For those interested. Kailasa and Lanka both come directly from the Hindu story Ramayana. Book Yuddha Kanda specifically. It’s the story of Rama and his monkey and bear friends going to war against Lanka. The bears have been reimagined in Dominions as Bandar for the sake of the “caste” angle. Note that that’s also the reason for all the moon blades. They’re there for lore reasons mostly (fighting Kailasa’s celestial sacreds, all of which are magic beings). I think the idea behind the assassins is you may be able to disrupt Kailasan armies because they’re led primarily by Ghuyukan generals. Just priest 1 80 leadership commanders with the magic being tag, not mages and usually not geared. Kailasa needs these leaders because their recruit anywhere sacreds require magical leadership.

Count Dooku voice: I've been looking forward to this

Amazing guide as always! Love hearing from you Perun. A few points to note for Lanka: 1) Regarding chaos power, every 15 points of unrest in a province counts as an additional stack of turmoil. If you're fighting an order nation, you can potentially bomb them with unrest-causing remote attack spells to help your demons out. There are a couple of semi-obscure ones in blood, Rain of Toads and Wrath of Pazuzu, that you have the crosspaths for and can use to both hurt the enemy eco and help your demons. 2) If anything, this guide, flattering as it was to them, undersold the virtues of the Raktapata. I would argue that because of their cheap cost and 21HP, they make you maybe the best nation in the game after Pythium and the Jotun line at communion shenanigans. 2 of these with someone throwing regen and a reinvigoration into the sabbath can power skelespam/thunderstrikes for ages. Maybe even worth considering a regen bless a little more highly just for these guys. 3) The big utility of the Asrapa I find is their magic weapon. They are available early enough to fend off a djinn attack if you have to. Notably unlike your other demons they do not have fire vulnerability, so especially if you took a fire res bless (you should) wooden warriors and such can help them offset the lack of protection that's a consequence of their gratuitous nudity. 4) Rakshasarani are hard to justify getting lots of due to your limited capital recruitment, but I do make a point to get they early on when your gold limits what you can get from your cap anyway, as they make really good site searchers with wide paths and stealth to protect them while they are wandering around alone. 5) It can be worth dipping into conjuration early. You have access to both reasonably costed ethereal chaff (Host of Ganas) and berserking size 4 tramplers (Herd of Buffalos) at C2/C3. Neither are great value long term, but along with lesser air eles going C3 ASAP can give you some additional tools in your tool box to let you leverage all of your starting gem income in late expansion and those scrappy Year 1 wars. 6) In a disciple game, Lanka/Pangaea have amazing synergy, as well as being very strong individually. Possibly scarier than even double elves.

Great guide, one nitpick others haven't mentioned: Turmoil/Dark power also boosts strength as well as skills. Not terribly relevant for Lanka's hard-hitting demons of course, but even chaospower1 on base 27 damage is a swing from 24 to 30 damage in O3 vs T3

It's been said already but the huge omission in this is the interaction between chaos power and unrest. Leading any major offensive with unrest projection via hurricane/raid of toads/wrath of pazzuzu is a pretty core part of most mid game and beyond Lankan campaigns. One other point to touch on that's tangently related; you'll have trouble keeping up with dedicated artillery mage line ups in terms of sheer volume, turbo communions not withstanding, you just won't have enough masters to stand atop them to compete with some of the other nations. So when faced with such an enemy it can be a good idea to drag them back to any earlier form of combat. You mentioned during your discussion of the Mandeha that by the time he's available the stabbing part of the game is mostly over but I feel that's missing one of Lanka's key strengths. The Mandeha puts up darkness (though putting it up the old fashion way isn't out of the question) and you can cast storm (or better yet a staff of storms) effectively dumping precision of all units on the battlefield into the low single digits (storm also puts up rain which helps slightly with that fire weakness). Suddenly we're back to who stabs better and in the middle of an eclipse my moneys on the bloodlusted darkvision chaos-powered sacred demon ogres and whatever other nightmares you've conjured up. All of this gives Lanka a further push to break into Earth magic in a big way, something conveniently covered by you pretender recommendation of S/E res.

One note on Kala Mucha mage: they are a great way to get H3 for divine blessing in early game because they only need to sabbath slaves to function. Plus some of your early summons can be done with the B2 variety. Basically they allow you to do those summons without using cap mage turns which can be useful for spamming sacred armies. The multi hero bunnies do have one purpose that I think is really useful: they are your only water access and can cross path water and other paths for forging

Good guide, just few notes: E\W random multihero is pretty gamechanging for me if im not lucky for neutrals. Also you cap only girls are seducers in their pretty form. Which is pretty handy, especially with their paths. About blood hunt - personally i prefer to drain one province with huge stack of B1 priests, then rase dead from this huge pile of bodies, and then you move to another province and repeat, probably with hurde of undead (yes they are terrible at patrol but you have hordes of them). Yes, most lankas longdeads and souless are crap, but they are good at soaking damage. About pretenders i try different builds, but in the end imprison rainbow is the best. Ok early, great in the mid and late game. Without it you can really suffer in the late game. Especially if you didnt pick fire resist. Btw undead D lanka summons is pretty good and you have easy access to them. I mean at least they cheap and ethereal.

Thank you for the video. I've been playing Lanka for the past 8(!) months in a big game and I fall asleep thinking about Rakshasis. So a few comments: - I think you're right that one of the great strengths of the nation is its mid-game battle magic. In the research 6/7/8 levels you just keep getting more and more options for dealing with difficult battles like sieges and you have easy and mobile access to many many strong battlefield - spells. Raksharajas and Rakshasis are just so good, and Raksharajas are only 2 recruitment points. - You miss a very important thing about the "chaos power" mechanic: each 15 points of province unrest counts as +1 turmoil (up to +3). Order-3 scales with 75 unrest counts as Turmoil-2 for chaos power. You have easy access to pretty cheap +unrest spells (hurricane, rain of toads) and there are others, as you know. Rather than recruiting one unit for the purpose of fighting into order (Kala-Mukha) - and tbh, I doubt most Lanka builds which 99% will have sloth + turmoil will have money to recruit units after early/mid game - it's easier to lead your attack with unrest spells on enemy forts. - I agree that reanimating longdead is not efficient (although Lucid made a lot of use of them in his series). Soullless are dreadful but quick to make and you get soulless Bandar with strength 18; you also have corpse constructs (a reason to have earth path). These make Lanka an absolute terror for forts, they are so good at cracking them, perhaps launching Raksharajas onto them in magic phase (so the owner can't see your script / army), and taking them (wwinds, howl, wrathful). - The Kala Mukha H2 priests are more useful than you think. Patrolling generates corpses, which they can quickly turn into soulless. You probably always want to be pushing dominion. The 1-in-3 B2s relieve your cap mages of summoning duties (Rakshasa Warriors, Asrapas) until you get to Constr-6 and cheap blood boosters. - Breaking into the missing elemental paths (F/E/W) is pretty important, if nothing else because there are good cheap items to forge in those paths that ensure your Raksharajas are perfectly tricked out for every occasion. - Lanka demons have poor MR compared to generic demon summons and other national demon lines (e.g. Yomi). So S can be pretty valuable too.

@mejitats6766

2 жыл бұрын

PS - I meant to say on your Patala video: you did a great job of delicately suggesting why the representation of Indian culture and history implied by the monkey nations in Dominions is uncomfortable. Your "lore" sections on the nations you review is something others don't do and is perhaps my favourite part of your nation overviews.

Lanka is one of my favorite nations but i can't play it to save my life. So thank you and thank you.

Your mention of Dai-Oni syndrome makes me hopeful that we'll see a Yomi guide at some point, as outside of the demon thing you mention, Dai-Oni seem to be exceptionally good SCs.

Oh this is going to be great!

For Lanka only "Demon" is not so bad trait. One of the weaknesses of the Lankan melee troops is the number of attacks per cell. But almost all of them are sacred, demons and have natural good strength. So instead of hitting "often" I suggest hitting "strongly". At a blood 4 you get a "blood lust" and its buff ALL "Demons" stengh. Add to bless some str (b/e) and atk(f) ? + mage buffs(Strength of Giants). And now few people can survive 1 hit.

Hmm.. Lanka getting a recruit-anywhere sacred is DEFINITLY one of Illwinters trademarket "minor nation adjustments" that appear once in a while. And its honestly bonkers. Lanka was a solid nation to start with. But those gorilla's dont have any of the issues (butt naked) that holds Kailasas recruit anywhere sacreds back. 35:00 "they can both celebrate because they both got a reason to exist" LOL xD

I have Dom5 for quite some time, but just got recently into it, like - a bit. Can't put my finger on it, like why, but I do like your style. Would like to see more on it. High Fleet - ecellent singleplayer game, nice to see that in your inventoey as well. As for Phoenix Point is that like the old UFO enemy unknown games ?

Sometimes I go early Conjuration 2 to get Ganas. They're pretty good against indies in some early wars as cheap ethereal units you get cheaply

They were ridiculous in Dom 4, the changes to bless costs in 5 really reigned them in a lot.

Multi attack missile attacks still only use 1 ammo each time

Demon isn't entirely bad, it gives you the opportunity to get bloodlusted, but that's more of a consolation prize than anything else.

Ah, Lanka. Used to be considered one of the strongest nations in the game back in Dom4, iirc. Don't know if that repuation still exists, but its still a really strong nation imo.

@HisRotundity

2 жыл бұрын

What's funny is they only got really one major direct nerf - it used to be, Reanimator Priest was a nation tag, rather than a unit tag, so Lanka could set up a temple in a province with recruitable indie priests and churn out longdead summoners forever. The Raktapata action economy wasn't as constrained because they could blood hunt and research while your indie priests did all the reanimating, which made Lanka a fair bit more threatening.

@LucidTactics

2 жыл бұрын

@@HisRotundity Dakini were also made a lot more expensive. That combined with blood hunting being less efficient going from dom4->5... Then the indie priest thing. Then hellblesses got a good bit of a nerf. All in all, it was a lot of nerfs.

@gibbcharron3469

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, that's all true. The introduction of recruitment points also served as modest indirect nerf, as it makes your nigh-required Turmoil 3 scales cap your sacred/Bandar production, albeit not to an extreme degree unless you're building mountain forts and such.

You seem to have softened up a bit on titans, you bring them up more often. Did something change?

@PerunAU

2 жыл бұрын

I was encouraged to reflect different viable playstyles in my videos rather than focusing fully on how I would play a nation. My play style wouldn't normally take a titan, favouring scales and imprisoned diversity rainbows in most cases, and monsters in others. But different people have different styles and there's nothing 'wrong' with the Titan option. I'll also say I've been doing a decent number of games as observers and I have noticed that a well deployed Titan can be a really good rush defence even at a very high skill level. It's a very very expensive way to get that rush defence, but there's no doubting that it can work wonders, especially if it's used to wipe the first large sacred stack that comes your way.

Another nice guide! Sad that the patreon commander tier is always sold out :(

@PerunAU

2 жыл бұрын

I'd like nothing more than to increase the limit on that tier. The issue is I want to make sure the Patron commissions are quality, and that means not signing up to do more of them than I feel I can comfortably do in a month. If work eases up in the next few weeks I may increase the tier from 4 to 6.

@adrianastrom-granberg439

2 жыл бұрын

@@PerunAU I totally understand why you keep it limited. I appreciate the quality of the work you do. A bummer for me but that's OK.

:)

Raktapata: "...is the sort of mage that Perun really likes. It knows what it is there to do and does nothing else but what its there to do." Raktapata: "...the one that does everything..." WHAT? Yes this unit that is here to do what it is here to do except it cant do all the things its here to do at the same time and is not in fact great at any of the things its here to do, that highly specialised and particular unit who has the utility of doing many different things.

@PerunAU

2 жыл бұрын

If I were to re-express it as "doesn't have unnecessary magic paths or statistics and so is cost efficient for what it is" does that help? B1H1 is just a great, minimalist path combo that leads to a cheap, efficient blood hunter and researcher.

@teekay851

2 жыл бұрын

@@PerunAU yes that helps my ocd riddled mind to get over it instead of fixating. Thanks, big fan.

wtf is going on here? this game is hard af