Guide to playing Patala competitively

[Ballbarian]

People who read the guide really needs to read more than the first few lines.

Must admit it took 3 or 4 visits to this thread before I could bring myself to even skim past the first few lines of your guide. The second line begins by what I consider to be an poorly worded slam on the AI followed by an endless stream of "this unit is crap", "that unit sucks ***", etc...

Overall, once I sifted through the "crap", I found that your guide has a useful set of opinions, observances and ideas to contribute. A suggestion would be to focus more on the positive aspects of the nation and less on the negative. It would make it much easier for many people to make use of your work.

Please don't take this as a flame, as it is not intended as such.

[KissBlade]

Ballbarian said:

Must admit it took 3 or 4 visits to this thread before I could bring myself to even skim past the first few lines of your guide. The second line begins by what I consider to be an poorly worded slam on the AI followed by an endless stream of "this unit is crap", "that unit sucks ***", etc...

Overall, once I sifted through the "crap", I found that your guide has a useful set of opinions, observances and ideas to contribute. A suggestion would be to focus more on the positive aspects of the nation and less on the negative. It would make it much easier for many people to make use of your work.

Please don't take this as a flame, as it is not intended as such.

Non taken, actually I had spoke with others about the guide and I was hoping that my tone about the subpar troops would be taken as a bit of saucy humor. But apparently it didn't come through very well and as a result doesn't appeal to certain audiences. This was pointed out to me actually when I was discussing it in the IRC channel. My next guide (assuming I find a good enough strat for another nation) will try to be more serious.

[Twan]

Personnally I have great fun with a mix of the two strategies.

I use a dormant cyclop E9. I've used sloth 3, the bless is mostly for mages and summons (exact scales : order 3, sloth 3, heat 3, misf 1, magic 3, dom 7 and growth 3 ; dom 6, death 1 or more misfortune + a second school at 6 is also possible, or dom 6, death 1, air 3, astral 4 for teleport, better buffes and precision for the cyclop ; or any combo with earth 8 as the protection bonus won't be used for a long time). I expand without mercenaries (I dislike mercenaries, against computer it's too easy, against players it's too random). I use a screen of any infantry with shields I can recruit (mostly indeps) + a second line with some bandars or other good infantry I've found + a squad of light longbowmen + a squad with elephants and some good morale troops in attack rear. Except my first commander/prophet I only use indie commanders and priests. I research only evocation in the first turns, and thanks to magic 3 have blade wind when the cyclop appears. At this point I normally have two armies and then take 3 provinces/turn without having to wait for my dominion (but I had to make only one nagarishi in the 10 first turns, as elephants cost a lot, and would be distanced in site searching by other players in a mp game, I only had arcane probing and one nagarishi doing manual searches before turn 15 or so).

Anyway once blade wind is found I stop to use elephants and just use a screen, eventually some archers, and the nagarishi I start to recruit each turn, blessed by indie priests (I never use nagarishi/rini for research, they start the lab work only when I have construction 4+). I've also made an army with a big heavy bandars squad I use for knights or heavy troops provinces, and add markatas to reduce defense if a castle is close (and rust mist against knights). Finally once site detection spells and alteration 3 are researched, I start to focus on construction/conjuration only. Once I have construction 6 (for the water bracelets) I start to build more naginis, more cost effective for clam hoarding than nagarishis.

I've also finally made a little army with nagah warriors leaded by a nagaraja to start expanding underwater (with +4 protection and their hp, nagahs can take a medium tritons or shamblers province without too many losses, but I agree they are not very usefull out of taking the firsts underwater provinces, and with sloth 3 I had to produce nothing else during 5 turns).

KB strategy is probably better, but this one is fun to play and relatively efficient (to have blade wind when many provinces with light troops are still independant rocks, and your mages are really unfatiguable with the fatigue reduction of magic 3 + reinvigoration 4 from the bless + eventually items). The +4 protection makes gandharvas very hard to kill, especially as their 25 hp are sufficient to endure one or two spells (and I think 21 prot devatas with reinvigoration to fight longer with 4 weapons, some resistance items, and buffing themselves with mistform, etc... would rock in the end game - I'm just at conjuration 6 in my test-). Another option with a cyclop would have been a classic focus on enchantment then using him to summon lots of living statues at a good cost, but I wanted to have the national summons as fast as possible (I'm probably not min/maxing here).

edit : "reinvigoration" not "recuperation"

[Boron]

Twan said:
... your mages are really unfatiguable with the fatigue reduction of magic 3 + recuperation 4 from the bless + eventually items...

You get another +4 reinvigoration from summon earthpower + 1 additional level of earth magic .

I haven't experimented much with Rust Mist yet, does the trampling from your elephants also destroy enemy armors?

[Twan]

Yes I forgot summon earthpower in addition, so reinvigoration 8 (+30% cost reduction in your dominion) without items.

I think trampling is only size based alas and do nothing if it doesn't succeed, but knights provinces are not really hard to take with rust mist + a bandar first line (or better some expandable troops then a bandar squad) and a horde of little monkeys behind. I prefer not to use the markatas for taking the first strike, as it's better to have them surrounding knights (2 squads on the sides and rear to maximize the number of attackers).

[Nerfix]

Wait wait wait, so Summon Earthpower gives 4 reinvig +1 reinvig per level in Earth magic? O_o

Also, Umor bless Rust Mist. It's a suprisingly good spell and there are more Water/Earth nations around to make use of it. It slows battles down for me though.

[Boron]

Twan said:
I think trampling is only size based alas and do nothing if it doesn't succeed, but knights provinces are not really hard to take with rust mist + a bandar first line (or better some expandable troops then a bandar squad) and a horde of little monkeys behind. I prefer not to use the markatas for taking the first strike, as it's better to have them surrounding knights (2 squads on the sides and rear to maximize the number of attackers).

I am not worried about indies, i wonder if rust mist might be useful in big PVP battles .

Maybe Destruction could used be instead too.

[Manuk]

It's not +1/level reinv. it's +1 earth lvl because casting summon earthpower just like the other summon power of other magiks.

[Twan]

Yes the other +4 is my bless.

[KissBlade]

If you want to bless your mages, I recommend going e8 with your cyclops,dominion 10, order 3, sloth 3, heat 2, death 3, misfortune 2, magic 3 OR take dom 9 and e9. It's definitely a viable alternate opening as you can easily solo with your cyclops turn 2 this way. I can probably add this into the guide as well and update it but you'll also be playing your game slightly different. For one, you can skip the entire alteration tree, which is a plus. You'll have to jump into evocation instead which isn't bad since you have to get it eventually anyway. You'll be relying on nagarishis more whlie using gurus for research instead. You're also trading off by having a weaker position from turn 12-20 roughly but having a much stronger turn 1-12. It's difficult to measure efficiency later game, since VQ SC is always useful but so is e8 or e9 bless. However, relief + summon earthpower does take a lot of burden off any fatigue from battle magic vs. the extra slots you'll be spending to script bless. As I've said, it's definitely a viable alternative but hard to say which one is better. Your strategy with expansion and mercs should still remain relatively the same however.

Edit: Actually in competitive setting the cyclops build will probably be stronger since most current LE games are indie 5 and the stronger early game a cyclops gives you under those settings will most likely be too good an advantage to pass up. A VQ does allow to cover up a bumpy road however since you can avoid tough indies that a cyclops or an army wouldn't normally be able to take and the VQ can wreck them later. Also the cyclops is a somewhat overused chassis while you'll rarely get to use the VQ. =)