Re: Caelum pretender design
 

1. natarajas are male.
2. they suffer cold fatigue from caelum's dominion
3. due to their usual function as brawlers w/out massive paths, they tend to accumulate afflictions - hence their popularity w/ Arcos.

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

1. correct . the name sounds feminine though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif
so i continue saying her http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/yawn.gif
2. sure . i never said though that i use her as an earlygame sc http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
nataraja is 0 points +3 dominion so giving her a bit fire + air magic ( for travel ) and a bit earth for forging + invulnerability since caelum lacks earth is not too expensive .
2 death is an almost must to summon spectres finally .

but thats all in all not so expensive so i can go quite good scales http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

when i use her lategame i fight often outside my own dominin anyways so until i have an undead pretender i will always suffer some fatigue against either heat or cold opponents anyway .

3. i use her only fully equipped as mid-lategame sc .
if i get afflictions then it should be not too difficult with my astral income which is quite nice as caelum if needed to summon first a coatl and then a fairy queen with coatl + treelords staff .
cause 1 of my spectres should be able to summon a coatl sooner or later http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif


so nataraja is relative useless earlygame ( but a good sitesearcher ) but mid-lategame she is better than a ghostking or a vq as sc and she is cheaper than a vq and about as expensive as a ghostking .

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

First turn buy 1 seraph and as many of the low resource (4) archers as you can afford.

Second turn. Equip seraph with air gem and script to wind guide. Take seraph and storm general maxed out with archers to indy province. SG has 21 archer in one unit, 1 archer in the other 4 units. The units with only one archer are spread across the front of the battlefield. Seraph has 6 archers in one unit, and 4 units with 1 archer. Again spread the single unit archers around the front of the battlefield.

The scattered archers does two things. First any missile file will target them, likely missing entirely, or killing 1. Second the ground units will zig zag around targeting your scattered archers before they advance towards your main force.

This gives your main wind guided archer force many turns to attack and hopefully route the enemy.

Anything with low armor or only a few HI is fair game.

Each turn you can bring another seraph with an air gem and another 10 archers. Once you have reached a critical mass you can have the storm general carry excess gems for wind guide. Then your mages can stay at home to research, site search, or form another conquering party.

The real key is researching Evo2. Once you have lighting then nearly any Indy province is available to you (including knights). Wind guide, combined with naturally high precision, and the precision bonus from lighting make almost every bolt hit. 4 seraphs and 50 archers (with as many scattered as possible) can take almost any province with a lost of 6 or 7 archers.

Once I hit Evo2 I generally go toward con2 for clams, and then conjuration to 5 or even 7 (for queens). It helps to avoid alteration so your seraphs stay focused on casting lighting instead of phantom warriors.

Anyways... this works well for me. And its fun to not depending on SC pretender for expansion. Or choosing the GK like most other nations end up doing.

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

I've rather enjoyed using a PoD with Caelum, adding on several magic paths on top of death - typically fire, earth, and some nature, to complement Caelum's national mages for site searching, forging, and summoning.

While not immune to cold, being undead means that it doesn't suffer increased fatigue from Caelum's cold weather, and it doesn't require use of boots for flight, meaning that it can keep up with all the flying mages and troops.

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

Too powerful because "everyone" is using it (ie: nerf-bait), or because it's "too cheap"? These are the two most-frequently cited opinions on the subject, from what I've seen. I'm curious as to your opinion and reason (especially since I know you're one of Zen's "disciples", as I am).

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

"We thank you for not offending ancient religions."
"But why? I haven't stopped doing so yet."

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

as "raja" means "king", I admit that i'm perplexed by the supposed femininity of it.

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

it is a language thing .

but in german you have not only the but 3 different words :
der ( normally for male )
die ( normally for female )
das ( normally for things )

but you say e.g. :
der mensch = the human
a human can be male and female . but here you chose the male variant der .
die see = the lake
you chose the femine variant die though a lake is of no gender .


in german das nataraja sounds stupid .
der nataraja and die nataraja sound both stupid too but die nataraja is probably the best chose for the 3 lol

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

I think "rani" is the feminine of "raja" (based on "Flashman & the Great Game"). It is an Indian word but I do not know what language.


Pickles

Re: Caelum pretender design
 

Sorry, it's not. It's a thing of education.

So you're one of the reasons of the Pisa-results. "Die See" = the sea. The lake = "der See". There's a difference in there, and the right pronoun is rather important.

Please consider yourself a Christian for a moment. Now imagine some noob in some forum goes calling Jesus Christ "daughter of god", because her name sounds stupid for a male in his native language.



I'm german, and the arrogance and lack of respect for other cultures and Languages shown by some germans (among others) always tics me off.

Add edit:_ /rant off. Back to topic.