Re: Kailasa guide
 

Sure, anyone with decent sacreds and an A9 bless will crush caelum. I mean, 70%+ resistances to Caelum's two biggest strenghts? I don't really see how that applies any more to Kailasa than any other nation.

Specifically for Kailasa, if you lean on big sacred armies, don't use decoys, and charge into the archer blob head on then you might have trouble against Caelum early. Once you have Ghandharvas, they shrug off arrows pretty well. Once you get Conj 6 (air access), you can beat thunder strike spam with thugs. And that's about all it takes.

I have a strategy similar to but slightly different than the one in the OP. I'm currently testing it in a pretty big multiplayer game (20 players) and was planning on posting a guide when the game is wrapped up and I have had some time playing around with Rudra and whatnot against real players. For the start, I stack up defense and parry on my Yaksha with a W9E6N4 bless and a Black Steel shield. That and a bodyguard and stoneskin takes care of the arrows problem, and stacked def+parry & awe means they almost never get hit. I was up to 22 provs at early spring year 2. The bless isn't just for the Yaksha and Yavana; slight regen really helps your thug and SC chassis later on when you're using mistform every battle.

Undead indeps, skelly-spamming nations, and berserkers are a problem for sure. Quickness helps that problem a little. Other than skelly-spam, you have counters for pretty much everything.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I sense that there is more variance among everyone's favored Kailasa strat than any other nation's set of strats. I propose an all Kail competition to sort this all out. Let's just see who wins that. :D

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Problem is, Yavanas have more HP than any other troops Kailasa can buy. Archers set to Fire Large Monsters will target the Yavanas and ignore your decoys. I was in a game with Alpine Joe where he was Kailasa, and he got destroyed by that tactic. Could be why he's not a big fan of the bless troops :)

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I wanted to point this out too, but got tired of talking.

also note that others in other threads have pointed out that any player worth their salt can essentially cancel out any amount of decoying if they are willing to invest an equal amount of time and effort into the troop composition logistics and scripting. In short, decoying only works on indies.

all this is why I still find any argument that A9 is a waste to be fallacious. taking some other bless is just hoping that other players are not any good and no one is playing Caeleum or Sauromatia or any archer heavy nation.

You're supposed to design nations to defeat good players, not bad ones. A9 isn't about making it easier to play in earlier game, it is freeing you to make other decisions to have an overall stronger game. Any other bless and your strat is already made for you: decoy through indies, hope to god that you get Ghandharvas, Kinnaras, and Arrow Fend before anybody decides to attack you. If its on hard research (a popular option it seems nowadays) then you can just forget about it.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I might be willing to take you up on this if byleswar ends soon as it's promising to. I'd have to play around with kailasa a bit though, it's been quite a while since I've played them.


The main point against a water bless for kailasa is they have the national celesital music spell, which is basically the same thing as a water bless and iirc does not stack with it. It's still viable and would of course be helpful in the early game, but for the most part it's also unnecessary in the early game. And if you get rid of their absolutely incredible weakness to arrows that you really have no other good way of handling the number of ways to counter kailasa's sacreds just plummeted. They're never going to be immune to everything, but with an air blessing they're a lot less vulnerable overall and once you get celestial music going there should be very little you're afraid of with them. Plus they're going to be largely immune to battlefield attack spells at this point, which is a nice bonus.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

Sounds Fun, but the problem is that the proposed airbless would be of no use against kailasa (as no sane kailasa player will field archers). But i am in if it comes to such a competition.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I'll second that proposal.

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I continue not understanding WHY you should simply send your sacreds to get slaughtered against an archer heavy army. If you want to do so, feel free to sink that gazillion points on the A9 bless and leave them totally vulnerable to the enemies that are able to destroy your sacreds in melee, and yes, there are. Niefel, Mictlan, *heims i.e. will chew you, just like several others. OR - play on your strenghts, give your sacreds melee prowess and if the enemy wants to play the big army with much melee and lotsa archers you can either:
- split your army in groups as little as 6 sacreds and 5 archer decoys and chew all its PD-defended province
- take indie elephants/horse brothers/shamblers/whatever has higher HP than your sacreds and use them as archer decoys while your sacreds destroy their melee troops and your markatas set on fire archers outnumber the enemy ones by what, 3:1? more? ;)

Re: Kailasa guide
 

I propose a competition gentlemen. And while I am too busy to play, I will create the mod as part of the national library project, if someone else is willing to create the thread and admin it.

What I suggest is this: Set up a semirandom map, size depending on the number of players involved. I suggest semirandom, because the semi random provinces will provide a greater challenge and thus help determine which of you gentlemen's proposed kailasa build is superior.

All participants create a Kailasa build based on ChrisCBM1.48 (Free plug). Then let the best design win...

Re: Kailasa guide
 

As was mentioned above, that competition won't even address the debate about the air bless. Kailasa isn't an archer heavy nation, unless someone decides to forgo the bless and focus on the monkey archers, which no one is suggesting as a viable strategy.
So it's almost a given that in this contest a non-air bless strategy will prevail.