Kailasa guide

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by rdonj

If you take an air/astral bless... caelum is going to be largely neutered against you. I'm not 100% sure if air shield will protect you from the poison effect on arrows as I've not fought this battle, but I'm going to guess not. If your main concerns are these three nations, you then have two very easy blesses you could add to the air/astral to lessen that a lot. N4 or E4. N4 means poison doesn't really hurt you, so now sauromatia's main offensive tools in the early game are shot. Of course, they still have skelly-spam. With E4, your sacreds build no fatigue and can fight endless waves of chaff, at last until you start using celestial music. If you take one of those two, combined with either relief or regeneration your sacreds should be able to deal with most things those three nations throw at you.

Sure, I agree that would be counters to those nations. If you are fighting a duel against Caelum by all means take an A9 bless. Likewise take some air, nature and earth against Sauro. But the point is making a bless that is generally the most usable one. Yavanas' biggest strength is avoiding to get hit with their awe and high defense. So you enhance that strength even more by adding some water and S9 for twist fate. Take a bless to enhance their strengths and not to cover for their weaknesses. If an enemy shows up with an army of archers hit him with something else - your own archers or blade wind spammers or something.

Also, I think people here overvalue archers. The problem with archers is that the person who is fielding them is not the person who is deciding where they will fire. The other person will dictate that with the placement of his troops in the battlefield. If I bring enough archer decoys with my army, your archers will never get to target my yavanas.

[Omnirizon]

I sense that there is more variance among everyone's favored Kailasa strat than any other nation's set of strats. I propose an all Kail competition to sort this all out. Let's just see who wins that.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

I sense that there is more variance among everyone's favored Kailasa strat than any other nation's set of strats. I propose an all Kail competition to sort this all out. Let's just see who wins that.

I might be willing to take you up on this if byleswar ends soon as it's promising to. I'd have to play around with kailasa a bit though, it's been quite a while since I've played them.


The main point against a water bless for kailasa is they have the national celesital music spell, which is basically the same thing as a water bless and iirc does not stack with it. It's still viable and would of course be helpful in the early game, but for the most part it's also unnecessary in the early game. And if you get rid of their absolutely incredible weakness to arrows that you really have no other good way of handling the number of ways to counter kailasa's sacreds just plummeted. They're never going to be immune to everything, but with an air blessing they're a lot less vulnerable overall and once you get celestial music going there should be very little you're afraid of with them. Plus they're going to be largely immune to battlefield attack spells at this point, which is a nice bonus.

[Hadrian_II]

Originally Posted by Omnirizon

I sense that there is more variance among everyone's favored Kailasa strat than any other nation's set of strats. I propose an all Kail competition to sort this all out. Let's just see who wins that.

Sounds Fun, but the problem is that the proposed airbless would be of no use against kailasa (as no sane kailasa player will field archers). But i am in if it comes to such a competition.

[statttis]

Originally Posted by Psycho

If I bring enough archer decoys with my army, your archers will never get to target my yavanas.

Problem is, Yavanas have more HP than any other troops Kailasa can buy. Archers set to Fire Large Monsters will target the Yavanas and ignore your decoys. I was in a game with Alpine Joe where he was Kailasa, and he got destroyed by that tactic. Could be why he's not a big fan of the bless troops

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by statttis

Problem is, Yavanas have more HP than any other troops Kailasa can buy. Archers set to Fire Large Monsters will target the Yavanas and ignore your decoys. I was in a game with Alpine Joe where he was Kailasa, and he got destroyed by that tactic. Could be why he's not a big fan of the bless troops

I wanted to point this out too, but got tired of talking.

also note that others in other threads have pointed out that any player worth their salt can essentially cancel out any amount of decoying if they are willing to invest an equal amount of time and effort into the troop composition logistics and scripting. In short, decoying only works on indies.

all this is why I still find any argument that A9 is a waste to be fallacious. taking some other bless is just hoping that other players are not any good and no one is playing Caeleum or Sauromatia or any archer heavy nation.

You're supposed to design nations to defeat good players, not bad ones. A9 isn't about making it easier to play in earlier game, it is freeing you to make other decisions to have an overall stronger game. Any other bless and your strat is already made for you: decoy through indies, hope to god that you get Ghandharvas, Kinnaras, and Arrow Fend before anybody decides to attack you. If its on hard research (a popular option it seems nowadays) then you can just forget about it.

[Alpine Joe]

Originally Posted by statttis

Problem is, Yavanas have more HP than any other troops Kailasa can buy. Archers set to Fire Large Monsters will target the Yavanas and ignore your decoys. I was in a game with Alpine Joe where he was Kailasa, and he got destroyed by that tactic. Could be why he's not a big fan of the bless troops

You are very correct Targeting large monsters is huge against Kailasa and makes decoys irrelevant except against indies.