triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

What is the best solution against triple blessed jaguar warriors.

THe bless is a triple 9 bless of water, fire and astral
I'm playing patala myself.
I'm thinking elephants wo't be enough and my personal idea would be to get elephants and archers

the archers to tick of the twist fate from astral bless and the trample with elephants.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Elephants certainly aren't an ideal counter against jaguar warriors with that bless because they are hard to trample and hit hard enough to mess the elephants up in return. With enough elephants you'd beat them, but as I said it isn't ideal.

Archers are a much more attractive counter if you can actually get them to fire at the jags reliably. Twist fate and their second form give them some protection, but they are basically vulnerable. Blade wind casters would work just as well if not better, since they tend to be a little more reliable in aiming it at large masses on low prot dudes.

The longer the war goes on the more mict's ****ty scales will hurt him, so remember if you're trading units goldcost to goldcost, you're actually winning.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Well, my triple blessed MA Jaguars were utterly destroyed (before they even moved 1 step towards the enemy in fact), by 30 - 40 mages spamming thunder strike. Those 30 - 40 caelum mages took apart about 150'ish triple blessed jaguars in just 2 combat rounds. Did it a couple of times in fact, as jaguars have 2 forms, they were killing 300 troops in just 2 rounds.

Not sure how much that helps you playing Patala thou... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Well, Patala could spam Blade Winds and Stellar Cascades (the cascades will drop a Twist Fate over a nice area, at least).

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

You could try archers, with some blockers ,spells like storm of thorns or earth meld (though blade wind is better) and some tough infantry (bandar??) to hold while archers do the job.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Yeah, you've got at least two hits negated, one by the astral bless, one by the form shift, but you're still fighting lightly armored guys with no shield. In the early game, archers and chaff. You're gonna have to hit each jaguar *at least* 3 times to kill them, so don't underestimate the amount of archers you need. With the F/W bless it's pretty much not worthwhile to send anything decent into melee, so just drown them in bodies. Longdead would be ideal, but failing that - does Patala get those tiny monkey guys? Their moral is crap, but if you give them sermon of courage in a friendly domain they should last a few rounds, and if you've got a bunch of higher hitpoint archers behind them they shouldn't route your whole army when they do break. Swarm should work to if you can grab that. The name of the game is stalling them long enough for each of them to get hit 3 or 4 times by arrows.

As your magic progresses, blade wind is quite fearsome vs Jaguars for obvious reasons. Many other evocations can be quite effective to, just always keep in mind you're gonna have to hit each one 3 times regardless of how much damage you do...so things like gifts from heaven and soul slay are going to be not too useful.

You could go the other way as well and try to fatigue them. Stellar cascades in sufficient numbers should neuter them nicely, aided by numbness, etc.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

And again, distant attacks are actually the way dealing with jaguars (mages better than archers, a lot of both is simply superior...)
But mictlan have some pretty flying sacreds)
And once more. time isn't playing against them. blood will grant them additional powers)

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

That's 7290 gold of mages vs. 3750 gold of units using a spell which crushes troops. I would hope that they would route them!

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

If you're speaking about early game, bend over and die.
Late game, try equipping SCs with vine shields and aoe attacks against them. At least they will soak hits while your arches deal damage.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Problem is magic isn't doing much yet since we are around turn 10 atm

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Well, you could bend over and die I suppose, though I'm more of a fighter than that. No doubt, you're rushed by a triple bless good sacred nation and you've got an uphill fight ahead of you, but it's not as hopeless as that. Just remember, the name of the game is lots of archers and stalls. If you can get those buggers to hold still for just a couple turns while you rain significant archer fire on them, they will die. Use your crappy monkey PD for the one thing it's good at - dying. Triple blessed jaguars are one of the few things those swarms of crappy monkeys are *above* average in handling....well so long as you define handling as dying at an acceptably slow rate. Forgo big damage dealing gorilla longbows for swarms of cheap chimp shortbows - remember you've got to hit them several times and the damage dealt per hit is not nearly as important as the number of arrows in the air. Leverage the sneakiness of your shortbows with the flexibility of pumping PD wherever you want to make him very uncertain in his raiding, and if he makes a push for your capital you've got even more things to your advantage. Meanwhile, hit that research hard for some of the suggestions here, if you can hold him off until you can start having a dozen blade wind spammers then jaguar warriors - triple blessed or not - are obsolete.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

I find archers not so good, as many mictlan players fly their other sacreds back to attack archers.

Magic spells do best. But you need some type of tough troop that can engage the jaguar warriors to buy time for your mages.

If your pretender is awake and 100 percent fr, and has a combat chassis, he may be able to stop them in friendly dominion.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

hmmm blade wind is not that close... a dozen casters of blade wind is even less close.

Then again for nwo I've only seen about 20 of the critters so I won't need that much for now...

but somehow I feel more will be coming..

what si the cost of a jag warrior anyway?

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

20 gold, the limit is going to be # of castles X dominion score.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Ethereal, Berserking Elephants are the birthright of the "good" monkey nations. It takes a couple of mages, but the research requirements are low.

With a screen of markata and archers, I think a triple bless rush is doable. The etherealness won't help against the fire bless, but it will help against the regular damage.

Other than that, a Falling Frost or Bladewind spam (with Precision boost) is key.

Remember also that while they can generally school you in the battlefield, you can keep them from massing enough troops to take a fortresses with wise archer use (they take fortress with slaves, which are the worse chaff in the game).

Also, every bless strategy is dependent on Bless. If you can kill their priest one the first turn while defending, you can massacre them rather than them slaughtering you. Considering that they will most likely be using a King of Rain to Bless their troops, a mass of archers on Fire Large Monster or a Gift from Heaven(with precision boost) can remove him pretty well.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

25 gold now.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

I saw no large monster in our first encounter

I will think about researching to either ethereal/berserk or bladewind (óf course my research is already going somewhere but can't let my opponent know to much.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

If you do head for ethereal, iron warriors isn't too much higher.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Tossing that on markata might not be a bad idea. Remember, they can kill five markata before you are even in terms of gold cost, and with Iron Warriors on elephants and markata they will have a lot of trouble doing damage. Archers and elephants can clean them up. Also,remember to make your elephants attack later in the combat because after mowing through chaff they will be fatigued and have lower Def, thus your tramples will work more often. Also, their Twist Fate will be gone by then.

Small numbers of jaguar warriors mean that you should focus on archers with cheap screening troops.

Remember that a triple bless means that their empire is on fire. Hit them hard and they will crumple because right now they have no money, blood, or castles. At best, they have 5 jaguars per turn of play. Give them some time to get blood, territory, or just massed troops and they can overwhelm you.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

ethereal with all due respect to k, is not the way to go against fire blessed jags. those 100 gold elephants will die just as fast.

I would focus on spells and cheap troops to slow them down for the spells to work.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

K I realise he much have the worst scales imaginable.. then again it's a team game so who knows what happens there.

Anyway before I can retaliate I'll first need to defeat the first 20 jags.

Maybe he'll want peace though, I'm sure it's all one big misunderstanding

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

I agree that using them in absence of other strategies is a bad idea. I think that as part of a mixed strategy, they have a place. If he's sending ten or twenty jags and you are sending sixty (good) archers, some chaff, and five elephants who come in ethereal when the jags are spread out you will clean up.

If he's massing 60 or 70 jags, pray you have evocations, because there is no other way you are coming out clean. Elephants at that point are disposable fire and forget missiles.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

PS. Communion up your evokers if possible.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

PPS. Let your markata throw rocks. It should strip that Twist Fate.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Yeah, my own preference is to skip the elephants - in general for this situation, but as pointed out it depends on what else is being fielded. You counter his jaguars with archers, he counters your archers with eagle warriors, you counter his eagle warriors with elephants posted by your archers, etc., etc., etc. This can be a near infinitely complicated discussion.

More to the point, specifically against a group of 20 triple blessed jaguar warriors with no applicable magic support on either side: One solid group of 40-50 (cheap!) atavi shortbows positioned behind 20 PD, with a priest for sermon of courage should do it with no losses on your side. Note, haven't actually tested this and with full humility may be very wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Just tested this out and vs 20 Jags you do need a little more than 50 atavis for a likely victory, but not much. 80 seemed to work pretty good (skip the priest, those Markatas break immediately no mater what you do). Total cost of 720 gold for troops + 210 for PD + 50 for commander vs Mictlan's 500 gold troops and 350 gold commander.

Not bad at all considering the scale difference and the fact that all you lost was freely replenished PD. Throw in a couple guys spamming tangling vines or earth meld to slow them down even more and you should be golden.

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Some people assume that just because he's throwing triple blessed sacreds at you, that he's suffering terribly for it.

That just isn't so for Mictlan. Mictlan can pick and choose where they want Dominion because it only spreads through their Pretender (weakly) and through blood sacrifices. When I play Mictlan, about the only place I'm going to have scales that bad is in my capital, in the provinces immediately surrounding my capital, and sometimes not even that if I can manage it.

As the game wears on, you can even choose an out of the way location and get Dominion there, and just leave it at that. It's dangerous in about three different ways: opponents can impose their scales on you, and you cannot benefit from the positives. If they have immortals, it's worse. If they can find your Dominion cache and get in there with either stealthy preachers or just take it over physically, you're in big trouble.

BUT, be that as it may, it's actually worth trying, because nothing can be as bad as trying to labor under -3s in your entire empire until you have a decent blood economy going. And... triple blessed jaguars are worth it. You can really stun and overwhelm just about any EA nation in the game with them in even a moderately rushing fashion.

I'm not sure I agree with the arrow method that the rest of the thread is pushing. Unless you have a really overwhelming archer force, arrows just tend to make jaguar warriors into were-jaguars. Obviously they do it eventually, but it's not anywhere near as cut and dried as four-five volleys = victory. I'd think your best bet against them with Kailasa would be sticks and stones with strength buffed monkeys, then evoke them till death. That strategy ought to work against any number of jaguar warriors, as long as you scale up in mages and research. And mage evocations, as someone astutely pointed out earlier, are a far more reliable way of targeting the jaguars as opposed to their shielding units, (I use the copper scale warriors) than missile weapons.

Baalz is absolutely right about throwing units into melee with them. That's a total write-off. It's not even worth skellyspam really, as the fatigue you'd incur will be more detrimental than any effect they'd have on the enemy. Gold for gold, they will just decimate anything you put against them, and probably much too quickly. The only real reason to put melee units against them would be to get them to catch up to THEIR screen, (which they'd probably do in short order anyway with W9 bless) making your missile weapons effective against them on Fire Closest. Fire Large Monsters would be your other option. Hm, might work.

Sticks and stones will break their bones, and is especially effective against Twist Fate. The nice thing is it doesn't take many mages to effect this strategy - the same ones doing the buffing can be the same ones blade-winding or what have you once they're in range. You've just stripped one of their three blesses without much trouble... he will have paid a lot more for Astral 9 than you did for monkeys and a mage to buff their strength!

The rest is up to you. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

Go monkeys!!!



My posts this day is getting more and more useful I see. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: triple blessed jaguar warrior
 

We'll see how it goes.. I'm going for archers, elephants and magic combined