[Hadrian_II]

Slobby said:
Been playing around with Kailasa recently, and imo a w9 bless is great,

I would not get a water bless with kailasa, as you can cast celestial music and then get quickness for free. And the quickness from the W9 bless does not stack with the quickness from celestial music. so everything you will have left from w9 is a +4 to defence.

Slobby said: the only weakness as mentioned previously, is massed archers, however that can be rectified with an accompanying air bless, arrow fend, storm. Or simply set up a screen and amass long bows to pelt the opposing archers.

I would use arrow fend, wit conj6 you can summon kinnaras, who are able to cast arrow fend. In the early game you can use markata decoys to eat the arrows while expanding, in the midgame ghandarvas are heavy enough armoured to witstand enemy archers.

Slobby said:
With regards to problems expanding without a combat pretender. Once you get 10+ Yavana's backed by missle troops (sticks n stones or bows) you'll roll over indy's (even hvy cav) without any problems. So ideally to compensate for the slow start you'll want to have a couple of these packs of Yavana's running about.

Just use markata archers as decoys, and the yavanas can enter into meelee withoug taking too much damage from archers. For kailasa heavy cav is no problem anyway due to awe. But i would really watch out to the provinces that have much archers.

Slobby said:
Imo opinion the most important goals to strive for are to get a second fort up so that you can make sacreds from two places, and to research conj5 for gandharvas (great units) giving you access to 3 good melee sacreds.

I would also get some evoc early, as your mages can cast either falling frost or blade wind without problems.

Slobby said:
Note: To help with starting expansion I like to go markata archers and atavi infantry. The bandar commander becomes the prophet scripted sermon of co. x2 then holy avenger and smitex2. Have both the archers and inf on fire closest, and position them parallel to each other to avoid cross fire. Most importantly tho, started pumping out yavana's by turn 3, and get a yaksha on your second turn.

I would not use archers, as they are just creating friendly fire on your sacreds, or only use archers when you use them without sacreds. (or only ghandarvas)

For a pretender, i would go with an imprisoned oracle.

Scales
order 3 --> you need the money
sloth 3 --> you need no ressources
heat 3 --> you can take heat 3, and you will still have heat 2 in most of your provinces.
growth 0
luck 0
magic 1 --> +33% research is quite nice
dom 5 --> early on you wont have more money, later you will have temples and other castles to recruit sacreds

Blessing:
S9: twist fate and MR are nice, and with S9 your pretender has some wish-fu ready (and yakshinis can clam out of the box)
either F9 or N9 -> f9 makes you offensive quite strong, as all your sacreds have 2 attacks, and will be quickened later on
N9 can increase your survivability and as your sacreds have 20 hp it actually works
either N4 or E4
E4 is nice as all your mages are sacred, and it will also reduce fatigue problems on the sacreds
N4 gives some regen

if you dare to go to missfortune 3 (remember the monkey PD) you can take both E4 and N4.