Kailasa guide

[Trumanator]

I thought it was very interesting how similar this is to Baalz' EA Caelum guide. The delayed expansion, dependent on a few key spells, and focusing on small parties of powerful awe commanders. It makes for a very interesting and new trend in ways to expand.

[Psycho]

If you like that kind of expansion, you might want to try the Nehekara mod. Their main commanders are immortal and have an equivalent of a fire brand from the start. They can take weaker provinces even without any buffs and can get nice paths for low buffing spells (astral, air and earth).

[Executor]

I really fail to relise how archers are the biggest problem with Kailasa, if you see a big army of archers coming your way, well don't send your sacreds to be massacred, send a diferent type of troops, mix up your troops a bit, send your own archers and put them to fire acrhers.

IMO a big air bless is just wasting design points. Take a small air bless and with their 2 parry buckler they have less than 30% chance to be hit by an arrow, which is still pretty high but how many arhcers would he need to cut down your sacreds before they reach them?


Sauromatia and Cealum are the only nation Kailasa really has to worry about.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Psycho

"You have to have Conj 8 before you get access to F and D, at which point you have rather a lot of catching up to do."
Actually you have to get to conj9 before you get those. But you really want death for tartarians and they are also conj9.

Err, that was sort of my point. Once you get to Conj 9, you get to summon a D3 caster. Then you get to site search and start bootstrapping up to a D7 caster. That's quite a delay before you get your first Tartarian. And of course you may not have had opportunities to site search before you get Rudras.

I'm not saying that a big double bless is a bad idea, just that the alternatives are valid too. If you're having to use time, tactics and design points to patch up weaknesses in the sacreds so they're decently effective, why not use a different strategy instead?

[Tifone]

I think in the time it takes to get to the D7 caster, Rudras can do very well Greg

[Psycho]

Go attack a nation with death magic and take over their death sites. Besides, you have your celestial summons, you don't need the tartarians so badly. They will be a bonus when you get them, but they are not required.

[Omnirizon]

i agree with psycho.

Kail doesn't really need Tartarians. They live and die more by their Celestial Summons. Their choice of strategy influences largely how their early and mid game shape up. Due to the way high level Alt spells work for them and the Conj they have available, all given Kail strats tend to converge later in the game. That's why I don't see the point in complaining that taking a bless to cover up weaknesses in your sacreds is foregoing all of Kail's strengths... Having out-of-the-box power early on that can push into a strong mid-game is better than trying to gear for only your mid-game. I'd rather go into mid-game strong and accelerate straight into late game rather than play catch up. With the right bless (an A9 S9 IMHO), Kail is a rush power. I've beat triple blessed Mictlan toe-to-toe with that bless (me being backed up by tons of archers and destruction-panic spamming mages that didn't have to worry about stray missiles from all their own archers or teh enemies.)

[rdonj]

Kailasa recruitable sacreds are top notch for initial expansion and against any nation without good archers and death magic (skelly-spamming). But if you run into Caelum, Ctis or god forbid Sauromatia, you're going to have a very hard time.

If you take an air/astral bless... caelum is going to be largely neutered against you. I'm not 100% sure if air shield will protect you from the poison effect on arrows as I've not fought this battle, but I'm going to guess not. If your main concerns are these three nations, you then have two very easy blesses you could add to the air/astral to lessen that a lot. N4 or E4. N4 means poison doesn't really hurt you, so now sauromatia's main offensive tools in the early game are shot. Of course, they still have skelly-spam. With E4, your sacreds build no fatigue and can fight endless waves of chaff, at last until you start using celestial music. If you take one of those two, combined with either relief or regeneration your sacreds should be able to deal with most things those three nations throw at you.

[Executor]

But that's like playing paper scissors rock, Neif will kill almost anyone, but Mictlan will crush them, Mictlan can be massacred by Caelum, Cealum will be crushed by Sauromatia and so on...
You can't expect to make your sacreds invulnerable to any form of attack.
Everything has it's counters and so it should, and that's the whole point.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by rdonj

If you take an air/astral bless... caelum is going to be largely neutered against you. I'm not 100% sure if air shield will protect you from the poison effect on arrows as I've not fought this battle, but I'm going to guess not. If your main concerns are these three nations, you then have two very easy blesses you could add to the air/astral to lessen that a lot. N4 or E4. N4 means poison doesn't really hurt you, so now sauromatia's main offensive tools in the early game are shot. Of course, they still have skelly-spam. With E4, your sacreds build no fatigue and can fight endless waves of chaff, at last until you start using celestial music. If you take one of those two, combined with either relief or regeneration your sacreds should be able to deal with most things those three nations throw at you.

Sure, I agree that would be counters to those nations. If you are fighting a duel against Caelum by all means take an A9 bless. Likewise take some air, nature and earth against Sauro. But the point is making a bless that is generally the most usable one. Yavanas' biggest strength is avoiding to get hit with their awe and high defense. So you enhance that strength even more by adding some water and S9 for twist fate. Take a bless to enhance their strengths and not to cover for their weaknesses. If an enemy shows up with an army of archers hit him with something else - your own archers or blade wind spammers or something.

Also, I think people here overvalue archers. The problem with archers is that the person who is fielding them is not the person who is deciding where they will fire. The other person will dictate that with the placement of his troops in the battlefield. If I bring enough archer decoys with my army, your archers will never get to target my yavanas.