Guide to playing Patala competitively

[KissBlade]

Boron said:
Btw are Patalas troops really that crappy?
They are not good, but in late era troop quality differs quite a bit.

A main characteristic seems to be whether a nation has x-bows or at least easy access to flaming arrows.

Imho other LA nations with weak troops:

-Arco:
Arco troops are somewhat similiar to the Patala troops, only the armored elephant seems very useful. But their various hoplite troops are rather weak too for late era imho.

-TC:
Only the horsemen are useful.

-Aby:
Resource intensive and expensive, only advantage is the fire resistence.

-Ctis:
No slave warriors, likely worst LA troops of all nations.



For Patala at least the Bandars with the iron crudgel and the Elephants are somewhat useful, and the atavi stealth archers for raiding.

Finally there is the theoretic possibility to use a horde of your troops in Mid- or Lategame and buff them with nagarishis.
With buffs like mass protection, mass regeneration, weapons of sharpness, quickening, luck, marble warriors, army of lead/gold you might be able to transform them from weakish units into decent hordes in key battles.
The bandar troops have only 4-5 enc, but good strength + ok attack rating, so if you manage to give them quickness + good protection/regeneration they might be formidable.

Well late game era does have actually a lot of good heavy infantry nationals, like jomon, etc. Longbows are also really nice as well. Keep in mind, A LOT of nations have crappy troops and then like two or three stellar ones.

I haven't played with Arco so I can't really comment on them but TC bk have really decent troops in form of glaives, foot archers and Ancestral Vessels. The vessels are especially great against indies, I routed knights! before from their bows =). Abys axemen are good too if I recall and their sacreds are decent but I haven't played too much aby either. Ctis troops blow, agreed on that one. But you can mass troops and just rush with them anyway. I usually get mass light infantry with Ctis and it's not terrible vs. most indies. However you know from your own experience Boron that Patala troops are really not that great. As for the theoretical use, I think you're really reaching there. After all, even my horde of wolves were a terror once I army of leaded them. =)

Edit: Actually looking over ARco's troops, they're not bad. They're one of those nations you need to take prod 3 with it seems but the elephants are really nice since they have those 14 morale troops and they have good protection. Also they get cheap jav throwers.