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.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Update: Oh yeah I wrote the guide at like 4am so I fixed some typos.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

If there was one lesson Dominions 2 ought to have thaught us, it is that we should be very careful about dimissing anything in the game as useless too quickly. Some of the succesful Dominions 2 strategies emerged on the scene a surpisingly long while after release, and were often based on aspects of the game that had earlier been vocally denounced as no good.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Fair enough.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I remember when Mictlan was considered too weak for competitive multiplayer play. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

The Akashic archives remember a time around Dominions: PPP when Caelum was considered a weak...and a time when people didn't touch it with a 6-foot pike in Dom II because Air Elementals got nerfed...

And so on.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Stating a nation is weak is different than stating units are weak. The effectiveness of a unit that has no magic capabilities whatsoever is obvious. You can COMPARE the stats if not just watch them in outright result comparisant. Sacreds are slightly harder to measure but magic beings with average priests, cold blooded, average hit points are NOT a recipe for a good bless strat. Patala has promise because their mages are AWESOME.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

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.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I think the title of this thread may be confusing, a Guide to play Patala in Blitz Games is not necessarily a guide to play Patala competitively on real maps (especially when no big mp game has been finished).

Each nation may easily have 3 or 4 good guides saying very different things. I doubt there is for any nation one "competitive" strategy, best at the same time in sp, duel blitzes on very small maps, duels on big maps, 10prov/player maps with many nations and 30prov/player maps with many nations.

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.