Guide to Nations: Lanka

Overview

This is a basic guide to people who are either new to playing Lanka, looking for an interesting nation to play as, or have had little success with Lanka in the past.

Introduction/Overview

Guide to Lanka

—Introduction

Hello, Welcome to Obfuscation’s Guide to Nations! (rhymes doesn’t it?)

This is a guide for people who want a general review on the Early Age Lanka nation, either because you are looking for a new nation to try, or because you are typically unsucessful with this one. After reading this guide you will have basic understanding of one way to use Lanka.

Hopefully this guide will be the first in a series. If you want me to continue making guides for other nations, please like this.

If you have some supplemental tactics, believe my guide is flawed, or have a suggestion on what nation to do next, I would love to hear your opinions in the comments section.

—Nation Overview

-Why to play Lanka?

Do you,

-Enjoy a sacred unit heavy nation?
-Like to pillage and feed of the chaos?
-Think monkeys and apes are rather neat?
-Think undead monkeys/apes, demons, and ape/demons are rather neat?
-Feel tired of playing as angsty Romans, tricky elf Vikings, or the effeminate Greeks? (I’m looking at you heart companions)
-Feel the need for the majority of your units to throw rocks before charging into battle?
-Want to learn (perhaps the hard way) how to create a supply independent army?
-Sometimes think to yourself, “I for one feel that we should be grateful to our ape overlords.”?
-Even lift bro?

If you answered yes to three or more of these Then Lanka is the nation for you.

-Pros & Cons

Pros
+++ Many sacred units
+++ Powerful and useful unique summons (most of which are sacred)
++ Versatile caste based army
++ Powerful Mages
+ Many unique summons
+ Ranged option on many basic units
+ Many units with high strength and high HP
+ Forest survival on almost every unit
+ Demons (Nightvision and good fighters)

Neither
+/- Blood Magic heavy
+/- Chaos Power
+/- Almost all units are animals

Cons
— Substandard defense skill, attack skill and/or protection on high tier units
– No cavlary units
– Only Trample units are summoned Elephants with poor morale
– Weakness to fire
– Demons (Can be banished and have gluttony)

Overall, Lanka like many nations has a certain set of strengths and weaknesses that you need to play with, not against. Use their sacred units effectivly and you will be rewarded.

Pretender

—Pretender God

In this Section I’ll give you a couple examples of typical pretender gods to use with Lanka, this is by no means ironclad, just the ones I like to use.

-Fountain of Blood (Imprisoned)

“Blood for the blood god!”

Lvl 9 Nature, Lvl 9 Blood

4 Dominion, 2 turmoil, 0 productivity, 2 heat, 2 growth, 1 luck, 0 magic
(high growth and turmoil for demons)

Making this pretender has a few vital flaws, but makes up for it with one huge boon.

Weaknesses
1. Weak dominion, so be prepared to build temples in every territory you capture.
2. Reduced income coupled with a tendency towards unrest. Income can be a bit lower than typical.
3. No access to your pretender for a while and when you do, it will be immoblie.
4. How do you imprision a fountain? how does it break free? (makes no sense)

Stengths
1. Sacred units will absolutley DESTROY EVERYTHING! Watch as your sacred units with already high HP get an increase to HP, return damage inflicted on them through blood vengence, regenerate wounds they just took, and when then get into combat do increased damage due to the extra strength!
2. The pretender will be able to cast practically any blood magic and nature magic (you will need to empower its death skill though) when he is free.

Overall I believe that this is the most fun pretender to play as. Early game you can go around conquering provinces with a Raksharaja as your prophet and about 30 Kala-Muka warriors (be prepared to not lose any). From then on, be sure to keep building temples (so your dominion doesn’t fall and so you have more holy points for sacred warriors) and maximize your use of sacred units.

-Nataraja (Dormant)

“The pain train has no brakes!”

Lvl 9 Fire, Lvl 2 Earth, Lvl 1 Astral

5 Dominion, 1 turmoil, 1 productivity, 2 heat, 1 growth, 1 luck, 0 magic
(balanced dominion attributes)

This is a more combat oriented pretender that tries to minimize on the weaknesses of Lanka.

Weakness
1. No blood magic, so you will need to empower a commander to do all of the summoning for you.
2. Weakish dominion, so be prepared to build temples in every territory you capture.
3. Slight delay in getting your Super Combatant God out.

Strengths
1. Strong combat oriented pretender (Four weapon slots?!)
2. Gives your sacred units much needed attack skill and as a bonus, fire damage (for fighting magical units).

This pretender minimizes his weaknesses and is combat oriented. In return his strengths seem rather lackluster. A well balanced Super Combatant.

Commanders

—Commanders

This section gives a rundown of the commanders of Lanka. For each commander I will give my personal rating, classifications, Tier (determined by classifications), uses, and what I think of them, and recommended items.

I will post Classifications separate, if you are wondering what it means i just use it to show value (Ex. Prince level 3 commander (81-120 leadership), and Agent Level 2 stealth (41-75 Stealth) so the unit would be tier 5)

-Markata scout (7/10) Agent
Tier 2

A cheap scout with unexpectedly high stealth.

While I generally dislike Markata, he is defenetly useful as a scout. Cheap and effective.

Units

—Units

In this section I will give a brief overview on the Lanka units and unique summons. They will recieve a rating, clasification and I will talk a bit about them.

Markata (2/10) Irregular

A garbage unit, there are better options for arrow fodder due to their low morale and lack of disipline.

Markata Archer (3/10) Irregular

Slightly more expensive and more useful than the regular markata, still can’t control them.

Atavi Archer (7/10) Stealth Archer

A strong unit that costs low resources and is quite cheap, suffers from low protection and fireing at anything with armor, a shield or especially both.

Atavi Infantry (5/10) Stealth Light Infantry

The generic and cheap light infantry of Lanka, useful in large numbers. Slightly more fragile though more dexterous than their human counterparts.

Light Bandar Archer (8/10) Archer

More expensive and less accurate than their atavi counterpart. They make up for it by having thirty three percent greater range and damage, as well as being more survivable.

Bandar Warrior (7/10) Infantry

The meat and potatoes of any early army, these guys are strong, have health, and a moderate amount of protection.

Kala-Mukha (9/10) Sacred Infantry

These guys don’t mess around, like the Bandar Warriors though better in almost every way in addition to being sacred. They suffer from requiring alot of resources and consuming aditional supplies.

Asara (5/10) Sacred Skirmishers

They are strong, healthy, and have good ranged javelins, but suffer from low protection and consume additional supplies.

Anusara (6/10) Sacred Infantry

Useful because they don’t require supplies, they arn’t very survivable even though they have a buckler. Ranged units will tear them apart.

Palankasha (8/10) Sacred Infantry

Strong elite assult units, they consume alot of additional supplies.

Tiger (7/10) Summoned Irregular

Fairly useful undisiplined unit can be summoned in large groups.

Elephant (7/10) Summoned Trampler

A trampler that can be summoned cheap and in large groups, efective until they trample back through your lines.

Gana (9/10) Summoned Infantry

An extremly effective unit if used correctly, they would be decent but because of their etheral nature, that they don’t need supplies, and the fact that they can be summoned by any death mage you own kaes them awesome. Use them!

Vetala (6/10) Summoned Infantry

Reanimated Bandar, they are harder to summon, and you get fewer per death gem than the gana, but are decent infantry.

Rakshasa (5/10) Summoned Sacred Infantry

These guys can be useful early game, and can be summoned by any blood mage. They suffer though from being summoned in small numbers, having little protection and having huge appitites (5 supplies a turn). It is worth noting that they technically don’t have to eat even though they are gluttonus.

Praghasa (4/10) Summoned Sacred Infantry

Similar to Rakhasa, these guys are harder to summon in both skill and resources and eat a ton of supplies (8) every turn, though you get more of them per summon.

Asrapas (6/10) Summoned Sacred Berserkers

Fast female demons who put on the hurt, they will get slaughtered by ranged units due to only one protection. Gentlemen, use protection (spells) when using them (hur hur hur).

Rakshasa Warrior (8/10) Summoned Sacred Infantry

Here we go, an excellent summon, like their namesake but with better stats and much better armor. They also are summoned in larger groups.

Sandhyabala (9/10) Summoned Sacred Specialist Infantry

Wow, these guys are serious business, like rakshasa Warriors but better again on average, they also do double damage vs magic beings. They are expensive enough to not warrant building an army out of them.

Danava (10/10) Summoned Sacred Specialist Giant

These guys cost a ton of blood slaves and are brutally high in the tech tree for a reason. With three weapons (three!), having fear (a non commander unit!), stunning other nation’s sacred units (what?!), costing no supplies (what?!) and having ridiclous stats including magic resistance (protection against Banishment). Their only downside is that they look kinda funny, and have a slight weakness to fire.

Tactics/Strategies

—Strategies

Here are a few things you need to keep in mind when you play Lanka,

1. Pillage if you need to. It increase gold, supplies and chaos (you benefit from all three of these!)
2. Don’t stagnate and go on the defensive waiting for better units. If you can gain ground by utilizing the marakata that sometimes spawn in your territory due to a lucky(unlucky?) event, do it!
3. Know how powerful your sacred units are! Don’t overcommit and starve and don’t undercommit and lose.
4. Utilize Yogini with one enormous cauldron full of broth, thats 120 supply you can use to fuel your demons. (and a spellcaster)
5. Armies don’t always have to have a balanced mix of units, you can get away with an army of demons/undead that, while all demons are gluttonus, they don’t actually need to eat.
6. Experiment with crazy army ideas, this is certanly one of the races to try it with, several herds of elephants followed up by Asrapas? sure, why not?
7. Dominion is doubly important, your demons can be alot stronger or weaker depending on who’s domain you are in!

—Tactics

Some army examples

–Early game:

-Early Command
1x Bandar Commandar
-40x Atavi Archers
-40x Atavi Infantry
(Basic Army)

-Task-force Halfbreed
1x Raksharaja
-30x Kala-Muhkas
2x Khala-muhka Priests
(extra reccomendation with Lvl 9 nature for regeneration)

-Bandar Blitz
1x Bandaraja
-80x Light Bandar Archers
-40x Bandar Warriors
2x Yogini
(Hold position and kill them with longbows)

Feel no Pain
1x Raksharaja
-80x Gana
1x Bandaraja
-120x Light Bandar Archers
2x Yogini
(double line of Gana go in first to absorb damage, Use Archers liberally, use yogini replace Gana losses)

–Mid Game:

-Summoners Onslaught
2x Raksharaja
-20x Elephants
-40x Tigers
-20x Rakshasa Warriors
4x Yogini
-80x Vetala

(Elephants and Tigers first to break apart formations, hold and attack with the vetala followed up by the Rakshasa Warriors, resummon all casulties you take)

-Army Halfbreed
4x Raksharaja
-200x Kala-Muhkas
-120x Light Bandar Archers
4x Kala-Muka Priests
4x Yogini (4x Enormous Cauldrons of Broth)
(extra reccomendation with Lvl 9 nature for regeneration, you will hit your own units with arrows)

–Late game:

Apocalypse
8x Raksharaja
-400x Rakshasa Warriors
-100x Sandhyabala
2x Mandeha
(Practically requires Blood Vortex active for the blood slaves required to summon this army, deepstrike the Mandeha for extra awesome, also they technically can’t starve despite consuming a ton of supplies)

Danava Blitz
2x Mandeha
-60x Danava
(for extra lulz use Astral Travel and capture thrones, don’t risk your Mandeha’s by deep striking them, have them cast spells instead)

These are just basic lists using only Lanka specific units (I know some other nation can summon Tigers and Elephants) make sure to experiment with different unit combinations from the generic list of summons.

Conclusion:

Thank you for taking the time to read my review hopefully this guide will be the first in a series. If you want me to continue making guides for other nations, please like this.

If you have some supplemental tactics, believe my guide is flawed, or have a suggestion on what nation to do next, I would love to hear your opinions in the comments section below.

Dominions 4 Guide