Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

In addition, don't take my word for it, try it out yourself. Try a Daynarr's dual bless strat and try to play twenty turns, and then try my aggressive mercenary + longbow + VQ and follow my guide for twenty turns. I guarantee you in our current metagame (default setting or indies: 6) mines will have a smoother game.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Hey now. Why'd I merit deletion? Because I misspelled your name, Mindi? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Ha ha, no because I deleted every reference to the disagreement, even the posts that just PNL (Point 'n Laugh). http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But hey, I did reopen the thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Heh ... PnL ... that's a new one ...

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

<counting the deleted posts>
<sigh>

Damnit, I've missed all the fun.

Easer with the delete button please Mindi! >:) This forum hasn't seen a flamewar for a long time AFAICT, IMHO it's a good distraction from wreaking my head on how to make a certain MP-challenged nation work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Btw are Patalas troops really that crappy?
They are not good, but in late era troop quality differs quite a bit.

A main characteristic seems to be whether a nation has x-bows or at least easy access to flaming arrows.

Imho other LA nations with weak troops:

-Arco:
Arco troops are somewhat similiar to the Patala troops, only the armored elephant seems very useful. But their various hoplite troops are rather weak too for late era imho.

-TC:
Only the horsemen are useful.

-Aby:
Resource intensive and expensive, only advantage is the fire resistence.

-Ctis:
No slave warriors, likely worst LA troops of all nations.



For Patala at least the Bandars with the iron crudgel and the Elephants are somewhat useful, and the atavi stealth archers for raiding.

Finally there is the theoretic possibility to use a horde of your troops in Mid- or Lategame and buff them with nagarishis.
With buffs like mass protection, mass regeneration, weapons of sharpness, quickening, luck, marble warriors, army of lead/gold you might be able to transform them from weakish units into decent hordes in key battles.
The bandar troops have only 4-5 enc, but good strength + ok attack rating, so if you manage to give them quickness + good protection/regeneration they might be formidable.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Well late game era does have actually a lot of good heavy infantry nationals, like jomon, etc. Longbows are also really nice as well. Keep in mind, A LOT of nations have crappy troops and then like two or three stellar ones.

I haven't played with Arco so I can't really comment on them but TC bk have really decent troops in form of glaives, foot archers and Ancestral Vessels. The vessels are especially great against indies, I routed knights! before from their bows =). Abys axemen are good too if I recall and their sacreds are decent but I haven't played too much aby either. Ctis troops blow, agreed on that one. But you can mass troops and just rush with them anyway. I usually get mass light infantry with Ctis and it's not terrible vs. most indies. However you know from your own experience Boron that Patala troops are really not that great. As for the theoretical use, I think you're really reaching there. After all, even my horde of wolves were a terror once I army of leaded them. =)

Edit: Actually looking over ARco's troops, they're not bad. They're one of those nations you need to take prod 3 with it seems but the elephants are really nice since they have those 14 morale troops and they have good protection. Also they get cheap jav throwers.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I dont think Patalas troops are that crappy other than it seems like its being examined by a bunch of Ulm players.

OK I took a look. The bless thing sounded interesting.
2 blessable units?
They also have 2 pretty decent stealth units and a stealth commander.

But I will stick with the bless thing for now. 6 blessable commanders, all priests and mages. OK this seems workable. But why look at army blesses. I think I will look more toward mage blesses.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Pretender: Great Sage (paying 35 to get 10 extra research points)
4 astral magic resist +1
4 earth reinvigorate +2
4 water defense skill +2
4 air air shield 20%
1 fire

Dominion 4
Order +1
Productivity +1
Heat +3 (2 were free)
</pre><hr />

Hope to land near the water to make good use of those aquatic troops. Use the great aquatic priest/mage to try and discover a castle underwater to cement my foothold.

Create a couple of stealth armies to move outward and possibly take weakly protected provinces during a players initial expansion when he has no way to hurt me back. Rape those provinces to death. I gain, he is damaged early in the game.

Make use of the 27 research on my god to rush into some heavy spells. Use the rainbowness of my mage to create magic boosting items for those great mages

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Your Nagahs are poor amphibians so it'll be tough "rushing" underwater ...

Also I don't play Ulm save Late Era. And even then all I use are Rangers + Zweihanders. In case you haven't guessed, I play everything min maxed. Note I didn't say ALL of Patala's troops are crappy, The Bandars are quite nice and should be the only thing you're recruiting besides possibly Atavi and Markata screens. The only reason you probably think I say so many of their units are crappy is because well ... they have a lot of other crappy units.

People who read the guide really needs to read more than the first few lines.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I didnt realize I was quoting YOU. I thought others had said it also. If its jsut you saying it then... well there would be no need to comment on it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

But when I say Ulm players I refer to the style, not so much the nation. The armored armies sweeping forward meeting armored armies style of play. As opposed to playing bless, or stealth, or defense, or research, or any other thing that a nation seems perfectly setup to do. Forcing a nation to compare to Ulm style combat tends to make many of the nations "suck".

As for the aquatic rush, they only have to take one province. After that the fact that I have magic/priests is adequate. I can use the locals to expand in water from there. As a land nation they actually have quite an advantage in water.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Must admit it took 3 or 4 visits to this thread before I could bring myself to even skim past the first few lines of your guide. The second line begins by what I consider to be an poorly worded slam on the AI followed by an endless stream of "this unit is crap", "that unit sucks ***", etc...

Overall, once I sifted through the "crap", I found that your guide has a useful set of opinions, observances and ideas to contribute. A suggestion would be to focus more on the positive aspects of the nation and less on the negative. It would make it much easier for many people to make use of your work.

Please don't take this as a flame, as it is not intended as such. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Non taken, actually I had spoke with others about the guide and I was hoping that my tone about the subpar troops would be taken as a bit of saucy humor. But apparently it didn't come through very well and as a result doesn't appeal to certain audiences. This was pointed out to me actually when I was discussing it in the IRC channel. My next guide (assuming I find a good enough strat for another nation) will try to be more serious.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Personnally I have great fun with a mix of the two strategies.

I use a dormant cyclop E9. I've used sloth 3, the bless is mostly for mages and summons (exact scales : order 3, sloth 3, heat 3, misf 1, magic 3, dom 7 and growth 3 ; dom 6, death 1 or more misfortune + a second school at 6 is also possible, or dom 6, death 1, air 3, astral 4 for teleport, better buffes and precision for the cyclop ; or any combo with earth 8 as the protection bonus won't be used for a long time). I expand without mercenaries (I dislike mercenaries, against computer it's too easy, against players it's too random). I use a screen of any infantry with shields I can recruit (mostly indeps) + a second line with some bandars or other good infantry I've found + a squad of light longbowmen + a squad with elephants and some good morale troops in attack rear. Except my first commander/prophet I only use indie commanders and priests. I research only evocation in the first turns, and thanks to magic 3 have blade wind when the cyclop appears. At this point I normally have two armies and then take 3 provinces/turn without having to wait for my dominion (but I had to make only one nagarishi in the 10 first turns, as elephants cost a lot, and would be distanced in site searching by other players in a mp game, I only had arcane probing and one nagarishi doing manual searches before turn 15 or so).

Anyway once blade wind is found I stop to use elephants and just use a screen, eventually some archers, and the nagarishi I start to recruit each turn, blessed by indie priests (I never use nagarishi/rini for research, they start the lab work only when I have construction 4+). I've also made an army with a big heavy bandars squad I use for knights or heavy troops provinces, and add markatas to reduce defense if a castle is close (and rust mist against knights). Finally once site detection spells and alteration 3 are researched, I start to focus on construction/conjuration only. Once I have construction 6 (for the water bracelets) I start to build more naginis, more cost effective for clam hoarding than nagarishis.

I've also finally made a little army with nagah warriors leaded by a nagaraja to start expanding underwater (with +4 protection and their hp, nagahs can take a medium tritons or shamblers province without too many losses, but I agree they are not very usefull out of taking the firsts underwater provinces, and with sloth 3 I had to produce nothing else during 5 turns).

KB strategy is probably better, but this one is fun to play and relatively efficient (to have blade wind when many provinces with light troops are still independant rocks, and your mages are really unfatiguable with the fatigue reduction of magic 3 + reinvigoration 4 from the bless + eventually items). The +4 protection makes gandharvas very hard to kill, especially as their 25 hp are sufficient to endure one or two spells (and I think 21 prot devatas with reinvigoration to fight longer with 4 weapons, some resistance items, and buffing themselves with mistform, etc... would rock in the end game - I'm just at conjuration 6 in my test-). Another option with a cyclop would have been a classic focus on enchantment then using him to summon lots of living statues at a good cost, but I wanted to have the national summons as fast as possible (I'm probably not min/maxing here).

edit : "reinvigoration" not "recuperation" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

You get another +4 reinvigoration from summon earthpower + 1 additional level of earth magic http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

I haven't experimented much with Rust Mist yet, does the trampling from your elephants also destroy enemy armors?

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Yes I forgot summon earthpower in addition, so reinvigoration 8 (+30% cost reduction in your dominion) without items.

I think trampling is only size based alas and do nothing if it doesn't succeed, but knights provinces are not really hard to take with rust mist + a bandar first line (or better some expandable troops then a bandar squad) and a horde of little monkeys behind. I prefer not to use the markatas for taking the first strike, as it's better to have them surrounding knights (2 squads on the sides and rear to maximize the number of attackers).

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Wait wait wait, so Summon Earthpower gives 4 reinvig +1 reinvig per level in Earth magic? O_o

Also, Umor bless Rust Mist. It's a suprisingly good spell and there are more Water/Earth nations around to make use of it. It slows battles down for me though.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I am not worried about indies, i wonder if rust mist might be useful in big PVP battles http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Maybe Destruction could used be instead too.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

It's not +1/level reinv. it's +1 earth lvl because casting summon earthpower just like the other summon power of other magiks.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Yes the other +4 is my bless.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

If you want to bless your mages, I recommend going e8 with your cyclops,dominion 10, order 3, sloth 3, heat 2, death 3, misfortune 2, magic 3 OR take dom 9 and e9. It's definitely a viable alternate opening as you can easily solo with your cyclops turn 2 this way. I can probably add this into the guide as well and update it but you'll also be playing your game slightly different. For one, you can skip the entire alteration tree, which is a plus. You'll have to jump into evocation instead which isn't bad since you have to get it eventually anyway. You'll be relying on nagarishis more whlie using gurus for research instead. You're also trading off by having a weaker position from turn 12-20 roughly but having a much stronger turn 1-12. It's difficult to measure efficiency later game, since VQ SC is always useful but so is e8 or e9 bless. However, relief + summon earthpower does take a lot of burden off any fatigue from battle magic vs. the extra slots you'll be spending to script bless. As I've said, it's definitely a viable alternative but hard to say which one is better. Your strategy with expansion and mercs should still remain relatively the same however.

Edit: Actually in competitive setting the cyclops build will probably be stronger since most current LE games are indie 5 and the stronger early game a cyclops gives you under those settings will most likely be too good an advantage to pass up. A VQ does allow to cover up a bumpy road however since you can avoid tough indies that a cyclops or an army wouldn't normally be able to take and the VQ can wreck them later. Also the cyclops is a somewhat overused chassis while you'll rarely get to use the VQ. =)

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I like E9 cyclops, yet they need some items to fight effectively if they don't have any other magic, due to their crap base Att/def.
From then they are pretty powerful as fighters, then have nice support spells such as LoS and Weapons of Sharpness, can cast Earthquakes and craploads of BW, then create armies of Statues when you've climbed Ench tree, go for an "artifact rush" with FotA... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Dunno if all this is really "competitive" but it's very nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

With dom 9 or 10 (10 is safer), a cyclops can solo most indies turn 2 without equip. FoTA is like Arcane Nexus, extremely dangerous to cast as it'll signal other players to target you as the main threat nation. It's actually not as great an idea to rush for it in MP as it is in SP.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

True. Most of the time when I see FoTA goes up in MP game, it means that the enchantment must be dispelled ASAP or the nation must be crashed quickly, otherwise it'll dominate the game using large array of dirt-cheap high level items. So usually I either attack the nation, or build coalition of neighbors to attack the nation, or join such coalition myself if it already exists.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Updated section on awakened e8 cyclops build.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Found this thread via the strategies link, gotta add something about the light bandar warriors.
They are actually good. Very good even, in right circumstances. But not as melee infantry - they are archers, with low precision, low range, but two attacks per round and a higher than normal damage.
You might want to recruit them against Pangaea, since it tends to mass lightly armored troops in great numbers. Light bandari take care of them like no tomorrow. I guess same goes to repelling the Ctulhus back to the sea - light bandari are THE unit to take care of chaff troops.
P.S.
Script them to fire, of course.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

The lower armor seems like they'd be less than ideal against chaff - the point for most front-line infantry is to take less damage over the long run, not deal damage quickly. But I haven't tried it yet. I like Patala, but I went with the Bandar archers with elephants or the chakram-atavi up front.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

They work provided they have some other troops like indy heavy infantry or something to stand in front of them eating arrows and blocking stuff. Or if you mass enough of them, of course. They're really nasty close range missile troops though, it's true.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Light Bandar archers shoot twice per round?

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I think he means light bandar warriors with the sticks and stones weapon, or something like that.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Yep. Light bandar warrior throws sticks and stones twice per round, and if you amass them in decent numbers, with some suicidal shieldmen in front of them, they clear chaff very efficienly. They arent that good for small clashes because of their awful precision, but when you go against 300+ meanads, satyrs, lobo guards, madmen etc, precision doesnt matter much.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

The problem is, the purpose you described are better served by Elephants/Blade Winders. I can't really picture scenarios where you're not better off just saving your gold for those instead. The Longbows serve a more specific role as artillery. STick and stones might shoot twice and all but considering the price and the lack of durability, it's pretty meh since Patala has access to lots of crappy missile anyway.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I suppose a lot of that depends on what research difficulty you're playing. Just bumping research to hard makes the wait for Bladewind significantly longer.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Elephants -
No, sometimes they arent a better answer to chaff. Maybe if you can hire 30 of them all of a sudden, they are. But if you can only hire 5 elephants (imagine you're short on gold), they are quite vulnerable and wont hurt enemy as 25 light bandari.
Bladewind -
For Patala (late age) maybe... against Pangaea. Because Rlyeh will easily mind duel your bladewinders into untimely grave. Same goes for elephants btw, they are 5x times easier to mind blast than light bandari.

Price and durability is the same as for bandari longbowmen. And stone is not such a crappy missile when a big bad bandar is holding it, dmg 12 is better than a longbow arrow. Its only downside is terrible accuracy, which wont matter when enemy chaff is everywhere.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I am a wannabee Arcos player (more success with fire nations...)and what I learned is that elephant are too costly to rely upon if you want an empire.

If you want them to be in sufficent numbers, so that they can literally crush any opposition before getting tired, you'll have too few battle groups, and you won't be able to fight on a sufficent number of fronts.

I've been able to win some battles with monkeys without using elephants, I think the big problem with them is having reinforcements after each noticeable engagements, as your troops tend to die easily.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I can't feasibly picture hiring those light bandar warriors over longbows in the beginning. And early mid, when elephants come into it's own and national troops are just about to be useless, they're still way more effective than light bandar warriors. The scenario you gave was mass chaff. Mass chaff allows you to build troops of your own too. 500 gold is still better served with elephants because those elephants will last you and it's not difficult to script them and place them to do heavy damage. You don't have to worry too much about friendly fire either as you will if you went light bandars. You can't go, well Ryleh is going to blah blah blah. That's nation specific because I can just as easily say light bandar warriors drop like flies to any sort of falling fire/frost, blade wind, archers etc. There's a lot more counters to them than elephants. And if you're forced to scatter into too many armies without a big solid main army you're fux0red anyway. In any MP, you should have ONE maybe TWO main armies around mid games with thugs/mini SC's scattered about to put out any small fires.

In short, Light Bandar Warriors are not good with their current stats cost. You can argue this until your blue in the face but until they have better range and better precision, I doubt I'll be changing my mind anytime soon.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I'm hereby bringing this thread back from the dead http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I've read carefully through this guide and truth be told I'm not in agreement with some of the notions raised here.

I've come with some recommendations, as below:
-&gt; Initial expansion. Use elepahnt groups. When you can, mix with Bandar infantry for morale.
-&gt; recommended scales, magic+1 or +3 for research bonus. Prod is not required. Order +3, Possibly Growth.
-&gt; Use a complementing pretnder to nations magic (W,E,S,N), so either a rainbow mage, or an SC with B,D,F,A,N for example.
-&gt; Expand early on using groups of elephants, they're awesome early game and terrible mid to late game (since their low MR means they're toast to competent players using MR spells like soul slay)
-&gt; In mid game switch to Bandar based armies with some Atavis for stealth if needed.
-&gt; Important magic schools are, Conj. (great summons) and Evoc (For Nagarishis)

I also have a couple of questions regarding Patala summons I couldn't find an answer for in this thread (or others for that matter):
1. Are Apsaras worth it?
2. Are Yakshas and Yakshine (conj. 4) the same as Kailasa recruited mages?
3. Gandharvas are supposedly good summons for EA. Are they also useful for Patala in LA?
4. Devala and Rudra. Any information is welcome. Are they unique? Can they be made into good SCs?

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

One point in favor of bandar infantry is that fire arrows, wind guide, and strength all increase their damage much more significantly than they would for longbows.

At least I think flaming arrows works for sticks and stones...

Drop a few strength buffs and flaming arrows with Wind Guide on an army of bandar infantry and watch the feces fly!

You now have: shortbow range with massive (magical) missile damage.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

1. They're unarmoured sacreds with only average defence and two attacks (although 1 is a kick - wow...). Probably not.
2. Yes, right down to having an upkeep cost.
3. They have about 17 prot, a buckler and a falchion or similar (and I think a kick too). Good MR and attack/defence make them able to stand up well in fights with LA troops.
4. The Rudra is a big 4-armed SC chassis, and is pretty handy. The Devala is a spellcaster who's not much good in a fight IIRC, and the side-effect of boosting magic scales makes it a good boost to researchers if you haven't gone for magic 3 in your scales.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Good suggestion. (I think it was already made earlier in this thread.)

I also found that markata units do have their uses. For one their small size allows them to swarm larger enemies, secondly they have high defense, meaning as long as they're not under direct enemy arrow fire they tend to bring relatively good results (for 5g units).
For example, in some of my test games I've seen the markata archers stop and handle a charge of a group of knights. This feat was repeated several times in my tests.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Thank you Gregstrom.

May I ask what you mean in your comment about point #4. The one about side effect of magic scale?- Does the Devala boost magic scales or some such?

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Exactly so. I don't know what the odds of a boost are each turn, but if it's a similar effect to the domain-issuing sites then you're pretty much guaranteed a province at Magic-3 after a Devala's been there for a few turns.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I didn't know that was possible.
Can it be modded?
I want scale modifying units...

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

AFAIK its possible when your domain is weak. Otherwise, your domain settings are stronger than some Devala's effect. In my tests, one Devala didnt change anything.
Perhaps if you mass them... but then again, is it worth massing an expensive 9-lvl summon to get +1 research for your mages in one castle?

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Well, I guess if you took the huge risk of being something like dom-6 and drain-1 then rushed conj 9 it would be +3 research.


Probably not a worthwhile strategy.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Sounds like nice flavor yet quite useless in practice. Nice touch on part of the Devs. I would have liked 2 see this idea developed more. Meaning having some high level summons, who can be viewed as lesser gods, that can exert global influence, like heat/cold, MR higer/lower etc.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I was thinking of the opposite use in the recent Man thread. High level summons that, to go with the LA Man Curse, shifted dominion towards drain, but were still good enough to use despite the drawback.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Drain for LA Man is hardly a setback, surely?

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I said that badly.
It was intended for MA Man, based on the unexplained Curse that led to LA Man.

Something powerful enough to be tempting, but destructive to the Witches in long run.

Never really got anywhere with the idea and it can't be modded anyway.


We now return you to your regularly scheduled monkeys...

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Well, a unit for Man that boosts Magic scale..... AND Death scale..... That might be able to be worked in with the curse somehow, in a thematic way that I don't understand, since Man is such a mystery. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif But basically looking at it as if you had used your points from Drain to get Growth, you could boost your researchers while only losing the Growth in 1 province. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

It makes sense to me. A huge group of little monkeys attack a knight charge... monkeys everywhere, and you can't lance the damn things cause they are too quick. They jump on you, jump on your horse, claw it's eyes out, and then the Knight is down on the ground, while the markatas are ripping his armor off and tearing his throat out.