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| Now, onto the main event. Angakoks are the heart of LA Atlantis. They don¿t have quite the versatility of the MA Atlantis Kings of the Deep, but what they do, they do well. You¿ll obviously want to recruit one every turn as soon as you can afford to.
Thugin¿: They¿re holy and you have a nice earth bless with small regen. Buffs range from soul vortex to ironskin to mistform with quicken self and breath of winter on the side. Pretty standard thug layouts apply, but make sure to leverage your sailing ability. Depending on the map layout this can be even better than flying. With reinvig and soul vortex it often works well to leave the thug Angakok to cast spells he¿ll throw out skellispam (great with his breath of winter, really adds to his staying power while soul vortex does its thing), cold blast, and many of the fun stuff listed in the next section. Hey, don¿t forget to cast twiceborn so you don¿t even risk that much, and now you¿ve got some mages who can more easily leverage rigor mortis. Combat Castin¿: You¿ll want to get some indie S1 mages for several reasons, one of which is to forge penetration boosters for you. Look for lizard shamen, mercenaries, sages, or if nothing else use your pretender to crank out some void eyes and spell foci kinda drudge work for a pretender, but you really need them to round out your arsenal. You also shouldn¿t have too much trouble getting 50 fire for an empowering (more below), which gives you fire skulls and then rune smashers. Note, if nothing else turns up you can summon some specters to get you weak astral mages, but you¿ll want to save your death gems for other uses if you can. Well, falling frost is the obvious goto spell, but I don¿t like to depend on it because it¿s too easy to counter. Cold resistance, high defense or high protection will all seriously hamper this one, though it does scale in power with the water mage level so a Angakok with a water pick and a water bracelet with sea robe will throw down a pretty impressive barrage. Shadow blast Penetration boosted shadow blast is a great switchup to the water magic stuff you¿re mainlining. Haha, you thought frost resistance would be enough?!?! Sailor¿s death With a penetration boost this spell is n*a*s*t*y. AN, AOE1 and a range of 30, 3 or 4 guys spamming this will blast the crap out of many different things which would otherwise give you difficulty. And it¿s only Thau-3! Numbness, desiccation, breath of winter, grip of winter, rigor mortis, ghost grip, curse of stones (penetration boosted!), curse of the desert (penetration boosted!). Combine this with great heavy infantry that take a lot of beating to go down. Mix in wights, winter wolves, ghosts, and anything else with a cold aura. Add in the encumbrance penalty for a cold climate, and friendly currents/quagmire. It¿s frightening how many things LA Atlantis can pile onto causing fatigue in fact it¿s usually more important to remember not to pile too many things up that your own units are merely resistant rather than immune to. Terror everything I said about frighten goes triple for terror. Combine with ghosts and leviathans and anybody even thinking about starving doesn¿t stand much chance. Oh, if you¿re feeling showy, you can throw Wailing Winds in as well. But wait, there¿s more! Freezing Mist don¿t be misled by its small damage number, this is a serious offensive spell which works wonderfully with the rest of your arsenal if given even a little time to work. It¿s hard to tell for sure, but this spell seems to scale up in damage with the cold scale. Regardless, it will do amazing amounts of damage in a wide AOE to guys standing around inside it. It¿s AN and AOE, so nobody who is not completely cold immune is spared this is your goto spell for the guys who are outfitted to scoff at your falling frost. Note: your infantry doesn¿t have 100% cold resistance by default, so make sure you buff them with winter ward, or use undead or other summons when using this spell, trust me that AN damage is nasty and you don¿t want even your 75% resistant guys inside it. Bonus it¿ll freeze your victims, thus flowing perfectly into your fatigue strategy. This spells works awesomely with¿. Skellispam you may not be able to field the same numbers of undead as the undead specialists, but that doesn¿t matter because they have such synergy with everything else you¿re using so you don¿t need an overwhelming mass. Think about it, you¿re laying down cold, fatigue, fear, and drowning all things to which your skellispam is immune. You don¿t need overwhelming amounts because you don¿t have to tie your opponent up as long, you¿ve got too many things working against him. Quickening you thought those Arssartut¿s were intimidating before? Try laying down a quickening on them. Oooooh I love those bone glaives! Now, with a cold, fatigue and fear based primary strategies, the obvious hole is swarms of undead, and LA has some of the nastiest. Fortunately, you¿ve got access to every one of the best anti-undead spells dust to dust spam for the powerful undead, wither bones and cleansing waters for the large groups of chaff, and undead mastery (death random + skull staff + skull helm) or solar brilliance (pretender) for the really big masses. You¿ve not only got the perfect counter for R¿yleh, you¿ve got the perfect counter for Ermor to! Now, you¿ll also not want to neglect earth and air spells. You should have several pairs of earth boots, so with summon earthpower E3 spells are in easy reach. I mentioned curse of stones above, which works great with the rest of what you¿re doing, but don¿t be afraid to lay down some of the classic earth spells. Strength of giants and legions of steel work extremely well with your Arssartuts (don¿t forget to quicken them if you have it! Now *there's* some nasty crap.). Destruction is always a welcome addition, and blade wind plugs the hole that lack of archers leaves. Marble warriors is also great (be careful as it¿ll remove your cold resistance), and with an elemental staff you get up into weapons of sharpness and army of lead range. Rust Mist can work well in a pinch to, though it¿s a bit hard to leverage (think: tying your opponent up with a skellispam screen while the rust mist takes effect, then marching in with your real troops) For air, you¿re quite a bit more limited with no boosters or self buff spell, but don¿t neglect the options you do have. With an elemental staff and some creativity cloud trapeze, thunder ward, and arrow fend all become accessible and very nice to have in the right situation. Also, don¿t overlook having a mage dedicated to casting aim on your main artillery players, it can make quite a difference. For the higher powered fights you¿ll want to look into darkness, bone grinding, niefel flames, and living water (yeah ice elementals!) Lab Castin¿: Here¿s where your lack of magic diversity hurts the most, but the things you can easily cast are so frickin cool (if you¿ll pardon the pun) that every water and death gem is going to be put to a very good use, and even your air and earth will be quite precious though more for forgings. You¿ll have a powerful astral pretender and hopefully enough S1 casters to power arcane probing, and enough fire for what you need, leaving just blood and nature as your glaring holes. Hmmm, did I mention you should really try to put nature on your pretender? Ignore blood and between your pretender and the free nature sites common underwater you should be able to eventually scrape up 50 nature gems. With one empowering you can now summon niads using water gems, so this gets you into nature in a big way. Voice of Tiamat. Now that you¿ve got a good sized water section to your empire (you did read the first part of this guide right?) you definitely want to make good use of it. Voice of Tiamat is going to not only get you a good flow of water gems, it¿s also going to get you a modest income of earth and fire. You should forge some earth boots with you pretender, then more with the guy you give the first set to, E2 mages are where the fun¿s at. Fire gems will more than likely go into an empowering, as mentioned above, then in addition to rune smashers you can start making the elemental staffs I referenced above. Also, kinda goes without saying, but dark knowledge is in the same school so you¿ll want to hit that hard as well. Send Tupac¿er Tupilak. This guy is a rather weak assassin spell, but it¿s also cheap, easy to cast, and relatively low on the research tree. He¿s not going to take out any thugs or really even bodyguards, but with his hitpoints he is quite capable of killing most unguarded mages. This is not a mainline spell as it¿s easy to counter, but it is a very good kick below the belt whenever you see your opponent fielding mages he forgot to put bodyguards with. Particularly right before a big fight. Spirit mastery let see, immune to all the stuff you¿re throwing down, ethereal, cheap, and pretty much tailor made to tie up the bad guys. Yep, these are a very good choice as blockers. These guys are perfect to pair with freezing mist. Ghosts Like dispossessed spirits, only they add fear and cold of their own, how much better could it get? Leviathan You know what the problem is with iron dragons? They¿re level 9 summons, and by that time everybody has good counters. How about a level 7 summon that¿s almost as good for almost half the price? A single Leviathan buffed with quickness and gift of flight (give one of your air Angakoks an air gem) will destroy any PD and a couple together will even do a number on real armies which are unprepared. They¿ve got great protection, massive hitpoints, are mindless (hint another great thing to throw at R¿yleh), amphibious, cold & fear immune so you don¿t need to worry about friendly fire, and in fact even have a fairly significant fear aura themselves! Not to mention, quickened, they absolutely smear size 2 guys without racking up all that unseemly fatigue it¿s frightening how much damage they cause each round. Heck, the gift of flight isn¿t really even necessary most of the time, but boy is it fun to watch. For big fights, make sure to leverage those S1 mages you¿ve been scouring the globe for to lay luck and body ethereal down on them before sending your flying doomcastles to attack rearmost. Trust me, your opponent won¿t have the luxury of worrying about all the fatigue you¿re laying down in the mean time. Monster fish In case your opponents don¿t just cede the water to you, and you need something to supplement your leviathans, buffed monster fish are just awesome. I don¿t want to repeat what I laid out in my MA Atlantis guide, but definitely check it out that section if you haven¿t read it. Between monster fish, leviathans, shark attacks, true amphibious uber sacreds, underwater PD and top notch undead counters nobody but R¿yleh should be able to rival you under the water, and you should be able to give even them a run for their money. Plus, KO mentioned he was planning some new underwater goodies for LA Atlantis in the next patch¿. Catoblepas Heck, who needs archers? Two words: death gaze. Oh wait, make that 3 words, quickened death gaze. Winter wolves anything with a cold aura works great. Bonus points for etherealness. Hidden in the snow a bit on the expensive side, but the troops work very well with your strategy and the mages can flesh out your earth magic a bit. Cold auras all around! Specters as mentioned above will get you into astral if you don¿t have a better way. They¿re also stealthy, so really useful as mind hunt deterrents. Make sure you boost them up to S3 to give a 100% chance of catching the mind hunters! Wolven winter you want to always be fighting in cold-3 if you can help it. With this spell you don¿t have much excuse to not help it. Murdering winter in the unlikely event a non-cold immune army is successfully invading you, this spell is expensive but fearsome in cold-3. Leprosy (penetration boosted!) did I mention that there are some disincentives to attacking LA Atlantis? Black death, tidal wave, wolven winter (again), blight cut off the economy of the bad guys. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, but I pity the fool who attacks me. Lure of the deep this is the type of insidious global which is both unlikely to be dispelled, and also cumulates to significant casualties over time. You pretty much need to be in control of any coast you don¿t want to be at war with, but it does add one more layer of disincentive in attacking you once you get entrenched around the coastline. Maelstrom great spell to shoot for, castable with 2 boosters and a water random. Well of misery likewise, two boosters and the right random. Speaking of two boosters and the right random, lots of nastiness is available at D7. Legion of wights (great blockers considering what you¿re throwing down), Ghost Riders, and a short jump to tartarians with the ring of sorcery your pretender forged. Ice pebble staffs turn out to be rather useful to, they¿d prove really, really nice with quickened Tungalik except they tend to spam skeletons and frighten once your script runs out, so instead leverage indie commanders and boots of quickness (once you have them). It¿s surprising how fast 3 quickened numbness spammers can cover the majority of a good sized army, and how effective it is. In addition to the fatigue and all its side effects, the freezing immediately drops attack and defense by 3, add a few more minuses on as the troops gain some fatigue closing for melee and trust me it¿s worthwhile even before the fatigue really mounts. Of course all the classic undead nastiness works as well bane lords, wraith lords, liches, etc. Finally, I want to close with a mention about sailing. Atlantis has some rather unique strategic options related to their both having sailing and being amphibious. They can leave one water province, sail over the next one and land on a land province on the far side. Given the usual larger size of water provinces, this can lead to *huge* strategic freedom. It¿s not unlikely that massing troops in a single province can leave dozens of places you can drop them in a single turn. Combine this with excellent raiding potential, solid thugs, excellent defensive entrenchment and you have the ability to dance all over anybody who wants to attack you, or to deliver a devastating sneak attack to anyone with a coastline. 8.13 Kalisa Hello everyone, I've been playing Dominions 2 for a long time, and have ordered Dom 3 and it should be here in a couple of days. When I first ordered Dom 2 years ago it took me months to figure out what works and what doesn't, it was a complicated game. I read a lot of good advice to get me rolling on these boards, and I imagine a lot of new players did the same. So I decided to contribute back and help some new players with Kailasa in the demo while I wait for my full copy. Kailasa is an intersting nation, and can be somewhat versatile. Their main strengths seem to be cheap archers and an abundance of sacred troops. So I think the best and most obvious choice is to focus on that. Pretender Design I went with a F9 Red Dragon, awakened. The scales I chose were Order:2, Sloth:2, Heat:2, and Growth:2. Kailasa, for the most part, has gold expensive troops at low resources, so I find these scales work well. You could possibly substitute 1 point in growth with 1 point in magic for a research boost without effecting your income too much. Another possible route to take would be W9 Mother of Rivers awakened. I sometimes have trouble finding magic sites that give you water gems on land, so the immediate boost is worth it, and the bless isn't too bad either. It's also recommended if you plan on facing underwater nations. However the expense is you won't have access to fire gems as easily through searching and a few key fire spells won't be readily castable without some luck and forging. There are a lot of options possible, however extra income and low supply scales, I feel, are a must. Army design First thing you'll notice about Kailasa is they have cheap, cheap scouts. These guys are great as they give you valuable information about the army you're about to face and as you move them away where the enemy nations are located. With the icon to locate them added to Dom 3 I find myself using them much more often (in Dom 2 I'd lose track of them easily and became a bit of a hassle). After a little more examination, you'll see that every troop available except one has a movement rate of 2 on the world map, so the nation as a whole is pretty mobile. Next thing you'll see is your starting army and it pretty much stinks. It can take a weak indy province, but will take heavy losses, so I'd get that out of the way as soon as possible. Over the next few turns or less you can begin to design your own army. Here's a list of the better troops and how to use them: You've got three different types of archers available, Markata, Atavi, and Bandar. Markata archers are cheap so it's easy to amass them in large numbers, however their range is smaller and they're fast, so frequently what happens is they run out in front of your lines to fire and get slaughtered. Atavi archers have the range necessary to stay put, for the most part, and fire. Bandar archers are even more expensive than both, but have a lower precision and more hit points. I don't think they're worth the cost. Atavi archers are probably the best option, they have a chance of surviving an arrow or sling and don't run out to get cut down. Out of all the infantry, Markata, Atavi, and Bandar, I think the resource heavy Bandar Swordsmen is the best option. They can take a few hits and hold a line, and are pretty good at absorbing missle weapons. It's well worth the cost, and additionally they're the only troop that uses more than a single digit of resources and even at sloth:2 you'll have enough to get quite a few of them and still get plenty of archers. Unfortunately, there is no calvarly to speak of in Kailasa. There are three types of sacred troops in Kailasa, and two are capital only. Yavana with a spear, Yavana with a sword and buckler, and Yavana Archers. They're not too expensive at around 40 gold a piece, and with a good bless they can be massed quickly and become extremely dangerous if you can keep them safe from missile fire. Since they're sacred, you can only recruit a certain number of them depending on your dominion, so you have to make a decision on how to best use them. I prefer to take the Yavana with the swords over the archers and spearmen because there's a lack of hardy front line troops and I already have plenty of archer options, but the blessed archers aren't too bad either. The basic strategy is to put the Bandar swordsmen in front, behind them the Yavana, and behind them/on the flanks your archers. I set all melee troops to hold and attack to let your most likely superior firepower fire a few volleys, and then move in to finish them off. Thinning the enemy out with arrows should minimize your losses. Your basic commanders are either Bandar Commanders or Atavi Chieftains. I'd stick with the Bandar Commander whenever possible, theose Atavi have a tendancy to die easily. Mages Kailasa has 4 mages available, and 2 priests. The priests are very expensive and only H1, but that's as good as it gets here. These are good candidates for a prophet as you'll be hard pressed to find a higher indy priest. The Yogi isn't a bad deal at 80G for 1S. It makes a decent mage to sit and spam Body Ethereal and later Luck on your blessed troops to improve their lifespan, or to cast Magic Duel and hope to get lucky. There's also a few useful items they can forge. The Guru at 160G and 2S 1N is a good mage. They're the only national mage that is capable of summoning Asparas. In battle they can use decent spells like Healing Light and Protection and Panic, and more devestating spells like Mind Burn, Paralyze, Swarm, and Horror Mark which are capable of downing stronger enemies easily. Their big drawback, however, is their limited movement range at 1. They'll probably slow your army down, so use with caution. These two can use use Communion Master/Slave which, for the demo, I don't really find necessary, but the option is there. The Yaksha, coming in at a whopping 360G and 3E 1N 1H 1?(random) is probably the best mage for this nation. He can naturally cast Blade Wind and Legions of Steel, which are excellent spells in the early age. Curse of Stones is also nice for keeping the enemy at range to be pelted by arrows. Ironskin is a good spell for personal protection. The Yakshini, also expensive at 360G for 3W 1N 1H 1? is not bad, and the main reason why I didn't take the Mother of Rivers as she can find water sites. In Dom 2 a water mage of sufficient power could breathe underwater, however due to a bug or perhaps design at this time she cannot, however perhaps in a patch it will be possible and add another piece of utility to this mage. Anyway, some of the more useful spells available to her are Quickness, Barkskin, Eagle Eyes, and Protection for buffs, and Encase in Ice, Numbness, Sailor's Death, and Curse of the Desert for offense. Depending on the randoms also, there's a host of other spells available. Forging There are many useful items available to this nation. Ice Pebble Staff, Summer Sword, Vine Bow and the like are good for commanders without magic to give them something to do in safety. Thistle Mace and Ivy Crown are good for Vine Ogres if you want them. Shambler Skin Armor is good to get in the water. Pendant of Luck and Antimagic Amulet are good for a lot of your Magic Beings who are vunerable to low level spells that will kill them instantly, Spell Focus is great for anyone who uses magic. The Earth Boots are good for your Yakshas who are casting Blade Wind. Ring of Regen is great for your pretender especially. Magic What paths to pursue depend on what you want to do with your nation. Conjuration is a must if you want to get underwater, you can get a huge army using Summon Sea Dogs quickly. Conjuration is also good if you want calvary, as Ambush of Tigers can give you that, and Asparas are free sacred troops which you will always be limited in producing. This is the school I'd pursue first, at least to Asparas. Alteration is a good school to pursue, many of your buffs come from here early. Body Ethereal, Protection, and Swarm are great spells. Encase in Ice is nice as well as Ironskin. Evocation is not bad, Blade Wind is worth it. There's also a lot of other spells your mages can cast to do direct damage. Fires from Afar is a good spell too. Construction is a great school. In addition to the many items you'll want to equip on commands, Legions of Steel comes with this school which is a great spell to open combat with. Thaumaturgy has some really great astral spells in it, like Paralyze, Mind Burn, and Horror Mark. Panic and Curse are also good spells. If you plan on using Gurus much, this school is definately worth it. Enchantment can be put off for the most part, Strength of Giants is about it in there, unless you took the recommended F9 pretender. Flame Arrows and Fire Shield are excellent spells from this school, Flame Arrows alone will make your army of archers devestating, however basically useful only to your pretender in the demo. General Strategy Your army is mobile and generally takes few losses. Using that to your advantage means fielding large amounts of troops are replaces the losses quickly with your ability to traverse the map, so perhaps castling isn't as necessary and that money is better spent on troops. You also should have plenty of scouts out observing what your enemy is doing and what kinds of troops he/she is fielding. Taking time to plan routes and avoid rough terrain is essential if you want to take advantage of the fast troops you have available to you. Closing Kailasa is a staightforward nation, with a few options. I'd recommend this nation to a beginner in the demo as you get to use a variety of troop types and schools of magic. Playing them successfully doesn't require complete mastery of tactics or the game, but it give you a basic idea on practically everything and a good foundation to try some more complicated and difficult tactics. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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