Kailasa guide

[Alpine Joe]

Well in response to cleveland:

I don't think barkskin alone is enough protection, even against non-archer indies. You then run too big of a risk of losing Yakshas, which you really can't afford. You could potentially do it with stoneskin at alteration 2 though. I haven't tried it but 15 protection might be enough. That would let you start expanding with yakshas on turn 4, which would be a huge improvement.

Also you can start expanding with the starting army earlier, I probably would if I found weak enough indies next to the capital. I probably over-stated the case in the guide for dramatic effect; I really wanted to emphasize that you can expand with only yakshas. Regardless of when you start expanding, the main point of the guide is that yakshas help augment expansion in the middle of year one in a significant way that kailasa has problems doing in other ways. My experience so far in multiplayer games is that I really don't start brushing up against other nations borders in a big way until turn 11-12, which i think gives you enough of a window to get away with slightly slower expansion in the first few turns, as long as it kicks in strong at 6-7.

[Hadrian_II]

I would not drop the sacreds, as they make up most of your attack power, also a strong bless will benefit your SCs in the endgame.

With 10 Yavanas and a priest and some markata chaff you can take almost all provinces you like with only loosing the markata you uses as decoys.

Also celestial music is your key to power, as it quickens your sacreds.

Against Arrows you can use ghandarvas first and later arrow fend, so you should not have too much problems.

If you get a strong bless for your sacreds, you will scale very good through the game, your build you propose looses all strengths of kailasa.

[Executor]

You want a bless with Kailasa, don't need a rainbow mage since they have all paths on mages or summons.

They also don't need a SC awake pretender since their sacreds are greats.
Try a bless like S9W8A6. Twist fate for those initial attacks, 40% air shield is enough for everyone except Cealum, and +4 defense from water 8, don't need 9 since they have a national spell for quickness.
Ocacle, imprisoned with order3, sloth3, magic1, miforutne2, heat3, high dominion.

They have great summonable sacreds which are great with a bless.

And Kailasa has great potential for clamming also.

They can expand damn quickly also.
Prophet first turn with 6-7 Yakashas can take any province, knights also, and that's a new expanding party every turn.

Oh yeah, astral is for wish and those astral national summons, and MR +3 is good for sacreds since they are magic beings.

[Radio_Star]

I looked back at Kailasa with CBM a bit ago and wanted to give a Mother of Rivers a try. You give up quite a bit to get her awake, but you can run moderate dominion with decent scales and get an enormous six water gems a turn. Since, in my mind, Kailasa is pretty much a must-clam nation and you don't have any natural starting water income, the leg up that this gets you is tremendous. You can go from forging your first clam somewhere around year three to forging your first clam somewhere around year one. The quickness bless is arguably the best early blessing for your sacreds, as it helps shore up the low prot at close range via defense and also helps vs your real nemesis, short bows, because of the increased closing and killing speeds. Unfortunately, the water blessing is both not as good and redundant in the lategame, so in essence you're trading quality for quantity. On the other hand, you'll have the gem income to spam gandharvas as soon as you hit conj 5 and will also be summoning multiple siddha and rudra each turn once you hit the research given your early start and high water income. On the other other hand you'll miss that MR like a big dog.

For scales, I'm a big fan of ransacking death for design points. Your early armies are going to be small bands of sacreds so the supply penalty doesn't really matter, you don't have any units worrying about old age and you quickly get to where you don't really give a hoot about gold, so the long-term pop loss isn't a factor. That being said, luck offsets the potentially devastating events (during one expansion test, I had half the population in my cap killed on turn 3) from death scales while giving you sporadic bits of cash and, more importantly, gems. All around, I'd be looking at something like 3 death, 3 sloth, 3 heat, magic 1 and luck 2-3, order as high as you can afford with your pretender, around 0-1, and a minimum of 6 dominion.

[Endoperez]

Perhaps Mother of Rivers with Water 4-6/Nature 4? Just enough bless to let your sacreds start your expansion until you get your Yakshas out and conquering? I haven't tested this so I don't know how well it works, but I'd expect that the minor regen bless is pretty much necessary for to keep the Yakshas alive.

[Psycho]

Expanding with Kailasa is a breeze. With just 5 sacreds you can take almost any province. If you take a nice bless, of course. I like the S9W8A6 one. The problem is finding someone to bless your yavanas as your only recruitable priest is 360 gold. So, you should start recruiting indy priests ASAP.

Rainbow seems completely unnecessary, as Kailasa has great magic diversity. You have all paths except blood available at least at level 3 (with the exception of nature which is available at level 2). So, take an imprisoned pretender and a good bless is my advice.

When fighting indy archers, you just take some archers decoys with you (which cost you 5 gold a piece). The small air shield and twist fate should prevent taking much loses. When fighting human opponents, consider taking bandars as archer decoys, in case your opponents scripts his archers with fire largest.

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.

I would also start with alteration, but not because of ironskin, but because of body ethereal. Since you will be leading your yavanas with a yogi (to lead them) and an indy priest (to bless them), you might as well use the yogi to cast some body ethereals. With 5 yavanas in the group set to hold and attack and with 3 castings he gets before they run forward, yogi will cover each of them and himself with body ethereal in each battle.

After that go to thau6 for celestial music. It gives you 2 attacks per round and together with water bless pushes yavanas defense over 20.

Of course, with their awe, good stats and earth magic for buffs, yakshas are great thugs. But, why wait for turn 6 or turn 3 to start expanding and not have a good bless, when you can do it from turn 2 while having a good bless. And that good bless comes in handy for all your summonable sacreds as well as any thug or SC who you give a shroud.

[Hadrian_II]

I would propose a N4 bless, as it is really nice with kailasa (you will regen 2 hp per turn) so you can drop air bless, as for expansion the few arrow that hit you will be healed soon. (with S9 twistfate and 20 hp yavanas can survive 3 arrow hits anyway and with 2 points of regeneration even more).

Also W bless does look nice, but you have high base defence and awe, so the def bonus from the bless is not really needed and as soon as you get celestial music you will have a def of 17 and that is plenty. Only Guhyakas will profit from W bless, and they are not used in small groups for expansion but should be around in bigger squads.

I would propose the F9 bless for the nice bang it gives to you.

[licker]

Why not D9? And that way you also have the late game option to leverage death without boosting.

Beyond which you can spam those AoE spells and rack up afflictions on everyone you hit right?

[Hadrian_II]

Originally Posted by licker

Why not D9? And that way you also have the late game option to leverage death without boosting.

Beyond which you can spam those AoE spells and rack up afflictions on everyone you hit right?

D9 might work also, but it is normally not too impossible to get into death magic and fire is better for raw offensive.

[Alpine Joe]

See even with the air bless tossed in, you really have huge weaknesses if you go for a big dual or triple bless. You still aren't immune to archers, especially considering that most opponents are going to have 4+ archers for every one of your sacreds and you don't have any air magic early for storm or mist or arrow fend. Sauromatia would absolutely ruin you, as would Tien'chi or any other decent archer nation. And then of course death nations can give you hell with skelli-spam.

Early game fielding expansion parties is a pain. You have to use a capital recruited yogi, and then get an indy priest. Capturing an indy priest province and then getting a temple up and then waiting to produce a few takes a significant number of turns.

True you have access to all paths late game, but i think its better to have a big rush of gems start up in the mid-game, which you can then alchemize into astral pearls if nothing else.

Lastly the biggest emphasis of my strategy is getting a winning combo going early so you don't get trashed in the first couple of wars. Sure you are better late game with a huge dual bless. But I say that with clamming and astral summons you are strong enough late game anyways, especially since you get something of a bless with the sage build as well. The big thing is not getting steam-rolled early. And with a big dual bless build, you will be destroyed by any of the following : High morale troops, massed archers, skelli-spam, early thunderstrike or falling fires. Your lack of early research makes it very hard to react to these tactics.

Finally lets measure up the proposed S9W8A6 bless build against my sage bless of S4A4N4F4W4E4

the big dual bless nets you +3 MR, twist fate, +4 defense, and 40 percent air shield.

Sage build gets you +1 MR, +2 Defense, +2 attack, 2 reinvig (huge for yakshas), 20 percent air shield, 5 percent regen.
Sage bless isn't as good, but its not radically worse. Twist fate is the big difference and it only blocks one attack, the first storm of arrows will get rid of it.

The big difference is that with the sage build, you have fog warriors by the time the dual-bless build's pretender is waking up.