[KissBlade]

Daynarr said:


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.

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.