[Immaculate]

Regarding Patala:


Firstly i love patala. I'm not great with them mid or late game where they are supposed to shine but early game i've got a good method.

Nagas are much stronger in CBM with the addition of their awe. I take production three so i can really lean heavily on them in the early game. I also grab a bless. I like a weak earth/nature for endurance, sometimes with a weak fire to make sure those big hits actually hit. Or else I like a strong astral. The reason for this is that they have awe and good protection so they can actually avoid getting hit for awhile if you have good archer decoys.

So expanding with the nagas:

Turn one: build a seducer naga commander and as many warrior nagas as you can.

Turn two: Attack with seducer naga and prophet, all forces.. Three of them tanking (the warrior nagas with the armor- not the other ones- they suck) while your starting archers and poo-flingers do their thing (archer decoy, fire archers for makata, fire closest for atavi) while your prophet divine blesses (and smites should help you take your first indie province (preferably with high resources). While you are taking it you are building one of the seducer naga commanders and as many warrior naga as you can.


Turn three: You attack another high resource province with both your new nagas (approximately 3) and both of the naga seducer commanders and your prophet. Build more naga warriors.

Turn four: return one commander to your capital and keep building naga warriors and naga seducers (or the 2s1n monkeys if you lack money). Your naga/prophet/monkeys army should be good to take one province per turn now for awhile with six+ nagas and monkey support.

Your next expansion parties will be naga seducer commanders and 6-8 naga warriors and maybe some archer decoys. Some stuff you might need elephants for and you can and should recruit them when and if you need them but they are very expensive so I don’t recommend it too much.


Once you take the provinces sorrouding your capital, you should be able to launch an expansion party every turn or every two turns depending on the resources you got. The problem is that you have to lead them with your nagas (at least until you build up a bit of infrastructure in other provinces) which can be bad for your early game research.


That said, I find that I accumulate gold pretty quickly using this method of expansion since the constraint is not gold but resources and I always end up with another fort before turn 13 and usually around turn 11 or 12. With another one by turn 14-16. Secondary, tertiary and quaternary forts should focus on building your research base and your mid-game communion mages. But that’s mid-game and I won’t discuss that here.


Go to magic in the early phase is
1) construction two for the crystal shield (turns your H2, N1 naga priests into H3, N2 naga priests that can cast panic after they divine bless) and
2) thaum 3. The awe and fear combo is very powerful on SCs/thugs and it works just as well with your naga. Your combination of panic spam and awe on your nagas mean that most opponents will not land a melee strike on your nagas. (you’ll need archer decoys obviously).

One thing I would like help with is turning the naga warrior/priests into efficient thugs- seems that with their awe and a bit of a bless they should be good but even with a frost brand they are not great- any ideas?



A lot of mindless units are good trample targets for elephants...