end game). It's why I've presumed the first strategy was only the best for small games.

For sure Patala looks like one of the many nations that may be rushed without a chance by double blessed troops (even after 20 or so turns on a big map). But as relying upon a dormant VQ and mercenaries against vans won't be really more efficient than hoping any other pretender may stop them, why not taking a pretender giving an earth and/or water bless ? Of course like all nations without a great short term efficiency, in a big mp game you need some diplomacy to survive, but then you have access to very good sacred troops and thugs, with clam hoarding to finance the summons. And as you are an earth nation you are one of the most useful allies nations not producing hammers can have, so I think in most games (allowing diplomacy) you are going to find some. So my only question is (and it's a question not an arguement one more time I'm not pretending to know very well this nation) why do you find a bless strategy for Patala so bad (outside of blitzes / no diplo games) ? The way you have answered Daynarr's posts doesn't make your reasons very clear.

[Mindi]

This thread is being locked to help tempers cool down and to preform some clean up. KissBlade has been issued a warning for his initial attitude that helped send this thread down a wrong path and Graeme has been booted for 3 days because he doesn't seem to like to listen to warnings.

When this thread reopens I hope all of you will remember to treat one another with respect. It's perfectly fine to have strong opinions and to give those opinions but other people are entitled to express their equally strong opinions as well. No character assasinations or personal attacks allowed. If you are going to debate, debate the issue, not the person.

----------------------------

Okay I have been addressing this issue all morning and have cleaned up this thread. This includes deletion of some posts entirely and editing of others including any references to the deleted content.

I expect this thread to be civil from here on out. This means debating the issues, not the posters and debating in a respectful manner. If I have to lock it again, it will stay locked.

We are now back to your regularly scheduled program.

[KissBlade]

Twan said:I've not played Patala sufficiently to have a definitive opinion, and Kissblade probably has far more experience and knowledge of the subject than me, but I find strange not to have a strategy allowing to give their full efficiency to national summons and mages, at least on big maps (if the nagas are not short terms good sacred, having a bless strat or semi bless strat for long term looks better than nothing, on paper at least, when you have access to many kinds of sacred summons including ones with 4 attack in end game). It's why I've presumed the first strategy was only the best for small games.




Sacred troops' strengths are entirely determined by their early game efficiency. Simply put once evocation spells are researched, a majority of sacreds tends to die the same. There are exceptions to this but Nagahs are not one of them. Hence a semi bless or a bless for long term strategy isn't effective unless you're talking about earth bless for your mages, which even then isn't really required since your best mages get summon earthpower and you don't want to waste scripting slots (which are very important) on everyone self blessing themselves. Theoretically you can also bring in priests to bless your gurus but that's a micromanagement nightmare and you can sidestep this issue largely by simply just communioning with them to a summon earthpowered nagarishi. Your most effective sacred troops comes in at conjuration 5. And they're not even that good since you have better uses for astral gems. Also your sacreds are magical beings so ferrying them is a very big hassle and takes away from your mage time. Efficient mage time is one of the most important things in a competitive setting. Worse yet, Nagah's capital only so you won't be getting them to the frontlines too quickly anyway. AND did I mention they were cold blooded so they're dominion reliant ESPECIALLY with their HUGE encumberance. Their stats are also very subpar given their huge resource costs. As said, they're among the least cost effective sacreds in the late era. (troops are typically determined by resources as their limiting factor, not gold) I'm not even going to bother pointing out the flaws of regular nagas who don't wear armor since their crappiness speaks for itself.

Also if we're on the topic of early game, your best long term strategy is to have a strong early game. Which spending your resources recruiting Nagahs instead of your more effective archers won't get you. A Vampire Queen however can cover a somewhat laggy early game however (if you get a tough start aka next to xbows/heavy cavs, etc) because she can take on the tough indies without a problem. She's a little excessive actually I mentioned this when I said that you can take a Ghost King instead but you'll have more fun with a VQ most likely. =)

Nagahs are not short term good sacreds. They are not long term good sacreds. In short, they're not good sacreds. In fact if anyone actually really bothered reading my description about Nagah sacreds I've even specifically said,theoeritcally you can make them /decent/ (not good) with a e9/n9 bless but if you're going that route why not use an actual bless nation??


Twan said:

So my only question is (and it's a question not an arguement one more time I'm not pretending to know very well this nation) why do you find a bless strategy for Patala so bad (outside of blitzes / no diplo games) ? The way you have answered Daynarr's posts doesn't make your reasons very clear.



If it's already past 20 turns, chances are you are safe with Patala, by then you should have the evoation spells to handle any "rushes". Also a VQ still be significantly more problematic for a nation like Van to handle since not only is the hotter + higher dominion from a pretender that's awake more effective against Vans, you'll have a reusable raider / defender. Also I have no idea why some people still think Patala has very good troops, as I've mentioned, Nagahs are among the worst sacreds and your level 5 conjuration is barely at adequate level. Heck I think equal heavy infantry indies even beats out Nagah dual blessed in cost. Also you'll rare see a dual bless strategy from most MP players simply because it's not a diplomatic strategy. It relies on constant wars and as mentioned, mid game battlemagic murders sacreds. In short to answer your question, a bless strategy for Patala is bad because their sacreds are awful. The awaken pretender option is feasible but IMO has it's faults because it tends to putter out of strength around early mid which is when your toughest time with Patala is going to be.

[KissBlade]

In addition, don't take my word for it, try it out yourself. Try a Daynarr's dual bless strat and try to play twenty turns, and then try my aggressive mercenary + longbow + VQ and follow my guide for twenty turns. I guarantee you in our current metagame (default setting or indies: 6) mines will have a smoother game.

[JaydedOne]

Hey now. Why'd I merit deletion? Because I misspelled your name, Mindi? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Mindi]

Ha ha, no because I deleted every reference to the disagreement, even the posts that just PNL (Point 'n Laugh). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But hey, I did reopen the thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[KissBlade]

Heh ... PnL ... that's a new one ...

[Corwin]

<counting the deleted posts>
<sigh>

Damnit, I've missed all the fun.

Easer with the delete button please Mindi! >:) This forum hasn't seen a flamewar for a long time AFAICT, IMHO it's a good distraction from wreaking my head on how to make a certain MP-challenged nation work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Boron]

Btw are Patalas troops really that crappy?
They are not good, but in late era troop quality differs quite a bit.

A main characteristic seems to be whether a nation has x-bows or at least easy access to flaming arrows.

Imho other LA nations with weak troops:

-Arco:
Arco troops are somewhat similiar to the Patala troops, only the armored elephant seems very useful. But their various hoplite troops are rather weak too for late era imho.

-TC:
Only the horsemen are useful.

-Aby:
Resource intensive and expensive, only advantage is the fire resistence.

-Ctis:
No slave warriors, likely worst LA troops of all nations.



For Patala at least the Bandars with the iron crudgel and the Elephants are somewhat useful, and the atavi stealth archers for raiding.

Finally there is the theoretic possibility to use a horde of your troops in Mid- or Lategame and buff them with nagarishis.
With buffs like mass protection, mass regeneration, weapons of sharpness, quickening, luck, marble warriors, army of lead/gold you might be able to transform them from weakish units into decent hordes in key battles.
The bandar troops have only 4-5 enc, but good strength + ok attack rating, so if you manage to give them quickness + good protection/regeneration they might be formidable.

[KissBlade]

Boron said:
Btw are Patalas troops really that crappy?
They are not good, but in late era troop quality differs quite a bit.

A main characteristic seems to be whether a nation has x-bows or at least easy access to flaming arrows.

Imho other LA nations with weak troops:

-Arco:
Arco troops are somewhat similiar to the Patala troops, only the armored elephant seems very useful. But their various hoplite troops are rather weak too for late era imho.

-TC:
Only the horsemen are useful.

-Aby:
Resource intensive and expensive, only advantage is the fire resistence.

-Ctis:
No slave warriors, likely worst LA troops of all nations.



For Patala at least the Bandars with the iron crudgel and the Elephants are somewhat useful, and the atavi stealth archers for raiding.

Finally there is the theoretic possibility to use a horde of your troops in Mid- or Lategame and buff them with nagarishis.
With buffs like mass protection, mass regeneration, weapons of sharpness, quickening, luck, marble warriors, army of lead/gold you might be able to transform them from weakish units into decent hordes in key battles.
The bandar troops have only 4-5 enc, but good strength + ok attack rating, so if you manage to give them quickness + good protection/regeneration they might be formidable.



Well late game era does have actually a lot of good heavy infantry nationals, like jomon, etc. Longbows are also really nice as well. Keep in mind, A LOT of nations have crappy troops and then like two or three stellar ones.

I haven't played with Arco so I can't really comment on them but TC bk have really decent troops in form of glaives, foot archers and Ancestral Vessels. The vessels are especially great against indies, I routed knights! before from their bows =). Abys axemen are good too if I recall and their sacreds are decent but I haven't played too much aby either. Ctis troops blow, agreed on that one. But you can mass troops and just rush with them anyway. I usually get mass light infantry with Ctis and it's not terrible vs. most indies. However you know from your own experience Boron that Patala troops are really not that great. As for the theoretical use, I think you're really reaching there. After all, even my horde of wolves were a terror once I army of leaded them. =)

Edit: Actually looking over ARco's troops, they're not bad. They're one of those nations you need to take prod 3 with it seems but the elephants are really nice since they have those 14 morale troops and they have good protection. Also they get cheap jav throwers.

[Gandalf Parker]

I dont think Patalas troops are that crappy other than it seems like its being examined by a bunch of Ulm players.

OK I took a look. The bless thing sounded interesting.
2 blessable units?
They also have 2 pretty decent stealth units and a stealth commander.

But I will stick with the bless thing for now. 6 blessable commanders, all priests and mages. OK this seems workable. But why look at army blesses. I think I will look more toward mage blesses.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Pretender: Great Sage (paying 35 to get 10 extra research points)
4 astral magic resist +1
4 earth reinvigorate +2
4 water defense skill +2
4 air air shield 20%
1 fire

Dominion 4
Order +1
Productivity +1
Heat +3 (2 were free)
</pre><hr />

Hope to land near the water to make good use of those aquatic troops. Use the great aquatic priest/mage to try and discover a castle underwater to cement my foothold.

Create a couple of stealth armies to move outward and possibly take weakly protected provinces during a players initial expansion when he has no way to hurt me back. Rape those provinces to death. I gain, he is damaged early in the game.

Make use of the 27 research on my god to rush into some heavy spells. Use the rainbowness of my mage to create magic boosting items for those great mages

[KissBlade]

Your Nagahs are poor amphibians so it'll be tough "rushing" underwater ...

Also I don't play Ulm save Late Era. And even then all I use are Rangers + Zweihanders. In case you haven't guessed, I play everything min maxed. Note I didn't say ALL of Patala's troops are crappy, The Bandars are quite nice and should be the only thing you're recruiting besides possibly Atavi and Markata screens. The only reason you probably think I say so many of their units are crappy is because well ... they have a lot of other crappy units.

People who read the guide really needs to read more than the first few lines.

[Gandalf Parker]

I didnt realize I was quoting YOU. I thought others had said it also. If its jsut you saying it then... well there would be no need to comment on it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But when I say Ulm players I refer to the style, not so much the nation. The armored armies sweeping forward meeting armored armies style of play. As opposed to playing bless, or stealth, or defense, or research, or any other thing that a nation seems perfectly setup to do. Forcing a nation to compare to Ulm style combat tends to make many of the nations "suck".

As for the aquatic rush, they only have to take one province. After that the fact that I have magic/priests is adequate. I can use the locals to expand in water from there. As a land nation they actually have quite an advantage in water.

[Ballbarian]

People who read the guide really needs to read more than the first few lines.



Must admit it took 3 or 4 visits to this thread before I could bring myself to even skim past the first few lines of your guide. The second line begins by what I consider to be an poorly worded slam on the AI followed by an endless stream of "this unit is crap", "that unit sucks ***", etc...

Overall, once I sifted through the "crap", I found that your guide has a useful set of opinions, observances and ideas to contribute. A suggestion would be to focus more on the positive aspects of the nation and less on the negative. It would make it much easier for many people to make use of your work.

Please don't take this as a flame, as it is not intended as such. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[KissBlade]

Ballbarian said:

People who read the guide really needs to read more than the first few lines.



Must admit it took 3 or 4 visits to this thread before I could bring myself to even skim past the first few lines of your guide. The second line begins by what I consider to be an poorly worded slam on the AI followed by an endless stream of "this unit is crap", "that unit sucks ***", etc...

Overall, once I sifted through the "crap", I found that your guide has a useful set of opinions, observances and ideas to contribute. A suggestion would be to focus more on the positive aspects of the nation and less on the negative. It would make it much easier for many people to make use of your work.

Please don't take this as a flame, as it is not intended as such. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif



Non taken, actually I had spoke with others about the guide and I was hoping that my tone about the subpar troops would be taken as a bit of saucy humor. But apparently it didn't come through very well and as a result doesn't appeal to certain audiences. This was pointed out to me actually when I was discussing it in the IRC channel. My next guide (assuming I find a good enough strat for another nation) will try to be more serious.

[Twan]

Personnally I have great fun with a mix of the two strategies.

I use a dormant cyclop E9. I've used sloth 3, the bless is mostly for mages and summons (exact scales : order 3, sloth 3, heat 3, misf 1, magic 3, dom 7 and growth 3 ; dom 6, death 1 or more misfortune + a second school at 6 is also possible, or dom 6, death 1, air 3, astral 4 for teleport, better buffes and precision for the cyclop ; or any combo with earth 8 as the protection bonus won't be used for a long time). I expand without mercenaries (I dislike mercenaries, against computer it's too easy, against players it's too random). I use a screen of any infantry with shields I can recruit (mostly indeps) + a second line with some bandars or other good infantry I've found + a squad of light longbowmen + a squad with elephants and some good morale troops in attack rear. Except my first commander/prophet I only use indie commanders and priests. I research only evocation in the first turns, and thanks to magic 3 have blade wind when the cyclop appears. At this point I normally have two armies and then take 3 provinces/turn without having to wait for my dominion (but I had to make only one nagarishi in the 10 first turns, as elephants cost a lot, and would be distanced in site searching by other players in a mp game, I only had arcane probing and one nagarishi doing manual searches before turn 15 or so).

Anyway once blade wind is found I stop to use elephants and just use a screen, eventually some archers, and the nagarishi I start to recruit each turn, blessed by indie priests (I never use nagarishi/rini for research, they start the lab work only when I have construction 4+). I've also made an army with a big heavy bandars squad I use for knights or heavy troops provinces, and add markatas to reduce defense if a castle is close (and rust mist against knights). Finally once site detection spells and alteration 3 are researched, I start to focus on construction/conjuration only. Once I have construction 6 (for the water bracelets) I start to build more naginis, more cost effective for clam hoarding than nagarishis.

I've also finally made a little army with nagah warriors leaded by a nagaraja to start expanding underwater (with +4 protection and their hp, nagahs can take a medium tritons or shamblers province without too many losses, but I agree they are not very usefull out of taking the firsts underwater provinces, and with sloth 3 I had to produce nothing else during 5 turns).

KB strategy is probably better, but this one is fun to play and relatively efficient (to have blade wind when many provinces with light troops are still independant rocks, and your mages are really unfatiguable with the fatigue reduction of magic 3 + reinvigoration 4 from the bless + eventually items). The +4 protection makes gandharvas very hard to kill, especially as their 25 hp are sufficient to endure one or two spells (and I think 21 prot devatas with reinvigoration to fight longer with 4 weapons, some resistance items, and buffing themselves with mistform, etc... would rock in the end game - I'm just at conjuration 6 in my test-). Another option with a cyclop would have been a classic focus on enchantment then using him to summon lots of living statues at a good cost, but I wanted to have the national summons as fast as possible (I'm probably not min/maxing here).

edit : "reinvigoration" not "recuperation" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Boron]

Twan said:
... your mages are really unfatiguable with the fatigue reduction of magic 3 + recuperation 4 from the bless + eventually items...


You get another +4 reinvigoration from summon earthpower + 1 additional level of earth magic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

I haven't experimented much with Rust Mist yet, does the trampling from your elephants also destroy enemy armors?

[Twan]

Yes I forgot summon earthpower in addition, so reinvigoration 8 (+30% cost reduction in your dominion) without items.

I think trampling is only size based alas and do nothing if it doesn't succeed, but knights provinces are not really hard to take with rust mist + a bandar first line (or better some expandable troops then a bandar squad) and a horde of little monkeys behind. I prefer not to use the markatas for taking the first strike, as it's better to have them surrounding knights (2 squads on the sides and rear to maximize the number of attackers).

[Nerfix]

Wait wait wait, so Summon Earthpower gives 4 reinvig +1 reinvig per level in Earth magic? O_o

Also, Umor bless Rust Mist. It's a suprisingly good spell and there are more Water/Earth nations around to make use of it. It slows battles down for me though.

[Boron]

Twan said:
I think trampling is only size based alas and do nothing if it doesn't succeed, but knights provinces are not really hard to take with rust mist + a bandar first line (or better some expandable troops then a bandar squad) and a horde of little monkeys behind. I prefer not to use the markatas for taking the first strike, as it's better to have them surrounding knights (2 squads on the sides and rear to maximize the number of attackers).


I am not worried about indies, i wonder if rust mist might be useful in big PVP battles http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Maybe Destruction could used be instead too.

[Manuk]

It's not +1/level reinv. it's +1 earth lvl because casting summon earthpower just like the other summon power of other magiks.

[Twan]

Yes the other +4 is my bless.

[KissBlade]

If you want to bless your mages, I recommend going e8 with your cyclops,dominion 10, order 3, sloth 3, heat 2, death 3, misfortune 2, magic 3 OR take dom 9 and e9. It's definitely a viable alternate opening as you can easily solo with your cyclops turn 2 this way. I can probably add this into the guide as well and update it but you'll also be playing your game slightly different. For one, you can skip the entire alteration tree, which is a plus. You'll have to jump into evocation instead which isn't bad since you have to get it eventually anyway. You'll be relying on nagarishis more whlie using gurus for research instead. You're also trading off by having a weaker position from turn 12-20 roughly but having a much stronger turn 1-12. It's difficult to measure efficiency later game, since VQ SC is always useful but so is e8 or e9 bless. However, relief + summon earthpower does take a lot of burden off any fatigue from battle magic vs. the extra slots you'll be spending to script bless. As I've said, it's definitely a viable alternative but hard to say which one is better. Your strategy with expansion and mercs should still remain relatively the same however.

Edit: Actually in competitive setting the cyclops build will probably be stronger since most current LE games are indie 5 and the stronger early game a cyclops gives you under those settings will most likely be too good an advantage to pass up. A VQ does allow to cover up a bumpy road however since you can avoid tough indies that a cyclops or an army wouldn't normally be able to take and the VQ can wreck them later. Also the cyclops is a somewhat overused chassis while you'll rarely get to use the VQ. =)

[PDF]

I like E9 cyclops, yet they need some items to fight effectively if they don't have any other magic, due to their crap base Att/def.
From then they are pretty powerful as fighters, then have nice support spells such as LoS and Weapons of Sharpness, can cast Earthquakes and craploads of BW, then create armies of Statues when you've climbed Ench tree, go for an "artifact rush" with FotA... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Dunno if all this is really "competitive" but it's very nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[KissBlade]

PDF said:
I like E9 cyclops, yet they need some items to fight effectively if they don't have any other magic, due to their crap base Att/def.
From then they are pretty powerful as fighters, then have nice support spells such as LoS and Weapons of Sharpness, can cast Earthquakes and craploads of BW, then create armies of Statues when you've climbed Ench tree, go for an "artifact rush" with FotA... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Dunno if all this is really "competitive" but it's very nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif



With dom 9 or 10 (10 is safer), a cyclops can solo most indies turn 2 without equip. FoTA is like Arcane Nexus, extremely dangerous to cast as it'll signal other players to target you as the main threat nation. It's actually not as great an idea to rush for it in MP as it is in SP.

[Corwin]

KissBlade said:
FoTA is like Arcane Nexus, extremely dangerous to cast as it'll signal other players to target you as the main threat nation. It's actually not as great an idea to rush for it in MP as it is in SP.



True. Most of the time when I see FoTA goes up in MP game, it means that the enchantment must be dispelled ASAP or the nation must be crashed quickly, otherwise it'll dominate the game using large array of dirt-cheap high level items. So usually I either attack the nation, or build coalition of neighbors to attack the nation, or join such coalition myself if it already exists.

[KissBlade]

Updated section on awakened e8 cyclops build.

[Kuritza]

Found this thread via the strategies link, gotta add something about the light bandar warriors.
They are actually good. Very good even, in right circumstances. But not as melee infantry - they are archers, with low precision, low range, but two attacks per round and a higher than normal damage.
You might want to recruit them against Pangaea, since it tends to mass lightly armored troops in great numbers. Light bandari take care of them like no tomorrow. I guess same goes to repelling the Ctulhus back to the sea - light bandari are THE unit to take care of chaff troops.
P.S.
Script them to fire, of course.

[Morkilus]

The lower armor seems like they'd be less than ideal against chaff - the point for most front-line infantry is to take less damage over the long run, not deal damage quickly. But I haven't tried it yet. I like Patala, but I went with the Bandar archers with elephants or the chakram-atavi up front.

[Sombre]

They work provided they have some other troops like indy heavy infantry or something to stand in front of them eating arrows and blocking stuff. Or if you mass enough of them, of course. They're really nasty close range missile troops though, it's true.

[Reverend Zombie]

Kuritza said:
But not as melee infantry - they are archers, with low precision, low range, but two attacks per round and a higher than normal damage.




Light Bandar archers shoot twice per round?

[Shovah32]

I think he means light bandar warriors with the sticks and stones weapon, or something like that.

[Kuritza]

Yep. Light bandar warrior throws sticks and stones twice per round, and if you amass them in decent numbers, with some suicidal shieldmen in front of them, they clear chaff very efficienly. They arent that good for small clashes because of their awful precision, but when you go against 300+ meanads, satyrs, lobo guards, madmen etc, precision doesnt matter much.

[KissBlade]

The problem is, the purpose you described are better served by Elephants/Blade Winders. I can't really picture scenarios where you're not better off just saving your gold for those instead. The Longbows serve a more specific role as artillery. STick and stones might shoot twice and all but considering the price and the lack of durability, it's pretty meh since Patala has access to lots of crappy missile anyway.

[Edi]

I suppose a lot of that depends on what research difficulty you're playing. Just bumping research to hard makes the wait for Bladewind significantly longer.

[Kuritza]

Elephants -
No, sometimes they arent a better answer to chaff. Maybe if you can hire 30 of them all of a sudden, they are. But if you can only hire 5 elephants (imagine you're short on gold), they are quite vulnerable and wont hurt enemy as 25 light bandari.
Bladewind -
For Patala (late age) maybe... against Pangaea. Because Rlyeh will easily mind duel your bladewinders into untimely grave. Same goes for elephants btw, they are 5x times easier to mind blast than light bandari.

Price and durability is the same as for bandari longbowmen. And stone is not such a crappy missile when a big bad bandar is holding it, dmg 12 is better than a longbow arrow. Its only downside is terrible accuracy, which wont matter when enemy chaff is everywhere.

[Humakty]

I am a wannabee Arcos player (more success with fire nations...)and what I learned is that elephant are too costly to rely upon if you want an empire.

If you want them to be in sufficent numbers, so that they can literally crush any opposition before getting tired, you'll have too few battle groups, and you won't be able to fight on a sufficent number of fronts.

I've been able to win some battles with monkeys without using elephants, I think the big problem with them is having reinforcements after each noticeable engagements, as your troops tend to die easily.

[KissBlade]

I can't feasibly picture hiring those light bandar warriors over longbows in the beginning. And early mid, when elephants come into it's own and national troops are just about to be useless, they're still way more effective than light bandar warriors. The scenario you gave was mass chaff. Mass chaff allows you to build troops of your own too. 500 gold is still better served with elephants because those elephants will last you and it's not difficult to script them and place them to do heavy damage. You don't have to worry too much about friendly fire either as you will if you went light bandars. You can't go, well Ryleh is going to blah blah blah. That's nation specific because I can just as easily say light bandar warriors drop like flies to any sort of falling fire/frost, blade wind, archers etc. There's a lot more counters to them than elephants. And if you're forced to scatter into too many armies without a big solid main army you're fux0red anyway. In any MP, you should have ONE maybe TWO main armies around mid games with thugs/mini SC's scattered about to put out any small fires.

In short, Light Bandar Warriors are not good with their current stats cost. You can argue this until your blue in the face but until they have better range and better precision, I doubt I'll be changing my mind anytime soon.

[WraithLord]

I'm hereby bringing this thread back from the dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I've read carefully through this guide and truth be told I'm not in agreement with some of the notions raised here.

I've come with some recommendations, as below:
-&gt; Initial expansion. Use elepahnt groups. When you can, mix with Bandar infantry for morale.
-&gt; recommended scales, magic+1 or +3 for research bonus. Prod is not required. Order +3, Possibly Growth.
-&gt; Use a complementing pretnder to nations magic (W,E,S,N), so either a rainbow mage, or an SC with B,D,F,A,N for example.
-&gt; Expand early on using groups of elephants, they're awesome early game and terrible mid to late game (since their low MR means they're toast to competent players using MR spells like soul slay)
-&gt; In mid game switch to Bandar based armies with some Atavis for stealth if needed.
-&gt; Important magic schools are, Conj. (great summons) and Evoc (For Nagarishis)

I also have a couple of questions regarding Patala summons I couldn't find an answer for in this thread (or others for that matter):
1. Are Apsaras worth it?
2. Are Yakshas and Yakshine (conj. 4) the same as Kailasa recruited mages?
3. Gandharvas are supposedly good summons for EA. Are they also useful for Patala in LA?
4. Devala and Rudra. Any information is welcome. Are they unique? Can they be made into good SCs?

[Renojustin]

One point in favor of bandar infantry is that fire arrows, wind guide, and strength all increase their damage much more significantly than they would for longbows.

At least I think flaming arrows works for sticks and stones...

Drop a few strength buffs and flaming arrows with Wind Guide on an army of bandar infantry and watch the feces fly!

You now have: shortbow range with massive (magical) missile damage.

[Gregstrom]

1. They're unarmoured sacreds with only average defence and two attacks (although 1 is a kick - wow...). Probably not.
2. Yes, right down to having an upkeep cost.
3. They have about 17 prot, a buckler and a falchion or similar (and I think a kick too). Good MR and attack/defence make them able to stand up well in fights with LA troops.
4. The Rudra is a big 4-armed SC chassis, and is pretty handy. The Devala is a spellcaster who's not much good in a fight IIRC, and the side-effect of boosting magic scales makes it a good boost to researchers if you haven't gone for magic 3 in your scales.

[WraithLord]

Good suggestion. (I think it was already made earlier in this thread.)

I also found that markata units do have their uses. For one their small size allows them to swarm larger enemies, secondly they have high defense, meaning as long as they're not under direct enemy arrow fire they tend to bring relatively good results (for 5g units).
For example, in some of my test games I've seen the markata archers stop and handle a charge of a group of knights. This feat was repeated several times in my tests.

[WraithLord]

Thank you Gregstrom.

May I ask what you mean in your comment about point #4. The one about side effect of magic scale?- Does the Devala boost magic scales or some such?

[Gregstrom]

Exactly so. I don't know what the odds of a boost are each turn, but if it's a similar effect to the domain-issuing sites then you're pretty much guaranteed a province at Magic-3 after a Devala's been there for a few turns.

[thejeff]

I didn't know that was possible.
Can it be modded?
I want scale modifying units...

[Kuritza]

AFAIK its possible when your domain is weak. Otherwise, your domain settings are stronger than some Devala's effect. In my tests, one Devala didnt change anything.
Perhaps if you mass them... but then again, is it worth massing an expensive 9-lvl summon to get +1 research for your mages in one castle?

[Gregstrom]

Well, I guess if you took the huge risk of being something like dom-6 and drain-1 then rushed conj 9 it would be +3 research.


Probably not a worthwhile strategy.

[WraithLord]

Sounds like nice flavor yet quite useless in practice. Nice touch on part of the Devs. I would have liked 2 see this idea developed more. Meaning having some high level summons, who can be viewed as lesser gods, that can exert global influence, like heat/cold, MR higer/lower etc.

[thejeff]

I was thinking of the opposite use in the recent Man thread. High level summons that, to go with the LA Man Curse, shifted dominion towards drain, but were still good enough to use despite the drawback.

[Gregstrom]

Drain for LA Man is hardly a setback, surely?

[thejeff]

I said that badly.
It was intended for MA Man, based on the unexplained Curse that led to LA Man.

Something powerful enough to be tempting, but destructive to the Witches in long run.

Never really got anywhere with the idea and it can't be modded anyway.


We now return you to your regularly scheduled monkeys...

[JimMorrison]

Well, a unit for Man that boosts Magic scale..... AND Death scale..... That might be able to be worked in with the curse somehow, in a thematic way that I don't understand, since Man is such a mystery. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif But basically looking at it as if you had used your points from Drain to get Growth, you could boost your researchers while only losing the Growth in 1 province. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Lingchih]

WraithLord said:
Good suggestion. (I think it was already made earlier in this thread.)

I also found that markata units do have their uses. For one their small size allows them to swarm larger enemies, secondly they have high defense, meaning as long as they're not under direct enemy arrow fire they tend to bring relatively good results (for 5g units).
For example, in some of my test games I've seen the markata archers stop and handle a charge of a group of knights. This feat was repeated several times in my tests.



It makes sense to me. A huge group of little monkeys attack a knight charge... monkeys everywhere, and you can't lance the damn things cause they are too quick. They jump on you, jump on your horse, claw it's eyes out, and then the Knight is down on the ground, while the markatas are ripping his armor off and tearing his throat out.

[Psycho]

Markatas couldn't possibly kill a knight no matter what their number is. They have 5 strength and a damage 3 weapon, that cannot bypass knights armor. They can stop the knights though and take those lance hits, so some more expensive troops don't get hit with them.

Devala has auto Celestial music in the battle, which is battlefield wide quickness for the sacreds (well at least the summoned ones, not sure about the nagas).

[thejeff]

Strength 5, a damage 3 weapon and open ended die rolls. Lots of them since they're six to a square. They'll do damage if there are enough of them.

[Endoperez]

thejeff said:
Strength 5, a damage 3 weapon and open ended die rolls. Lots of them since they're six to a square. They'll do damage if there are enough of them.



They won't do much before the knights are fatigued, though. Critical hits from fatigue will help a lot, of course.

[Psycho]

If they place enough hits some will go through eventually. But they won't place enough hits because they will route too soon. Markatas have a big problem with routing.

[llamabeast]

I once started an MP game as Kailasa, with the plan to focus almost exclusively on markata using Strength of Giants to make them into killing machines.

Unfortunately (largely due to bad luck, I claim!), I was out of the game by turn 11. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[WraithLord]

Regarding Markatas, in my tests they met the knights in one of two ways:
1. In front and to the side I put a decoy squad to take arrows (whatever monkey with shields will do). Then I put a squad of Marakata in middle to hold the charge of enemy knights. Last, heavy duty killers finish knights (elephants mainly, but blessed Nagas work, Bandars as well).

2. Unexpected and most fun. I put squads of Markata archers to the sides and rear. It so happens that sometimes knights choose to go after them instead of charging the middle squad. The archers stop the knights with little losses for a few turns. Until killer squad arrives.

Oh and one last note about this, It works with (or rather vs.) Vans as well. Its a nice, unexpected, way to hold melee units.

Not related - The Devala Celestial music sounds awesome. Thanks for the info.

[Gandalf Parker]

I havent read thru this entire thread and Im lazy so I will just ask...

Sometimes the player guides work for the stupid ai also but sometimes they are too strategy oriented for it. Has this thread come up with a better-build for a Patala AI? Something we can add to the library for the semirandom program?
Pretender choice, magic for pretender, equipment for the pretender, scales, dominion strength, etc etc.

[Jarkko]

Can anybody please tell what special heroes Patala can get? I am playing in a MP (with current patch and latest CBM 1.6, so no clamming), and the one hero I got so far made me drool quite a bit. This is the first time I play with Patala, and wasn't quite expecting so that (sorry, not revealing what the hero is, in case somebody from the game reads this; I want to keep my little secret for a few more turns :) ).

Been so far fighting pretty much as per the guidelines Baalz (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=40568) gave in his guide for Bandar Log in early game. With some spell support markatas throwing sticks&stones really are great, and nothing pleases me more than to see the little guys gaining some respect :)

As clamwhoring is not available in CBM 1.6 anymore, I have come up with an alternative end-game strategy. I have to see how it goes, if I make it to the end game of course :) I intend to write down some notes about my experiences with Patala after the game though, as under CBM 1.6 I think they are quite different from before.

[Stavis_L]

Can anybody please tell what special heroes Patala can get?

See this thread (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45713) for a post by Burnsaber with a link to a document with all Vanilla + CBM 1.6 heroes.

[Jarkko]

Heh, seems Patala has just one hero, but he is a multihero. So much about my secrecy then :p

Anyway, when I saw the Golden Naga in my capital I did pee my pants :D

[chrispedersen]

yep, f4 for flaming ...