Guide to playing Patala competitively

[KissBlade]

In addition, don't take my word for it, try it out yourself. Try a Daynarr's dual bless strat and try to play twenty turns, and then try my aggressive mercenary + longbow + VQ and follow my guide for twenty turns. I guarantee you in our current metagame (default setting or indies: 6) mines will have a smoother game.

[JaydedOne]

Hey now. Why'd I merit deletion? Because I misspelled your name, Mindi?

[Mindi]

Ha ha, no because I deleted every reference to the disagreement, even the posts that just PNL (Point 'n Laugh).

But hey, I did reopen the thread.

[KissBlade]

Heh ... PnL ... that's a new one ...

[Corwin]

<counting the deleted posts>
<sigh>

Damnit, I've missed all the fun.

Easer with the delete button please Mindi! > This forum hasn't seen a flamewar for a long time AFAICT, IMHO it's a good distraction from wreaking my head on how to make a certain MP-challenged nation work.

[Boron]

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.

[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.

[Gandalf Parker]

I dont think Patalas troops are that crappy other than it seems like its being examined by a bunch of Ulm players.

OK I took a look. The bless thing sounded interesting.
2 blessable units?
They also have 2 pretty decent stealth units and a stealth commander.

But I will stick with the bless thing for now. 6 blessable commanders, all priests and mages. OK this seems workable. But why look at army blesses. I think I will look more toward mage blesses.
Code:

---

Pretender: Great Sage  (paying 35 to get 10 extra research points)

4 astral    magic resist +1

4 earth     reinvigorate +2

4 water     defense skill +2

4 air       air shield 20%

1 fire



Dominion      4

Order        +1

Productivity +1

Heat         +3 (2 were free)

---

Hope to land near the water to make good use of those aquatic troops. Use the great aquatic priest/mage to try and discover a castle underwater to cement my foothold.

Create a couple of stealth armies to move outward and possibly take weakly protected provinces during a players initial expansion when he has no way to hurt me back. Rape those provinces to death. I gain, he is damaged early in the game.

Make use of the 27 research on my god to rush into some heavy spells. Use the rainbowness of my mage to create magic boosting items for those great mages

[PDF]

I like E9 cyclops, yet they need some items to fight effectively if they don't have any other magic, due to their crap base Att/def.
From then they are pretty powerful as fighters, then have nice support spells such as LoS and Weapons of Sharpness, can cast Earthquakes and craploads of BW, then create armies of Statues when you've climbed Ench tree, go for an "artifact rush" with FotA...
Dunno if all this is really "competitive" but it's very nice

[KissBlade]

PDF said:
I like E9 cyclops, yet they need some items to fight effectively if they don't have any other magic, due to their crap base Att/def.
From then they are pretty powerful as fighters, then have nice support spells such as LoS and Weapons of Sharpness, can cast Earthquakes and craploads of BW, then create armies of Statues when you've climbed Ench tree, go for an "artifact rush" with FotA...
Dunno if all this is really "competitive" but it's very nice

With dom 9 or 10 (10 is safer), a cyclops can solo most indies turn 2 without equip. FoTA is like Arcane Nexus, extremely dangerous to cast as it'll signal other players to target you as the main threat nation. It's actually not as great an idea to rush for it in MP as it is in SP.