Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Just as a note first off, I don't usually play SP unless it's for testing reasons. You can get away with almost anything against the computer anyway because the AI is retarded. This guide is for Patala in MP, enjoy! ^.^

Description
Patala is a nation of Nagahs who uses a few primate minions to do their biddings. But they're mostly Nagahs =). You can read the manual for most of their descriptive stuff not to mention right click most of the units to see what they cost, etc. I'm assuming you know how to read when writing this guide so I'm not going to bother with menial details.

Units:

Markata: I have no idea why these are in the game. Those clubs aren't going to deal much damage (read: none) and they die like flies. Actually no, they die way easier than flies. Damn buggers. Never recruit this unit. Even if you need a archer decoy. VERY lame version of lobo guards.
Markata archers: Oh god, I've never even SEEN small bows before. Oh jeebus these suck *** too. Because they suck so much and are cheap, great for sacrificial lambs though as archer decoys, lance soakers. Most good players will use "target archers" against you, so use these to mess up their script. I don't build much of these since your initial squad of them should last you awhile but reinforce with these every so and often to save your more valuable troops.
Atavi archers: they can move pretty fast on the map and have stealth. They have bows too and aren't too expensive. Still they because they're pretty much like villains. And villains suck. Unless they're super villains. Which these certainly are not.

Update: Alright they're not THAT bad in second thought. They have great raiding potential with a nagini leader (change shape for stealth) who can script quickening. Since raiding is pretty much the bread and butter of early to mid game wars, it's a good deterrent against trigger happy players. Of course, I'd probably just bluff that I have these during negotiation stage and avoid recruiting them altogether that way. =)
Vanara Archer: Atavi archers without the stealth and more armor and more resource cost. Needless to say, they suck too.
Vanara Infantry: Like Vanara archers except they get a buckler instead of the bow. Average cost. Pretty much a crappy version of heavy infantry indies. So ... you won't be buying much of them either.
Vanara Swordsmen: Their stats aren't terrible. A bit better than Vanara Infantry. Their gold to resource ratio isn't bad if you have little gold. But generally if you have no gold you shouldn't be buying subpar troops anyway because heavy infantry from indies are still better. Not a terrible choice for the first few turns if for some unknown reason you took prod: 3 for this nation.
Light Bandar Archers: Wow, the first serviceable unit of this line. Good hit points and an awesome range attack with above average morale. Expensive as hell but the longbow is a ridiculously good weapon. Oh yeah they have no protection whatsoever so be sure to get some archer decoy and screens for them. Try to get heavier bandar archers for archer decoying because smart players will script their archers to fire archers or large monsters if they see you massing these. You'll be spending most of your gold on these units a lot unless you have a lot of resources ...
Bandar Archers: In which case, these are a better buy. Same as above but they won't pop to opposing fire so quickly.
Light Bandar Warrior: Pretty meh. Think of them as bootlegged light infantry (the javelin variety). In other words, not too great.
Bandar Warrior: Comes in two varieties, the cudgel isn't horrible, still subpar prot and prone to getting hit a lot but they have 18 hit points. Still too expensive and the mace one gets a buckler which is better. I use these for screens a lot early on or the vanara swordsmen. Actually, I take that back. I usually don't build any of these since early on I just build the bandar archers.
Elephant: Not bad units especially if you bring along a yogi to ethereal them. Too bad their morale is so poor that you need to balance them out by grouping them with Bandars. And bandar troops suck. You can group them with nagahs too but those troops are even worse.
Naga: Sacred but bad. Read above about nagah troops being even worse. If you're bored and no one's taken the seas yet late game, you can grab about fourty of them and maybe take on thirty tritons. Oh wait, they're poor amphibians. Ok ten tritons.
Nagah Warriors: Eh I guess it's workable with an e9/n9 bless. But so does a lot of other sacreds that aren't overpriced in both gold and resources. Like fourty of these will be able to break underwater first. You can body ethereal them too with one of your naga mages to make things easier. Still not very recommended.
Markata Scout: You start with one of these, and you'll never need to recruit another one since you should be buying indie scouts. Oh yeah buy a lot of indie scouts.
Atavi Chieftain: If you ever feel the need to mass atavi and go for a stealth run, you should play vanheim or Pan. Not Bandars.
Vanara Captain: Yeah these suck. Buy indie commanders.
Bandar Commander: See above. You start with one of these too.
Brahmin: I recruited one of these by accident. And that's the only time these should make it into your army.

All your mages are sacred which leads to a possibility of e4 bless. Too bad your priests suck though. But there's always indies!
Yogi: Uber cheap s1 researchers, communicants, and horror markers until they fix the spell.
Guru: Not bad, s2 lets you start soul slaying en masse once you get a banner of the north star going or that light of the north whatever spell it's called. It's in the conjuration tree. I recommend spamming these later game in your fort/lab centers since your nagahs are capital only.
Nagaraja: I recruited one of these by accident. If you REALLY need sermon of courage (which you shouldn't since your troops suck besides Bandar archers) you might want to give these a whirl. Otherwise they're decent but naginis are way better in comparisant. You can pseudo thug with these but I don't like to.
Nagarishi: OWNAGE mage for late era. Really frigging amazing. Blade winder, falling frost, Rust Mist. Lots of nifty goodies. Watch out for astral duelers but you can fix those easy to spamming gurus out of your other forts. If you can afford these every turn, make sure to make them every turn.
Naginis: Decent assassination thanks to seduction but you need a bit of spells to get them to that status. I buy these as researchers and site searchers earlier if I can't afford Nagarishi's but don't want to stinge on yogis. They are really good just nagarishis are awesome and alas all the naga mages are cap only.

Pretender of choice: VAMPIRE QUEEN

Yes she's been nerfed to oblivion but the VQ is really good for Patala. Why? as you have already probably deduced, Patala's troops suck. Which means they need an uber pretender to help shore up their weaknesses. Yes you can go the boring Ghost King uber chassis rout but the VQ is recyclable thanks to her immortality and you can get lots of free points from negative scales thanks to Patala's heat: 2 preference and the imbalance between order/misfortune and being able to come out ahead even if you take sloth x3, death x3. Whee free points! Also high dominion synergies with patala's heat preference. And it really messes with other nations later on. Haha take that!

Build: Air: 2, Earth: 1, Astral: 3, Death: 3, Blood: 2
Dormant, Dom: 9, Order: 3, Sloth: 3 (or death 3 and sloth 2 with no misfortune), Heat: 3, Misfortune: 2, Magic: 1.

Edit: 1/08/09 3.21 patch cbm update: A dom 10 Destroyer of World with Order 3, sloth 1, heat 3, death 3, magic 1 works as well awakened. Take A4/d4 and then splash on either s4 for end game wishing or e4 for a stronger protection on your chassis.

ALTERNATE BUILD (Not discussed in this section of guide):

E8 Bless Cyclops
Dom: 10
Order: 3, Sloth: 3, Heat: 2, Death: 3, Misfortune: 2, Magic: 3
Significantly more effective for early expansion at trade off for later magic versatility and early mid game tends to be rougher than the VQ start. This build works for current metagame for LE games at indie: 5 strength. Also you'll want to choose evocation earlier to take advantage of the reinvig mage blessings. This strategy is discussed on page FIVE of this thread.

STRATEGY:

The first few turns, prophetize your commander and send your scout on MOVE to a juicy farmland and script him on retreat. I tend to mass bandar light archers and do your typical expand in the circle around my capital routine. My initial few researchers are usually yogis to save up money for a Nagarishi. Place a HUGE priority on investing in mercenaries since they'll cover the holes of your nationals. As soon as I start a turn with a solid 450, I recruit a nagarishi (assuming there aren't any mercenaries to recruit that turn) to put on site searching. Initial priority of research is alteration: 3. You'll want to get it before your pretender wakes. Also you'll want to target mountains preferably early on since it'll cover up the points from sloth. Plus mountains tend to have easier indies than farmlands. But go after farmlands as second highest priority since gold is always good. Keep an eye out for indie troops that you can recruit aka 22 resourced heavy infantries, indie scouts, xbows. You'll want one or two indie commanders to just run around and collect these as you recruit them every turn. Eventually you'll be able to mass a decent army of these to use either as a secondary army or to pad up your main army.

Speaking of your main army, the one you start out with sucks. In fact, you may even have to wait TWO turns instead of one to expand if your indies are particularly tough and may have to branch into the crappy vanaras on gold/resource needs. You may have to script a LOT of decoy squads if you don't have enough longbows or are facing like 60 xbows in a province. Yes these things can set you back but it's ok, keep in mind your VQ can take down the tough indies later on anyway. Still you should try to expand as much as you can. You will want to hire a second indie commander asap though to ferry the troops from your capital into your main army every turn as you travel. Your yogis can do this early on as well since you shouldn't be expanding too far from your capital. Think of your starting army as cannon/archer fodder while your bandar archers do all the work.

Also you want to get a Nagarishi to start site searching ASAP. In fact, sometimes I even get two for this since gems are very very important for this strategy. If you want to slack a bit on gold or you're just really poor, you can do a nagini + yogi pair but I highly recommend the Nagarishis instead.

After alteration 3, your pretender should awake. With Body ethereal, Personal Luck , Iron skin, mirror image, mistform attack rear as a script, she should be able to solo anything in her dominion. If there's a particularly tough indie province in your dominion that only has one candle in it, just attack a province close to it so your dominion spreads higher and then take it. With awe and the dominion bonus, you shouldn't have any trouble with this.

I switch to thaum 2 after alteration for remote searching spells but you may have found a nature site earlier. If so, switch to construction 2 instead. Why? This is the core of the Patala strategy. Ask yourself this, what's a race that has access to water/earth/nature/astral path and one of the strongest late era mages to do? The answer: CLAM HORDE LIKE A *****! Yes, we're using two overnerfed things now but hey shows you how silly this nation is right?

Anyway with a dwarven hammer you should be able to comfortably clam at least once a turn (maybe you'll need to alchemize at some points) and eventually move on to two ... then three ... etc. Make sure you build more hammers first for each additional clam forger.

Once const:2 and thaum: 2 are resourced, I tend to get conjuration: 3 and then evocation: 2 just to get all the remote spells out of the way so you won't have to send around your nagarishis to search anyway. Remote searching is a lot more practical than manual searching even with an awesome searcher like the nagarishi.

After all these are done, you'll want thaum: 3 for teleport on your Vampire queen to deter invasions. You'll also want a second castle and lab soon to spam gurus out of it. Most indie mages are not worth recruiting since your mages are so uber anyway but keep an eye out of any that offers you a chance to branch out your magic. Once you set up the castle/lab you'll want conjuration: 4 for light of the north star and thaum: 5 so you can first paralyze and then eventually soul slay with guru battle mages. Conjuration 4 is also interesting because it lets you cast the national summons: Contact Yaksha and Yakshini, both decent mages. Resist this temptation. They cost a LOT of nature gems and your nagarishis are better. As mentioned all your gems should be going towards forging hammers or clams.

After conjuration: 4 and thaum: 5 are done, you're entering the mid game. Try not to start any wars at this time, you should be hording most of the time anyway and can ill afford to lose your clam base/production to summon troops and send battle mages. Your Vampire Queen should convince most people that war against you is too costly anyway. Convince them to attack someone else. Like Vanheim or Pan for example =).

You have now a choice to either research construction to 6 (or higher) or more conjuration. Your end goal should be conjuration and construction both to 8 as your clam horde allows you to spam the world with devatas and golems. You can also choose to simply flood everyone with vine ogres backed up by guru soul slaying hordes as well.



Well this be the end of the guide and hopefully it'll strength your Patala game. Thanks for reading and drop by our mIRC channel anytime for more dom III goodness!

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Beware, Markata archers don't have "short" bows, they have "SMALL" bows that do only *6* damage, worse than slings !
Markatas really s*cks *ss big time ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Else lots of good advices , but it seems the nation is quite weak and has to rely on ubernerfed overused old gamey strategies... Yet I've found Patala better than the previous Bandar Log ages, that have even crappier troops and no nagas !

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Normal markatas (if they can reach melee) are probably more useful than Markata archers as having size 1 melee units is very good for reducing ennemy defence (-2 per attacker). As nagas are size 3, adding Markatas in a squad should make it more efficient against human sized opponents, and as Markatas cost only 5 gold there is no reason not to use them even if lots die in each fight.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Small bows + Flaming Arrows... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

For LA it has imho incredible mages.
But their troops are rather poor, so i have severe problems with expanding fast enough in earlygame and defending vs. earlygame rushes.

In LE missile weapons are not too useful. In EA their light bandar longbow apes for 20 gold and 7 resources rock, but in LA where shields + heavy armor are common even longbows are rather weak.

The Bandars cost 20 gold but do performance only about as good as solid MI other nations have and which costs only half their gold.

Thematically i like Patala though a lot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.
And good guide Kiss, i only disagree about your god choice, VQ is imho overkill and too expensive.

I suggest the following god for starters:
Awake Cyclops, Dom 6, Earth 6, Order 3, Heat 3, Prod 1, Growth 3, Magic 1, Misfortune 3.
The Cyclops can help with indy expansion and with some trinklet items he should serve well enough as SC and F9W9 bless defense god.
Your mages nicely profit from reinvigoration.

If the map is larger you can set him to dormant and use the extra points to buy productivity 3 and earth 8 or to reduce your misfortune a bit.

Your VQ has several weaknesses:
1. Dormant, someone might have bless/SC rushed you already and kill you before she awakens.
2. Earth 1. This makes buffing her problematic.
Ironskin gives you -75% shock resistence, thus even if you cast resist lightning you have only 25%.
Stoneskin gives her only 15 protection.
3. No fire, thus vulnerable to fire magic too.
So incinerate could easily kill her. Flaming weapons might be an issue too.
...

In short, your VQ is imho rather a papertiger and shouldn't protect you long enough till your hoarding pays off.

So you are not protected till she awakens from an early bless rush by e.g. Vanheim or Mictlan, and when she awakens she only protects you a short while but in the turn 20-40 range many nations should be able to deal with your vq rather easily and she will be your main defense in this timeframe.
Any nation with astral magic can kill your VQ with solar rays.
Some blesstroops might kill her too.
Atlantis+Caelum have magic weapons, they should handle the VQ too, Caelum with an attack fliers script, Atlantis Ice Guards and Arsartuts should do enough damage to kill her with their magic weapons.

Your Mages could forge a black steel full plate though, so you do not need earth magic on your VQ.
It will give you lots of extra fatigue though during buffing.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Arssartuts are suprisingly brutal. Those bone glaives with the weakness are the penultimate strong unit killer.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Hehe thanks for the correction.

Sure there is your uber mages cost gold. =) And mercenaries and indies!

Sure ... when you recruit those f3 mages, let me know.

Eh I wouldn't worry about all those early rushers. Most early rushers you will have to outmaneveur, out diplomacy anyway but they ARE defeatable. In the event of the uber bless, well those strategies are imbalanced anyway and will probably be fixed. Hopefully. The VQ isn't as fragile as you think once she wakes up, she's stealthy AND flies with huge dominion spread and immortality. Too bad you can't really use the vampires she gives you for anything =). Also you get a lot of free points and you can't really bless anything worth a damn so why not spend them all in the uber SC chassis? An early game pretender isn't a bad pick like Great Bull, Cyclops, Wyrm and dragons etc ... but let's face it, if you can stop a VQ, you can stop those for sure. Also I think solar rays are magic resistable and you can script more defense into your VQ to make magic weapons not as effective against her. Otherwise you can pick off raiding parties of opponents with her easily and that REALLY cripples a midgame war. Like I said, she is meant to be the deterrent, not the threat. Most people don't like the thought of going up against a recyclable SC. =)

As for nations with magical weapons, caelum sucks militarily just as much as you do. And both caelum and Atlantis will have fatigue/armor troubles with your dom 9 heat 2 setting. =)

Edit: Corrected typo, undefeatable = defeatable. Hehe ... freudian slip there!

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Patala is probably the nation I played most so far, even more then Kailasa.

I disagree with original poster on some points though. First off, god choice is completely off the mark. I mean, you can take VQ or even Ghost King but you are missing on Patala's main strength - sacred troops. Patala has amphibious buyable troops, all of their mages and priests are sacred and all of their summons (except tigers) are sacred. With so many sacred troops it's almost a sin not to take some bless strategy for them. What bless to take? Well they can try following:
- Nature 10: I'm using this in my current game to great effect. This bless allows you to take good scales with it as well. Makes naga warriors really hard to kill and route and they take much less afflictions in combat too. N10 pretender is also excellent to get Gift of Health global spell up. Won’t help mages directly though.
- Earth 9: Covers needs for both troops (increased protection and no fatigue problem) and mages (reinvigoration). However, with this bless alone your sacred troops won’t be that good in killing enemies so you will need to rely on mages to help them.
- Water 9: This one is almost universal for any bless strategy. It will make your nagas more deadly, harder to hit and faster on the battlefield. You can try to take earth 4 or nature 4(6) with it (or both) to increase their survivability. It’s not that good for mages though.
- Astral 9: Yes, this one gives them twist fate and you would be surprised how much this helps them in battle. It also allows your pretender to cast Wish easy. Nagas have 13 MR so +4 bonus to MR they will make them very hard to overcome with MR dependant spells. It helps mages too as it increases their MR against enemy spells and helps them survive some stray arrow or spell that would otherwise hit them.
- Fire 9: Purpose of this one is apparent - it turns nagas into killing machines. Downside of this is that mages will have little benefit of this blessing. Either this or Water blessing is suggested for people who are not familiar with nation.

Of course, you can take a combination of blessings but note that scales will suffer and Patala actually needs good scales. That is why both my pretender suggestions are imprisoned – only way to get blessing and good scales.

Ok, some of my remarks about Patala units:

Nagaraja is actually good commander (80 leadership) that can also lead magical units so if you plan to make combo army with archers, support troops (chaff if you will http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif) and sacred units, this is your commander. It's also sacred and has high protection and low skills in earth, water and nature magic. Nagaraja’s main problem is that its capitol only unit and you will always want to buy Nagarishis if you can afford.

Nagarishi’s are probably best mages in late era. Very strong water and earth magic with additional astral and nature magic and they are also holy 1 priests. They can shape shift into form that can wear boots but loses 1 point in water magic. Usually if you go land you make earth boots, shape shift them and script them to cast 'Summon Earthpower' first. This way they always have 5-6 in earth magic which means they can cast easily blade winds, petrify (ultimate anti-SC spell) and support spells for troops like 'Legions of Steel'.
Another important fact about them is that their magic skills allow them to forge clams (as mentioned later but it doesn't make them silly). With Nagarishi’s you can setup clam economy easy. Even in combat they aren’t bad with high hp's (for normal mages), good attack/defense values and ability to easily cast invulnerability and quicken self.

Naga Warriors are well protected sacred troops with good attack/defense values (for heavy infantry) and good morale/hp and MR. You can go on either fire, nature, earth, water and astral blessings for them and you won't go wrong. They are not overpriced either. With high protection they should cost more resources and as being sacred/amphibious GOOD troops they cost as much as they should. Maybe you have problem that original poster had with them was because he took sloth instead production scale and no bless strategy? Most sacred troops are overpriced if you don't have proper bless to give them and sloth is always bad idea for nation whose troops cost lots of resources.

Gurus are very useful mages even at the start of the game as they can cast Mind Burn which allows you to easily setup arillery group with them as support for your main forces to take out heavy indies (like knights and heavy cavalry) or for defences. Later on you can use communion or spells to increase their astral power and use soulslay. With items you can even use them to enslave mind. They are also nations most economical researchers.

Bandar warriors and archers are not bad at all. They have higher strength (which means they kill well protected troops more easily), higher morale then most human troops and more hp that makes them harder to kill then normal HI. If supported by mages that cast legions of steel on them they get protection 17 which is quite nice. They are good and reliable troops to protect your longbows.

Some mention about scales for Patala.

Order 3 and Production 3 is a MUST for them or you won't be able to recruit enough sacred troops and mages to make it really work. You simply need resource and gold bonus from Production scale. Take heat 3 scale as it will rarely stay at 3 and usually drops 1 or 2 points down (Patala prefers heat 2) so very often heat will be just right for them and you get 40 additional design points. Growth scale for them depends on what your preference is but since Patala has no problem with age and can produce summer swords/bags of wine they can take death scale. You can also take growth scale to get more income. For small maps I suggest taking Death scale and better blessings, though. You can take Luck/Misfortune scale to your personal preference with note that I wouldn't take more then Misfortune 1 for Patala. Size of barbarian hordes or knights that attack you from random events depends directly on misfortune scale. Since Patala has rather weak PD, you don't want to be attacked by too large forces from indies that even PD 20 or more can’t handle. Patala have easy access for cheap researchers so you can go drain 2 with them. Saves a lot of design points.

Suggested pretenders:

1.Mother of Rivers - imprisoned

Magic - Water 9, Nature 6
Scales - Order 3, Productivity 3, Heat 3, Growth 1, Misfortune 1, Drain 2.
Dominion strength - 6
9 points left.

With this setup you get both good blessing with good scales that will allow you to setup sacred armies fast and expand with no problems (tested with indy strength 9). It's good setup for people who are just starting to learn this nation. Your goal is to expand using your sacred troops so buy as many naga warriors as your gold allows you.

2. Cyclops - imprisoned

Magic - Earth 9
Scales - Order 3, Productivity 3, Heat 3, Growth 1, Misfortune 1, Drain 2.
Dominion strength - 10
15 points left.

This setup helps both mages and troops while still having great scales. However, with this setup you want to focus on mages so make sure you buy as many mages (Nagarishi's primarily) as your finances allow. Always have at least a couple of them escort your troops.

One last important thing about Patala - they have all national summons that Kailasa has. That means they can summon Siddhas and Devatas which are excellent mages/priests and Devata is good thug as well. They can also have armies of Gandharvas, excellent sacred infantry that guru's can summon with no problems. All this adds to their strength and all this should be used properly in game to fully utilize Patala's power.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by Mindi

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by Mindi

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.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I find no portions of my guide at all applicable for the current dom 3 blitz metagame. I have not declared this is the best guide, if you had read it even past the first few words, you'll realize it is simply my guide to them being played in MP settings. I am very thorough with my current strategy and I feel it's definitely one of the more viable options currently available to Patala. I have no idea why now people are setting up this premise that I'm writing this guide for blitzes.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively *DELETED*
 

Post deleted by Mindi

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Blitzes are different than long term games, but not that different. This is because late game, everyone is more or less playing from the same bag of tricks, so what tends to matter is how well your nation did early game.

Now, I don't consider Patala weak, and I don't think that was Kiss's final conclusion either. They simply have - like almost every nation - a lot of troops that don't stack up to the others, or a few that are too good, depending how you look at it.

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Post deleted by Mindi

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Post deleted by Mindi

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I haven't tested this at all, but Markatas could be useful if you're using Rust Mist heavily. Removing the protection of a unit makes any hits they score likely to do a little bit of damage, and since they're very small they can swarm units causing them to accure defense penalties, especially against larger opponents, and the damage could add up quickly (if they don't all die first). Ideally I think that Rust Mist is best used with high strength units though, but it might work.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

You suggested dormant VQ pretender with no bless and sloth scale. So for entire first year of game you get no bless, no pretender and no resources to buy enough troops. How exactly does that help early expansion you mention?

They have no more problems with blessing sacred troops then virtually any other nation with powerful sacreds (Vans and Helheim for example). Most of those nations don't have h3 priests to cast divine blessing on them. They can however make temples and hire normal priests to bless those troops and so can Patala. From GAMEPLAY experience you need 4-5 of them to bless a group of 40 naga warriors that are on hold/attack orders. It's no problem for them at all. No more then for almost any other nation that is. Do I need to mention that you also have prophet that can cast divine bless and is perfect for early expansion? And yes, you will use capitol mages to get your nagas around but then again, you want those mages in battle and gurus to do research. In worse case gurus can do it to as they can lead 25 magic units each.

Edit:typos

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Rust Mist is a good spell and could work with hordes of Markatas. However, as I've mentioned, at that stage of the game you should generally be supplimenting your forces with superior indies instead and/or mercanaries. if you have extra gold to dump, it should be invested in setting up another guru factory. When comparing effectiveness of troops, you need to take into mind oppurtunity costs. For example, why are loboguards more feasible than markatase? Well because they're not leadership heavy, they don't effect the amount of regular troops your commander should have, have better stats and are mindless allowing a more effective swarm tactic. Also ryleh works well with swarm tactics because most of the time you'll be fighting tritons and icthyids. Patala doesn't have this option.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Daynarr - pretenders don't cast Divine Blessing. Prophets do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Damn you are fast. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif
You saw it even before I managed to edit it.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Hmmm, I just tried out Patala with a E4 W4 Nataraja and some assorted positive scales.

All I can give you is a deep "Hmmmmm.". Those S2 1N mages are good. It's easy to forge neat trinkets for Nataraja. The troops tend to suck, but I think that missilespam with Rust Cloud/Destruction could work. Could. Not sure how competive that is. Propably not very.

Natarajas still own BTW.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I don't know, Rust Mist is Evoc 2 and with an awake pretender with a research score higher than 20, like a rainbow or bless Great Sage, you could have it by turn 5 or earlier so it would probably work good against indy knights at least.

Of course, there's probably better units for it in the game. But Patala doesn't seem to have too many options anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

These kind of strategy discussions are great. Keep it up!

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Rust Mist actually helps to longbows too, since they allow those longbows bite into the sweet, sweet flesh of enemies even better. It also helps those naga warriors if you ever use them since two attack vs rusted armor = very good.

The Naga Warriors themselves don't look bad to me.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I have already given a strategy to expand early with Patala so I have no idea why you're harping on that point. With the right unit scripting and archer decoying, you can take on most indies on turn 2. I typically play on indies setting 6 or 7. Second, I have already said and highlighted why sacreds are NOT Patala's strength. I do not tell people how to play turn by turn. Instead I offer a general guideline on what they should be doing if following THIS strategy. The variety of different strategies in dominions III comes from battle formations, scripting issues, horde vs. rush, etc. Choosing which units for these purposes generally tends not to deviate from player to player. When you watch good player's execute their first few turns, you will generally see the same pattern regardless of which nation they're using. The only rare exceptions to this are uber bless strats and those with odd awaken designs (aka dom 9 or 10 PoD for a second turn expander). But I digress, as I've said, I am open to other builds, I've responded to Boron's post earlier about his suggestion of awaken thug vs dormant SC pretenders. However, I don't find your current build viable.

Other nations with powerful sacreds like Vanheim and Pangaea (Helheim is not a late era nation and I'm keeping it out of this discussion for that reason) have exactly that. POWERFUL Sacreds, which nagas are NOT. Duel blessed Vans and Centaurs can easily take most indies, possess stealth and have enormous raiding potential. You work those sacreds into a strategy by themselves AND they have the advantage of being non capital only occasionally and are able to be troop ferried by indie commanders. The last part is VERY important as logistics makes and breaks your game usually. Also they're not encumbered like a *&%$! and you're able to mass them a LOT easier (thanks to the imbalanced ratio of gold vs. resource) cost. How can you even find Nagahs comparable to Vans and Black Centaurs is baffling to me! Nagahs are among the WORST sacreds in the Late Era!

You point to a lot of theories but there is NO way Patala can compete without research as opposed to certain other powerful sacred nations, leading four or five commanders to bless 40 - 50 nagahs is ridiculous since if you're moving out at that stage of the game, you're going to get overruned. SIX TO SEVEN Dual blesed black centaurs are able to take most indie provinces. Your gurus should form the bulk of your battlemages not your nagarishis which have SO many other uses! Nagarishis are really amazing battlemages yes but they're also going to be your main summoners, site searchers, forgers, etc.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I like to mash them with across the front line. Since the targeting AI has fits with more target squads. They don't get enough time to rout anyway, so they are good for confusion and the right price. But as a unit that are any sort of real cost effective, they are not. If the Targeting AI was smarter, they would have no use.

Use just like normal markata, but for people who like to "Fire Archers". I like to put them right in front of a weak flank, but make sure they are in front of your real archer block so they will get priority targeting. You can usually get away with 3 or 4 in a small squad and then do them in small clusters across your front line slightly behind your other markata decoys.

It's mostly the range on these. If they had shortbows, I'd buy them by the bucketloads initially then switch to Atavi Turn 10+

I have to say they are pretty good across all three eras. They are in fact the most useful and ease to mass unit that this nation line has, suited to Sloth, suited to support, and you can save them from arty's until you are ready to lose them.

As an archer, this unit is not a top pick. Archers are defined by maximizing resources. Especially considering most of your resources are taken by either Sacreds or more cost-effective troops.

I don't see any reason to buy these.


I see no reason to buy these.

This is probably my personal preference but: The Longbow is not worth 2 Shortbows at current IMO. Even moreso with mid-lategame use of bows (I.E. Flaming Arrows and Wind Guide). Stealth makes your units more survivable, so I stay away from these and buy Atavi 2 for 1.

I only build any of these units to go with Elephants. It's mostly morale/resource dependant. Not on their own merits.

Standard Trample tactics. You would be a fool in the current way combat works to not take advantage of this for heavy armored troops in the early game... if you happen to run into any. You will want to watch out if your opponent has a F9 blessing though, they drop damn so fast it's not worth the gold. Plus mid-game they get owned by spells first, I use them as decoys for Size 6 units I want to try to save (Pretenders without a full regiment of resistances).

Naga Troops are subpar, this is only an issue if the nation does not have enough other strengths to overcome this. Sufficed to say, if you are playing a bless strategy, this is not the nation to choose.

This is true for all nations, all ages minus probably the giant*heim's, I don't know why you made this a point for Naga's in particular http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

My 3.5 cents.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I'm not an expert at quoting mechanics but I agree with most of your points save Atavi vs. Bandar. The short bows really don't puncture most late game indies very well compared to longbows. If we were talking about midgame or early game indies, I'd switch to Atavi archers instead. This nation doesn't have access to flaming arrows, though I can find Atavis feasible with Rust Mist/Destruction.

Also the Markata scouts were just a random point I tossed out there to be thorough and cover all their nationals. =)

Obviously I forgot to point out the primary use of Markata archers are archer decoys, squads to mess up cavalry, etc. I should insert that point though since some people might have missed it. =)

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Like I said, personal preference. If it's 2 for 1 and my 2 are stealthy. It might be that I prepare my army for people as I take indies for the most part. I have too often had to switch fighting indies in the first 6 turns to fighting real armies so I tend to think in terms of survivability/utility.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Fair enough, I'll add their possible raiding potential in my description for them then=).

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I'm not ‘harping point’, I saying that you suggested bad pretender design and explained why. I'll repeat, you get no pretender, not bless and low resources with it. And until your pretender arrives you probably be facing more then just indies.
And I have highlited why they ARE their strength. If you didn't manage to use them effectively and I did then by all means I won't accept your opinion on that as true.

I explained in those desings that they are meant for people who start playing with Patala. They won’t jump into blitzes immediately. Designs I posted are not blitz designs so your reasons for not finding them viable are off the mark.

Quite frankly, I have no idea what is all this directed to.
You said
And I responded
That means following:
1. My post is about blessing sacred troops and all era's have them. Therefore for that point, era is irrelevant. Vanheim and Helheim were just examples for nations with sacreds, that need to use h1 priests to bless their sacred troops.
2. I have not mentioned any sort of comparison between Vans, Centaurs and Nagas. Where did you come up with :’ How can you even find Nagahs comparable to Vans and Black Centaurs is baffling to me!’ is baffling me actually. You are arguing something that I never said.
3. I did not say ANYWHERE that you will use 40-50 nagas to take indie provinces. I said that you need 4-5 h1 priests to bless 40 nagas. I also mentioned prophet for early expansion. That was example. It looked like example as well.
4. None of this is really response to anything I said.

Edit, typos.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I have NEVER even mentioned blitzes in any of my arguments. I've even stated this current strat and Patala as a whole is NOT A GOOD BLITZ NATION. I've also explained how to handle early game scuffles and your VQ arrives usually around the same time you find your first few neighbors anyway. Bandar longbows, indies + aggressive mercenaries are good to hold the defensive line from turn 6-12 against 95% of the MP players ESPECIALLY if you're adept at raiding and counter raiding. I can guarantee you this. If the player is good enough that he outwits you, your sacreds will DEFINITELY not save you. This is the difference between Patala and an actual sacred nation like Vanheim. Van's sacreds are actually GOOD.

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Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

@Zen,
According to your analysis, there's just no good troops with Patala, just standard Atavi archers...
So what do you build when playing them ? Nothing ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

I've not played Patala sufficiently to have a definitive opinion, and Kissblade probably has far more experience and knowledge of the subject than me, but I find strange not to have a strategy allowing to give their full efficiency to national summons and mages, at least on big maps (if the nagas are not short terms good sacred, having a bless strat or semi bless strat for long term looks better than nothing, on paper at least, when you have access to many kinds of sacred summons including ones with 4 attack in end game). It's why I've presumed the first strategy was only the best for small games.

For sure Patala looks like one of the many nations that may be rushed without a chance by double blessed troops (even after 20 or so turns on a big map). But as relying upon a dormant VQ and mercenaries against vans won't be really more efficient than hoping any other pretender may stop them, why not taking a pretender giving an earth and/or water bless ? Of course like all nations without a great short term efficiency, in a big mp game you need some diplomacy to survive, but then you have access to very good sacred troops and thugs, with clam hoarding to finance the summons. And as you are an earth nation you are one of the most useful allies nations not producing hammers can have, so I think in most games (allowing diplomacy) you are going to find some. So my only question is (and it's a question not an arguement one more time I'm not pretending to know very well this nation) why do you find a bless strategy for Patala so bad (outside of blitzes / no diplo games) ? The way you have answered Daynarr's posts doesn't make your reasons very clear.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

This thread is being locked to help tempers cool down and to preform some clean up. KissBlade has been issued a warning for his initial attitude that helped send this thread down a wrong path and Graeme has been booted for 3 days because he doesn't seem to like to listen to warnings.

When this thread reopens I hope all of you will remember to treat one another with respect. It's perfectly fine to have strong opinions and to give those opinions but other people are entitled to express their equally strong opinions as well. No character assasinations or personal attacks allowed. If you are going to debate, debate the issue, not the person.

----------------------------

Okay I have been addressing this issue all morning and have cleaned up this thread. This includes deletion of some posts entirely and editing of others including any references to the deleted content.

I expect this thread to be civil from here on out. This means debating the issues, not the posters and debating in a respectful manner. If I have to lock it again, it will stay locked.

We are now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Re: Guide to playing Patala competitively
 

Sacred troops' strengths are entirely determined by their early game efficiency. Simply put once evocation spells are researched, a majority of sacreds tends to die the same. There are exceptions to this but Nagahs are not one of them. Hence a semi bless or a bless for long term strategy isn't effective unless you're talking about earth bless for your mages, which even then isn't really required since your best mages get summon earthpower and you don't want to waste scripting slots (which are very important) on everyone self blessing themselves. Theoretically you can also bring in priests to bless your gurus but that's a micromanagement nightmare and you can sidestep this issue largely by simply just communioning with them to a summon earthpowered nagarishi. Your most effective sacred troops comes in at conjuration 5. And they're not even that good since you have better uses for astral gems. Also your sacreds are magical beings so ferrying them is a very big hassle and takes away from your mage time. Efficient mage time is one of the most important things in a competitive setting. Worse yet, Nagah's capital only so you won't be getting them to the frontlines too quickly anyway. AND did I mention they were cold blooded so they're dominion reliant ESPECIALLY with their HUGE encumberance. Their stats are also very subpar given their huge resource costs. As said, they're among the least cost effective sacreds in the late era. (troops are typically determined by resources as their limiting factor, not gold) I'm not even going to bother pointing out the flaws of regular nagas who don't wear armor since their crappiness speaks for itself.

Also if we're on the topic of early game, your best long term strategy is to have a strong early game. Which spending your resources recruiting Nagahs instead of your more effective archers won't get you. A Vampire Queen however can cover a somewhat laggy early game however (if you get a tough start aka next to xbows/heavy cavs, etc) because she can take on the tough indies without a problem. She's a little excessive actually I mentioned this when I said that you can take a Ghost King instead but you'll have more fun with a VQ most likely. =)

Nagahs are not short term good sacreds. They are not long term good sacreds. In short, they're not good sacreds. In fact if anyone actually really bothered reading my description about Nagah sacreds I've even specifically said,theoeritcally you can make them /decent/ (not good) with a e9/n9 bless but if you're going that route why not use an actual bless nation??

If it's already past 20 turns, chances are you are safe with Patala, by then you should have the evoation spells to handle any "rushes". Also a VQ still be significantly more problematic for a nation like Van to handle since not only is the hotter + higher dominion from a pretender that's awake more effective against Vans, you'll have a reusable raider / defender. Also I have no idea why some people still think Patala has very good troops, as I've mentioned, Nagahs are among the worst sacreds and your level 5 conjuration is barely at adequate level. Heck I think equal heavy infantry indies even beats out Nagah dual blessed in cost. Also you'll rare see a dual bless strategy from most MP players simply because it's not a diplomatic strategy. It relies on constant wars and as mentioned, mid game battlemagic murders sacreds. In short to answer your question, a bless strategy for Patala is bad because their sacreds are awful. The awaken pretender option is feasible but IMO has it's faults because it tends to putter out of strength around early mid which is when your toughest time with Patala is going to be.