Lanka Guide (and Mini-Blood Guide) 3.10 Patch

[K]

vvv

[sector24]

Good guide! I don't remember if there was already a Lanka guide around or not, but I do remember some conversation points from other posts that you could add.

1. Kala-Mukha warriors have helmets while Palankasha's do not. In some cases this makes them the better choice to recruit.

2. Yoginis are statistically your best research per gold unit, but they are not sacred so mass producing them as researchers is more expensive long term.

The guide is otherwise pretty comprehensive. The only thing I can think of that isn't in there is a sample pretender design for new players to try out Lanka for the first time. Thanks for the hard work.

[Revolution]

K said:
they cut through indies and other poor units like a hurricane.




Here I am....ROCK YOU LIKE A HURRICANE!



nice guide

[mathusalem]

K said:
Lanka Guide(and Mini-Blood Guide) 3.10 Patch
Author: K

[...]

-Flyers carrying blood slaves are the best way to bring blood slaves into battles. Just make sure your flyers appear next to your blood mages.



Do you mean Blood slaves are shared between all your mages on the battlefield ?

[Micah]

Not quite, blood slaves are shared, but only with nearby mages. Not sure what the range is, but I'd guess somewhere between 1-3 squares away. It's pretty short.

[Aethyr]

Micah said:
Not quite, blood slaves are shared, but only with nearby mages. Not sure what the range is, but I'd guess somewhere between 1-3 squares away. It's pretty short.



Huh. Good info, I'm not sure that I've ever noticed that this was the case.

[K]

Yes, putting blood slaves next to blood mages, even if they come from a non-mage character, means that the blood mage will use them.

I'll add the info about the helmets and the Yogini. I don't think either are truly important details, but for completeness's sake they should be tossed in.

Glad everyone liked the guide. I spend a good chunk of two days of vacation, and I was worried no one was going to read it.

As for the builds, I find that several builds work well with Lanka and their individual effectiveness depends heavily on play style and game parameters, so even a sample build would be misleading.

[Agrajag]

Very interesting read.
Do you intend to fix the incomplete sentences? (like "For people concerned that Berserking ")
And if you do, please highlight the "fix" in some way, so I'll just reread the missing part http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[sector24]

Yeah, honestly your guide is pretty comprehensive. The only reason I made any suggestions is because without them there's really not much reason to post.

Hey...nice guide...uh....cya!

[parcelt]

Thanks for writing this guide, K. I had been looking for one on Lanka, and this one is very helpful indeed!

[Huzurdaddi]

This is a fantastic guide. One of the best I have ever seen. Congratulations.

One suggestion to make it over the top amazing: some screen shots of your troop placement during inital expansion, and maybe a couple of your uber armies (with sub-screen shots of some of the leaders that make the armies go).

[Meglobob]

Great guide.

Its a totally comprehensive guide to playing Lanka. So much that I can't think of anything to add and lots of new ideas for me to use... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Seve82]

This is nice guide indeed. Would be great if someone added this to this Lazy_Perfectionists list of guides:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=531894&page=0&view=collap sed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

[Cerlin]

This is a very useful guide thank you! Before this guide i have never been patient enough to successfully play Lanka. Now that I have read this I had a really fun game with them and I have really discovered how to have fun!

I think this is a great aspect that Dominions 3 always has something new to offer!

[MKDELTA]

Flight is a pretty nice spell for the Raksharajas, I think, at least early on. It's like a sniper attack versus those indies who have their commanders loitering around archers. Bless - Flight (make sure he is enough far away from any troops!) - Attack enemy archers. Tadah. I wouldn't use it against Hoburg Crossbows though, and it's not 100% risk free, but I like it. Much more effective than plain lightning bolt. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also, for Anusaras, I sometimes make them in the very start when I can't affrod that many tiger heads. I put them on the flanks with orders of attack archers or attack rear. They are pretty fast and then to reach the archers/rear pretty fast. With the tiger heads on the front, it's a pretty tight trap and kills those "medieaval" infantry & archer indies dead. Maybe not world's most effective tactic, but I like it too, so the donkey heads are not completely useless IMO.

[TwoBits]

The donkey-demons also have a strategic move of 3, which might be useful in certain circumstances.

Also, beware of unscripted blood mages. They will indeed "share" other units' slaves (spamming stuff like Summon Imps), often when you'd rather they didn't. And I think the "sharing" range is a way lot more than three - at least I remember it that way the last time I played Lanka (that was a couple patches ago though).

[K]

MKDELTA said:
Flight is a pretty nice spell for the Raksharajas, I think, at least early on. It's like a sniper attack versus those indies who have their commanders loitering around archers. Bless - Flight (make sure he is enough far away from any troops!) - Attack enemy archers. Tadah. I wouldn't use it against Hoburg Crossbows though, and it's not 100% risk free, but I like it. Much more effective than plain lightning bolt. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also, for Anusaras, I sometimes make them in the very start when I can't affrod that many tiger heads. I put them on the flanks with orders of attack archers or attack rear. They are pretty fast and then to reach the archers/rear pretty fast. With the tiger heads on the front, it's a pretty tight trap and kills those "medieaval" infantry & archer indies dead. Maybe not world's most effective tactic, but I like it too, so the donkey heads are not completely useless IMO.



Unfortunately, these are two ideas I can't really support.

Flight tends to get Raksharajas killed, and at 270 a pop for a capital-only commander you do research and reanimating with, its something I just can't justify. If you were going to do it in an emergency situation, make sure to cast Air Shield first so that you hopefully last a few rounds. In the mid-game when you have equipment and Mistform, this tactic sees use but in the early game an average indie province can be taken by 2-5 Palashankas and an H2 with no losses, so tossing a Rakshraja with no equipment into the mix is just asking for a dead commander with little additional combat effectiveness.

Anusaras are also a bad move if only gold is your limit. For the gold, I'll take two Palashankas for three Anusaras any day of the week. Heck, if you count in sheer survivability and the effects of XP, I'd take one Palashanka over three Anusaras.
-------------

Someone else also noted that Anusara(donkey heads) have a map move of 3. I find that this is pretty useless as the rest of your army is generally move 2, including the Kala-mulka that do most of your magical leadership.

[Tharsonius]

Great guide, it helped me a lot in a war against Lanka I'm fighting right now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

To win you have to know your enemy.

[Aezeal]

Do I see it correct that if you have a nature 9 bless (berserk) and a battlefield wide damage spell is cast (earthquake) that you won't cast anything anymore and your mages will probably all die?

[thejeff]

Well, any of your sacred mages that take damage will probably berserk or die, so yes.

Of course, with many nations, your mages will just die. Berserk isn't worse than dead.

You could not bless the mages, but that's tricky if you want to bless sacred troops.

[UncleYee]

All the accolades for this guide make me sad because it's not here. Is there any way for me to read it?

[vfb]

Oh, that's weird! The strategy now appears to boil down to a single tactic: "w".

It's okay though, 'cause it's on the wiki:

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Land_of_Demons/K%27s_guide_and_Blood_mini-guide

There's a couple more there too:

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Land_of_Demons#Playing_guides

[rdonj]

Sorry about that, apparently it is my fault.

[vfb]

What, the accolades?

[rdonj]

The guide being replaced by vvv :)

[vfb]

I think re-editing posts after 30 minutes is some sort of exploit, isn't it? Can we get that fixed in the next version of CBM?

[Tolkien]

Perhaps if enough blood were sacrificed, and hopefully if enough skulls piled up, Khorne may help.

[Sombre]

I followed this guide to the letter. All three of them. But I barely had a blood economy going at all.