Demo Guide to Kailasa

[Hadrian_II]

Slobby said:
Been playing around with Kailasa recently, and imo a w9 bless is great,

I would not get a water bless with kailasa, as you can cast celestial music and then get quickness for free. And the quickness from the W9 bless does not stack with the quickness from celestial music. so everything you will have left from w9 is a +4 to defence.

Slobby said: the only weakness as mentioned previously, is massed archers, however that can be rectified with an accompanying air bless, arrow fend, storm. Or simply set up a screen and amass long bows to pelt the opposing archers.

I would use arrow fend, wit conj6 you can summon kinnaras, who are able to cast arrow fend. In the early game you can use markata decoys to eat the arrows while expanding, in the midgame ghandarvas are heavy enough armoured to witstand enemy archers.

Slobby said:
With regards to problems expanding without a combat pretender. Once you get 10+ Yavana's backed by missle troops (sticks n stones or bows) you'll roll over indy's (even hvy cav) without any problems. So ideally to compensate for the slow start you'll want to have a couple of these packs of Yavana's running about.

Just use markata archers as decoys, and the yavanas can enter into meelee withoug taking too much damage from archers. For kailasa heavy cav is no problem anyway due to awe. But i would really watch out to the provinces that have much archers.

Slobby said:
Imo opinion the most important goals to strive for are to get a second fort up so that you can make sacreds from two places, and to research conj5 for gandharvas (great units) giving you access to 3 good melee sacreds.

I would also get some evoc early, as your mages can cast either falling frost or blade wind without problems.

Slobby said:
Note: To help with starting expansion I like to go markata archers and atavi infantry. The bandar commander becomes the prophet scripted sermon of co. x2 then holy avenger and smitex2. Have both the archers and inf on fire closest, and position them parallel to each other to avoid cross fire. Most importantly tho, started pumping out yavana's by turn 3, and get a yaksha on your second turn.

I would not use archers, as they are just creating friendly fire on your sacreds, or only use archers when you use them without sacreds. (or only ghandarvas)

For a pretender, i would go with an imprisoned oracle.

Scales
order 3 --> you need the money
sloth 3 --> you need no ressources
heat 3 --> you can take heat 3, and you will still have heat 2 in most of your provinces.
growth 0
luck 0
magic 1 --> +33% research is quite nice
dom 5 --> early on you wont have more money, later you will have temples and other castles to recruit sacreds

Blessing:
S9: twist fate and MR are nice, and with S9 your pretender has some wish-fu ready (and yakshinis can clam out of the box)
either F9 or N9 -> f9 makes you offensive quite strong, as all your sacreds have 2 attacks, and will be quickened later on
N9 can increase your survivability and as your sacreds have 20 hp it actually works
either N4 or E4
E4 is nice as all your mages are sacred, and it will also reduce fatigue problems on the sacreds
N4 gives some regen

if you dare to go to missfortune 3 (remember the monkey PD) you can take both E4 and N4.

[Endoperez]

Hadrian_II said:
I would not get a water bless with kailasa, as you can cast celestial music and then get quickness for free. And the quickness from the W9 bless does not stack with the quickness from celestial music. so everything you will have left from w9 is a +4 to defence.

I never noticed this, but Celestial Music doesn't stack with W9 bless. I always thought CM was just Quickness effect from other spell - so does that mean that spell Quickness and bless DON'T stack?

It's interesting, because going through the archives I found threads that kept on answering that yes, bless and spell quickness do stack, and also that no, bless and celestial music don't stack. Also, no one ever seemed to know just how bless and magic quickness stack.

Has anyone actually used them together?


EDIT: Kristoffer thinks they stack, though. Scroll down a few posts, I didn't manage to link directly to his post.

[Hadrian_II]

I tested it and they did not stack, with W9 bless and celestial music, my sacreds did just had their AP doubled, if it would have stacked they should have been tripled.

[Slobby]

Hadrian_II said:
I would not get a water bless with kailasa, as you can cast celestial music and then get quickness for free. And the quickness from the W9 bless does not stack with the quickness from celestial music. so everything you will have left from w9 is a +4 to defence.

Counting on cm means that you'll have to research thau6 and have an s3 caster. Even if the quickness doesn't stack with a w9 bless, having quickness early on really helps the early expansion. I'd rather go to conj5 and have the w9 bless.

I don't feel that cm + w9 bless is a waste, since it also diversifies who's leading your sacreds. You can either bless or cm to essentially the same effect (assuming you have a straight w9 bless).

Hadrian_II said:
I would not use archers, as they are just creating friendly fire on your sacreds, or only use archers when you use them without sacreds. (or only ghandarvas)

I just put my archers on 'fire archers'...

[Endoperez]

Besides, +3 att/def +4 def works pretty well together, especially as Kailasa's sacreds have multiple attacks and everyone except Gandharvas have high base defense. Even Gandharvas can evade some attacks after both boosts.

Any way, I'd like more discussion about the fact that bless and quickness don't stack. I and Hadrian both tested it, and water bless and Celestial Music don't stack. If no one has actualyl benefitted from stacking different kinds of quicknesses, we'll have to bump some recent question threads and start the re-education.

[vfb]

Tested with W9 and Marverni Boar Warriors.


Initial stats (not blessed):

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 10


Blessed:

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 15
Defense+4


Blessed and Quickness (spell):

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 20
Defense+7, Attack+3


Just Quickness (spell):

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 20
Defense+3, Attack+3


Endo, you are right, there is no stacking of AP bonus from Bless and Quickness spell.

[vfb]

To see equipment effects, I tested with Bune the Sacred Ice Devil:

Initial Stats:

Basic Action Points 14, Current Action Points 14


Wearing Jade Armor:

Basic Action Points 14, Current Action Points 20
Defense+3, Attack+3


Wearing Jade Armor and Blessed:

Basic Action Points 14, Current Action Points 20
Defense+7, Attack+3


Wearing Jade Armor and Blessed and Quickness spell:

Impossible, refuses to cast Quickness while wearing Jade Armor.


Conclusion: As Endo found, the only stacking that you get from a W9 bless and any other kind of quickness is an additional +4 defense from the bless, in addition to all the quickness bonuses from the spell.

Special note: Quickness does stack with Cold Power. So instead of +1 AP for a cold-1 scale, you get +2 AP if quickness is in effect.

[Hadrian_II]

Slobby said:
Counting on cm means that you'll have to research thau6 and have an s3 caster. Even if the quickness doesn't stack with a w9 bless, having quickness early on really helps the early expansion. I'd rather go to conj5 and have the w9 bless.

I never had any problems with expansion, if i go with dom5 i can start expansion partys with 15 yavanas and about 20-30 markata decoys and usually just loose the decoys (3-6 per battle) and no more that 1 yavana.

You are stronger with a water bless early on that with other blesses, but as you are not too strong early on, this is not really an issue, i would better look that everything i can get stacks nicely together afer i have it.

Slobby said:
I just put my archers on 'fire archers'...

In my opinion, even then they do more damage to you than to the enemy.

[Ming]

I tried playing Kailasa for the first time recently and seem to have a somewhat different take from what has been written so far on this thread. I am only playing SP, so maybe that is the reason for the variance - but I suspect not and so hope that it would be helpful to present my views.

Kailasa really sucks at first glance. The problem with Kailasa is finding a way to survive in the early game. I would imagine that this could be even more acute in MP. As mentioned earlier in the thread, the starting army is woefully weak and the PD is also weak. The only recruitable troop with any protection is the Bandar Warrior with 10, and the Atavi Archer is worse than most indies in a straight fight - barely compensated by its 1GP lower cost and survival/stealth capability. To rely on it as a key strategy is to admit defeat in making Kailasa work.

So what does Kailasa have to compensate for its glaring weakness and how can these be make to help it survive in the early game? In my opinion Kailasa's strength - or at lease its key differences from other nations - lies in its sacreds, its national summons, and its mages. The last two won't help its early survival. So we are left with the sacreds to find a way to make Kailasa competitive in the early game. The possibility of an awake SC Pretender has been considered and rejected - and I shall address it later.

Kailasa's sacreds have the same glaring weakness as its other national troops - no armour (BTW, that means Legions of steel won't help). As it stands Kailasa has no answer to the standard enemy formation of archers screened by infantry with shields because Kailasa's own screens are inadequate even after taking into consideration of its cheap size 1 Markatas. It has been mentioned that researching "wind guide" and "flaming arrows" is the way to go but other nations can do it better and it becomes unstuck against "arrow fend". Kailasa has no answer to arrow fend as it has no recruitable air mages. So it can easily be overrun by the likes of Vanheim and Helheim - who happens to be strong in the early game. Some of you might have already guessed what I am getting at: air bless. To be precise, an A9 bless as the 70% protection is needed to compensate for the poor missile defense of its other troops and the lightning protection gives it needed "advantage" or improved survivability against air nations - like Vanheim/Helheim. Since Kailasa has no recruitable H3 mages, this does mean it needs lots of priests to field more than one effective major army. however, this should not be a problem in the early game - and early game survival is the key for Kailasa. Later on H3 mages can be summoned (S4 required). Another needed measure to improve survivability in the early game is to have good scales, since Kailasa needs superiority in numbers to augment the limited supply of sacreds.

This brings me to address the issue of an awake SC Pretender. The problem with an awake SC Pretender is that one has to give up on one or both of the following: A9 bless and good scales. In my opinion this would be too much of an handicap to its middle/end game, as well as failure to properly utilize its sacreds.

My choice of Kailasa's Pretender would be A9W4 at a minimum for magic to make the sacreds effective. For scales O3 and H3 and M1 (at least) are no-brainers. I would also use an imprisoned pretender to max out its early game ability (through blesses and scales) - you can see that I am obsessed with Kailasa's early game survival, and I do think that it is warranted. The rest of Pretender design would be trade-offs and depends on individual preferences and playing style. I have deliberately refrained from a specific recommendation as I have only just started trying to play Kailasa and have yet to come out with a definite "best" design.

The issue of the starting army also needs to be addressed. It is very weak in combat but not bad as patrollers. I would use them in the first few turns patrolling the capital and turning tax up to 140% to speed up the building of the second (real) army and hiring mercs for expansion Unless of course you are lucky enough to have a high income province defended by weak indies next to your capital and no mercs are available! I have also toyed with the idea of recruiting a Yaksha immediately and make it your Prophet but have not yet come to a final decision yet. Your initial "real" army should ideally be made up of Markatas (a few in front on fire archers as first screen and the rest in reserve guarding commanders), Yavanas on hold and attack or Yavana archers on fire closest as a second screen, Bandar swdsmen as main melee troops and final screen, backed up by light Bandar archers and Atavi archers as well as some Bandar warriors at the very back (so that it won't get into enemy missile range too soon).

Alone the same theme, Alt3 should be researched ASAP to get body ethereal, protection, and moss body - much needed to improve the survivability of your troops in melee. Unless, of course, you have a Yaksha with a W1 pick, in which case Evo2 (rust mist) is quicker. Thau4 (paralyse) would also be a top priority if you have giants or awake Pretenders as neighbours. Alt4 is nice (luck, destruction, swarm in addition to wind guide) and only a short way from Alt3, but if not in a war already or have one looming I would after Alt3 go straight to conjuration5 to get Gandhavas. After that you would be fully competitive.