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Old October 24th, 2006, 01:58 PM
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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively

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 ) 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.
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  #2  
Old October 24th, 2006, 02:02 PM
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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively *DELETED*

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Old October 24th, 2006, 02:06 PM
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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively *DELETED*

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Old October 24th, 2006, 02:08 PM
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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively

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.
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Old October 24th, 2006, 02:41 PM
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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively

Quote:
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.
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Old October 24th, 2006, 02:49 PM
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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively

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.
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Old October 24th, 2006, 02:54 PM

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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively *DELETED*

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Old October 24th, 2006, 03:19 PM
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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively

Quote:
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?

Quote:
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
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Old October 24th, 2006, 02:59 PM

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Default Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively

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.
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Old October 24th, 2006, 03:08 PM
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