Re: Kailasa guide
 

I don't think its a forgone conclusion that kailasa is not an archer nation. D9AxZx is how I play kailasa, and I usually focus on archers.

So you're saying you don't think anyone will take an archer nation thejeff?

Re: Kailasa guide
 

what?

no. I'd contest that.

Kailasa is, in fact, an archer heavy nation. They have a gradient of four archers. They have the world's cheapest archer. They have one of only two [or maybe three] (in the entire game) sacred archers. They don't have a lot of precision. But they have lots of archers. If a Kailasa didn't take an Air bless, another Kailasa with an Air bless is just about the perfect nation to wipe them out. Not only are they immune to all of Kail's archers, they are free to use all their own (depite low precision) with near impunity.

An Air bless is just as, if not more, salient in an all Kailasa game as in any other game. Otherwise your making your 25 gold recruit which you invested a 500 point bless into easily counterable by a 5 gold markata with no bless.

I actually make monkey archers central to my strategy when I'm using an Air bless. That's part of the beauty with that bless, you can make them a key component. Add to that that you have perfect mages for spamming Destruction and Iron Bane (and with, well what do you know, an A9 bless they can also sit right on the front lines with impunity so their Destruction spells can reach pretty much any target).

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Agreed with Omnirizon 100%. Kailasa's sacreds are 20+ hp buckler wielding swordsmen with 1(!) protection. The vast majority of kailasa's units don't even have a buckler, or any kind of armor worth speaking of. Kailasa is absolutely one of the best targets for enemy archer hordes in the game, so far as I can tell. Markata would even be the superior archers in this case due to the sheer volume of missile fire they can achieve.

Tifone - While it's true that other blesses would be more useful against powerful sacred rush nations, the ones you just mentioned should be completely possible to deal with if you can get a bit of research done before you have to face them down. Which should generally be quite possible, I think.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Endoperez suggested this thread in another and I set out whacking together a mod for a multi-EA Kailasa game letting you sort out your argument. I have something but it needs some more work. Notably I can't figure out how to *add pretenders*. I have:
and that doesn't seem to be working. If someone can point me out a mod that does this I would be grateful. Also PD was just a guess and may be better that is should be. Fort types are also just a guess. I will correct them when I have more time.

A sample with three players is include here to look. The mod name is "Any Kailasa Early Age". The python script that generates it is included as an example in dmg.zip in this thread.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

pyg, the way modding is done, modding commands overwrite unit attributes. If a unit already has an attribute, a mod will update that attribute. If you have a unit with 10% regen and set it to 20% regen in a mod, then it will have 20% regen, and not two attributes with 10% and 20% regen which would result in 30% regen. You are overwriting the "pretender for nation" attribute three times, so only the last one will stick. If you want the units as pretenders for multiple nations, then you need to make copies of them.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I'm with Tifone. If you are facing archers why send your sacreds to be slaughtered? Invent a different solution.

It is possible that archers on fire largest will fire yavanas instead of decoy bandars. I haven't tried it. But surely you can find someone or something with more hit points than yavanas to serve as decoys if you really want to use your sacreds against an archer heavy army. Use more yavanas as decoys if nothing else.

I am pretty sure that an army of yavanas with a S9A6 bless will defeat an army of archers of an equal gold cost even with no decoys used. Just split yavanas into several smaller groups.

I don't think that an all-Kailasa competition can show which bless is the best all around. But it would be an interesting game, so I'd like in as well. Probably the fire bless will win.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

If any nation can benefit from an A9 bless it is Kailasa, and you also have several pretender choices. Also keep in mind that this would make your blessed troops pretty potent against EA lighting/archers strategies from

- Vanheim
- Fomoria
- Caelum
- Sauromatia
- Tir
- TC
- Arcos

Which means you limit strategy choices for third of your possible opponents pretty heavily.
Throw in two minor blesses from W and one from ESB - keep your everywhere recruitable sacred spearmen in mind.
I won't count on Arrow Fend either given your lack of air mages.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Use more yavanas as decoys..? Perhaps the purpose of decoying to protection your valuable troops is lost on that one ... Also your opponent can just break up his archers into different groups to dodge your decoys anyway. And choosing to simply "avoid" archers, if your neighbor sees you playing Kailasa, what's stopping him from rounding up a group of indie archers and breaking down your door?

Re: Kailasa guide
 

"if your neighbor sees you playing Kailasa, what's stopping him from rounding up a group of indie archers and breaking down your door?"

Time is, can you really buy enough indie archers to counter Kailasa so early? You would need a great deal of archers to do so.
When you get to the point where you have several forts with cheap acrhers Kailasa is going to have some magic and other troops to support the yavanas.

What you're saying is impossible. What's to stop me from rounding up a group of indie infantry to stop those archers? Or buying my own archers put to fire archers? Indie archers won't get you anywhere against Kailasa.

If you're playing Sauromatia, sure they'll be a pain in the *** since nations like that are going to use archers anyway but even then there are ways to avoid archers.

An army of yavanas against an army of archers as the same gold cost, yavanas are gonna cut them to shreds, and they are a part of your general strategy unlike archers who you're gonna use in only certain situations but will still cost you twice as much to keep since yavanas are sacred.

And with Kailasa you don't need big armies running around. Several small armies are much more effective and will make it harder for a big group of archers to stop.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I don't mean to be pushy here, but I made a much better version of a multi Kailasa mod. I believe everything is correct except there are some extra pretenders that should not be available. Obviously if you were going to play such a game you would want real names and flags which are easy to do. If someone wants to host a multi Kailasa game I would be glad to help set up/fix/troubleshoot, but I'm not a Kailasa fan and don't want to play. Please PM me if you find something incorrect.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Are you joking? Not only are indie archers readily in supply during EA (both massable due to crappier armor in EA and ever present indie "tribes" to mass them with) but they're one of the most effective EA expansion troops. If you're going to "counter archers with archers" then you're following my suggestions that Kailasa is more of an archer nation than sacred or you're going to focus on sacred with crappier bless scales and less cash to get archers because you're using them on sacreds and have crappier scales.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Not really, you can get a strong bless and good scales, well relativly good. Order and magic with a S9W8A6 bless. Heat is a logical option, and sloth also.

All your mages are sacred, so that's less upkeep, your yavanas are sacred and it only takes a handful of them as an expansion party, so believe me when I say this even with turmoil/sloth you'll have enough gold to buy mages and troops. If you take order, well you'll practically be swimming in gold and popin forts all over.
Kailasa has great potencial as a fast expander, if you play it right, almost as good as Mictlan.
AND your archers are just a bit cheaper (9 gold 3 res.) than indie and you can buy then in every fort, and are stealthy.
So you can bring them with your yavanas and when you're facing that BIG archer army they won't even know you have archers also, correct?
It isn't even hard to mass them when needed with the forts you'll quickly build.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

You are very correct :) Targeting large monsters is huge against Kailasa and makes decoys irrelevant except against indies.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Indie cavalry is also very common though :)

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Won't using Bandar as decoys alleviate the problem of firing at large monsters? Of course, they are more costly - but they can take some arrows and continue their decoying duty next fight, too...

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Bandars are still smaller (less HP) than Yavanas.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Yesterday I started to test this nation, the approach I used is

1st turn tax to 200 and recruit a yaksha
2 turn make the yaksha your profet, buy yavanas, and a mage (guru)
3turn start your expansion, the guru could forge a sield for your prophet,

Pretender: I think that a sleeping Nataraja with at least A4,S4,N4, is a good base to start, it has potential for supporting the middle game fighting when fully equipped with gear.

:)

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Just tried them.

Sleeping blood fountain , empowering S2 mages with 1b.
Early expansion with with atavi archers/bandar warrior/ cold blasts (I use them much more then bolts or salor's death, if I have good archery or mages)
Later - horrorspam/horrormarks. Didn't use sacred warriors at all at these stages. Without strong bless - I think just forget about them until high level Alt research is a good idea - you can mass them later in all castles, just will have spear version wich is not so bad anyway. Horrors are really funnier and less expected. Btw, horrors, lowering morale + your AWE troops + panic/siege items = a cool synergy.

Blood fountain is needed just for horrors to fill the early-mid period, and has a lot of usage later- you are free to experiment with pretender magic paths - you will have quite a lot of points with sleeping pretender, even with magic +2. So you can still take not bad bless. I'm not a big fan of Air bless, as it looses it's value with time, but still in such situation if you really can't live without sacreds (I can !) it's not a bad idea to use it. If your main weakness is early game, why not to sacrifice some points to minimize your risks here?
Even the minimal usage of fountain - forging and horrors is very nice, and in late game you can build blood economy, which sometimes is a good idea. Especially for a nation which wants peace to get to high alt and gets a chance to live in peace.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

You can even use blood rain later when have someone with B3 or just your regular S2B1 mage equipped in Blood+ equipment. Even more synergy.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

They wouldn't work as decoys, imo. HP and size aren't sufficient.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Lowering morale also makes repel effective.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Can you not equip a buffing yakshah with a hide shield as an archer decoy? It's a bit pricey but surely it would draw fire?

Re: Kailasa guide
 

this strategy would work a lot better with Bandar Log and Patala as these 2 can actually benefit from the addition of Blood thanks to the Lanka summons they inherited. Kailasa doesn't have much with blood besides these horror spells, and have much better alternatives for the early stage of the game, and better than those of Bandar Log and Patala.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Any nation with decent Astral mages can take a Blood Fountain and go down the Horror route by empowering S mages in Blood, but that doesn't necessarily make it a good idea. As mostly it just means spending a lot of points, or making concessions, on a compromised build which tries too hard to turn a nation into a type of nation it just isn't.

Although as Blackguard says, it could be an interesting idea for Bandar Log due entirely to the Lanka summons it has access to.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

BL wants some Blood - turn it into MA Lanka and you have some real power.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

The main strength of Kailasa, is mages, and everything is quite obvius what can be done with them. The second strength is sacreds, which are not easy to use if you are not using strong bless. And if you are using strong bless, it benefits mostly in the early game. Using rainbow also has not much sense because of good access to any magic (not early, but still).
So the idea was to use BF (even with combining with minor bless approach) - just because both rainbow and stong bless are not as obvious as for most of other nations.

Other nations with S, which can extanded by BF also sometimes really would benefit from BF (for example those who have old mages problem - just to make boots is not bad).

The goal why I've started to think about Kailasa - is to find a way to use these sacreds properly, underlining their strengths (and their only unique strength is awe), rather then adding one more direction.

And the fact that this idea fits better for bandar logs, which is maybe true, doesn't stop me from thinking about this unique awe, of this underrespected for EA nation. And try to find a way to play with it.

The question is if something can be done to increase AWE effect by using synergistic spells enough to make an affective strategy if it.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

The best way to synergize awe is to lower morale. Fear is excellent. But then so is Blood Rain.

Panic and terror are also excellent.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

B4 bless is not a bad idea. Kailasa sacreds have dual attacks. So that's +2 @ 2 attacks more damage. Good for pounding through armour on the few EA nations that have it. Not maybe godly, but nothing wrong with it.

Kailasa sacreds have great hps, dual attack, awe, fast, good defence. Weaknesses are naked, terrible shield. Some things that make sense are A6 bless, W4 - 6 to boost defence, N4 to reduce afflictions.

For the magi the obvious choices are E4 and D bless. Mix and match.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

You can use BF as a rainbow - for example A4F4B4 .. even E4 can be added..will give a superbloodhunter with possibility to cloud trapese/ wind guiding/ flame arrows. 40 points for a new path is not a rainbow price ,but still is much less then many others. I don't know if unit landed by CT takes part in the same battle as the army which enters a province by move.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

It makes it /more/ effective, anyway. As does lower prot on target, higher attack and them having extremely low hp and shorter weapons.

But unless you get all of that going, it doesn't do much.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Mages? Kailasas mages are nothing special, and they are surely not the main strength of it. Kailasa lives from its sacreds wich have enormous offensive power.

The unique strength of kailasas sacreds is not that they have awe (which is nice of course), but that you can cast celestial music on them (battlefield wide quickness for all kailasa sacreds) with that spell cast, they can wear every enemy down quickly, and that is what kailasa is about. Also you can summon nice thugs with the kinnaras and later with the rudras you also get artillery mages/SCs.

Fun spells after celestial music are iron bane for offence and arrow fend (for defence, if you did not take an air bless).

The target of the game is not to awe your enemies, but to kill them.:D

Re: Kailasa guide
 

The fountain can teleport but cannot cloud trapeze.