Kailasa VS Lanka

K · #1 December 5th, 2007, 05:08 AM

There's nothing stopping you from Prophetizing a Yogi and busting out a Communion for mad H5 Banishments. Toss in an SC god like the Great White Bull, and you could have been knocking on Lanka's door on turn 10.

Lanka is also vulnerable to archers until its gets Arrow Fend or Storm, and you've got a holy Archer with a Precision of 12(Death Bless anyone?) and rocktossing Bandar.

Lanka also fields small armies in the early game, so anything that slows down small armies is key. Earth Meld would be deadly.

Close range deathmatches are all about SC gods and blesses and bad scales, and magic you can get within the first 2 or 3 path levels.

Shovah32 · #2 December 5th, 2007, 05:23 AM

You could always try an awake, F9 dragon with dom10, order 3, sloth2, heat 3, misfortune 2, drain 2.

The dragons awe+breath should be able to handle indy troops easily. Your sacreds will be deadly, even on Lankas sacreds(although an E9 bless would still make Lankas sacreds tough), and your sacreds+pretender will be extremely effective if Lanka summons a few of those lovely, 50% fire weakness nationals.

If you manage to research up to either Conjuration 5 or Evocation 5 you will be in a great position. F9 Gandharvas are deadly and still tough if you take conjuration, where-as your national mages casting gifts from heaven, falling frost and(against chaff mainly) earthquake/bladewind can do alot of damage. Your F9 Dragon casting falling fires should also decimate just about anything Lanka has.
You could also head for alteration 4 instead, for destruction(destruction+F9 Yavanas=dead enemies).

Sombre · #3 December 5th, 2007, 05:37 AM

Eh,.. I don't think going full on for a H5 banishment is actually going to be a sensible strategy against Lanka. If they even work out you're using it all they have to do is use their non demonic sacreds (they aren't that much worse).

I haven't heard anything about the Great White Bull being a good monster SC before. In what way is it better than/comparable with a wyrm? I'm not doubting, just asking.

From quick tests, death bless affliction bonus doesn't actually help archers that much. I mean you afflict some stuff, but a better bless on melee troops that costs about the same would allow you do deal far more damage. It might be effective if the archers were cheap and numerous, but Kailasas sacreds aren't either of these things. Also bar in mind the lankan sacreds are probably rocking a strong nature bless, so cut down chance for afflictions and far less chance that arrows will wear them down.

Those low resource Bandar light infantry with their cheap and fairly effective rock tossing might be an idea, though I doubt they'd fare too well against the nature blessed good hp lankans.

vfb · #4 December 5th, 2007, 06:11 AM

I ran a quick test of 10 turns of gold-equivalent:

atavi archers, yogi (Mind Burn), warriors, awake pretender casting Flaming Arrows then summoning skeletons/dead, prophet casting 2 * courage then banishment,

versus

50 N9E9 Palankashas with a prophet casting bless then smite, imprisoned god.

Lanka won, with about 10 losses. Probably could have gone with less yogi (I made 10), they just made the Palankas mad.

K · #5 December 5th, 2007, 06:39 AM

Quote:

vfb said:
I ran a quick test of 10 turns of gold-equivalent:

atavi archers, yogi (Mind Burn), warriors, awake pretender casting Flaming Arrows then summoning skeletons/dead, prophet casting 2 * courage then banishment,

versus

50 N9E9 Palankashas with a prophet casting bless then smite, imprisoned god.

Lanka won, with about 10 losses. Probably could have gone with less yogi (I made 10), they just made the Palankas mad.

I probably would have used meatshields of markata. The Def 14 and low costs means that the Rakshasa will actually kill them slower than the armored Bandar, and cost a whole lot less.

Also, rather than enchantment 4, I'd aim for Evocation 5. If that pretender had been spamming Shadow Blast and instead of Yogis you toss down the E3 or W3 guys, I think you'd have seen more Lanka deaths.

vfb · #6 December 5th, 2007, 10:29 AM

Quote:

K said:
I probably would have used meatshields of markata. The Def 14 and low costs means that the Rakshasa will actually kill them slower than the armored Bandar, and cost a whole lot less.

Also, rather than enchantment 4, I'd aim for Evocation 5. If that pretender had been spamming Shadow Blast and instead of Yogis you toss down the E3 or W3 guys, I think you'd have seen more Lanka deaths.

Thanks for the tips, K! Actually I was using Atavi warriors in the test, not Bandar, I thought it would take longer to kill them. I didn't even think about using the little monkeys. Too bad the little guys have 14 move, it would be nice if they ran slower so that the Palankas could waste more time on them.

I ran it again, this time with 200 Markata archers as the "meatshield", 100 atavi archers in the backfield, and 1 Bladewind caster, 2 Falling Frost casters, god Shadow Blasting. It looked promising, but the Bladewind was less effective than Falling Frost, and the atavi didn't do much damage without Flaming Arrows.

So I tried one more time, 200 Markata only, 5 Falling Frost casters, god Shadow Blasting. Worked well until turn 6. Then the god decided to start buffing and the mages decided to banish instead of frosting. Bleh.

But if I research both Enchant 4 and Evoc 5, then Lanka dies to the combo of spells and flaming arrows.

Morkilus · #7 December 5th, 2007, 01:01 PM

Pretenders aside, I'd never think Kailasa would ever be a good match against Lanka. Lanka is one of the strongest nations, from what I've heard.

Kuritza · #8 December 5th, 2007, 01:18 PM

And now give Lanka some mages and thugs too, and cry as your monkeys bite dust. I dont understand why is everyone saying 'side A has much stronger troops, but side B can even that with magic'. Magic works for both sides.
Anyway, Lanka has a potential to become very strong, yes, but so far it seems its much weaker than Mictlan so you can go against Langa and win 1 vs1. Monkey demons are harder to amass than Jaguar, early summons are weaker etc.
In one of our games Kailasa actually rushed Lanka early with a Deva god. Defense boosted over 30 and an eye shield took care of the demons easily, while Lanka didnt think of using same eye shields on its commanders against Deva.

LDiCesare · #9 December 5th, 2007, 07:05 AM

Lanka are strong early on, while Kailasa is strong late game. This makes a blitz very unbalanced in favor of Lanka imho.
It you manage to last till you can summon Gandharvas and build lots of mage priests, Kailasa can win, but not against a rush.
I once played a Ramayana game myself, and Kailasa won because I wanted to see how the late game summons were, Lanka happened to have a crappy starting location, and I toyed a lot. So the game lasted longer than it should have due to 'let's try seducing with rakshasi' and 'I want to see all national Summons', which led to a big advantage for Kailasa late game. Early on, they suffered more than a little.

Hadrian_II · #10 December 5th, 2007, 10:27 AM

The bigger part of Kailasas defence in close combat comes from awe on the units, but as lanka is fielding morale 16 troops (blessed palanksha) this wont work very well.

Vfbs example is a bit biased, if you would fight the palankshas with the equivalent of yavanas Blessed with S9F9 lanka should take bigger losses than with a army of archers. Also mostly when you use archers with kailasa, they do more friendly fire than harm to the enemy.

Later on when kailasa has Gandharvas and Celestial music, lanka will be in pretty much trouble.

The problem with kailasa is, that you need arrow fend (or armys of gandharvas) to fight against enemy archery before that their arrows will just kill you. Also units with high morale (skellyspamming) can kill your units easy.