Guide to playing Patala competitively

[Daynarr]

Endoperez said:
Daynarr - pretenders don't cast Divine Blessing. Prophets do.

Damn you are fast.
You saw it even before I managed to edit it.

[Nerfix]

Hmmm, I just tried out Patala with a E4 W4 Nataraja and some assorted positive scales.

All I can give you is a deep "Hmmmmm.". Those S2 1N mages are good. It's easy to forge neat trinkets for Nataraja. The troops tend to suck, but I think that missilespam with Rust Cloud/Destruction could work. Could. Not sure how competive that is. Propably not very.

Natarajas still own BTW.

[dirtywick]

KissBlade said:
Rust Mist is a good spell and could work with hordes of Markatas. However, as I've mentioned, at that stage of the game you should generally be supplimenting your forces with superior indies instead and/or mercanaries. if you have extra gold to dump, it should be invested in setting up another guru factory. When comparing effectiveness of troops, you need to take into mind oppurtunity costs. For example, why are loboguards more feasible than markatase? Well because they're not leadership heavy, they don't effect the amount of regular troops your commander should have, have better stats and are mindless allowing a more effective swarm tactic. Also ryleh works well with swarm tactics because most of the time you'll be fighting tritons and icthyids. Patala doesn't have this option.

I don't know, Rust Mist is Evoc 2 and with an awake pretender with a research score higher than 20, like a rainbow or bless Great Sage, you could have it by turn 5 or earlier so it would probably work good against indy knights at least.

Of course, there's probably better units for it in the game. But Patala doesn't seem to have too many options anyway

[Morkilus]

These kind of strategy discussions are great. Keep it up!

[Nerfix]

Rust Mist actually helps to longbows too, since they allow those longbows bite into the sweet, sweet flesh of enemies even better. It also helps those naga warriors if you ever use them since two attack vs rusted armor = very good.

The Naga Warriors themselves don't look bad to me.

[KissBlade]

Daynarr said:


You suggested dormant VQ pretender with no bless and sloth scale. So for entire first year of game you get no bless, no pretender and no resources to buy enough troops. How exactly does that help early expansion you mention?

They have no more problems with blessing sacred troops then virtually any other nation with powerful sacreds (Vans and Helheim for example). Most of those nations don't have h3 priests to cast divine blessing on them. They can however make temples and hire normal priests to bless those troops and so can Patala. From GAMEPLAY experience you need 4-5 of them to bless a group of 40 naga warriors that are on hold/attack orders. It's no problem for them at all. No more then for almost any other nation that is. Do I need to mention that you also have prophet that can cast divine bless and is perfect for early expansion? And yes, you will use capitol mages to get your nagas around but then again, you want those mages in battle and gurus to do research. In worse case gurus can do it to as they can lead 25 magic units each.

I have already given a strategy to expand early with Patala so I have no idea why you're harping on that point. With the right unit scripting and archer decoying, you can take on most indies on turn 2. I typically play on indies setting 6 or 7. Second, I have already said and highlighted why sacreds are NOT Patala's strength. I do not tell people how to play turn by turn. Instead I offer a general guideline on what they should be doing if following THIS strategy. The variety of different strategies in dominions III comes from battle formations, scripting issues, horde vs. rush, etc. Choosing which units for these purposes generally tends not to deviate from player to player. When you watch good player's execute their first few turns, you will generally see the same pattern regardless of which nation they're using. The only rare exceptions to this are uber bless strats and those with odd awaken designs (aka dom 9 or 10 PoD for a second turn expander). But I digress, as I've said, I am open to other builds, I've responded to Boron's post earlier about his suggestion of awaken thug vs dormant SC pretenders. However, I don't find your current build viable.

Other nations with powerful sacreds like Vanheim and Pangaea (Helheim is not a late era nation and I'm keeping it out of this discussion for that reason) have exactly that. POWERFUL Sacreds, which nagas are NOT. Duel blessed Vans and Centaurs can easily take most indies, possess stealth and have enormous raiding potential. You work those sacreds into a strategy by themselves AND they have the advantage of being non capital only occasionally and are able to be troop ferried by indie commanders. The last part is VERY important as logistics makes and breaks your game usually. Also they're not encumbered like a *&%$! and you're able to mass them a LOT easier (thanks to the imbalanced ratio of gold vs. resource) cost. How can you even find Nagahs comparable to Vans and Black Centaurs is baffling to me! Nagahs are among the WORST sacreds in the Late Era!

You point to a lot of theories but there is NO way Patala can compete without research as opposed to certain other powerful sacred nations, leading four or five commanders to bless 40 - 50 nagahs is ridiculous since if you're moving out at that stage of the game, you're going to get overruned. SIX TO SEVEN Dual blesed black centaurs are able to take most indie provinces. Your gurus should form the bulk of your battlemages not your nagarishis which have SO many other uses! Nagarishis are really amazing battlemages yes but they're also going to be your main summoners, site searchers, forgers, etc.

[Zen]

KissBlade said:
Markata: I have no idea why these are in the game. Those clubs aren't going to deal much damage (read: none) and they die like flies. Actually no, they die way easier than flies. Damn buggers. Never recruit this unit. Even if you need a archer decoy. VERY lame version of lobo guards.

I like to mash them with across the front line. Since the targeting AI has fits with more target squads. They don't get enough time to rout anyway, so they are good for confusion and the right price. But as a unit that are any sort of real cost effective, they are not. If the Targeting AI was smarter, they would have no use.

Markata archers: Oh god, I've never even SEEN small bows before. Oh jeebus these suck *** too.

Use just like normal markata, but for people who like to "Fire Archers". I like to put them right in front of a weak flank, but make sure they are in front of your real archer block so they will get priority targeting. You can usually get away with 3 or 4 in a small squad and then do them in small clusters across your front line slightly behind your other markata decoys.

It's mostly the range on these. If they had shortbows, I'd buy them by the bucketloads initially then switch to Atavi Turn 10+

Atavi archers: they can move pretty fast on the map and have stealth. They have bows too and aren't too expensive. Still they because they're pretty much like villains. And villains suck. Unless they're super villains. Which these certainly are not.

I have to say they are pretty good across all three eras. They are in fact the most useful and ease to mass unit that this nation line has, suited to Sloth, suited to support, and you can save them from arty's until you are ready to lose them.

Vanara Archer: Atavi archers without the stealth and more armor and more resource cost. Needless to say, they suck too.

As an archer, this unit is not a top pick. Archers are defined by maximizing resources. Especially considering most of your resources are taken by either Sacreds or more cost-effective troops.

Vanara Infantry: Like Vanara archers except they get a buckler instead of the bow. Average cost. Pretty much a crappy version of heavy infantry indies. So ... you won't be buying much of them either.

I don't see any reason to buy these.

Vanara Swordsmen: Their stats aren't terrible. A bit better than Vanara Infantry. Their gold to resource ratio isn't bad if you have little gold. But generally if you have no gold you shouldn't be buying subpar troops anyway because heavy infantry from indies are still better. Not a terrible choice for the first few turns if for some unknown reason you took prod: 3 for this nation.

I see no reason to buy these.

Light Bandar Archers: Wow, the first serviceable unit of this line. Good hit points and an awesome range attack with above average morale. Expensive as hell but the longbow is a ridiculously good weapon. Oh yeah they have no protection whatsoever so be sure to get some archer decoy and screens for them. Try to get heavier bandar archers for archer decoying because smart players will script their archers to fire archers or large monsters if they see you massing these. You'll be spending most of your gold on these units a lot unless you have a lot of resources ...

This is probably my personal preference but: The Longbow is not worth 2 Shortbows at current IMO. Even moreso with mid-lategame use of bows (I.E. Flaming Arrows and Wind Guide). Stealth makes your units more survivable, so I stay away from these and buy Atavi 2 for 1.

Light Bandar Warrior: Pretty meh. Think of them as bootlegged light infantry (the javelin variety). In other words, not too great.
Bandar Warrior: Comes in two varieties, the cudgel isn't horrible, still subpar prot and prone to getting hit a lot but they have 18 hit points. Still too expensive and the mace one gets a buckler which is better. I use these for screens a lot early on or the vanara swordsmen. Actually, I take that back. I usually don't build any of these since early on I just build the bandar archers.

I only build any of these units to go with Elephants. It's mostly morale/resource dependant. Not on their own merits.

Elephant: Not bad units especially if you bring along a yogi to ethereal them. Too bad their morale is so poor that you need to balance them out by grouping them with Bandars. And bandar troops suck. You can group them with nagahs too but those troops are even worse.

Standard Trample tactics. You would be a fool in the current way combat works to not take advantage of this for heavy armored troops in the early game... if you happen to run into any. You will want to watch out if your opponent has a F9 blessing though, they drop damn so fast it's not worth the gold. Plus mid-game they get owned by spells first, I use them as decoys for Size 6 units I want to try to save (Pretenders without a full regiment of resistances).

Naga: Sacred but bad. Read above about nagah troops being even worse. If you're bored and no one's taken the seas yet late game, you can grab about fourty of them and maybe take on thirty tritons. Oh wait, they're poor amphibians. Ok ten tritons.
Nagah Warriors: Eh I guess it's workable with an e9/n9 bless. But so does a lot of other sacreds that aren't overpriced in both gold and resources. Like fourty of these will be able to break underwater first. You can body ethereal them too with one of your naga mages to make things easier. Still not very recommended.

Naga Troops are subpar, this is only an issue if the nation does not have enough other strengths to overcome this. Sufficed to say, if you are playing a bless strategy, this is not the nation to choose.

Markata Scout: You start with one of these, and you'll never need to recruit another one since you should be buying indie scouts. Oh yeah buy a lot of indie scouts.

This is true for all nations, all ages minus probably the giant*heim's, I don't know why you made this a point for Naga's in particular

My 3.5 cents.

[KissBlade]

I'm not an expert at quoting mechanics but I agree with most of your points save Atavi vs. Bandar. The short bows really don't puncture most late game indies very well compared to longbows. If we were talking about midgame or early game indies, I'd switch to Atavi archers instead. This nation doesn't have access to flaming arrows, though I can find Atavis feasible with Rust Mist/Destruction.

Also the Markata scouts were just a random point I tossed out there to be thorough and cover all their nationals. =)

Obviously I forgot to point out the primary use of Markata archers are archer decoys, squads to mess up cavalry, etc. I should insert that point though since some people might have missed it. =)

[Zen]

KissBlade said:
I'm not an expert at quoting mechanics but I agree with most of your points save Atavi vs. Bandar. The short bows really don't puncture most late game indies very well compared to longbows. If we were talking about midgame or early game indies, I'd switch to Atavi archers instead. This nation doesn't have access to flaming arrows, though I can find Atavis feasible with Rust Mist/Destruction.

Like I said, personal preference. If it's 2 for 1 and my 2 are stealthy. It might be that I prepare my army for people as I take indies for the most part. I have too often had to switch fighting indies in the first 6 turns to fighting real armies so I tend to think in terms of survivability/utility.

[KissBlade]

Zen said:

Like I said, personal preference. If it's 2 for 1 and my 2 are stealthy. It might be that I prepare my army for people as I take indies for the most part. I have too often had to switch fighting indies in the first 6 turns to fighting real armies so I tend to think in terms of survivability/utility.

Fair enough, I'll add their possible raiding potential in my description for them then=).