Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

All of Kail's national commander summons have Air magic, and you'd generally start considering them later in the game. Here the SR is a later game tool anyway, used offensively by protecting from FF; but it is never a bad thing to have at any point... Air is considered by some as the most potent combat magic.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Yes, 75% SR plus storm warriors let you unleash wrathful sky at will.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I heard something about a death bless being fairly effective for Kailasa combined with the sacred archers. Does the Death Weapons effect apply to the arrows? If it does, what about the Fire Weapons from that bless?

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

No, but the increased affliction chance does apply.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

It will also affect your battlemages, which I think Kail must depend on heavily.

potentially a very good bless, but must be weighed against its opportunity cost. archer sacreds are only recruitable in the cap, there are no summonable archer sacreds. I believe that defense blesses are better for non-archer sacreds (but maybe just my opinion/playstyle). is the death bless worth the loss of another that is potentially more useful for your non-archer sacreds? strong astral/weak water/weak nature?

also, the Destroyer of Worlds comes with 2A 2D, and if you want to mix an air bless with anything other than astral, is your best bet; he's kind of already set to go for a death bless. Death bless also gives you diversity.

death bless with the wide AoE of spells like earthquake and bladewind is nice. later when paired with the almost garuanteed damage from spells like shimmering fields and wrathful skies, it would be an intersting tool...

On this topic (but slightly not), the Kailasa archer sacred is one of only three missile unit sacreds in the entire game:
1. Yavana Archer
2. Ancient One[I think is name, those argathan boulder hurlers]
3. Ancestor Vessel[TC cavalry sacred with a bow]

I think we need a few more missile sacreds, KO...

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

4. LA Man - Warden (Crossbow)

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

and the Pegasus Riders. A number also have javelins.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

yeah... i was trying to think of ones that are able to act as committed archers, not just contribute a couple of javelins.

thanks for the catch on man's Warden, I had missed that one.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

They have javelins? Are you talking about the EA Arco Pegasi, or the Crystal amazon ones?

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

No, I meant those to be separate.
The Crystal Amazon Pegasi have bows.
There are also sacreds with javelins.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Is there really a point to buying the Crystal Amazon Pegasi? It seems like flying units with bows are kind of a waste.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

If you can do marble warrior or above and weapon of sharpness, they can be a great melee force. Even if you cannot a good bless like F9W9 or F9E9 also greatly increase their effctiveness in melee.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I haven't had too much success using flying archers, either. It's too bad they're as rare as they are. I think Caelum has them, but other than that, they're Independent or Commander only. If you have a good Death or Air bless, it would also help them in missle (Air would help keep them from being targeted, while Death would give them increased afflictions with their arrows).

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

If you've gone a double bless on capital only units, it's worth buying any sacreds you find.

And uber blessed flying raiders can be a great surprise, if it's not your nations shtick.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Well yeah, but you're not really using them as archers though. Sure it works, but its not horribly effective. The only way I could see flying archers being useful is if you had flying meelee units but no flying archers. I suppose EA Arco could make fairly good use of the Pegasi archers.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I've been trying Bandar Log against the AI, so far almost always disastrously. Even when I have the biggest army in the game I'm getting ganged up on early on. Since the PD is worthless you don't buy it and that makes you look like a juicy target to the AI.

It doesn't help to get things like a pretender (not a SC type at all!) with a few troops deciding to attack the province I was besieging--one dead pretender and yet another enemy in what was already a 3-front war.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I don't think the AI takes PD's troop strength into account, just the amount that you've dumped into it.

Jazzepi

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I found them once when playing EA T'ien Ch'i with a Water9/Astral9 bless for quickness and twist fate. They were absolutely amazing.

Jazzepi

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Ah yes, the AI. A quick tip to avoid that: If 2 AI's are at war with each other. And one is at war with you and the other is not you must make sure that the AI you are at peace with cannot come adjacent to you sieging the AI that you are both at war with. The AI that has peace with you does not recognize you as owning the sieged castle yet. So, it will attack your force laying siege to the castle. If that happends, win or lose, the AI that you had peace with will consider itself at war with you. To prevent that, you must prevent that peacfull AI from getting adjacent to the castle you wish to siege. If you must, take that sieging army attack all around the castle, cutting the friendly AI off from getting to the castle. Even if both you and the friendly AI hit the same enemy ai province war will not be declared as long as it did not happen in a fort province.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I'm pretty sure I've had the AI attack my sieging force without starting a general war.
I think the AI treats that the same as attacking a 3rd parties province. The same is true if you attack their besiegers.
In the OP's case he killed their pretender in the battle, which automatically starts the war.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

As far as I can tell such a battle happening as part of a siege doesn't trigger war. It looks like war depends on who owned the province at the start of the turn.

What happened in this case was it was a suicidal attack by his pretender. Kill a pretender and it's war no matter what.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Read my sig. THANK YOU!

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

kinda OT, but isn't a water bless supposed to give units two attacks? So why doesn't it work on sacred archers, or at least it doesn't seem to.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Water bless only gives you a 50% quickness increase. But there is odd behavior with ranged weapons and quickness, that usually results in them just using the bonus AP to advance between each shot. :(

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Water 9 is 50% Quickness, or about three attacks in two turns. Sometimes it works strangely with archers, who move forward instead of firing. Once there are enemies in range, they attack twice about every other turn, or something pretty close.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Air bless is almost as useless for Kailasa as for anybody else. As for arrows - they are bane for all monkey nations because their troops are lightly armored and carry no shields.
Yes, thats right, bucklers DO NOT qualify as shields. Monkeys kinda want you to believe they are shielded, but being stupid animals, they screw it up. So basically, you need arrow fend for both Kailasa and Bandar Log.
You *can* take Air bless and compromise your ability to use higher end summons, or you can take a good bless. Its up to you.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Not ONLY do you need Ench6 for Arrow Fend, you also NEED Conj7 to cast it. Before you think about that, you'll probably want to get Evo2 and Thau2 for site searching (little, I know, but in the early stages of the game amounts to a significant setback in time until you have your fix). This is all time that you are not getting to Thau6 for Celestial Music.

My strong Air Blessed Kailasa will kick your triple/quadruple/quintuple or whatever but non-Air Blessed Kailasa's butt; and all I need to do it are Markatas. And before you even have Arrow Fend (not to mention you can't cast it yet because you now have to research to Conj6 for Kinnaras) I have Celestial Music and am REALLY kicking ***, and all I need to do it are some cheap-*** Apsaras. By the time you've got something that can cast your Arrow Fend I've now got some big-time battle magic and, not that you'd be alive anymore, will be frying your Arrow Fended uber blessed whatevers with Celestial Musicked Apsaras and battle-magic. By the time you've got Celestial Music and are thinking "Ha! now I've caught up with you and the late-game geardness of bless will really stomp you", I've better battle-magic and Alt spells to further buff my own units and debuff yours.

Not taking the Air bless is putting you WAY behind the curve and locks you into one single path of advancement. With it Kailasa is one of the fastest expanding powers and more than capable of defending themselves (perhaps even rushing another) in the early stages of the game. The options it lends to the player allows them to unfold quickly and take control of the early game, take control of the mid game. Without the Air bless, you have to hide away and simply hope no one decides to attack you. And any player worth their salt will be able to recognize (from pretenders name if nothing else) that you are immediately vulnerable (SC's pretenders are NOT protection from another player) and an easy target. The Air bless lends this nation immediate potency and flexibility that allows them to be played with speed, authority, and power.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Well half their number of White Ones can do it without PD. Putting money on PD above the scout-catching limit is commonly considered waste anyway, so can't understand what you intend to gain by beating old dead monkey PD horse.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

2 Omnirizon

Arrow fend can be cast with pretender; having some air magic for cloud trapeze on a titan-chassis God is extremly useful. And I didnt say anything about extreme blesses - vice versa, I meant some useful bless like nature-earth or nature-water.
Okay, Air bless may be great indeed. I even remember taking it in a blitz as MA Mictlan once; it won that game for me as MA Man (the last survivor) just gave up when he saw my air and missile immune sacreds.
But its highly situational. What are you going to do with air bless against, say, 2-x blessed Mictlan? Or Niefelheim? Sacred demons of Lanka? Hinnom? Fomorian kings? Ctis? Etc, etc.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

An Air bless for Kailasa has a double purpose ... you not only guard your sacreds from arrows you also can mix your troops with archers (and that is a big advantage) ... additionally you may use storm / wrathful skies in the later game phase.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Thanks Baalz and all. I'm having a lot of fun implementing these strategies from this thread. I started a Loemendor map game with independents 9 and 5 AI players at impossible. However, I had to try a bunch of starts to get the pretender right. This map and independents 9 makes the early game very tough. Still, once I fine tuned the pretender (RB dormant with almost straight 4's) it's ticking along well.

Again, thanks for some neat new ideas.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I really don't agree ... well pretty much at all.

If you have an air bless, you can put your air blessed archers close, behind a few awed warriors. Archers will try to target them. Leaving your monkeys at medium range to decimate them with sheer cheap numbers.

kailasa and mictlan are two nations I like air blesses on.
with mictlan its usually part of a triple bless...

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

While I see an air bless with kailasa as possible, on Mictlan it seems to just be a waste. Your jags already are immune to first hit kills, plus if you take an astral bless you can add another hit to the immunity list. If you give them W9S9F9 bless then you are guarenteed to survive at least 2 hits, will close very fast, and will cut through anything not fire-immune like a hot knife through butter. If you go W9F9A6 or something like that you MIGHT have a case, but I still think that high air on a pretender when you don't have good air nationals to be something of a waste.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

yeah. Air Bless wins out for Kail for too many reasons

1. Makes your recruitable everywhere sacreds also be usable everywhere sacreds. Any Kail strat must depend on these guys. Also, the Apsaras are in principle the same as your recruits and benefit from the same blesses. Lastly, consider that Air magic and arrows are particularly fearsome in EA specifically.

2. The nature of the recruits makes bless usefulness breakdown as follows:

blesses that lessen the amount of damage received are useless because the sacreds have no armor to be effected, which in turn also means that they take so much damage from any hit that regen is worthless.
useless = earth, nature

blesses that buff offense are useful but if the sacreds are dead it doesn't matter. this makes defense blesses first priority.
not priority = fire/death/blood

The priority optional blesses are ones that add defense by preventing hits from occurring at all. Twist Fate prevents first damage and weak Water pumps their already high Defense to phenomenal levels, preventing melee hits from landing in the first place.
priority = Astral, Water(weak)

The key bless is Air because without it then then all the Awe, Twist Fate, and Defense in the world are useless.
key = Air

on top of the key and priority optional blesses it would be nice to have an offense bless; but it's not realistic because there just won't be points available, and any points for blesses are better spent on the priorities.


With the sacreds as the axiom of the strategy, Kail also has many ways to fit their other units around them and their blesses so nicely. They come together in an almost Nirvanic symmetry, making Kail one of my top favorite nations.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

How can someone say that arrows are the bane of a nation, and that air bless is worthless, in the same post? Altho I wouldnt give up the cool Kailasa summons for it.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

As soon as you have Arrow Fend, air bless becomes worthless, and as kailasa is a nation that is not so good early, but can get really strong later. I personally think that a strategy based on compensation their early game weaknesses with sacrificing later power is wrong. A good kailasa should aim to maximize the power of the nation, and not try to make it survive. And the effects of Air and Water bless you get from the spells Arrow Fend and Celestial Music, so you dont take them in the beginning because they will become useless. And for the Shock resistance i had never problems with wrathful skies, as you can finish battles very early, if you have a nice fire bless. (and will of fates :))

Also with S9 you can live long enough to conquer almost any indy you want.

Your sacreds survive 2-3 arrows on average when you get N4 bless you regenerate an arrow every 5 turns, and also make sure that it really needs 3 arrows to kill you.

And if someone is intending to kill you, with Conj 5 you get ghandaravas and they can kill lots of archers :). Also there are not so many nations that have strong archery and i dont think that a sane player would mass slingers, so that he can engage kailasa.

The only Nations that can field heavy archery early are:
Ulm (Mass Maidens)
Sauromantia (Always be nice to sauromatia they have way to much archery)
TC (they have nice archers)
Caelum (they have archers, but kailasa should not be too afraid from mammoths)
Yomi (Bakemono archers are very cheap)

So i would not recommend an air bless, except in a blitz against one of these nations.

I actually played a MP with an air bless, but the only thing that happened was that i got trashed by helheim.

And if someone really wants to play archery duel, you have always the possibility to recruit your own cheap archers. Or just use markate decoys. Or get Ghandaravas. Or Die (id rather use ghandaravas :D).

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

While I don't personally agree with THIS...

...point, as if you don't survive (survive well possibly) the early game you surely don't arrive to the "maximized" late game where you would shine... :D

...I must admit you have a point. Kailasa has very cheap units to use as decoys and don't really mind losing in squads of five/six for a couple of turns for distracting the archers (or just recruit shielded indeps). If someone really wants to play the archers game with quality archers (Sauromantia?) you can counter with a mass of recruitable anywhere extremely cheap archers.

With that you should have the time to bring your S9N4/6 sacreds to the enemy, one occasional volley of arrows would probably be twisted-fated or regenerated (and be unlikely to produce afflictions). C'mon, you don't really want your sacreds to take arrow fire anyway. And surely the MR and regeneration bonus will keep being useful till the late game while the Air Shield... and expecially that partial Shock Resistance... mmmh...
Not to talk about the difference between an S9 caster (expecially for an astral nation which will probably have many pearls in the mid-to-late game) and an A9 one... :smirk:

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

I obviously disagree with most of your post except your disagreement with Hadrian about early-late game power balance; i'd like to add to your point that a less than late-game-maximized Kailasa will outperform a late-game-maximized one in early game so much so that they arrive into late game with far more benefits and momentum. In late game things that are maximized through a particular bless become a lot less important while having a healthy economy is much more relevant; meaning the whole argument that an Air bless Kail isn't maximized for late game is really a fallacy, and just wrong.

I'd like to point out to you also that having an A9 pretender with Kail is very important for the magic path provided. First of all, it lets you begin searching out Air sites quickly so that you get a good Air economy built up and ready for when you reach the high-power Air magic and your national summons that can use this magic. Second, you will need this A9 mage to cast Dark Skies which synergizes splendidly with all of Kail's sacreds.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

You only need A4 to site-search all air sites. Actually, you only need A4 to search plains, A3 is sufficient elsewhere. And the plains A4 site is both unique and very rare.

You only need A5 to cast Dark Skies, and A4 is enough to boost to A5. Can you please explain how Dark Skies works with Kailasa's sacreds? Sorry, I don't understand that.

Edit: Oh, I get it I think, lower morale = more failed Awe checks. Is that the plan?

As an alternative to an A4 god you could even empower an A2 summon to A3, make a Ring of Wizardry with your S9 pretender, make a Bag with your A3+RoW, and cast any A5 global.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

you got it.

but not only is the Air bless worth it. I don't see any point in taking just enough Air on a pretender to cast some spells while not going ahead and getting the strong bless.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

The point is the cost-efficiency.

Because (totally imho) the strong bless costs a lot of points and... well... quite... s*cks. :D 75% SR? Not safe enough to toss around them Thunderstrikes and similar freely (not that you would anyway, you have far better and easier options); good to defend against... Caelum? Some others? Better than high MR and twist fate? ;)

A strong bless is already expensive for the nice ones (F, W). I don't get the points of spending many points for A9, even because as vfb pointed out you just need and A5 caster for Dark Skies. You can have a mage cast it. Why to spend so many design points on A9? For which spells do you need it? S9 gets you Master Enslave on turn1 on battlefield, Arcane Nexus and a very strong Strands of Arcane Power for globals, and Wish as ritual :eek:

If you really want to be have an easy Dark Skies and protect your sacreds from arrows go for S9A5 i.e. but I don't really see many advantages over S9N4/6.

Also, I don't get how can you start searching for air sites "quickly" with an A9 pretender. At least you need it dormant, and anyway far less expensive indie mages can do a fair job in searching for those too.

I really liked your analysis of the A bless advantages (as you can see, I thanked you for that too) but if I really want some Air Shield just a minor bless seems enough to me. :)

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Generally I agree with people that an a9 blessing is overkill. However, I believe kailasa is one of the exceptions.

Previous poster made note of some of the points for kailasa. A partial air bless is useful for kailasa. After that you have to look at what to do with your points. Since you are buying sacreds, you need a high dominion. You want a mobile pretender to start with to aid early expansion.

I happen to like the four arm deva that casts lightning bolts. And the way the points turn out, in this particular case, I believe the most effective thing is to run up Air path - the fact that your sacreds are now 75% resistant to the lightning bolts it slings around is just gravy.

PLUS with lightning resistant troops shockwave becomes .. well shockingly effective.

Kailasa can be quite fun this way - you have fun awe, archers - and later on you can cast rusting mist, or armor of achilles or the battlefield equivalent of same...

And then use hordes of markatas!!! to destroy armor - and anything other high prot units. Its quite fun to see markatas mowing through cavalry.......

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Add to that the likely investment required to get Arrow Fend on your armies, and an Air bless looks better and better.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

There is also another rather nice little synnergy for kailasa.
Dark Skies + Melancholia - which is earth- and what do you know.. kailasa is well equipped for casting earth spells.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Regarding Mictlan:

If you are on a crowded map; or if you are in a game with high resources/high money, an air bless becomes more important than an Astral bless for Mictlan.

Mictlans sacred troop production scales slowly, and linearly. So as the resoure/money % gets higher than 100% the balance of how many your troops your opponents will be fielding to your blessed troops gets higher and higher.

I have seen armies of 200+ archers before turn 10. In these circumstances, mictlan is hard pressed to beat archer armies. An air bless drastically incresses mictlans ability in these cases - and yes, it does have a late game cost. But most nations aren't going to get to the endgame....

Mictlan's other option is to build regular troops. However, if she does that, upkeep costs really start make mictlan feel those horrible scales required for a triple bless....

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Seriously. I never understood why the argument against the Air bless, is to cast Arrow Fend - with no national access to Air magic at all.....

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

National access is through national summons at Conj 6, requiring pearls only.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

That's still a lot of extra researching on top of that already needed to get Arrow Fend. With an Air bless Kailasa is free to get Celestial Music pronto and then work on whatever they need most.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

Why get any bless at all then? Go conjuration 6 for the summon, enchantment 6 for arrow fend, thunder ward and strength of giants, get alteration 6(?) for celestial music, construction 7 for weapons of sharpness to get an ap attack far better than the f9 bless, GoR all your sacreds and empower them to 1S so they can cast twist fate and personal luck and equip them with a burning pearl to replicate the attack skill addition from the fire bless. Research thaum 5 for growing fury and toss in a ring of regeneration to cover the nature bless and boots of the messenger for the earth bless. Then all you have to do is equip them all with baneblades and research alteration 7 for doom and you've got a death bless also! By the time you get all this going you'll have the most powerful recruitable sacreds in the game. They'll be 30 times as expensive as anyone else's but they'll have the benefits of all 8 blesses, how can you go wrong?

Okay, that was a bit heavy on the sarcasm but taking an air bless would make your armies a fair amount less expensive to maintain. Which is always good.

Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
 

For a moment I thought you were serious. Then obviously I read the bottom. I now believe that the biggest problem with forums is the inability of the written word to consistently communicate sarcasm.