[Hadrian_II]

Radio_Star said:
Finally, your sacred troops are excellent in melee but they will suffer heavily to archer fire before they can close and continue to take friendly fire afterwards.

There is absolutely no need for kailasa to use missile troops, as they are always causing more friendly fire than harm to the enemy. The only exception might be to counter enemy archer armys early in the game, or later on when you can cast wind guide/flaming arrows on them.

Radio_Star said:
They’re moderately expensive at 35-40 gold and outside of a buckler on the capitol-only variant, they wear no armor and have no natural protection.

This is only a problem early in the game, later on army of gold does a nice job fixing this problem.

Radio_Star said:The final nail in the coffin of your sacred troops is your access to priests. Your only national priests are capitol-only and, since they’re also your top shelf mages, monstrously expensive. Oh yeah, and you’ll need magic leadership for them. Needless to say, employing your sacreds on the field can be somewhat cumbersome.

yogis and gurus can ferry your troops around, and indy priests can bless them, it might not be a very sexy solution, but it is a working one.

Radio_Star said:
Finally, your PD is somewhat on the poor side.

I know, and because of that monkey nations will never win a game.

Radio_Star said:
Kailasa’s largest strength is clearly their magic.

Kailasas largest strength is the sacreds, dual bless, army of gold, arrow fend, celestial music and will of fates will make them squish every enemy opposition. And with strength of the giants, yavanas have a damage of 26 what is able to damage most scs, and if you really want to kick some sc butt, just cast weapons of sharpness on them.

Did i say that i had won a battle, where the enemy has cast wrathful skies, and that lasted for 10+ turns, and my losses where just 2 yavanas?

Radio_Star said:
The nature of the bless is pretty self evident. With decent starting defense and awe, w9 makes your sacreds amazingly difficult to take down in melee. As much of what is excellent about your nation is astral, (summons, clam-ability) it also follows that you take a strong astral pretender, giving you a magic resist boost that will be invaluable later on, a high astral caster for late game, and twist fate to further help your sacreds. Finally, you’ve got to take an air bless. Fielding sacreds without it is an exercise in futility.The most obvious choice is an imprisoned oracle:

Astral 9, Water 9, Air 6
Order 3
Sloth 3
Heat 3
Death 1
Misfortune 3
Magic 1
Dominion 8

I would say your bless is flawed, both the water and the air bless will become obsolete around turn 30, you you are basically giving up your your strengths to cover for your weaknesses. I Would Go for S9 and then eigher N9 or F9 (E9 would make your ghandaravas fatigue free --> insane, but this might be too niche to be feasable) and as a small bless either E4 or N4, 2 reinvig will make your infantry fatigueless and N4 helps while expanding, by cutting back the losses due to enemy arrows.

Also i would not take missfortune, as your PD is not really able to defend against barbarians, but this might be subjective. Also Dom8 is not really necessary, as you will have to build other castles fast to not fall back in the research race.

Radio_Star said:
You’ll want to save all your money for troops the first few turns, forming parties of 8-10 yavana lead by a yaksha (set to bless, bless, attack, troops set to hold and attack).

i would not set the yaksha to attack, as he is to expensive to be killed by a lucky indy.

Radio_Star said:
Each of those groups is capable of going through almost any indie province you can find. Certain archer-heavy indies can inflict losses and there’s the ever present chance of bad luck killing the commander, but for the most part you can expand at will.

Kailasa has problems with some archer types, but OTOH can take knights almost without losses. And the funny thing about the elephant province is that you are more afraid from the slingers than from the elephants

Radio_Star said:
Gandharvas deserve a short paragraph of their own here. With awe, high protection (-very- high for early age) 2 attacks, high strength and decent defense/attack, they’re monsters in their own right. With the bless described, they become thug-quality combatants limited only by fatigue. By the time something manages to score a hit through the bless-boosted defense and awe, the odds of it actually hurting their 16/18 prot are pretty slim. Combine this with the MR boost from the bless, and even small groups of them can inflict massive damage on opposing troops.

I played some blitzes with kailasa, and most of the time the enemy was sieging my capital when i reached conj 5, but i was always easily able to defeat the sieging army with some Ghandaravas

Radio_Star said:
If you’re getting raided by SCs, fit a Rudra with a shroud, give it a luck booster and script attack, hand of deathx4. Alternatively, kit the same but with 4 dusk daggers and just set it to attack. 10 attacks per round to chew through defense and armor negating damage should drop just about anything in short order.

With 4 arms, it does also does not hurt you much to take along an eye shield. The only problem is that Rudras have low hp for an SC and so can be killed by units with high damage. But as the really ugly SCs tend to be tartarians and they are undead, and you have 4 arms, you might consider to dual wield flambeaus (or Holy Scourges, or gate cleavers) for the anti undead oomph. (with quickness that makes 4 or 8 hard hitting attacks per turn, also when you add a stonebird, a rudra with 2x holy scourges a stonebird and quickness has 18 attacks per turn )

Radio_Star said:
Your biggest issue will be evocation-happy armies plodding through your turf.

Any input on other possible counters to mage-heavy armies would be greatly appreciated.

Army of Gold, makes you immune to the fire and water based evocations, and lightning does not have the aoe it needs to kill you (twist fate from bless and will of fate are protecting you good enough also with an n bless you regen). And if the enemy is fielding really lots of mages, you might have to consider that he is just stronger than you.

Radio_Star said:
Conclusions
Excellent summons, tactical and strategic flexibility both map-wise and magic-wise make for a monster power curve into the late game. If you can fight like a demon early on and keep the predators off your back, you can easily grow into the biggest, meanest boy on the block. The question is how to make it that far with such poor national troops.

I would not fight like a demon early, better try to look like a poisonous hedgehog, so noone intends to attack you.

And why should they?
- you can curse horror mark scs
- your sacreds are very strong (but early on not yet as much as later on, so you will go down when a determined mictlan intends to kill you [but a smart mictlan player should be able to find a better target than you are])
- if they engage you with archers you can build archers on your own (but this can destroy you, as you cant really use infantry supporting your archers, enemy archer fire and friendly fire will tear you up) <-- you dont want to have heavy archery attacking you before you have ghandharavas.