Demo Guide to Kailasa

[Slobby]

Been playing around with Kailasa recently, and imo a w9 bless is great, the only weakness as mentioned previously, is massed archers, however that can be rectified with an accompanying air bless, arrow fend, storm. Or simply set up a screen and amass long bows to pelt the opposing archers.

With regards to problems expanding without a combat pretender. Once you get 10+ Yavana's backed by missle troops (sticks n stones or bows) you'll roll over indy's (even hvy cav) without any problems. So ideally to compensate for the slow start you'll want to have a couple of these packs of Yavana's running about.

Imo opinion the most important goals to strive for are to get a second fort up so that you can make sacreds from two places, and to research conj5 for gandharvas (great units) giving you access to 3 good melee sacreds.

Note: To help with starting expansion I like to go markata archers and atavi infantry. The bandar commander becomes the prophet scripted sermon of co. x2 then holy avenger and smitex2. Have both the archers and inf on fire closest, and position them parallel to each other to avoid cross fire. Most importantly tho, started pumping out yavana's by turn 3, and get a yaksha on your second turn.

Some interesting pretender choices.

Awake Nataraja W9
dom5
ord2
sloth3
heat2
misfortune1
magic2

It's very important to research construction 2, followed by alt2. You can either take your chances and have him help fight in the beginning (he can take Yavana's who will do most of the fighting to minimize the chance of him getting wounded) or have him sit and research construction 2 in ~5 turns. Once construction 2 is done fill up his equipment slots with cheap gear, and let him loose! He can easily have a defense skill over 30, a pendant of luck, a tower shield, and 4 attacks if he's given a horned helmet. Once alteration 2 is researched he can cast quicken self.

Dormant Destroyer of Worlds A7W9D2

dom6
order2
sloth3
heat3
misfortune1

A great dual bless for kailasa's sacreds. Once he wakes up you'll have a solid spellcaster/ranged attacker, and ready access to air magic.

*Mother of Rivers

You can easily get a w9 a7 bless and good scales with her if she's dormant, or you can minimize the bless/scales and have her awake. She's a guaranteed source of water gems, which will allow you to better use yakshini's, and help you expand under the sea.

Dormant Lady of Fortune S9W9

dom6
order2
sloth3
heat2
misfortune1

I don't know how well the twist of fate with go with the blessed troops, however she can lead armies underwater.

[Dedas]

We have a necromancer in the forums I believe.
Thank you for this valuable information though.

[Hadrian_II]

Slobby said:
Been playing around with Kailasa recently, and imo a w9 bless is great,

I would not get a water bless with kailasa, as you can cast celestial music and then get quickness for free. And the quickness from the W9 bless does not stack with the quickness from celestial music. so everything you will have left from w9 is a +4 to defence.

Slobby said: the only weakness as mentioned previously, is massed archers, however that can be rectified with an accompanying air bless, arrow fend, storm. Or simply set up a screen and amass long bows to pelt the opposing archers.

I would use arrow fend, wit conj6 you can summon kinnaras, who are able to cast arrow fend. In the early game you can use markata decoys to eat the arrows while expanding, in the midgame ghandarvas are heavy enough armoured to witstand enemy archers.

Slobby said:
With regards to problems expanding without a combat pretender. Once you get 10+ Yavana's backed by missle troops (sticks n stones or bows) you'll roll over indy's (even hvy cav) without any problems. So ideally to compensate for the slow start you'll want to have a couple of these packs of Yavana's running about.

Just use markata archers as decoys, and the yavanas can enter into meelee withoug taking too much damage from archers. For kailasa heavy cav is no problem anyway due to awe. But i would really watch out to the provinces that have much archers.

Slobby said:
Imo opinion the most important goals to strive for are to get a second fort up so that you can make sacreds from two places, and to research conj5 for gandharvas (great units) giving you access to 3 good melee sacreds.

I would also get some evoc early, as your mages can cast either falling frost or blade wind without problems.

Slobby said:
Note: To help with starting expansion I like to go markata archers and atavi infantry. The bandar commander becomes the prophet scripted sermon of co. x2 then holy avenger and smitex2. Have both the archers and inf on fire closest, and position them parallel to each other to avoid cross fire. Most importantly tho, started pumping out yavana's by turn 3, and get a yaksha on your second turn.

I would not use archers, as they are just creating friendly fire on your sacreds, or only use archers when you use them without sacreds. (or only ghandarvas)

For a pretender, i would go with an imprisoned oracle.

Scales
order 3 --> you need the money
sloth 3 --> you need no ressources
heat 3 --> you can take heat 3, and you will still have heat 2 in most of your provinces.
growth 0
luck 0
magic 1 --> +33% research is quite nice
dom 5 --> early on you wont have more money, later you will have temples and other castles to recruit sacreds

Blessing:
S9: twist fate and MR are nice, and with S9 your pretender has some wish-fu ready (and yakshinis can clam out of the box)
either F9 or N9 -> f9 makes you offensive quite strong, as all your sacreds have 2 attacks, and will be quickened later on
N9 can increase your survivability and as your sacreds have 20 hp it actually works
either N4 or E4
E4 is nice as all your mages are sacred, and it will also reduce fatigue problems on the sacreds
N4 gives some regen

if you dare to go to missfortune 3 (remember the monkey PD) you can take both E4 and N4.

[Endoperez]

Hadrian_II said:
I would not get a water bless with kailasa, as you can cast celestial music and then get quickness for free. And the quickness from the W9 bless does not stack with the quickness from celestial music. so everything you will have left from w9 is a +4 to defence.

I never noticed this, but Celestial Music doesn't stack with W9 bless. I always thought CM was just Quickness effect from other spell - so does that mean that spell Quickness and bless DON'T stack?

It's interesting, because going through the archives I found threads that kept on answering that yes, bless and spell quickness do stack, and also that no, bless and celestial music don't stack. Also, no one ever seemed to know just how bless and magic quickness stack.

Has anyone actually used them together?


EDIT: Kristoffer thinks they stack, though. Scroll down a few posts, I didn't manage to link directly to his post.

[Hadrian_II]

I tested it and they did not stack, with W9 bless and celestial music, my sacreds did just had their AP doubled, if it would have stacked they should have been tripled.

[Slobby]

Hadrian_II said:
I would not get a water bless with kailasa, as you can cast celestial music and then get quickness for free. And the quickness from the W9 bless does not stack with the quickness from celestial music. so everything you will have left from w9 is a +4 to defence.

Counting on cm means that you'll have to research thau6 and have an s3 caster. Even if the quickness doesn't stack with a w9 bless, having quickness early on really helps the early expansion. I'd rather go to conj5 and have the w9 bless.

I don't feel that cm + w9 bless is a waste, since it also diversifies who's leading your sacreds. You can either bless or cm to essentially the same effect (assuming you have a straight w9 bless).

Hadrian_II said:
I would not use archers, as they are just creating friendly fire on your sacreds, or only use archers when you use them without sacreds. (or only ghandarvas)

I just put my archers on 'fire archers'...

[Endoperez]

Besides, +3 att/def +4 def works pretty well together, especially as Kailasa's sacreds have multiple attacks and everyone except Gandharvas have high base defense. Even Gandharvas can evade some attacks after both boosts.

Any way, I'd like more discussion about the fact that bless and quickness don't stack. I and Hadrian both tested it, and water bless and Celestial Music don't stack. If no one has actualyl benefitted from stacking different kinds of quicknesses, we'll have to bump some recent question threads and start the re-education.

[vfb]

Tested with W9 and Marverni Boar Warriors.


Initial stats (not blessed):

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 10


Blessed:

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 15
Defense+4


Blessed and Quickness (spell):

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 20
Defense+7, Attack+3


Just Quickness (spell):

Basic Action Points 12, Current Action Points 20
Defense+3, Attack+3


Endo, you are right, there is no stacking of AP bonus from Bless and Quickness spell.

[vfb]

To see equipment effects, I tested with Bune the Sacred Ice Devil:

Initial Stats:

Basic Action Points 14, Current Action Points 14


Wearing Jade Armor:

Basic Action Points 14, Current Action Points 20
Defense+3, Attack+3


Wearing Jade Armor and Blessed:

Basic Action Points 14, Current Action Points 20
Defense+7, Attack+3


Wearing Jade Armor and Blessed and Quickness spell:

Impossible, refuses to cast Quickness while wearing Jade Armor.


Conclusion: As Endo found, the only stacking that you get from a W9 bless and any other kind of quickness is an additional +4 defense from the bless, in addition to all the quickness bonuses from the spell.

Special note: Quickness does stack with Cold Power. So instead of +1 AP for a cold-1 scale, you get +2 AP if quickness is in effect.

[Hadrian_II]

Slobby said:
Counting on cm means that you'll have to research thau6 and have an s3 caster. Even if the quickness doesn't stack with a w9 bless, having quickness early on really helps the early expansion. I'd rather go to conj5 and have the w9 bless.

I never had any problems with expansion, if i go with dom5 i can start expansion partys with 15 yavanas and about 20-30 markata decoys and usually just loose the decoys (3-6 per battle) and no more that 1 yavana.

You are stronger with a water bless early on that with other blesses, but as you are not too strong early on, this is not really an issue, i would better look that everything i can get stacks nicely together afer i have it.

Slobby said:
I just put my archers on 'fire archers'...

In my opinion, even then they do more damage to you than to the enemy.