Is There A Way To Raise Priest Levels?

[Teralitha]

I havent seen priest commander ever go up in priest level and I see no way to raise it like with empowerment.

[Staythecourse]

Kailasa's real strengths are a non-STR cap only E3+ mage, dirt cheap S1 mages, and the Celestial Music spell at Thaum 6, which gives Kailasa one of the most deadly sacreds in the game . . . but only from the late midgame on. Using them too early is just asking for defeat since it will kill critical early game research.

As mentioned, sacred archers are trash, as archery, especially in the low armor EA, depends on volume, not individual accuracy or strength. Kailasa actually has one of the best EA archers, in its super cheap Atavi archer. And said archer is actually what saves Kailasa from being near unplayable, since EA indy distribution and armor allows Kailasa to expand with Atavis. Problem is, Kailasa has no means to leverage its archers into early game wars, with no decent blockers, no F for Flaming Arrows, and no A until Conj 6 for Windguide.

Kailasa needs to look for decent indy blockers like Amazon infantry, recruit as many Yakshas as possible as early as possible, and beeline straight to Earthmeld + Earthpower. Having twice as many of a very good cap only mage can carry Kailasa into the midgame. If Kailasa can reach in a good position its 3 major midgame goals of Maws + Wooden Warriors in Alteration, Stellar Cascades in Evocation, and Celestial Music in Thaumaturgy, it actually gets quite powerful.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Red_Rob:

I'm not quite sure what Boozermonkey is going for here. Kailasa is just a fairly weak nation with a poor troop lineup and a few glaring weaknesses. Trying to convince a new player who has correctly identified their weaknesses otherwise is just going to confuse them and think they are understanding the game wrong.

No, sacred archers are not good. Due to the way precision works, archery works through mass fire and not a few fairly accurate shots. Taking a major A bless is not worth it on most sacred archers, and definitely not on units that cost 35 Gold. Saying that a major Air bless is "The king" is highly misleading - it is well known as the worst major bless. Taking it to cover for the fact your units die to arrow fire and to make your few expensive archers a little more accurate is a massive waste of points. The fact that all your sacreds are magic beings, and Kailasa hurts for both magic leadership and holy levels makes this problem even worse.

The comment that Kailasa should do well in MP makes me question if you have ever played the game that way. You do realise that against players having expensive units with a glaring weakness will have them beelining for those weaknesses? Awe is nice in melee against chaff units, but against elites, or mindless units, or ranged attacks, or spells it does nothing and your expensive units just die. As they are supposedly the trump card Kailasa can bring to bear in place of the poor quality monkey troops, this leads to the nation being a prime target.

Teralitha, there isn't some magic way to play Kailasa that suddenly makes them work. Sure, you can find ways to play against the AI that take advantage of it's inability to learn or exploit weaknesses. Yes, thematically they are great and playing them can be fun if you find it interesting to work around their foibles. But pound-for-pound Kailasa is weaker than most other nations due to it's poor troop selection, exploitable weaknesses and anti-synergistic elements.

Boozermonkey exaggerates a lot.

Sacred archers are fine, they just aren't worth a bless. The Sacred archers Caelum gets are occasionally worth getting for the halfed upkeep cost. But yes, Kailasa's sacred archers are impractical when you've got other decent archer choices. I agree a major air bless is usually impractical, but if for some odd reason you wanted air 4 or something on your pretender, the extra points to get a major air bless for the shield isn't such a bad idea when your sacreds run around naked. I think earlier I advocated for a single w9 bless instead of doing any air though. Kailasa's sacreds are strong, but they simply aren't reliable enough for a strong bless strategy. However they do get one non-cap sacred troop who is fairly decent, so a single major bless is enough to make it worth it.

I agree Kailasa is a bit on the weaker side, but they aren't unplayable. Non-cap only sacreds, decent summons, astral magic, and some other good magic paths are all fairly strong advantages. They don't come online until later, but there are plenty of other nations like Marverni who also suffer from that.

[Mormacil]

How does Marverni suffer?

[Torgon]

The way I'd describe Kalissa, Bandar and Patala is simply they're all mid-tier nations that take a bit of finesse and experience to play. None of them have 'I win' buttons in the form of high powered units that you can just recruit turn after turn and be sure you've done it right.

They require complicated tactics and combined arms more than many other nations. This doesn't make them bad, but it makes them hard for a new player to master. I suspect that contributes a great deal to their low performance in MP.

[Mormacil]

Ah, I found Marverni quite straight forward of you either go B9 boar spam or S1 hordes of Stellar Cascades.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Mormacil:

How does Marverni suffer?

Because they are a bit sub-par until midgame. Their troop selection, despite seeming vast at first, is really limited. They got slingers instead of archers, so that's a point against them, although they got javelins to make up for it. They got Boar Warriors, who are decent, cost effective sacreds, in a time period with very destructive and/or spammable sacreds like Vanheres, Helhirdlings and Jaguar Warriors. The noble warriors are OK, but won't hold the line vs giants, elfy units, or even Fir Bolgs. They have no units with two attacks, not even their cavalry, which makes their cavalry unit a bit overpriced for what you get. Overall the problem with their troop roster isn't that it's awful, but it's noticably a notch below average.

Then there are the weaknesses associated with being an astral nation, where you are really weak until you get either Stellar Cascades or Soul Slay or something similar which causes you to suddenly jump in power. They have Sequanis, who are probably among the most cost effective mages ingame, but you need LOTS of them for them to be any use in battle, which could be a problem if anything slows your expansion. They have Druids and Elder Druids, both decent mages, but both start suffering from old age a bit early. The regular Druid also needs some Sequani communion slaves if he didn't get a second astral path.

Eventually you either get Stellar-Cascades/Soul-Slay with a whole lot of astral mages to make use of them, or you rush Conjuration and start summoning sacred boars. Until then though, you can expect to have problems in early game fights where other nations are already either crushing armies with bless rushes, flinging evocations around, skelespamming, or just fielding much stronger units.

[boozermonkey]

Originally posted by Torgon:

The way I'd describe Kalissa, Bandar and Patala is simply they're all mid-tier nations that take a bit of finesse and experience to play. None of them have 'I win' buttons in the form of high powered units that you can just recruit turn after turn and be sure you've done it right.

They require complicated tactics and combined arms more than many other nations. This doesn't make them bad, but it makes them hard for a new player to master. I suspect that contributes a great deal to their low performance in MP.

This. Just because you dont know how to play an "I win" button nation, one that appears to have a weak troop lineup. One that on first glance appears to have trash sacreds. That does not equate to the nation being bad. It equates to you not know how to play a nation that isn't overpowered. That is all.

There was no exxageration on my part. The Air bless is pretty much requited for this nation to overcome their sacred weakness. The same can be said of Tien Chi's WoT5E. Or do you think that makes Tien Chi a crap nation too? Are you all now going to cry rivers of tears over how the WoT5E's suck, arguably one of the best sacred in the whole damn game just because they share the same weakness to a lesser degree?

Kailasa is a weaker nation to the weak and lazy player for sure. It is a challenging nation to play in MP without doubt. In the dozen or so games I have played it now - many in private MP games - I lost some and won some. So f&cking what? Does not prove a damn thing.

I play all nations and love them all. I will try my best to make any nation work because its fun for me to do that. With that experience I have learned that there truly are no "strong" or "weak" nations with the possible exception of EA Pelagia but that is conditional. There are only weak players that dont know how to deal with a challenge.

Yah I know I have not played MP in any games wth you guys. Thats because I play with friends. Not aholes. Saves me the trouble of having to deal with whiners.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by boozermonkey:

There was no exxageration on my part. The Air bless is pretty much requited for this nation to overcome their sacred weakness.

I still maintain that a W9 bless without an A9 bless is workable. You don't really need to make sacred archers as you can just spam Atavi, Bandar, or even Markata archers in some cases. The weakness to archers is either acceptable, or can be circumvented through other ways such as having Markata take one for the team.

Missing out on the A9 bless gives you a lot of extra points to put into Order, Growth, Magic and Dominion. You can also tank productivity with almost no penalty.

That said, Kailasa is one of about 3 nations I would even consider a major air bless with.

Another good idea is a E9 bless, which you can take with a wonderful awake Earth Snek. This lets you get 7 dominion, 3 order, 3 sloth, 2 heat, and either 1 growth or 1 magic. Your sacreds get some protection vs arrows, your mages don't need to take a break to drink mountain dew or something in between casts, and you can start looking for earth sites early on.

The W9 bless I suggested can only really be taken with a dormant Dragon or a Wyrm. This gives you 5-6 dominion, 3 order, 3 sloth, 2 heat, 2 growth, and 2 magic. I wouldn't go Imprisonned as Kailasa lacks recruitable H3 priests. This gives you good scales, and makes your sacred troops rip apart enemy lines until they eventually get downed by elites and arrows.

If you are fine with having very limited throne capping power till lategame, you can also go W9 S5 imprisoned Oracle. Which gives you 1 more scale... Not really recommended, but at least you get guranteed access to your lategame summons.

[Staythecourse]

I don't like W9 as it does not stack with Celestial Music. Of course, Dom4 research means Celestial Music is unlikely to come until the late mid-game, so there is an argument for going W9 anyway to be able to use the sacred before then. Then again, my opinion is that's a trap, and Kailasa is better off ignoring its sacred troops until shortly before Celestial Music comes up.

And there is no comparison with EA TC. TC has towershields to draw arrow fire, and excellent mage buffed composite archers to kill enemy archers. Which is how you use arrow vulnerable high offense troops, not pumping points into a bless that doesn't help the sacred do what it's good for.

If there's any nation for which A9 is viable, it's Kailasa, since it simply doesn't have the ability to decoy and counterbattery the way TC can. But it's still questionable. F9, N9, B9 all contribute more to Kailasa's sacreds at their best, midgame with Celestial Music and protection buffs up, and Arrow Fend in sight. Even minor blesses plus excellent scales are arguably better.

[boozermonkey]

Originally posted by Staythecourse:

I don't like W9 as it does not stack with Celestial Music. Of course, Dom4 research means Celestial Music is unlikely to come until the late mid-game, so there is an argument for going W9 anyway to be able to use the sacred before then. Then again, my opinion is that's a trap, and Kailasa is better off ignoring its sacred troops until shortly before Celestial Music comes up.

And there is no comparison with EA TC. TC has towershields to draw arrow fire, and excellent mage buffed composite archers to kill enemy archers. Which is how you use arrow vulnerable high offense troops, not pumping points into a bless that doesn't help the sacred do what it's good for.

If there's any nation for which A9 is viable, it's Kailasa, since it simply doesn't have the ability to decoy and counterbattery the way TC can. But it's still questionable. F9, N9, B9 all contribute more to Kailasa's sacreds at their best, midgame with Celestial Music and protection buffs up, and Arrow Fend in sight. Even minor blesses plus excellent scales are arguably better.

I don't disagree with any of that. In fact, there is lots to be said for a N9B9 bless for their sacreds. Haven't tried that.

I was only comparing the Kailasa sacred weakness with that of the WoT5E weakness as they share that same issue of being pin cushion fodder. Thats where the comparison ends, obviously, Tien Chi is an extremely strong nation on its own.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Staythecourse:

I don't like W9 as it does not stack with Celestial Music. Of course, Dom4 research means Celestial Music is unlikely to come until the late mid-game, so there is an argument for going W9 anyway to be able to use the sacred before then. Then again, my opinion is that's a trap, and Kailasa is better off ignoring its sacred troops until shortly before Celestial Music comes up.

And there is no comparison with EA TC. TC has towershields to draw arrow fire, and excellent mage buffed composite archers to kill enemy archers. Which is how you use arrow vulnerable high offense troops, not pumping points into a bless that doesn't help the sacred do what it's good for.

If there's any nation for which A9 is viable, it's Kailasa, since it simply doesn't have the ability to decoy and counterbattery the way TC can. But it's still questionable. F9, N9, B9 all contribute more to Kailasa's sacreds at their best, midgame with Celestial Music and protection buffs up, and Arrow Fend in sight. Even minor blesses plus excellent scales are arguably better.

Unless you took an awake expander, I think ignoring the sacreds is a bad idea. You can expand with the monkey troops, but they are barely better than indies and will take pretty big attrition. W9 bless lets you have many small squads of a few sacreds who can handle indies just fine. Hopefully you can grab enough land to make up for the fact that Kailasa doesn't have an easy time with early fights vs most other nations.

The issue I have with waiting for Celestial Music is often who wins lategame is decided by midgame. Even as a late bloomer nation like Kailasa, I'd think you'd need to have some amount of early game power in order to be relevant later on.

Course you could always go with my Earth Snek suggestion above and get a +5 prot bonus instead, as well as a better buff for your mages. Its less useful of a buff early on, but you got a big nearly unkillable snake thing to help even things out a bit.

Also not so sure about taking an N9 bless on sacreds that don't have any armor and cost too much to be good spell magnets. You get more health and regen, but funtionally that doesn't mean much when your average human soldier can still kill them in 2-4 hits, let alone what other sacreds can do to them. Combined with a B9 bless maybe, but thats a lot of points for a strategy I don't think Kailasa does very well to begin with.

[jonbrave]

The topic here is "Is There A Way To Raise Priest Levels?" :)

[Torgon]

Originally posted by Pidgeotto:

Also not so sure about taking an N9 bless on sacreds that don't have any armor and cost too much to be good spell magnets. You get more health and regen, but funtionally that doesn't mean much when your average human soldier can still kill them in 2-4 hits, let alone what other sacreds can do to them. Combined with a B9 bless maybe, but thats a lot of points for a strategy I don't think Kailasa does very well to begin with.

N9 bless would be a little bit for the recruitable sacreds, but it would primarily be a more mid-lategame bless for regen on Yaksha/summonable thugs and SCs and on your armored summonable sacreds.

I wish Kalissal had an NW or AN pretender. Either of those two combinations would be quite good for them

E9N9 is not bad on Bandar. Both tiger riders and white ones do well with it. Use the bull. Imprisoned, Dom 7, E9N9, -1 scale. Or go awake E5N9, Dom 9, -4 scales for a good expander.

[Torgon]

Originally posted by jonbrave:

The topic here is "Is There A Way To Raise Priest Levels?" :)

Ha! But that's an easy question and was answered in the first 2 posts. Much better to argue about monkeys.

[Rope Man]

Originally posted by jonbrave:

The topic here is "Is There A Way To Raise Priest Levels?" :)

yeah but the reason Teralitha asked it was because of kailasa's weaknesses which spurred on a conversation about how and if you could make them work