0. 2 Description 3 Credits
Download 5.74 Mb.
|
|
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. Quote: 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. 8.14.1.4 Yet another comment Quote: Twan said:I've not played Patala sufficiently to have a definitive opinion, and Kissblade probably has far more experience and knowledge of the subject than me, but I find strange not to have a strategy allowing to give their full efficiency to national summons and mages, at least on big maps (if the nagas are not short terms good sacred, having a bless strat or semi bless strat for long term looks better than nothing, on paper at least, when you have access to many kinds of sacred summons including ones with 4 attack in end game). It's why I've presumed the first strategy was only the best for small games. Sacred troops' strengths are entirely determined by their early game efficiency. Simply put once evocation spells are researched, a majority of sacreds tends to die the same. There are exceptions to this but Nagahs are not one of them. Hence a semi bless or a bless for long term strategy isn't effective unless you're talking about earth bless for your mages, which even then isn't really required since your best mages get summon earthpower and you don't want to waste scripting slots (which are very important) on everyone self blessing themselves. Theoretically you can also bring in priests to bless your gurus but that's a micromanagement nightmare and you can sidestep this issue largely by simply just communioning with them to a summon earthpowered nagarishi. Your most effective sacred troops comes in at conjuration 5. And they're not even that good since you have better uses for astral gems. Also your sacreds are magical beings so ferrying them is a very big hassle and takes away from your mage time. Efficient mage time is one of the most important things in a competitive setting. Worse yet, Nagah's capital only so you won't be getting them to the frontlines too quickly anyway. AND did I mention they were cold blooded so they're dominion reliant ESPECIALLY with their HUGE encumberance. Their stats are also very subpar given their huge resource costs. As said, they're among the least cost effective sacreds in the late era. (troops are typically determined by resources as their limiting factor, not gold) I'm not even going to bother pointing out the flaws of regular nagas who don't wear armor since their crappiness speaks for itself.
Twan said: So my only question is (and it's a question not an arguement one more time I'm not pretending to know very well this nation) why do you find a bless strategy for Patala so bad (outside of blitzes / no diplo games) ? The way you have answered Daynarr's posts doesn't make your reasons very clear. If it's already past 20 turns, chances are you are safe with Patala, by then you should have the evoation spells to handle any "rushes". Also a VQ still be significantly more problematic for a nation like Van to handle since not only is the hotter + higher dominion from a pretender that's awake more effective against Vans, you'll have a reusable raider / defender. Also I have no idea why some people still think Patala has very good troops, as I've mentioned, Nagahs are among the worst sacreds and your level 5 conjuration is barely at adequate level. Heck I think equal heavy infantry indies even beats out Nagah dual blessed in cost. Also you'll rare see a dual bless strategy from most MP players simply because it's not a diplomatic strategy. It relies on constant wars and as mentioned, mid game battlemagic murders sacreds. In short to answer your question, a bless strategy for Patala is bad because their sacreds are awful. The awaken pretender option is feasible but IMO has it's faults because it tends to putter out of strength around early mid which is when your toughest time with Patala is going to be. 8.14.1.5 Alternative suggestion 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" 8.14.1.6 My (WL) comments: -> Initial expansion. Use elepahnt groups. When you can mix with Bandar infantry for morale. -> recommended scales, magic+1 or +3 for research bonus. Sloth 3 (no need for prod.). Income +3, Growth (+3) for blood hunt -> Take a complementing pretnder to nations magic (W,E,S,N), so either a rainbow mage, or an SC with B,D,F,A,N for example. -> Blood hunt. Many great spells for Patala in blood school! -> Expand early on using groups of elephants, they're awesome early game and terrible mid to late game (since their low MR means they're toast to competent players using MR spells like soul slay) -> In mid game switch to Bandar based armies with some Atavis for stealth if needed. -> Important magic schools are, Conj. (great summons), Blood (same), Evoc (For Nagarishis) -> For access to air summon kinnara. -> Get a clam factory up and running with your Nagarishis.
8.15.1 EA Caelum 8.15.1.1 Early Guide Article Author: Warhammer I have been looking to expand my nation knowledge of Dominions nations. Next on my list is EA Caelum. EA Caelum has some great things going for is, easy access to high level air magic. Flying units which can hit at the rear of the enemy both on the tactical battlefield and on the strategic level. Finally, they have cheap, high precision archers which can wreak havoc on opposing armies in the EA. However, EA Caelum does have some weaknesses. First, they have very poor line troops. You cannot hope to stand toe to toe against other nation's line troops. The big problem is that your troop size is 3, so you wind up outnumbered when going against human sized opponents. This is your big disadvantage in melee combat since your stats are on par with human nations in attack and defense. You have level 1 access to death, water, and earth magic, but unless you get lucky with randoms you'll only have a handful of mages with 2 levels of magic in these paths. That makes it difficult to really make a magic plan using any of these paths. However, you do have access to low level boosters in each of these paths if you get the randoms so it isn't a total loss. One more interesting tidbit, your national spells are both astral spells, something which none of your mages can get without empowerment. What then do we need to do with EA Caelum to unlock the potential of the nation? We will look at pretender design, troop strategies, and magic. Pretenders: The decision to make here is which type of pretender do you want. Do you want an awake pretender for quick expansion, or do you want to go with an imprisoned or dormant pretender for better bless or magic? The first thing to look at are the scales that you will need. EA Caelum needs cold hard gold pieces to really get going. That means you will need Order and lots of it. With mammoths at 120 gp a pop and Eagle Kings at 400 gp a pop, Order 3 is the way to go. So that means that we need to dump at least 3 scales to stay even. Caelum wants Cold 2, but I suggest Cold 3. My reasoning for this is twofold, first your dominion rarely matches up exactly with your scales and you are more likely to have most of your provinces at Cold 2, if you go for Cold 3. Also, at cold 3, it hurts you less than it hurts your enemies. The other item with this is that I believe I read somewhere (although I can't find it now) that your armor is better in colder climes. Still, even if this isn't true, the first reason is enough to justify Cold 3. This also makes your scales cost 0 at this point. From here, you can go a couple of different ways. You can go with fortune to help gather gems and gold. For many nations I like to pick up some points by taking misfortune. I don't like to do this with Caelum due to the nature of their troops. They are too expensive and fragile Production I leave as is, with Caelum's troops and their resource cost, I have found little reason to increase this scale at all, but others may prefer to take one scale here. That said, I have little desire to lower it because you want to be able to spam archers. Magic/Drain is another place where you can go either way, the MR of Caelum's troops aren't great which drain can help, but Caelum is also very dependent upon magic for battlefield magic. Magic will help research as well as make spells easier to cast. Growth and death scales you can leave as is. While growth isn't required, it is preferable to death as you will need plenty of supplies for your size 3 troops. So we are looking at either even or 40 points down on the scales. That leaves 310 points for an awake pretender or 460 or 560 for a dormant/imprisoned pretender. Caelum is a little slow to get started. The reason for this is the lack of melee troops. They have great archers, but the lack of quality melee troops means that you need to constantly replenish these guys. An awake dragon can really help your expansion in the early game. Alternatively, you can take a Cyclops as well who will have the strong earth magic to still be relevant later in the game. A Virtue or Arch Seraph with additional paths in air magic can be a boon early in the game and be a beast magically late in the game. The problem with an awake pretender is that the magic path cost to increase your magic versatility is so high that you don't really add much to the nation in the late game. My preferance for Caelum is to go with a dormant pretender. You get additional points for scales as well as magic paths. If you go this route, I suggest a rainbow mage with F4A4W2E2S4N2D2. This does not give you a great bless, but what it does is give you a powerful mage who can search for magic sites and locate most of them relatively early in the game and get some gem income flowing in. The fire gives you the ability to create some fire boosters for any Eagle King that gets a Fire random. With W2E2D2N2 you can make all the low level magic boosters. Astral 4 allows you to go down the path of skullshine cap -> ring of sorcery -> ring of wizardry to help your pretender really get his magic going. Once you have the ring of wizardry and either earth boots or a water bracelet you can start making Staffs of Elemental Mastery for your Eagle Kings (A5E2W2 sounds so much better than A4EW). Imprisoned pretenders can take even better magic paths or scales, but at a cost of time. I'm not sure that is something EA Caelum can afford. Forging items: Since I started talking about it, let's talk about forging. What really makes Caelum shine is their air magic. Any air boosters you can get are very welcome. I especially love the Bag of Winds because you get the boost as well as another unit on the battlefield. With Caelum's troops this is doubly important. With other nations the Air Elemental is a nice addition, with Caelum it becomes a no brainer. Plus, an Eagle King with the Bag of Winds can cast Storm, or cast other spells like lightning bolt, thunder strike, etc., for low fatigue. Spells like Orb Lighting become deadly with 4 bolts of lighting from it. The Staff of Storms merits its own paragraph here. The Staff of Storms automatically creates a storm on the battlefield. The problem is that in a storm your archers are useless and you can't fly (without tempest warriors). But storms allow you to cast a very effective wrathful skies. With shock resistance on many of your troops this is a very good spell for Caelum. Summon storm power can only be cast when a storm is in effect so this is necessary to boost your Eagle Kings during battle. The good news about losing your archers effectiveness is that your mages are much more powerful and more effective against troops that your archers will have a tough time hitting anyway. Depending on pretender design some other magic items become important. As I mentioned before, with S4, the skullshine cap -> ring of sorcery -> ring of wizardry helps your pretender out quite a bit. Rings of Wizardry are nice on your Eagle Kings as it boosts their magic up quite a bit. I would go so far as to say that every Eagle King with a random should have a Ring of Wizardry as well as a Staff of Elemental Mastery. Earth boots, water bracelets, and death rods help your mages of the appropriate paths. Additionally, death rods can enable death mage to start producing skull mentors which will greatly boost magic as well as use any death gems you have little use for. Picking this up: Troops: Your national troops are pretty weak. Its not so much the stats, which are average, but your size. Archers: The choice here is simple. The difference between Blizzard Warriors and Spire Horn Archers is 2 protection, 1 encumberance, 1 defense, and 4 resources (which is an 80% increase). My choice here is take the Spire Horn Archers. With gold cost not a factor, you can nearly get 2 Spire Horns for every Blizzard Warrior. Since I don't like my archers mixing it up anyway, protection is a very small factor in this equation. Grunts: This is a little different. Again, your size 3 units hurt you here. The big question is what do you plan on doing with your magic, and how essential is melee to your combat skills? The two primary competitors here are the Iron Crows and your Iceclads. Iceclads are more expensive costing nearly 60% more resources than the Iron Crows. However, if fighting in a cold region, their protection is far higher than the Iron Crows. If fighting in a warm dominion, I would opt in favor of the Iron Crows. One other item to keep in mind is that the Iceclads are considered to have magic weapons with their ice blades. The other ground unit worth mentioning is the Temple Guard. They are the same resource cost as Iceclads and cost 5 more gold. The issue with them is that they only move one province at a time on the strategic map. However, they do fight better than either the Iceclads or the Iron Crows due to their size factor. This allows more of them to bring weapons to bear than their larger breathren. It also keeps your guys from getting ganged up upon. The fact that they are sacred makes them cheaper to maintain as well. The final grunt to consider is the Tempest Warrior. These guys are slightly worse than the Iceclads when it comes to defense, but they make up for this in three ways. They are significantly cheaper, 15 gold and 12 resources, they are 75% shock resistant and they can fly in storms. So, if you are fighting in your own dominion, which you better have made cold, your grunt of choice should be the iceclad. If you are fighting in someone else's domain and do not have a lot of mages, or just have low level mages, than Iron Crows are the grunts of choice. I would always build a few Temple Guards, but keep them out of the battles where you cast a lot of indiscriminate lightning. If you are going the storm/wrathful skies combo, then you need a lot of Tempest Warriors. These guys will resist the lightning well and can fly and attack the rearmost guys if you would like. Mammoths: That leaves the big dog for last, or rather the big wooly elephant for last! Every non-storm AND wrathful skies army should have at least 3 mammoths in the army. This is the minimum safe level for expansion early in the game. Forego buying and Eagle Kings early so you can get plenty of Mammoths to expand with. As the game goes on, your Mammoth force will need to get larger to stay competitive, but once you reach the Storm/Wrathful Skies combo, their utility decreases quite a bit. At that point, your armies will be more dependant upon mages and meat shields. I will try and post mages and gems, etc. later. -> I've been playing an EA Caelum SP game for a few days now, and I really enjoy them. I went up against only Saroumatia at the start of the game, 8 Impossible AI on random medium map. Here's some thoughts. The problem with Eagle Kings being good thugs is that they have very high encumbrance with their Fire Plate. After they're done buffing themselves, their fatigue is really starting to get up there. You'd need either priests and an earth bless or a good magic item economy to counter that, so it seems that your best bet here is to leave the Kings as casters unless and until your opponents start using lightning counters. Your PD is atrocious... you might not even bother past 10 points to try to catch scouts. Archers are useful against chaff, but mammoths, Wrathful Skies, or Thunder Strike are just as useful, and can be used against high protection units as well. I just... don't like Caelum's army very much at all. Mammoths are pretty nice for early expansion, and that's about it. I simply pick up more Iceclads every turn as archer bait for my Eagle Kings. Unfortunately, that means you limit yourself to strategic movement 2, hm. Probably Tempest Warriors are the way to go, set to hold and attack archers, with limited amounts of Iceclads as the aforementioned arrow soakers. Important: once you research Thunder Strike, there's pretty much no reason to keep your Eagle Kings around the nest anymore. SEND THEM OUT. You need very little magic research to be a very powerful magic nation with Thunder Strike spam. This is what will make EA Caelum an absolute terror from turn 10 onwards. -> For Eagle King thugs you really want to have an E9 bless, this is paramount. For equipment my standard setting is frostbrand, weightless kite shield, weightless scale mail and girdle of strenght. If I have a fire random EK I add brimstone boots. [comment: If you are casting Ironskin you might as well replace wightless scale mail with shroud of battle saint, and cast Mirror Image instead of blessing. Answer: Assuming you find astral enabled indy mages (your pretender likely has more important things to do than forging armor for thugs, if he/she has astral) and get decent astral gem income that isn't bad alternative at all. Personally though, I might still be inclined to save any astral gems I manage to scrape up for those Amesha Spentas. Answer 2 Answer: True, astral may be a problem for Caelum, since they don't have astral mages. But astral 1 indep mages are relatively easy to find (for example lizard shamans are arguably the most common type of indep mages), and you will want to get astral mages anyway for national summons, luck items, et cetera. As for Amesha Spentas (which are indeed good units) - Battles Shroud only costs 5 astral gems, so 2-4 shrouds for your EK SCs are unlikely to make much difference. On the other hand Mirror Image on Air4 EK can make a big difference, especially if your opponent is using mages against your EK or using troops with magic weapons, as you have pointed out earlier. ]
The above example has prot around 25, def over 20, high damage, encumberance 3, quickness, lots of resistances etc. Try it, you will be pleased by its performance. [Comment: If you're going to buff, you might as well throw in Mirror Image; it's great with A4. Answer: Mirror Image is a great spell but I left it out because you rarely have 5 rounds of buff-time and it isn't really needed on top of all those other buffs. The one instance where I would use MI is when fighting against opponents armed with magic weapons. In this case Mirror Image would replace Mistform. ] Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
|