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 ...

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...

[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 .
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 ...

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...

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

Boron said:

Thematically i like Patala though a lot .
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 ) 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