Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?

[Baalz]

Bandar Log is a nation sorely in need of a guide. They have a truly awesome arsenal at their disposal, but unlike other superpowers it is not obvious how bad-*** their stuff is. I’d say Bandar Log is one of the most powerful nations for a good player, but one of the worst for a new or inexperienced player because of the finesse required to make this precision machine hum. Note, almost everything I lay out here is applicable to Kalaisia and Patala, though they add a few twists I won’t explore here.

Bandar’s recruitable troops are a variety of special forces. Generally they’re gonna struggle holding the line in a pitched fight, but applied correctly in the right applications they show a devastating range of abilities. Used as a blunt instrument they’ll be cut to pieces though, so…don’t do that. Fortunately their large variety of summons will fill the ranks if staying power is what you need. Bandar is a nation of summons, conjuration is going to be of critical research priority.

Markatas - these guys get no respect, but with a little bit of creativity they are top notch units. Size 1 with a good defense they require nothing but enough numbers to overwhelm elite units with medium or high encumbrance. Markatas are surprisingly good unsupported against even things like heavy cavalry. If your opponent has a water bless with no earth bless, heck, you generally don’t even really need much more than to throw monkeys at him. As with most of the monkey forces though you’re gonna have trouble with morale. H2 priests are hard to come by for Bandar, you’ll find its often a good idea to use they’re nice summonable mage/priests to spam some sermons of courage rather than the typical magery their paths would suggest. Note, a great way to significantly help your morale issues is to sprinkle in the (cheap) Apsara or (expensive) Gandharva who have a standard effect. A small number will do amazing things for your morale when you can’t come up with a h2 priest. Their awe will also do great things in some situations such as stopping tramplers from squishing all your monkeys.

But wait there’s more! By now I hope you’re starting to see how in certain situations Markatas can be greatly effective. Lets see how these monkeys look with some real support. Lets paint a picture: On one side super elite dual blessed sacreds, high armor, good defense and huge attack damage, flaming weapons and all the usualness. On the other: a whole bunch of markata PD….and a Yakshana who casts iron bane, then several strength of giants. The size one markatas overwhelm the defense with sheer numbers, the first hit completely destroys the armor and shield of the sacreds, the next markata hits the armorless sacred with a club for 12 damage, while the markatas not in the front row fling sticks and stones with two attacks dealing 6 damage and ignoring all defense - and the shield has just been destroyed! Every time those super flaming weapons kill a whole monkey (assuming they can hit the 14 defense little guys), while the very expensive knights of the chalice, or vans or whatever get steadily chewed up.

Remember, special forces. This sort of maneuver is not going to be a silver bullet, but in the right situation your opponent will be screaming “he beat the snot out of me with….MONKEY PD?!?” Other great things that you’ll want to consider to use with markatas in various situations are: curse of stones, numbness (ice pebble staff can be great if you invest in 3-4), poison/sleep cloud, etc. Basically anything which takes advantage of the fact that those expensive super soldiers are gonna have to take awhile to hack through endless waves of monkeys - remember, even if you die 5:1 you probably still come out ahead! Supplement your PD with extra Markatas, at these prices buy them by the dozen.

Next on the menu of undervalued primates, the Atavis. Again, no respect, but these guys have won me several wars. Lets start with the short bow variety. They’re cheaper than most short bow archers I can think of at 9 gold and 3 resources. For short bows generally the most important thing is to get as many bows as possible, so obviously the cheapest archers win. Next, they are stealthy! Holy crap that’s awesome. What’s the worst thing about archers? The fact that any reasonably good opponent is going to deploy effective archer counters as soon as you start showing masses of archers. Adding my previous few sentences together, just think about how many fights you’ve been in where an extra 100 archers which your opponent completely didn’t anticipate would have made a drastic difference. That’s under 1000 gold. How about when your opponent goes to break the siege on his capital expecting to engage (whatever the hell you’re doing) which just killed all his PD and instead meets (whatever the hell you’re doing) plus 100+ archers buffed with flaming arrows and wind guide?

Now, let me sidebar for a moment to mention that I really like a rainbow pretender for Bandar Log for reasons which will be fleshed out as this guide continues, but flaming arrows is one of those spells that it can be worthwhile to take special consideration of when designing your pretender. Fire plus either air (cloud trapeze) or astral (teleport) is a huge leg up for several different nations for those few pivotal fights.

Now, lets look at the mace Atavis. Nothing super special as far as infantry goes, but they do have the rather unique Sticks and Stones attack combined with stealth. As I briefly mentioned with the Markatas, the sticks and stones are buffed by strength of giants, and the Atavis have more base strength. With two attacks per turn, 30 ammo, and 11 damage each (with strength of giants), *plus* a shield (invaluable for engaging other archers) these guys are certainly worth considering over the shortbows against some enemies if you’ve got an earth mage but no fire (flaming arrows doesn’t effect sticks and stones). Remember, the best thing you’ve got going for you is the element of surprise, use your stealth!

Vanara - A bit of a bastard middle child, these are your medium infantry. Generally you’ll skip them, but they’re not terrible if you need that niche filled.

Bandar archers - longbows are nice, but keep in mind these guys are 20 gold and have a precision of 9. The scale mail guys back up their good armor and solid hitpoints with a mace, so they can make those flankers sorry they got to the archers. If you decide to invest in these expensive archers, consider trying to use an air mage (Kinnara are the obvious choice) with a wind guide to offset the low precision.

Bandar light warriors - oh yeah, these guys are great. If you’ve been following along at home you’ll note I like the sticks and stones. These guys follow that up with a great strength. Buffed with strength of giants these guys are flinging two rocks per turn dealing 16 damage with a range of 19 (short bows have a range of 25). With two attacks for 20 gold these guys are comparable to 10 gold archers, only they’re dealing 16 damage, and have a shield, 10 protection, and a mace.

So, what’s better than attacking twice per turn for 16 damage? How about using that earth mage who just buffed them to spam some destruction. Now you’re dealing 16 X 2 damage against guys with 0 protection, no shield, and ignoring their defense. Can you think of any situations that this might be effective? Goodbye almost any super elite units! The damage and amount of projectiles is so high that even high hitpoints and moderate natural armor won’t save you. E/N blessed Neifels or Palashankas will evaporate just as fast as W/F blessed Vans - faster than they can say “Oh SH…!”

Advanced tip: if you’re having trouble landing destruction due to clever battlefield placement tactics of your opponent, consider trying to leverage iron bane. This can require some maneuvering though as ranged weapons will not trigger the armor loss. Any melee hit will though, so look to combine it with things which are otherwise often of limited usefulness. A great one-two punch is to combine the iron bane with swarm or black hawks (who can be scripted to attack large creatures, or whatever). Your Rishi can teleport and cast swarm (or howl if it makes more sense), and even creeping doom works well (never thought you’d hear that, did you?)

Bandar warrior - Expensive heavy infantry. Generally not cost effective, but what’s cooler than pounding guys over the head with pissed off gorillas?

White ones - These guys are pretty solid holy units who are cheap. I’ve seen them used very effectively, but I generally find it hard to get a good bless for them given the other things Bandar needs. Still, with even a minor bless they’re cost effective troops, so go ahead an mix them in as a supplement to whatever else you’re fielding.

Elephants - they’re elephants, they give you a great way to get a solid early expansion without using your pretender. This frees you up to look at a rainbow.

Tiger riders - these guys are awesome with the right bless, but they’re *so* expensive, and again I’d rather have a rainbow than an expensive bless. Your early game you’ll be using elephants so won’t miss them, by the time the elephants become obsolete you’ll have better options.

Your commanders are fairly standard, you’ve got a stealthy commander and only an H1 priest. Your mages, you’ve got a small S1 (research, communion slave), medium S2, N1 (good SC/thug slayer), and a grande S3 N2 1W/E/S/N + 10% another like that. Being heavy on the astral component your recruit able mages are great for the end game but you’ll be leaning heavily on your summonable mages to carry you in the mid game. Fortunately, you’ve got some *great* ones. Rishis are very nice though, being cap only and reasonably priced you’ll want to start recruiting one every turn once you’re able.

Before I get into the summonable commanders I wanted to review your non-commander summons.

Ganas - cheap, ethereal undead which any death mage can summon. They’re quite cost effective blockers for your low morale and fairly fragile ape troops flinging rocks. If you’ve taken a rainbow pretender it’s easy to create a revenant and a skull staff and leave your pretender free for other things, D2 is all you‘ll really need for most of your death needs. You’ll want to look to mound kings to heard your undead.

Vetelas - These often overlooked guys are surprisingly resilient with their protection, hitpoints, and second ethereal life. They go down pretty fast to real undead counters or massed archery, but the nice thing is they’re sideline enough that they’ll seldom prompt your opponent to invest in counters which are ineffective against the rest of your troops.

Nagas - Your first real frontline heavy infantry. You’ll have a hard time summoning them at the point you’ve first researched them, but in a pinch your nice rainbow pretender can spend a couple turns giving you a solid core for your early forces. They’re amphibious, so you can move into the water early enough that some water indies are still available for pilfering. They’re also holy, so I’ll go ahead and talk about the bless you’ll be wanting.

Just because you’ve taken a rainbow pretender is no reason to neglect considering what impact your blessing will have. As previously mentioned you’ll want fire magic for flaming arrows, but so long as you’re headed there F4 will give your troops a welcome +2 attack. The minor regen from N4 and reinvig from E4 will both help greatly with many of the units you’ll be using. B4 gives a noticeable bump up in the damage output of your troops who often add a kick to their attack and gives you a way to easily drop some of the great blood summons you inherit from Lanka if you luck into some indie blood mages (or trade for blood slaves). Outside of that you’ll want a minimum of D2 to get you in to that path (more if you can afford it would be useful), water and astral paths are most useful just because you’ll be site searching and need those gems, leaving air as not particularly necessary, but a pretty cheap bonus since you’ll be site searching anyway. Make sure you’ve got either enough astral for teleport or enough air for cloud trapeze. You’ll be taking heat scales, and there’s no reason not to take sloth so it’s not too hard to get the points necessary to be awake and start site searching immediately - getting an early gem flow to power your summon machine is a huge advantage for Bandar.

So, considering the bless discussed here nagas are very nice units for the price and research level. Also, keep in mind they’ve got darkvision, so if you should happen to find yourself fighting in the dark against somebody who’s using strong undead counters that can be very valuable.

Apsaras - These guys are armorless and thus very vulnerable to many things, but they are cheap, have a good awe value plus defense and a standard effect, so there are definitely good places to use them.

Advanced tip - awe has a great synergy with fear. Apsaras main defense is their awe, so assuming you can field them against troops with no ranged weapons consider trying to lower the bad guy’s morale. You’ve got good options to spam panic, and it wouldn’t be the worst use of gems to equip a couple cheap thugs with fear helmets to lead the charge. If appropriate, consider using your B4 rainbow pretender to cast blood rain, the effectiveness of your awe will skyrocket while your standard effect will counteract the effect on your own troops.

Gandharva - Apsaras big, mean, older brother. These guys are certainly on the expensive side, but they are definitely one of my favorite infantries in the game. High hitpoints, high awe, high protection, multiple attacks, good magic resistance, small regen and reinvig (with the blessing discussed), high damage output, a shield and helm while being imminently buffable. With a little support there aren’t many troops these guys can’t chew through while taking few casualties. As long as you’re investing in these guys make sure not to leave the house underdressed, strength of giants, legions of steel and wooden warriors are a must, as your research ramps up look to celestial music (national quickness buff), weapons of sharpness, will of the fates, marble warriors/army of lead/gold, and mass regeneration to make these some damn scary guys.

Advance tip: Gandharvas are your go-to guys for troops. Part of the thesis for going with a rainbow pretender is that you can easily alchemize anything you’ve got into astral which is what you’ll be using to summon your best stuff. If chance should happen to cause your rainbow pretender to rack up a large fire income (or whatever), don’t be shy about changing those straight into pearls. Even at double price your astral summons are often going to be better than anything else you could spend those gems on.

I won’t go into much detail as there are so many of them and you’re unlikely to afford more than a handful, but as previously mentioned you’ve inherited some very nice blood summons from Lanka. Be vigilant for a lucky break into blood, or the opportunity to trade for some cheap slaves. It’s probably not worthwhile to try and bootstrap into blood with all your other good options, but there’s no reason you couldn’t if you wanted to put in the effort. Check out the good Lanka guides for a detailed discussion of your options here if you’re interested.

Now, on to your summonable mages. You’ve probably noticed that many of my tips revolve around strong earth magic, fortunately Bandar has a very powerful earth mage in the Yaksha. You’ll want a couple Yakshini (the female, water version) for water magery, forging clams and if you’re lucky with the randoms summoning nagas, but other than that you’ll want to spend every nature gem you can get your grubby little monkey paws on to summon Yaksha. Aside from laying down all the previously discussed earth battle magic these guys make awesome thugs. With awe, good hitpoints, a secondary attack and E/N/(sometimes W) magic they’ll clean up any unsupported PD easily with very little gear. Summoning earthpower and using their bless they’ll have enough reinvig generally to save you on those gems, the awe generally takes care of crowd control, the second attack is usually enough to get them through the killing they need done, and the minor regen plus iron skin is often enough to keep them ahead of the few hits that do land. Slap some winged boots on them (one of the better things you can spend your air gems on) and switch hit between soloing PD / small armies, and dropping in to surprise they guys expecting to face unsupported monkeys. Of course, a bit of extra gear certainly won’t hurt as well. The great thing about these guys is you use nature gems to summon them, and you don’t really have much else competing for your nature gems.

You’ve got three different flavors of naga mages, but in general you’ll want to use your water gems for other things. Naga troops in a pinch, frost brands for your Yaksha, or even better crank out clams as much as you can so you can get as many of your awesome astral summons as possible. Bandar Log is arguably the best clam spammer in the game, with good earth for hammers, good clam forgers and top notch astral summons to spend the pearls on.

First up for your astral commander summons is the Kinnara. He gives a welcome diversity into air magic and can site search and forge the winged boots for your Yaksha. He also makes a good thug himself and already flies. With his awe and mistform and minor regen (from the bless) he’ll also handily clean up most PD. A little air goes a long way for wind guides and arrow fends - both greatly beneficial to your monkey/ape troops. With a staff of elemental mastery (courtesy of your pretender) you can also look at mass flight which is very, very nice to combine with iron bane and markatas, or as a surprise with haste buffed elephants. The other option is to go up to Devatas for A3.

Next up, Siddha. These guys occupy an awkward niche. They’ve got 4 arms and the magic paths to buff themselves into real SCs, but have the crippling low astral magic which will bring magic duels out of the woodwork when you stick some good gear on them. Still, with a strategic mapmove of 10 on top of the ability to both cloud trapeze *and* teleport these guys are great to keep in reserve for special purpose surprises. With 4 arms and those paths its not hard at all to kit them out to kill a specific SC/thug (think 30+ defense, awe, mirror image, luck, body ethereal with whatever weapons seem appropriate) then drop them in, set to cast returning the turn after. They can also be used as more general purpose killing machines if you’re matched up against somebody with weak/no astral as you can leverage that mapmove of 10 and plenty of your own cheap and powerful astral mages to make it very difficult to catch him with a small handful of S1 mages.

Devata- Generally skip them for SC‘ing, anything you want to do a Siddha can do cheaper and better. They do get you into A3, or A4 with a staff which opens up fun things like fog warrior’ed markatas.

Rudra - I’m not going to talk about any other summons at this level, because once you can get these guys you don’t want to spend your gems on anything else. Ever. These guys are my absolute favorite SC chasis of all time. 4 arms, mistform, soul vortex, phoenix pyre, mirror image, these guys eat tartarians for lunch (think wielding two flambeauxs with boots of quickness). They fly in a storm so you can’t even stop them from eating whatever they want while you can screw up whatever your opponent was going to do (they can even wield a staff of storms *plus* a sword and shield if you‘re so inclined). Or, consider equipping 4 shields scripting attack, cast hand of death X4, or perhaps attack and flame eruption X4, maybe use a crystal shield, bag of winds and winged helmet and drop some shimmering fields, they‘re naturally shock and fire immune so follow that storm up with wrathful skies and/or firestorm, or pile rigormortis on top of heat from hell and let your soul vortex keep you powered, drop a couple Rudras in to squish even big armies... I’ve wished for Rudras before rather than Seraphs because they’re straight up better in several situations. They’re non-unique so you can get as many as you can afford, they cost pearls so you can alchemize whatever is handy, and they’re a bargain at 55 pearls (compare to other angel type summons!). If by this point you’ve stockpiled a decent number of clams you’re gonna be very, very hard to stop.

Now, much has been made of the monkey PD, and indeed it won’t be able to stop much designed against it, but its actually not that terrible. All the missile weapons do a good job chasing off barbarians, and as I mentioned before markatas do just fine against knights/heavy cavalry. The biggest problem is your morale, so definitely push your dominion (that makes a huge difference), and consider some cheap support sprinkled around if you’re raided (Apsaras are cheap enough to be sprinkled around if you can’t line any H2 priests up, and of course mage support does wonders to any PD).

Of course the best monkey PD is research. With mindhunts, teleporting thugs and mages, earth attacks, stealthy flaming arrows, and ubiquitous astral mages (one guy spamming paralyze from the back row will discourage plenty of thugs intent on monkey squishing, and teleporting in a Rishi with penetration boosters to spam charm will make most anybody think twice about raiding wantonly) you’ve got no excuse for complaining that your PD alone won’t stop the bad guys.

[ano]

Well, I firmly believe that monkeys are very powerful in the lategame if left untouhed early on but with the pretender you suggest they will have very hard times to defend from properly launched attack and that is a pity fact. Yes, they have many powers and excellent summons but very many different things (territory and gems being the most obvious) are required to make all that work well. Still, I'm agree that they are playable and, if lucky enough, may even become unstoppable in the late game.
But they are very, very luck dependent. I don't mean luck scale, I mean lucky positions, neighbours, sites etc. Especially I don't like being very luck dependent but may be one day I'll try...

[Aezeal]

could you conclude with your advice for pretender build? Not just the this is good, that is good etc (with all respect) but

this magic
these scales
this dominion score
awake/sleeping/imprisoned

It's just because when I play a nation, I usually have plenty of time to read the guide about troops in the MONTHS I'm playing the game.

But when starting a game (pretender submission) I usually have a limited amount of days. So your best pretender suggestion will be a better starting point to test my game. (not saying I'll copy it (I don't like monkeys so I'm not likely to play Bander in the near future) but it would be a good start point)

[hoo]

Few pts of disagrement and other notes:

1) I think BL makes for a solid bless nation. White ones are recruitable in a fort with a temple, which is a big boost. You can crank out 20+ off these guys a turn. Gandharvas are the key BL troops and are blessable (as are your combat/thug mages...). Plus Celestial music gives them quickness for free. So in the middle stages you can have some double or even triple blessed troops.

2) I'm not the biggest fan of fire for BL on the pretender. If you're trying to rely on a rainbow mage to cast flaming arrows for you in combat, that's a losing proposition to me. I think a earth bless is key for reinv of your quickened gandhas and mages. I can understand a rainbow to get the death/blood summons going but I think it's too hard to focus on fire when there are better options. Any combo of death, astral, earth are good for a BL pretender. The Great Enchantress is arguably the preferred chasis due to the free astral gem, the lifeblood of BL. Otoh, a stealth mage could make the atavi work.

3) I don't think BL has to worry too much about an early game rush. Elephants are a great equalizer early on. So BL can turtle a bit and wait for its conjurations to come on line. So I usually have an asleep pretender or imprisoned if I'm going for a bless/max scales.

4) I'm not the biggest atavi fan. Your giant strength plus sticks and stones only works on defense and thus negates their stealth. They can't really stealth raid by themselves since moderate PD will obliterate them (of course this changes when the kinnara comes online and can fly to the battle and jump over a front line). Maybe you can decide your campaign around a fire/ stealth pretender that accompanies that atavi but that's a bit dicey.

5) BL are among the kings of communion spells. Every mage is astral with cheap slaves available. Control and other nasty spells are in the same tree as Celestial music and an mid-game + army should have rishis ready to hit bad units with control, soul slay and the other communed thau combat spells.

6) I love taking magic when designing my BL pretender. Your MR already sucks for most of your troops so you're already hurting from any spells against you. OTOH, you're gonna be throwing around controls, enslaves, mind hunts, soul slays and you need high research so I think it's worth the 40+ for each pt.

7) Not sure how viable The markata strategy is in multiplayer. The enchantment spells are way down the list of BL research priorities. Obviously, you need to take conjuration first otherwise you'll never get the earth mage to cast destruction/str etc. Then I'd rather go for Thau/evok both for offensive spells and site searches. Then maybe conj/alteration and enchantment is way down the list. Takes a while to boost up the markata forces to be good otherwise you can see a bunch of them flailing away at heavily armored troops.

8) Agree with you on the scales especialy with sloth. I think gold is nice too. BL basically only builds fortified cities so it's pricey to build a new mage/white one producing lair. I like the order/growth for those reasons. The supply aspect of growth isn't really needed but the income boost is nice and there's no reason to ever take productivity.

Key to BL is to survive till your Ganda's come online. Asparas should only be used if you're attacked and in dire straight before you've hit conj 5...or you're facing someone with no javelins, slings or arrows.

Edit: BL takes a while to windup. Unless you have an awake SC you probably won't be attacking on turn 2 b/c your starting forces stink and you'll need some elephants to carry you through. So you'll be behind the power curve for a while but then will catc up like a flywheel.

[WraithLord]

I'm playing Patala in MP now and I find your guide useful to some extent for Patala as well.

Very nice guide and I agree with most of it.

Thanks.

[Edratman]

I've always been a big monkey player and fan. I think it was the versatility of the summons that drew me to them first. Never considered the midget monkey horde tactic, but it is now on the agenda.

First class guide.

[Omnirizon]

actually, I have a guide about 3/4 done on bandar log. I may finish it tonight and release it. and you are absolutely right about their utter bad-***-ness. They are like Kailasa without the weaknesses. Rather than have to play to the weaknesses of Kailasa, you can play to all their strengths with Bandar Log.

If you ever get to play with kitted out Siddhas, you will understand just how absolutely bad-*** this nation is. Intrinsic teleport, no gems no lab required. four arms. high natural MR. No initial weaknesses, so pretender creation can be geared to making use of all the mid and late game potential. People see monkeys and think "damn they suck". They don't look at their Celestial potential. And they just ooze astral. And their national astral summons stand in for whatever you might ever want death magic for. So its like with this nation, you get all the benefits of astral and death in one path.

So much hidden power in this nation. And so many options.

[ano]

I didn't get it. Why don't Siddhas need lab for teleporting?
Did you mean mapmove 10?

[Sombre]

Is this a tutorial? Looks more like a guide.

[WraithLord]

I didn't get it. Why don't Siddhas need lab for teleporting?
Did you mean mapmove 10?
Yes, got me puzzled as well. I even double check to see I haven't missed an intrinsic teleport ability (which would have been very cool btw).

[Sombre]

Obviously he just means flying and mapmove 10.

[lch]

it is referred to as "teleporting" in the description text as well, IIRC, a little misleading

[Sombre]

It should be Spherewalking or Planeshifting or something.

[Kuritza]

Sweet theory.

Tell me when somebody manages to actually become 'unstoppable' with Bandar Log.

[Tifone]

Tell me when somebody manages to actually become 'unstoppable' with Bandar Log.

Well, is there anyone "unstoppable" with any nation out there? :)

[Zeldor]

Hinnom :)

[mighty_scoop]

So back to the tutorial ...
i would be very interested in a scales recommendation what would fit for the apes ?
Sloth (-3 ?) was an easy decision for me ... also magic +1 for the 1s mages.
But what about order/turmoil and luck ?
So far i went for turmoil 3 and luck 3 because you need lot's of gems and no money for your summons ... but the early game is really hard with these scales.

[hoo]

"But what about order/turmoil and luck ?
So far i went for turmoil 3 and luck 3 because you need lot's of gems and no money for your summons ... but the early game is really hard with these scales."

The problem with that selection is that it's a huge hit to your income. You're losing 27% to gold off the top since you maxed out sloth. Furthermore, BL needs to heat 2 otherwise they lose another 5%+ of income. So you're probably losing at least a third of your income per province. Income that small means that your expansion is going to be pretty slow b/c it will take a long time to get up to 1200 gold to build your second fort unless the luck scale income jackpot hits. Throw in the traditional slow BL start and you're gonna be way behind the power curve.

For my scales I like sloth, growth for income, plus magic, heat 3 and then my order/luck are dependent on what pretender I build.

[DonCorazon]

Sweet theory.

Tell me when somebody manages to actually become 'unstoppable' with Bandar Log.

One of the many things I like about Baalz guides is they get people interested in playing nations that otherwise are not too popular.

As for theory, what else can a guide be? Obviously some of the tactics mentioned won't work in 100% of the situations but I enjoy the insights into game rules or spell combinations that I had not thought of.

Nice job.

[Hadrian_II]

Throw in the traditional slow BL start and you're gonna be way behind the power curve.

Slow start for Bandar Log?
Bandar log is the nation with i am able to expand the fastest of all. With Bandar i was able to get around 30 provinces after 1 year, and i think this is even faster that what you get with nations like helheim.

How to Do it.

I used s9w9 bless and white ones for expansion.

With 9 whiteones 1 bandar longbowman and a indy priest you have an expansion force that can take most indys without losses.

just put them as far in the back as you can and set the white ones on hold & attack, and the priest on (bless)(bless)(bless)stay behind troops. The archer is used so that the priest stays behind and does not get killed by enemy archers.

You can recruit one of therse partys per turn for only (50 + 23 * 9 + 20) = 277 gold and you should be able to get 160 ressources in your capital even when you took sloth.

[ano]

Any nation with decent recruitable everywhere sacreds will be able to expand really fast if it takes a double-bless. The question was how to expand effectively without super bless.
Btw, tigers even with minor bless are at least no worse for expansion than elephants and their upkeep won't ruin your day. I'm not a bandar player but I agree with Kuritza that it'll be very hard to bring this theory from paper to real world. Many reasons for that..
One option that seems rather viable is careful diversifying into blood. Any nation can go for it but while any other nation needs 50 slaves to get a B1 hunter, monkeys need 50 slaves to get a B3 Dakini who is much better than just a hunter. I believe that BL can be quite powerful combining awake SC Deva pretender with most of what Baalz wrote. But without it you'll need lots of luck to do well with monkeys.

[Baalz]

Well, I don't think Bandar Log is particularly vulnerable to an early attack. As Hoo points out elephants go a long way towards bringing Bandar Log into the 'Hmmm, is there an easier target?' category for early rushes, and when you throw in all the astral mages - ethereal elephants backed up by paralyze will put a good amount of hurt on most things that might rush you. Certainly if you're talking worse case scenario from a first class rusher, then yeah Bandar Log along with just about anybody is gonna have some trouble, and an awake combat pretender isn't gonna really help too much. Heck, in other contexts I've had to argue my guide thesis against potential elephant rushes and there's no reason at all that Bandar Log can't pull off a first class elephant rush, though I don't really focus on that in this guide because it's not really my style. Regardless of if you plan on rushing, anybody who can't turn elephants into a very brisk expansion against indies needs to practice a bit more with them.

To those of you very skeptical about Bandar Log's effectiveness, I ask you to look again at my thesis. The core of it is that Bandar Log is difficult to play, and it's not surprising that they often don't fare well. They have the tools to be a first rate power early, middle, and late game but it's not as obvious how to leverage them as, say, triple blessing some good sacreds and smashing the crap out of anything that shows up. I firmly don't believe you have to be lucky to do well with Bandar Log, though of course any nation is at the mercy of their neighbors ganging up on them or finding some high population indies to conquer.

Now, as to the questions about taking a rainbow pretender, I think most people discount the tactical advantage that an awake rainbow pretender gives you in an early rush situation. Fighting back an early rush is generally the game of trying to stall the aggressor long enough for you to research up to a critical spell or two. With an awake rainbow pretender researching you'll get more research done in the first few turns than you'd otherwise be able to do in the first year. Being able to meet an early rush (which by nature must be done by a small force) with mind burns, teleports and paralyzes can certainly be at least as effective as a poorly equipped combat pretender. Additionally, the rainbow pretender obviously gives you access to spells which your national mages can't cast, so you gain access to whatever the best low level spell in the game is to counter whatever is giving you pain. Having access to that one perfect spell is often the most effective thing you could possibly do. It's a bit disingenuous to say using your pretender to cast flaming arrows is a losing proposition, think about it this way: how many pivotal battles changed from a high casualty loss into a overwhelming victory does it take to make those design points worth it? My opinion is that number is one. This is not a tactic that you're going to leverage on your raiders, it's something you're gonna use in a "break this glass in case of emergency" type of situation. I have personally used it - with Kalaisian stealthy Atavis to surprise an opponent trying to break the siege on his capital and I fell in love with its potential. In any game there will be a few pivotal battles which you spend the rest of the time maneuvering yourself into a good position for, having a rainbow pretender means you can always have the spell that will make a difference - whether that's flaming arrows or darkness or wrathful skies. You can go ahead and consider it a losing proposition, I'll take the overwhelming victories that pivotal spells bring me in pivotal battles. In addition, a rainbow pretender will get you lots of gems - the lifeblood of Bandar. Many different types of summons use different gem types, and as I point out you can always alchemize into astral so every gem is very useful. I know plenty of people will take an awake combat pretender under any circumstances and disagree with my opinion on this, but I often take rainbows or imprisoned pretenders and do well enough.

In response to the comments which are essentially "this would never work in practice", everything I list here I've used effectively - at bare minimum against the AI and mostly against people in MP games. I've defeated many people as Kalasia and Bandar Log (haven't played Patala in MP yet), and am set to win a MP game with Bandar that I'm currently in. Certainly a good player might counter any tactic, but everything here is viable in a MP game if deployed in the right situation. Nothing is unstoppable, but nobody engaging a properly played Bandar Log could describe them as anything other than powerful.

I disagree that Asparas should be avoided, they are perfect for exactly what I suggested - shoring up Markatas. If you're fighting forces with no ranged weapons (or if you lay down arrow fend) their awe + high defense gives them a surprising survivability (particularly if you add in something with a fear effect for support) for their cost while their standard effect removes the real weakness of the monkeys. Hint: troops with no range or using arrow fend is exactly when you want to be deploying your markatas anyway. If you're using destruction/iron bane already their kick is plenty effective - you can certainly use them by themselves with a bit of good mage support. True, gandaharvas can do the same thing better, but you can't really complain that Bandar has a hard time coming up with the gems they need, then refuse to use anything but the top shelf summons. Everything has an opportunity cost, once you spend more than "good enough" you're giving up more than you should in some other vector.

As to specific pretenders and scales, I try to avoid suggesting a specific build in my guides if possible, and leave as much up to your preference as possible while meeting the requirements for the strategies I suggest. Within what I suggest here you could go with the minimal paths I suggest and still get excellent scales (with sloth and heat), but any extra magic you take will be useful and you can go with straight 4's in every path by taking weak-but-not-crippling scales (you don't need a strong dominion score). Order is of course nice, magic 1 is usually a good idea for any nation, I generally lean towards death scales when none of your mages are old and you're unlikely to run into supply issues (lots of nature mages). My own preference is for the enchantress for the extra pearls, but you can't really go wrong with any of the rainbow chasises, so pick whichever one most appeals to you. You could certainly even go with something like a ghost king or master lich if the human pretenders don't appeal to you, though remember....opportunity costs.

Thanks for pointing out the Dakini Ano, I ment to mention them and forgot. Bandar Log and MA Mictlan are the only two non blood nations who can summon cost effective blood hunters. *particularly* if you should happen to find a blood magic bonus site while site searching with your pretender. Also, searching with a good rainbow mage obviously maximizes your opportunity of finding an indy mage who can bloodhunt.

[Gregstrom]

I didn't get it. Why don't Siddhas need lab for teleporting?
Did you mean mapmove 10?

The Siddha mapmove 10 is IIRC like the mapmove 10 some horrors get - it can move multiple underwater provinces if it has water breathing, for instance. It's sort of like a range-10 teleport spell in behaviour (apart from the bit where it happens in the movement phase instead of the magic phase).

PS: Baalz, can I link from my Lanka guide to this one? You explain what to do with monkey troops better than I can.

[hoo]

I disagree that Asparas should be avoided, they are perfect for exactly what I suggested - shoring up Markatas. True, gandaharvas can do the same thing better, but you can't really complain that Bandar has a hard time coming up with the gems they need, then refuse to use anything but the top shelf summons. Everything has an opportunity cost, once you spend more than "good enough" you're giving up more than you should in some other vector.

Doh, I'm completely wrong on Asparas and apologize. Dang. Sorry about that. at least I got I knew there was a 3 multiple in there.

Good points on the rainbow pretenders. I think earth 4 is still pretty key b/c the Gandhas rack up a lot of fatigue attacking twice. I've made an Enchantress rainbow as well but not in a real cutthroat MP game and had some success. I wish the BL had access to the archdruid which would be perfect for a stealth leader for the atavis plus nature gems. I think he'd be a no-brainer, but alas it's not to be.

3 other tidbits:

1) BL has the best scout in the game I believe (markata +50 stealth, 20 gold). I think BL probably has the best scouting capabilities for anyone in the game (easy access to astral projection/stone sphere too). So you should be able to identify weak pts for attack/research.
2) BL does pretty well against SCs at a pretty early age due to the easy curse/soul slay/horror mark. Lot of these spells dovetail nicely with the research to get celestial music.
3) While most discussion has been on conjurations and markatas, BL can opt for an alteration heavy start with good success.

[JimMorrison]

Well, with 1 Sloth you're starting with 68 resources, at 2 Sloth you start with 56 resources, and at 3 Sloth you start with a whopping 44 resources.

Let me know when you hit 160. :(

[Tichy]

Apsaras are 3 for 3 gems, so 1 gem a piece.

[Hadrian_II]

Well, with 1 Sloth you're starting with 68 resources, at 2 Sloth you start with 56 resources, and at 3 Sloth you start with a whopping 44 resources.

Let me know when you hit 160. :(

After you have enough adjacent provinces to the capital

[Baalz]

Asparas are 3 for 3, Gandhavas are 6 for 18...so they're 3 times as expensive. Quite a difference, particularly as Asparas are generally used in conjunction with other troops, while gandharvas are a big whackin stick nobody else can keep up with so you need to have critical mass of them. Sticking 9 Asparas in to give your markatas a spine is almost an order of magnitude cheaper than summoning 18 gandharvas to smash straight into your opponent's face.

[Baalz]

PS: Baalz, can I link from my Lanka guide to this one? You explain what to do with monkey troops better than I can.

Yes, of course.

[JimMorrison]

Well, with 1 Sloth you're starting with 68 resources, at 2 Sloth you start with 56 resources, and at 3 Sloth you start with a whopping 44 resources.

Let me know when you hit 160. :(

After you have enough adjacent provinces to the capital


Hey I'm just saying. I'm in a game right now without Sloth at all, and with all 5 adjacent territories, my cap gets a whopping 126 resources. I'm just so glad I'm not playing a nation that is dependent on capital only troops in any way.

Sloth kind of complicates your start when you are using elephants, more so than other strategies. Even when you hit 2 Sloth, you can only get 2 elephants out. You can have 5 ready to go on turn 3, but waiting until turn 3 is painful.

I was having a lot of fun with Bandar Log doing the W9/S9 bless (cheapest double bless they can get), but I expanded with the tigers, as 5 blessed tigers could take almost any indies without a single loss. But, I have become convinced that W9 isn't really the trick for these guys in the mid-late game. I do still think that it's a good idea to look long term at the White Ones as being worthy of a pretty good bless though. The jury is still out. :P And obviously if I, or someone else develops an overarching strategy for BL that is competitive with Baalz' build, it doesn't invalidate any of that, it's all down to playstyle. ;)

[Baalz]

Oh yeah, as I mentioned I like the white ones and I've seen them used very effectively. I guess in general I try to avoid trying to do something that somebody else does better, and while white ones are fairly good I don't think they compare well to the real top notch sacreds. Opportunity costs, and a real good blessing is expensive. I wouldn't argue with anybody who would base a strategy around them though.

[Dedas]

I would never ever go overboard with sloth no matter the nation. When people say that regular troops are worthless they are probably playing with sloth 3 and thus never getting enough of them.
I would recommend sloth 1, maybe 2 at the most, for BA.

[ano]

Baalz
I didn't really say I don't believe in what you described. All this is quite possile but you really need a lot of luck to win. Luck to find enough nature sites to summon Yakshas/Yakshinis (nature games are, IMO, one of the most valuaable and rather rare in addition to that), luck to have enough astral income or enough water to clam. Gems are the most obvious luck aspect but there're many others. Of course every nation needs luck, but the build you described seem more luck dependent than skill dependent to me and I really don't like being dependent on luck. It's just an opinion, nothing else. Also, I can't say for sure that my suggestions or thoughts are more viable as I didn't try them in the real game, I just think that relying on blood from the very beginning and planning your strategy around this, aiming for Dakinis as main thugs and using Conjuration summons as a support for them is much more reliable because with blood you only depend on magic site percent value, not luck in having stable gem income.

[Tichy]

Isn't W9 a bit of a waste, because you get it with the national BF enchantment?

[Omnirizon]

W9 bless is a waste with BL, and i find even a weak water bless arguable. On the face it looks good, because it buffs already high-ish defense scores. However I think that an E9 bless is more valuable for BL, and mixing W and E blesses is a little ineffecient becuase it is mixing two types of damage prevention. If you ever prevent damage from the extra defense, than the extra prot is just dead points. It is most efficient to just use the always useful extra prot.

Apsaras are MUCH less valuable for BL than for Kailasa, because BL should not take an Air bless since they don't need it. For Kailasa Apsaras are a backbone unit, even when Gandharvasa are available; simply because they are so cheap, very defense oriented, and provide another body for Celestial Music. Now, if you opt for the E9 bless (which I highly recommend), then that bless is just dead points on the Apsaras, even if you have Arrow Fend.

BL can focus totally on blesses that optimize the performance of Gandharvas, Siddhas, Rudras, and all mages. E9 for starters. S9 is a good choice, so is weak N. I prefer to avoid offensive blesses, because the sacreds are already so offense oriented. It is good to invest points in making them more robust. The above units are BL's most powerful, and are optimized with E9 blesses. Further, these units allow for the most efficient research strategies... I explain why in the next paragraph.

A W8 bless IS an option for BL, but to optimize it requires a certain research strategy. With it, BL could theoretically only research to Conj 3 for Apsaras, and lean on White Ones until it gets to Ench6 for Arrow Fend. Now it can unleash a mass of Apsaras with something like 19 Defense (once blesses) and Awe3; the Arrow Fend protects them from missile fire. Now shoot straight for Thau6, and you have 22 Def Awe3 Quickened Arrow Fended Apsaras. Do you see WHY Kailasa and BL are so bad-***? What other nation has a mid-game tool to match that? You wouldn't need to research higher in the Conj tree to find things to spend your pearls on with those. Also, you only NEED pearls, and every gem alchemizes into them on a 2:1 basis. You can really benefit from all gem incomes without needing to do lots of trading. But here's the catch... You need Conj6 Kinnaras to have commanders to cast the Arrow Fend, and you lose any benefit of this strategy (namely, the ability to research other trees than Conj early on). This said, you're better off with an E9 bless and shooting for Gandharvas. I think Apsaras are an absolutely bad-*** unit, just not for BL given their options; they are more suited for Kailasa's needs and blesses.

I prefer to avoid anything more than sloth-1, because the White Ones are a bit resource intensive. Since I like big bless strats, it is important that resources not limit the amount of sacreds I can produce. In fact, a high prod might be a good thing for BL... read on.

Turmoil/Luck is a hard choice. Gold is very useful for BL, but so are all gems since they all turn into pearls easily. If you opt for this route, than a high prod is a good choice. Why? It provides a little extra gold, but more importantly it allows you to focus on gold efficient troops; the ones that are resource intensive but more robust.

I personally find rainbows to be a dubious choice for BL becuase I like strong blesses and they also have access to a lot of summons that increase their diversity. strong W, A, E, S, and N are going to be reasonably easily available. The only thing they miss are death and fire. I'm willing to take a strong double bless and decent scales while losing out on death and fire.

[Baalz]

Baalz
I didn't really say I don't believe in what you described. All this is quite possile but you really need a lot of luck to win. Luck to find enough nature sites to summon Yakshas/Yakshinis (nature games are, IMO, one of the most valuaable and rather rare in addition to that), luck to have enough astral income or enough water to clam. Gems are the most obvious luck aspect but there're many others. Of course every nation needs luck, but the build you described seem more luck dependent than skill dependent to me and I really don't like being dependent on luck. It's just an opinion, nothing else. Also, I can't say for sure that my suggestions or thoughts are more viable as I didn't try them in the real game, I just think that relying on blood from the very beginning and planning your strategy around this, aiming for Dakinis as main thugs and using Conjuration summons as a support for them is much more reliable because with blood you only depend on magic site percent value, not luck in having stable gem income.

Hmmm, I don't know. I suppose if you were extremely unlucky you might not have the gems you need, but I haven't found this to be a problem in the games I played as they're very reasonably priced summons at 25 gems. You start out with nature income from your capital, and I find if you give site searching the priority it's due with this nation (high!) I generally have the gems to summon 3 or so as soon as they're researched, and even a very modest income at that point will let you summon one ever third turn or so. You can certainly put as many as you can get to use, but you don't strictly *need* a large amount. In a pinch just one per army will cover the critical stuff.

Granted, you could theoretically have terrible luck and just not land the sites you really want, but if you're aggressively site searching I don't think it's terribly pressing to worry about not landing astral, water, or nature! Yeah, you'll be hard pressed if you don't have a significant amount of any of these, but that's pretty unlikely. Additionally, part of the thesis for a rainbow pretender is that you can alchemize for what you need if you have the bad luck to not land it naturally.

If you're site searching with a rainbow pretender, and S/N Rishi, you will have a gem income, and it'll be skewed towards S/N. If you've got more clams in one game and more Yaksha in another it isn't a deal breaker, you just need a little flexibility. You could also worry that all the provinces you conquer have less than a thousand population, but it's probably not reasonable to design your nation expecting that.

That said, I fully agree that one of the benefits of blood is it's predictability - though you still have a different randomness on a turn to turn basis as to how many slaves you pull in.

[K]

Don't forget that while Bandar Log is chasing the research for Ghandarvas, they also get access to Akashic Record. I use it only for Mountain/Forests and other high frequency provinces and have not been disappointed, despite the fact that you have other things to spend Astral on.

I also favor the Nature bless and like Wooden Warriors for BL, so the Mother Oak is almost always mine. That seems to keep a steady supply of summonable mages.

[Olive]

I've tried a game with a E4/N4 bless :

Ancient Lich, imprisoned, dom7.
A2 E4 D6 N4 B2 ( half rainbow ;) )
Ord 3 - Prod 1 - Heat 3 - Gro 3 - Misf 2 - Mag 1.

Pretty decent for early expansion imho, mixing elephants and blessed white ones, more for the morale than their battle skills, elephants having usually won the battle before the white ones have reached the frontline.

But I've really big issues with misfortune. I lose a lot of provinces with event attacks. And investing in PD doesn't help, 20 doesn't seem more efficient than 1. What would you cut to reduce misfortune ?

Order is required to recruit the expensive elephants.
Prod is also needed imho ( 17 res. for white ones, 20 for elephants, 23 for bowmen ).
Growth : I never feel comfortable with death, and growth 3 is good for an eventual late game blood economy.
Magic is not an option, you don't have early Air / Death / Fire gem income or mages to forge research boosters and all the astral mages may cast spells with MR check.

What would you change ?
Turmoil 1 Sloth 1 Luck 3 maybe ?

[Dragar]

I don't like death either, but I wouldn't say growth 3 is essential. If you trim it back to 1 you can remove misfortunate altogether

[Olive]

I tried that, game is much more quiet. And I got cool Yashka / Yashkini heroes. Thanks. I gonna keep those scales. :)

[Edi]

I tried that, game is much more quiet. And I got cool Yashka / Yashkini heroes. Thanks. I gonna keep those scales. :)
You're playing with Worthy Heroes on, as there are no monkey nation heroes in the vanilla game except Devasura the Fallen and the longdead raja (Lanka).

[mathusalem]

with Worthy heroes, I like an oracle S9 E9, turmoil 3 sloth 2 Heat 3 luck 3 magic 3

[Tifone]

And you are actually able to really buy units with that? :shock:

[mathusalem]

some Elephant for early expansion + Whites Ones
I rush for Paralyse (Thau4) and Conjuration-> I summon a lot

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks for these and your other guides, Baalz!-particularly Marverni-they've really helped me make balancing decisions with my Aksum mod. Infact, removing Astral magic from Aksum was entirely a result of reading Marverni, and considering the potential of Teleport (Aksum is very movement-oriented in it's balancing).

[Epaminondas]

This is slightly off-topic but not completely. How would you guys consider Ghandarvas as a recruitable sacred for either/both Kailasa or Bandar Log?

First, would they be too powerful as a recruitable? I don't see them as overpowering in EA, but I wonder what you guys would think--as I find Kailasa a rather frustrating nation to play as is.

Second, how would they be priced, if recruitable? I think 120g or so is fine, cheaper than the premier sacreds like Niefel Giants, but again, I am open to suggestions.

[Epaminondas]

Also, why is Devala so damn expensive? I find the unit so worthless vis-a-vis Rudra. Heck, I'd rather build Siddhas--even for the same price!

[AreaOfEffect]

W9 bless is a waste with BL...

All quickness effects stack. That includes the quickness from the heroic ability. I've got a turn file here with a Jotun Skratti prophet casting Quickness, blessed with water 9, and has the Quickness heroic ability. The proof is that he can attack three different squares in the same round with just his claws. So to say it is a waste is to assume that double quickness is somehow redundant when it isn't. Running on the other hand is a different story.

As for this guide. I like it very much and I'm sure I understand what your trying to say. The point is that you don't need a huge bless, or blood magic, or any of the other tired old schemes to be a powerful force as Bandar Log. I'm particularly glad you made an effort to even make monkey PD sound scary when backed by the right magic spells.

I say this so that everyone else can maybe understand. As it was once said by Gandalf Parker, everyone has their own style which is the best way for them to play. A style is generally, in-of-itself, not superior to other styles. People who gravitate to rainbow gods or SCs just have an affinity to them and through that affinity understand better how to utilize them. Some people understand bless strategies in a way that makes it suitable for them to always utilize sacred units. Baalz has tried his best to not let the strategies he presents get in the way of a person's style. The main point is that you see potential where you may have missed it before. It also has a really cool theme of kicking you butt with "crappy dudes". So please enjoy it for what it is.

Thanks Baalz.

[JimMorrison]

W9 bless is a waste with BL...

All quickness effects stack. That includes the quickness from the heroic ability. I've got a turn file here with a Jotun Skratti prophet casting Quickness, blessed with water 9, and has the Quickness heroic ability. The proof is that he can attack three different squares in the same round with just his claws. So to say it is a waste is to assume that double quickness is somehow redundant when it isn't. Running on the other hand is a different story.


Heroic Quickness is multiplicative with other Quickness. However, W9 bless is overwritten by both item and spell Quickness. I was told this very emphatically, so I did my own test to be sure, and it is. W1 mage with W9 bless, cast Blessing he goes to 150% of AP, then cast Personal Quickness, and he goes to 200%.

So since Heroic starts at +50% (or rather x150%), then if you are Quickened from spell or item, you are at 200%, x1.5 = 300% from the get go. It's awesome. ;)

[Kristoffer O]

This is slightly off-topic but not completely. How would you guys consider Ghandarvas as a recruitable sacred for either/both Kailasa or Bandar Log?

First, would they be too powerful as a recruitable? I don't see them as overpowering in EA, but I wonder what you guys would think--as I find Kailasa a rather frustrating nation to play as is.

Second, how would they be priced, if recruitable? I think 120g or so is fine, cheaper than the premier sacreds like Niefel Giants, but again, I am open to suggestions.

Compare them to tiger riders. Would you rather have One ghandarva or two tiger riders after your second turn? If so they should be more expensive than the tiger rider. Perhaps not double, since it is easier to kill one than two with single strikes, but still substantially more expensive. If you prefer rate the ghandarva three times as efficient as the tiger rider you might price them two to three times as expensive.

Since ghandarvas are midgame summons they they do not fit smoothly into the recruitment system. If you do not like high gold cost you might give them an increased resource cost.

Basic way of balancing: how much would I buy this unit instead of other units. As long as you prefer to buy the ghandarva they are too cheap.
When the opportunity cost is too high for you to buy them there are still many niche uses for them, and you are close to right about pricing. Unless you want them to be a ghandarva nation, that is.

---
The Devala is costly because she increases your dominion like the juggernaut and also the magic scale where she stays (unless I'm mistaken).

[Epaminondas]

This is slightly off-topic but not completely. How would you guys consider Ghandarvas as a recruitable sacred for either/both Kailasa or Bandar Log?

First, would they be too powerful as a recruitable? I don't see them as overpowering in EA, but I wonder what you guys would think--as I find Kailasa a rather frustrating nation to play as is.

Second, how would they be priced, if recruitable? I think 120g or so is fine, cheaper than the premier sacreds like Niefel Giants, but again, I am open to suggestions.

Compare them to tiger riders. Would you rather have One ghandarva or two tiger riders after your second turn? If so they should be more expensive than the tiger rider. Perhaps not double, since it is easier to kill one than two with single strikes, but still substantially more expensive. If you prefer rate the ghandarva three times as efficient as the tiger rider you might price them two to three times as expensive.

Since ghandarvas are midgame summons they they do not fit smoothly into the recruitment system. If you do not like high gold cost you might give them an increased resource cost.

Basic way of balancing: how much would I buy this unit instead of other units. As long as you prefer to buy the ghandarva they are too cheap.
When the opportunity cost is too high for you to buy them there are still many niche uses for them, and you are close to right about pricing. Unless you want them to be a ghandarva nation, that is.

---
The Devala is costly because she increases your dominion like the juggernaut and also the magic scale where she stays (unless I'm mistaken).

Kristoffer,

Thanks for your comments. (As an aside, it's refreshing to have a game developer frequently interact with the player community. In fact' it's unprecedented among at least the games I play). My response:

1) I actually think a lot of the sacred cavalry in the game is overpriced, and the Tiger Riders for Bandar Log are no exception. So I am not sure Ghandarvas ought to be priced with the Tiger Riders as comparison point.

The other issue is whether a unit ought to be priced in comparison with units of its own nation at all. Wouldn't it make more sense to price them against comparable units of other nations? Of course, the problem is that--as you imply--there aren't too many peer units for Ghandarvas. I don't think it's quite as nasty as the uber-sacreds like Niefel Giants or the Hinnom/Ashdod ones; but it's certainly nastier than the glorified human or human-level units that comprise many sacreds.

Anyways, what I did was slightly boost its stats and price it at 125g and the default resource cost. Let's see how it works. I've also given Ti'en Ch'i Celestial Soldiers as a recruitable, as well as giving Mictlan Jade Serpents. They are priced at 125g (Celestial Soldiers were slightly boosted as well), and 150, respectively.

The reason I gave several nations medium-level summons as recruitables was because I felt that national units--with notable exceptions like the giant sacreds--quickly become out-dated in mid- and late- game, and that was one of the game deficiencies (to my eyes) that I wanted to address.

2. I did not realize that Devalas change scales; that would partly explain the cost.

Perhaps our approach to game developers ought to be what the Christian fathers demanded of their flock: Believe, rather than question! :)

[Kristoffer O]

> The other issue is whether a unit ought to be priced in comparison with units of its own nation at all.

Yes, you must. Otherwise units of your nation will be obsolete (not that there are not obsolete units in dom3 :) , but it is good to keep the numbers down). Nations are not balanced vs other nations based on the cost of the most popular recruit, they are balanced as a whole.

So try to keep units relatively balanced within the nation and if they are too expensive compared to other nations, lower the cost of all units of the nation. This way you get the nation internally balanced, which is preferable.

[JimMorrison]

In case you return to this thread once more KO, I'd like to second the comment that sacred cavalry are, on the whole, a tad too pricey for what you get. It seems that perhaps there is just a multiplier being applied to cost, and while that multiplier is correctly applied to infantry, cavalry with their higher initial costs and higher initial stats do not gain any greater additional benefit from the bless than infantry do. Most blesses do not magnify a units power, but simply add to it.

So my point being, I think Tiger Riders are a bit high priced. I did a number of tests on different bless builds with Bandar Log, and by and large none of them are effective at early growth as the tried and true elephants. This just seems a little sad to me, that dual blessed tigers can't beat the ele. Sure, they are superior in some ways, but with no bless at all, there's almost no point whatsoever in purchasing them over elephants.

I think that perhaps your argument of how many of what units you would value more, breaks down a bit when you add the distinction of capital only. Capital only troops perhaps deserve to be just a little more cost effective, to encourage you to make use of them in your armies as you can afford to. Otherwise people will gravitate towards more easily replaced units to fill that particular niche.

On the other hand, I do think that recruitable Gandharvas may be a bit much. Though mid game summons like that might not be too bad with high resource cost, so that it's not worth buying them early on when you can't get a good squad together in any timeframe. Boosting gold cost may make them unattractive at all points of the game, especially if you are modding the summoned unit rather than copying it - as that will mean that summoned units gain the same high upkeep costs.


One other thing this made me think of (dear god, does he ever stop??), was that looking at what people will pay in gold for a particular summonable unit, brings into stark contrast the poor returns that you get from alchemizing. It seems people value units in the range of 30-50g per gem or more in some cases. Just makes me think that the pace of the game could be kept in check a bit if people had more incentive to alchemize gems for cash, rather than saving for more SCs. :p

[Tifone]

Well maybe... and I say maybe... Tiger Riders are like one of the many other sacreds not worthy of an high bless so, if they're so pricey... ^^

Like many others, they may be one unit which you buy a couple sometimes to add to your troops (let's say, to go with elephants to help their morale) and which may have nice qualities with the many little blesses coming i.e. by Baalz's strategy, with a rainbow pretender.

It doesn't sound so strange to me ^^ Many nations are not worthy for an high-bless strategy for their sacred units being having small survivability, or small map-movement... in this case, it's just their small cost-efficiency ^^ I think we can live with it - Bandar Log doesn't work too well with a bless strategy, or better, it doesn't work better than if it goes with just elephants ^^

May I be saying something stupid, just tell me I'm not getting offended ^^

[Kuritza]

Regarding luck/skill... skill wont make you win with Bandar Log, they just lack the tools to win with what they are guaranteed to have. Bad combat magic, terrible troops, inability to craft many important items etc.
Luck isnt much better, because even if you are lucky, you wont have enough nature gems for everything. Clams, thug items, yakshas (whole strategy seems to be based around these) - too many uses for your nature gems, which are rarely abudant.
Which sums up why Bandar Log doesnt win games.

[JimMorrison]

Well maybe... and I say maybe... Tiger Riders are like one of the many other sacreds not worthy of an high bless so, if they're so pricey... ^^

Well the Tigers have niche usefulness (and are still fairly effective units where the elephants outshine them - but they're 100g whether one calls them worthy of a bless or not. I think they are (not by themselves, but since you bless White Ones as well, and have many sacred summonables), but if they are worthy of a bless but just not quite worth the cost, then they're not going to be more cost effective as units without that bless. :p

I rather like the White Ones themselves. They're low on the ladder of the MA sacreds I think, but they're cheap and plentiful, so they add good value to the use of a bless.

But as KO was saying, if you can buy 4 White Ones for every Tiger Rider, would you? A squad of 20 White Ones, vs 5 Tigers. 90% of the time you're going to want to buy the White Ones. Which is sort of a shame - I'd like to see people use cap only sacreds a bit more often, as they're usually very distinctive and flavorful units.

[Endoperez]

Regarding luck/skill... skill wont make you win with Bandar Log, they just lack the tools to win with what they are guaranteed to have. Bad combat magic, terrible troops, inability to craft many important items etc.
Clams, thug items, yakshas(whole strategy seems to be based around these) - too many uses for your nature gems, which are rarely abudant.

So you're saying that Bandar Log would need both skill and luck to succeed, because neither are good enough on their own? That's true of most nations.

[Kuritza]

So you are saying that most nations are equal in power?

I have heard claims that nations power matters little because its skill that makes you win. But strangely, these who claim such things tend to play extremly strong nations, such as Mictlan and LA Rlyeh. :)
If nations arent equal in power, then least powerful nations need most luck and skill. And thats true for Bandar Log.

[Baalz]

Regarding luck/skill... skill wont make you win with Bandar Log, they just lack the tools to win with what they are guaranteed to have. Bad combat magic, terrible troops, inability to craft many important items etc.
Luck isnt much better, because even if you are lucky, you wont have enough nature gems for everything. Clams, thug items, yakshas (whole strategy seems to be based around these) - too many uses for your nature gems, which are rarely abudant.
Which sums up why Bandar Log doesnt win games.

I think this is quite the mischaracterization. As I stressed above, if you insist on only using the "best" stuff - aka the most expensive, then you certainly have a point that you can have trouble coming up with the gems you need. If you reread my guide though, the point I didn't explicitly say (and apparently isn't clear to several people) is that the ability to use the less expensive units effectively is the finesse that is required to play Bandar effectively.

If it was as easy as blasting straight for gandarvas, summoning a ton of them, buffing them with every spell imaginable then marching straight towards your oppenent's capital while dozens of fully kitted Yaksha thugs grabbed every other province along the way then I dare say it wouldn't require much finesse at all. I give several examples above of ways to be very effective with very few gems if you're clever enough to use the right tool for the right job. Much of what I discussed above can be perfectly devastating with no more than the gem income you get from your capital. Again, to repeat what I said you'll put every gem to good use, but at the end of the day your most critical needs can be met by a couple Yakasha, a Kinnara, several Rishi, and the proper research.

IMO, the reason Bandar often does poorly is because people don't want to use the 'crappy' stuff, they only want uber double sacreds and SCs - which are priced accordingly. That's fine, but that's not gonna work with Bandar. You have to use your Asparas when in makes sense rather than Gandharvas. You've got to leverage your markatas against the super expensive stuff your neighbor insists is the only thing worth using. You've got to use your stealth archers to catch people with unexpected arrow volleys. You've got to compensate for your low morale with good battlefield tactics. You've got to use iron bane and destruction to even out the field on the protection front. Trying to wield the Bandar army like a blunt instrument is going to get you cut to pieces - which is why that happens a lot.

Just like any nation, the more gems you get the better off you are by a good margin. Just like any nation if you have *no* gems by mid game, you're pretty much screwed. It's absolutely not the case though that the only way to win with Bandar is to pray you get an abnormally large supply of gems. You just have to be willing to use what you've got and what you can afford.

Ps. Another thing I wanted to restress is that almost all your nature gems should go to Yakshas. One or two Yakshini for clam forging (if that's appropriate for your gem income), then everything else straight into Yakshas. You don't want to forge any nature items for them. They've got awe, so skip the vine shield. They've got good reinvig, so skip those items. They've already got regen, so skip that as well. If you don't spend your nature gems on anything but Yakshas, and you've made site searching a priority you absolutely shouldn't have any trouble summoning one every 2-3 turns by mid game even if you're forging a clam (with a hammer!) every turn.

[Endoperez]

So you are saying that most nations are equal in power?

I wasn't trying to say anything, but trying to understand what you had meant. Most nations aren't grossly imbalanced, in either direction, and I doubt Bandar Log is too far down, personally.

On your original post, the tone suggested that you tried to belittle Bandar, but the arguments weren't spesific to them. I tried to point that out.

[Edratman]

I agree with Endoperez and Baalz.

What they are saying is that it isn't a stretch to play Bandar and win in MP. They can't can't be played using a strategy of "recruit and smash mouth", but they have the resources available to play with any nation if you know what you are doing.

That is the purpose of Baalz guide. It is not to convince you that Bandar is the absolute easiest, best nation.

[Epaminondas]

In case you return to this thread once more KO, I'd like to second the comment that sacred cavalry are, on the whole, a tad too pricey for what you get. It seems that perhaps there is just a multiplier being applied to cost, and while that multiplier is correctly applied to infantry, cavalry with their higher initial costs and higher initial stats do not gain any greater additional benefit from the bless than infantry do. Most blesses do not magnify a units power, but simply add to it.

So my point being, I think Tiger Riders are a bit high priced. I did a number of tests on different bless builds with Bandar Log, and by and large none of them are effective at early growth as the tried and true elephants. This just seems a little sad to me, that dual blessed tigers can't beat the ele. Sure, they are superior in some ways, but with no bless at all, there's almost no point whatsoever in purchasing them over elephants.

I think that perhaps your argument of how many of what units you would value more, breaks down a bit when you add the distinction of capital only. Capital only troops perhaps deserve to be just a little more cost effective, to encourage you to make use of them in your armies as you can afford to. Otherwise people will gravitate towards more easily replaced units to fill that particular niche.

On the other hand, I do think that recruitable Gandharvas may be a bit much. Though mid game summons like that might not be too bad with high resource cost, so that it's not worth buying them early on when you can't get a good squad together in any timeframe. Boosting gold cost may make them unattractive at all points of the game, especially if you are modding the summoned unit rather than copying it - as that will mean that summoned units gain the same high upkeep costs.


One other thing this made me think of (dear god, does he ever stop??), was that looking at what people will pay in gold for a particular summonable unit, brings into stark contrast the poor returns that you get from alchemizing. It seems people value units in the range of 30-50g per gem or more in some cases. Just makes me think that the pace of the game could be kept in check a bit if people had more incentive to alchemize gems for cash, rather than saving for more SCs. :p

1. You make an excellent point about the need for capital-only troops to be cheaper, because they will comprise only a small portion of your military.

As for Tiger Riders in particular, what do you think is a fair price for them in comparison to the Elephants? I've re-priced them to 85 from 100. The problem with them was that they were priced too high even within the context of the high price of cavalry in Dominions III in general. For instance, I did not see them as 30-35 percent more efficient than Androphags or Red Guards. They are likely the most over-costed sacred in the game, along with the Wind Riders.

2.Why would recruitable Ghandarvas be too much? I've ran a few tests with them on Gandalf's map, and they get stomped by both Niefel Giants and either the Hinnom or Ashdod giants on battles of 2 v 3 manpower ratio (that is, assuming Ghandarvas are priced at 100 to 150 for the giants). Sure, they are powerful; but they are not over-powering. If Niefel Giants were a summonable, they would be like a level 7-8 summon, no?

[Epaminondas]

> The other issue is whether a unit ought to be priced in comparison with units of its own nation at all.

Yes, you must. Otherwise units of your nation will be obsolete (not that there are not obsolete units in dom3 :) , but it is good to keep the numbers down). Nations are not balanced vs other nations based on the cost of the most popular recruit, they are balanced as a whole.

So try to keep units relatively balanced within the nation and if they are too expensive compared to other nations, lower the cost of all units of the nation. This way you get the nation internally balanced, which is preferable.

Ok, you've made me see the other side of the coin. So I suppose that's why normal Elephants and armored Elephants are priced the same. So I suppose the right way to evaluate unit price is to compare them to both the nation's own units and foreign peer units? :)

[AreaOfEffect]

It is always important to avoid direct comparisons of vastly different units, such as elephants and tiger riders. I would not hesitate to choose elephants for initial expansion, but believe me, when it comes to war I would pick the tiger riders first. This goes double when I'm at war with a nation that uses fear effects or forces MR checks with their spells. This goes triple when I'm fighting Ry'leh. (Though I'd bring an elephant anyhow to absorb a few spells.)

Making direct comparisons between gandharvas and niefel giants is also not a fair comparison. Sacred units tend to have naturally higher moral scores. You put the gandharva at a disadvantage when putting them up against another sacred because their awe becomes almost irrelevant. The gandharvas also have a standard and infantry average move speed, which means they are army friendly and operate best by elevating your regulars. Niefel Giants operate best on their own. Niefel giants are also priced in comparison to giants, meaning they absorb the benefits of being a giant as a national advantage.

Back to what KO is saying, it is important to compare units of a nation to each other and not other nations. Otherwise you discount national weaknesses and strengths. If you compared every infantry unit to Mictlan's infantry then you would conclude that all solidly average units should be priced as 9 gold and not 10. This would cause you to completely miss the fact that Mictlan's national advantage is cheap humans soldiers. Bandar Log has a national disadvantage, which is that all of their units are animals. Give them a unit that isn't an animal, but rather a magic being, and you must account for it.

I don't like gandharvas as a national unit because I think it is unthematic. The point of Bandar Log is that the apes have come to stand on their own. It is the only ape nation that rules itself. The summons imply that the celestial beings now answer to them, not the other way around. If gandharvas are around and are revered by the monkeys then it would logically imply that a gandharva-like commander would naturally follow. Though a faction with gandharva-like commanders and sacreds fighting along side apes already exists, it's called Kailasa.

[Epaminondas]

AreaofEffect,

If that post was directed to me, you are already preaching to the (half-) converted. I acknowledged as much in my response to Kristoffer. He introduced an angle I did not sufficiently consider before.

Nonetheless, if you are trying to go to an immoderate lengths with the argument and simply say that cross-national comparisons ought not be made, period--well, then, I can't agree.

[Kuritza]

>> Again, to repeat what I said you'll put every gem to good use, but at the end of the day your most critical needs can be met by a couple Yakasha, a Kinnara, several Rishi, and the proper research.

A couple of Yakshas is already very expensive. What does 'a couple' mean? 3 of them is 75 nature gems already. Dont forge anything out of nature? Clams are nature, for starters. And how are you going to equip your thugs (kinnaras?) without nature, then? Not trying to say its impossible, just not sure how to do it as a Bandar Log.

Finesse when using Bandar troops is great, but what happens when your opponent, who has got real troops, uses it too? He's got better tools, so if he's as skilled as you are... you're in trouble.

[Kristoffer O]

>JM> In case you return to this thread once more KO, I'd like to second the comment that sacred cavalry are, on the whole, a tad too pricey for what you get. It seems that perhaps there is just a multiplier being applied to cost, and while that multiplier is correctly applied to infantry, cavalry with their higher initial costs and higher initial stats do not gain any greater additional benefit from the bless than infantry do. Most blesses do not magnify a units power, but simply add to it.

No multiplier. Just a guess from my side. More powerful units have less educated guesses. Benefits from defense and prot are generally more useful when the initial value is high.

> So my point being, I think Tiger Riders are a bit high priced. I did a number of tests on different bless builds with Bandar Log, and by and large none of them are effective at early growth as the tried and true elephants. This just seems a little sad to me, that dual blessed tigers can't beat the ele. Sure, they are superior in some ways, but with no bless at all, there's almost no point whatsoever in purchasing them over elephants.

Might be true. Might be more of an elephant problem though.

> I think that perhaps your argument of how many of what units you would value more, breaks down a bit when you add the distinction of capital only. Capital only troops perhaps deserve to be just a little more cost effective, to encourage you to make use of them in your armies as you can afford to. Otherwise people will gravitate towards more easily replaced units to fill that particular niche.

True.

> On the other hand, I do think that recruitable Gandharvas may be a bit much. Though mid game summons like that might not be too bad with high resource cost, so that it's not worth buying them early on when you can't get a good squad together in any timeframe. Boosting gold cost may make them unattractive at all points of the game, especially if you are modding the summoned unit rather than copying it - as that will mean that summoned units gain the same high upkeep costs.

> One other thing this made me think of (dear god, does he ever stop??), was that looking at what people will pay in gold for a particular summonable unit, brings into stark contrast the poor returns that you get from alchemizing. It seems people value units in the range of 30-50g per gem or more in some cases. Just makes me think that the pace of the game could be kept in check a bit if people had more incentive to alchemize gems for cash, rather than saving for more SCs. :p

It would lead to faster research and more castles. I have not really thought about the consequences though. I mostly view alchemy as a last resort/niche use.

>Epaminondas> Ok, you've made me see the other side of the coin. So I suppose that's why normal Elephants and armored Elephants are priced the same. So I suppose the right way to evaluate unit price is to compare them to both the nation's own units and foreign peer units?

Thats nice! Yep!

[AreaOfEffect]

AreaofEffect,

If that post was directed to me, you are already preaching to the (half-) converted. I acknowledged as much in my response to Kristoffer. He introduced an angle I did not sufficiently consider before.

Nonetheless, if you are trying to go to an immoderate lengths with the argument and simply say that cross-national comparisons ought not be made, period--well, then, I can't agree.

Don't get me wrong. I am not against making comparisons between nations in general. Nation-to-nation comparisons are always good in my book. What I'm saying is that unit-to-unit comparisons aren't very helpful. Also note that I feel even more strongly about this when the two units being compared fill completely different niches. Comparing a size 6 trampler to a sacred mounted unit and a standard bearer with awe against an ice giant are rather drastic comparisons to make.

My opinion is that you should make comparisons for the sake of game balance. However, those comparisons should be made by taking in the nation as a whole. Regular units, sacred units, commanders, province defense, priest power, magic paths, starting gems, pretender selection, national spells, extra dominion effects, castle types, and temple costs all have to be considered. It's not an easy comparison to make.

The purpose in the post is to express my concern that some comparisons were being made rather hastily and incorrectly. That comparisons were being made in a manner that didn't reveal much insight.

I'm glad you are half converted on this issue. I guess that means that I don't have much else to say. I just wanted to be clear that nation-to-nation comparisons are fine, though doomed to be skewed by personal opinion. Nothings perfect.

[JimMorrison]

Well AOE, perhaps I misspoke a bit, as I didn't mean to make a strictly direct comparison. I was mostly just trying to show how unless you are absolutely rolling in cash you can't spend, the tigers generally end up not being not entirely cost effective.

And really, I did not just compare them to elephants. I also compared them to White Ones. Unfortunately, Bandar Log has no other cavalry, certainly no other sacred cavalry, so what would be a better unit to compare to? :p I compared them to the other unit with a similar cost, and to the other sacred unit, I think that's all I could do, since we all seemed to agree it's not right to compare them to Oiorpata, for example. ;)

I just hope that KO's agreement of my point on cost, wasn't a euphemistic, philosophical agreement. I will cross my fingers that we see a cost reduction of capital only units (not commanders) in the next patch - to encourage people to use their special national units more frequently.

<3

[Omnirizon]

Regarding luck/skill... skill wont make you win with Bandar Log, they just lack the tools to win with what they are guaranteed to have. Bad combat magic, terrible troops, inability to craft many important items etc.
Luck isnt much better, because even if you are lucky, you wont have enough nature gems for everything. Clams, thug items, yakshas (whole strategy seems to be based around these) - too many uses for your nature gems, which are rarely abudant.
Which sums up why Bandar Log doesnt win games.

Not to wax poetic... but...

Bandar Log and Kailasa are nations of finesse and elegance. They are ineffably powerful, and infinitely fragile. Most people don't have the touch (I didn't say skill) to play them, and they don't understand them; the range and contradiction between comments regarding the nation seen in this thread alone will attest to that.

They take zen and laser-like focus to play (I didn't say luck or skill, though both are factors).

They also take patience, and there is more micro-management involved; what to summon where to summon how to mix...

They take foresight, caution, and planning... what enemy might I face in the next twelve turns, what spells are top priority for that enemy, what does my army need to look like, where does my army need to be, how many commanders and priests do I need and where to I need them. These are the vital questions for this nation, yet surprisingly these are not always the general vital questions most people are thinking about. Most nations don't require careful foresight regarding leadership that this nation does, so people take leadership and availability for granted, and then fall flat when the lack of leadership logistics immobilizes a nation that counts mobility and flexibility among its primary strengths.

This is not a press the gas and GO GO GO nation. They take deliberate but deft maneuvering. This nation is neither a monster truck, nor a drag racer, yet that is the play paradigm most people will approach the nations with; no wonder most people fail with this one. They are kind of like mario kart, where too much gas off the line is just as bad as too little, but hit it just right and you just take off; most people are not used to thinking with that kind of vision in Dominions. This nation has heavy logistical requirements, and you have to think turns ahead; maximizing speed through one turn may actually result in a poor position for another, with a net loss of overall speed (still with the racing metaphor). And as always, sometimes your better hanging behind, making a plan, and stuffing a red turtle shell up number one's ***.

[Trumanator]

^ Best gaming analogy I've ever heard!! :laugh:

[Kuritza]

This is not a press the gas and GO GO GO nation. They take deliberate but deft maneuvering. This nation is neither a monster truck, nor a drag racer, yet that is the play paradigm most people will approach the nations with; no wonder most people fail with this one. They are kind of like mario kart, where too much gas off the line is just as bad as too little, but hit it just right and you just take off; most people are not used to thinking with that kind of vision in Dominions. This nation has heavy logistical requirements, and you have to think turns ahead; maximizing speed through one turn may actually result in a poor position for another, with a net loss of overall speed (still with the racing metaphor). And as always, sometimes your better hanging behind, making a plan, and stuffing a red turtle shell up number one's ***.

Thats good and true, but so far now 'most' players fail with this nation; all of them do. Which really makes me think that this nation is a little bit toooooooo far on the 'elegance' side and too thin on the 'power' side.
Elegant apes are too much in my opinion anyway.

[Lingchih]

As a Texan, I like the use of "yep" in this thread

[Omnirizon]

This is not a press the gas and GO GO GO nation. They take deliberate but deft maneuvering. This nation is neither a monster truck, nor a drag racer, yet that is the play paradigm most people will approach the nations with; no wonder most people fail with this one. They are kind of like mario kart, where too much gas off the line is just as bad as too little, but hit it just right and you just take off; most people are not used to thinking with that kind of vision in Dominions. This nation has heavy logistical requirements, and you have to think turns ahead; maximizing speed through one turn may actually result in a poor position for another, with a net loss of overall speed (still with the racing metaphor). And as always, sometimes your better hanging behind, making a plan, and stuffing a red turtle shell up number one's ***.

Thats good and true, but so far now 'most' players fail with this nation; all of them do. Which really makes me think that this nation is a little bit toooooooo far on the 'elegance' side and too thin on the 'power' side.
Elegant apes are too much in my opinion anyway.

The fact that I never mentioned apes or monkeys but you still interpreted my post as talking about apes demonstrates the problem players have when approaching Bandar Log. The problem is most severe for them because they are the 'monkiest' of all monkey nations, whereas with Kail and Patala it is obvious that they are supposed to be support.

How is it that Gandharvas are the premier mid-game unit in many peoples opinions (and at least a first-order mid-game unit in most's minds)... and BL has terrible units? and apparently 'not real' units? how are they thin on power? You misread my musings on elegance as something exclusive to power, when I was saying that elegance IS power for this nation. And BL is the _best_ setup to use these units, much more so than Kailasa.

How are Siddhas the essence of mobility: "can be (almost) anywhere at anytime with (almost) no conditionals. bringing divine blesses and really good battle magic OR thug-ability", and BL has no combat magic? ("Hell, I can even jump into the middle of your empire, then jump back out to a border skirmish, then to my own empire to defend or recapture a raided province, then back into the middle of your empire" says the Siddha that pops into your mind, then back out again as easily as it arrived). I mean, once you've got these guys, the massive logistical problems that are, in fact, BL and Kail's main challenge is solved. And once again, BL is better situated to use Siddhas and higher end summons compared to Kailasa

That's only the tip of the Kail/BL toolbox...
and what other nation has that _type_ of toolbox?

People don't think of BL as a nation that must depend on its summons. They see Kail = Celestial summons and BL = Monkeys, and this is why Kailasa has had victories before BL.

As far as the track record goes... well... Kailasa had their FIRST victory only two months ago, and then their second right after that, two weeks ago. They went from off the bottom to average in a couple of months, and Dominions has been out for two years now.

As people are realizing where the strengths lie and how to unlock them, they will start to win. BL is a very similar nation to Kail, and perhaps almost more powerful (maybe, its a hard call). We will see victories soon...

[Kuritza]

Kailasa has very good recruitable mages and better sacreds. This guide describes heavy usage of summons which are recruitable in Kailiasa, and Kailasa has won two games recently. Coincidence? :)
Also, how Bandar Log is 'better' at using its troops than Kailasa when it needs to summon support mages instead of just recruiting them is beyond my understanding.

Ghandarvas are a decend mid-game unit, and?.. Your recruitable troops are still terrible. Some rather expensive summons dont make your army shine.
Siddhas, a high-end summon, can offer you air magic to cast some essential spells like arrow fend, not to spam combat spells. Two or even three thunder strikes arent that big by the time you can summon siddhas.
Once again, I'm completely puzzled how Bandar Log is better suited for using Siddhas.
I agree that Bandar Log depend on their summons... because summons are the only good thing about Bandar Log. And Kailasa has some of them as recruitable troops.

[konming]

After playing my first ever Bandar game (SP or MP), I must say they have potential but serious weakness.

Typically Bandars are played with either good bless or good scale. Good bless is much weaker for Bandar than for Kailasa, since Bandar's sacred is not nearly as powerful as Kailasa. While Kailasa's sacred has some obvious weakness, it can be mitigated with bless. I have not seen anyone pointing out a great way to bless white ones. Sure with the right bless they smash indies quick, but elephants are just as quick against indies. Against decent human player, who uses arrows, low level evocations,heavily armored troops and so on, they are at disadvantage against most of the middle age nations.

Now about their mages. First, many of their summoned mages cost money to maintain. This is bad after paying 20N, you now have to pay 12G per month for a mage. Second, summons are less numerous than recruits. Can you get as many Yakasha as in Kailasa? And nature gems have many great use, like GOR and GOH. So if you use all your nature gems on summons, you lose out in other important area. Third, all their mages require lab+temple to recruit, wasting lots of money plus valuable time on your summoned mages, since none of your recruited mages is priest.

And there is their PD. Even backed up by Yakasha casting destruction (shouldn't he have better things to do?), 20 PD would be hard pressed to stop a similar cost invasion force. Against small raiding forces, esp. stealth ones, you have pratically no way to counter.

Then there is this ridiculous animal tag on all their troops and commanders. For god's sake, how can an almost transcend rishi be an animal where lowly peasants are "human"? In game term, it make sieging and defending against siege pointless for Bandar. You better recruit a lot of indies if you want to take any castle. And what happened to yogi's 7 morale? Even indy militias are better motivated. Oh, and what's the reason for guru's 2 combat movement? Since only immobile units (like a fountain) has combat movement of 2, are gurus made of stone?

Bandar do have potential in their summon department. But relying only on summon against others who can both recruit powerful mages and troops as well as summon, will not get you very far.

[sum1lost]

I'd say that blesses can be incredibly valuable in BL's late game, simply because their summons are almost always sacred.

[JimMorrison]

Then there is this ridiculous animal tag on all their troops and commanders. For god's sake, how can an almost transcend rishi be an animal where lowly peasants are "human"? In game term, it make sieging and defending against siege pointless for Bandar. You better recruit a lot of indies if you want to take any castle.


There is a glaring lack of understanding on this siege issue, I've seen this repeated a few times lately.

Let me clarify - Animal (and Mindless) tags ONLY reduce your ability to defend. Animals and the Mindless can't rebuild walls effectively. They can, however, tear them down just fine. Bandar has no problem taking castles without indie troops. No trouble at all.

Defending is indeed another story. ;)


(Edit: Also, they do have severe drawbacks, that's why they're considered harder to play. However, direct comparisions to Kailasa do not hold water, as Kailasa faces entirely different threats in EA than BL faces in MA. They also have a different but overlapping set of tools to use against those threats. Yaksha and Yakshini are not primary mages for BL, but they are powerful methods to diversify magic, and so should be summoned. If I could summon Rishi with Kailasa, I think I would go for it as well.)

[Meglobob]

Just out of curiosity, where in the league of Ma nations would people place Bandar Log?

I have no experience of Bandar Log, I have never played them in SP or MP but I have just started a SP game with them out of curiosity, probably will never finish it but there you go.

From what I remember of Bandar in the Ma MP's I have played in they tend to do somewhere around average. Usually make the mid game and then are eliminated.

[Kristoffer O]

I'm quite fond of this thread. Can't resist reading the latest comments :)

I'm a bit puzzled. Astral is often considered the strongest path. Nature among the stronger. BL has them both. BL also have strong summons in astral which is otherwise rare.

On the other hand you will probably go into conjuration rather than other astral heavy schools at first, making your astral skills evolve slower than for other astral nations.

[konming]

Since Kristoffer is here, I cannot resist to ask why Brahmin and Yogi have a moral of 7? Is it an oversight or intentional?

[Sombre]

Perhaps it is because they are pacifists?

[Baalz]

Well, I think I've been clear on why I think can be powerful.

1) They've got access to powerful (3+ level) mages in astral, nature, earth, water, and air, leaving only death, blood and fire which take some work. They've got good/great national summons in death & blood, so a little effort in diversifying goes a long way. This leaves them really only 'weak' in fire, which is arguably the least useful path. Head of the class in diversity.

2) Some of the best non-unique thug/SCs in the game at fairly cheap prices. For 25-35 each they get a wide variety of guys who are not only good thugs, but also powerful combat and forging mages. On the high end you can field almost 3 Rudra for each GOR'ed Seraph, and all your guys are sacred.

3) Very good non-commander summons ranging from cheap ethereal chaff to uber heavy infantry.

4) Lots of 'special forces' type recruits, from knight slaying Markatas to stealth archers to stick and stone flinging Bandars to elephants (who can be great even into late game if your opponent wasn't expecting them).

5) Your most expensive (and best) stuff all costs pearls so alchemizing from anything is an option most of the game. Most of your stuff can still be cost effective at twice the cost in an off gem.

Ways in which Bandar can struggle

1) No single easily accessible 'use almost anywhere' unit. You can't crank out your 'best' unit, confident they'll get put to good use against most any opponent.

2) Lots of expensive options, lost of chances to waste money and gems on suboptimal choices. From summoning a hundred gandaharvas to massing thirty elephants to fielding a swarm of Bandar longbows, you've got a whole lot of opportunities to waste a whole lot of resources on expensive things. As I was discussing above you have to be willing to use the Apsaras if you can get away with it, even if you could summon gandaharvas at the moment. You have to be willing to turn back those F/W vans using markatas rather than spending 4 times as much on Bandar troops.

3) Several "gotcha" weaknesses from generally low moral to having the animal flag to having map move one recruitable mages to having only H1 priests. The reason I describe them as that is because none of them are crippling...until you forgot about it the turn it mattered.

[edit after thinking for a moment and AoE's comment]
4) Several "necessary" things that you really need to spend your gems on. Compounds the expensive options problem. If you can't clear a minimum hurdle for gem expenditure you're pretty much hosed.

Basically, Bandar gives you a whole lot of chances to shoot yourself in the foot. Played by a very experience player I think they'll fairly consistently do pretty well - even against opponents of equal skill. Played by even a moderately experience player I think they're pretty much always going to struggle to be competitive.

[AreaOfEffect]

I don't think anyone has yet criticized Bandar Log's magic power from their regular commanders. The chassis itself for the guru is the only thing I've noticed anyone having a problem with. Admittedly, 2 AP is rather slow, even for a guy with his legs crossed.

Astral and nature are both very strong paths. However, I think that Bandar Log lacks a great deal of magic diversity outside of their summons. Magic diversity is in my opinion the true hallmark of magical power. Outside of astral and nature Bandar Log can, at best, get 2 water, 2 earth, or 1 earth and 1 water. But don't hold your breath as that all involves a 10% random. Most likely you'll get only 1 water or 1 earth half of the time. What is worse is that it can only occur your capital only mage. Even getting 2 nature is limited to only the Rishi.

With such limitations on magic diversity and the availability of your powerful caster, the fact that BL is an astral and nature faction is very much mitigated. It is most likely why Baalz came to the conclusion that using their summons wasn't just good, but necessary.

[Kristoffer O]

Perhaps it is because they are pacifists?

It's because they are cowards :)

[Amhazair]

Perhaps it is because they are pacifists?

It's because they are cowards :)That actually makes a lot of sense. :D

5) Your most expensive (and best) stuff all costs pearls so alchemizing from anything is an option most of the game. Most of your stuff can still be cost effective at twice the cost in an off gem.I'm not sure I see this as an advantage. I do see your point about the ease of alchemisation, but still... I'm not sure.

As an astral nation I always confortably manage to use up all the pearls I can lay my hands on, and then some, on astral boosters, penetration boosters, banners of the northern star, mind hunts, and battlefield gem use alone. (Not to mention any MR/luck equipment you might also want to forge) What has always put me off about Bandar Log, but also Pythium and Marignon, is that on top of all that, you also have to use those same precious gems for your summons.

I've yet to play any of those nations, so I can't really give an informed opinion, but that has always been the thing that struck me about them, how to get hold of enough pearls. I am now involved in a MP with LA Marignon, but am just now entering the mid game, and they also have the various blood summons to help out and mitigate the problem. We'll see how it goes.

[Epaminondas]

Omnirizon's post was well-written and entertaining, but I'd have to conclude that it lacks substance.

[Epaminondas]

After playing my first ever Bandar game (SP or MP), I must say they have potential but serious weakness.

Typically Bandars are played with either good bless or good scale. Good bless is much weaker for Bandar than for Kailasa, since Bandar's sacred is not nearly as powerful as Kailasa. While Kailasa's sacred has some obvious weakness, it can be mitigated with bless. I have not seen anyone pointing out a great way to bless white ones. Sure with the right bless they smash indies quick, but elephants are just as quick against indies. Against decent human player, who uses arrows, low level evocations,heavily armored troops and so on, they are at disadvantage against most of the middle age nations.

Now about their mages. First, many of their summoned mages cost money to maintain. This is bad after paying 20N, you now have to pay 12G per month for a mage. Second, summons are less numerous than recruits. Can you get as many Yakasha as in Kailasa? And nature gems have many great use, like GOR and GOH. So if you use all your nature gems on summons, you lose out in other important area. Third, all their mages require lab+temple to recruit, wasting lots of money plus valuable time on your summoned mages, since none of your recruited mages is priest.

And there is their PD. Even backed up by Yakasha casting destruction (shouldn't he have better things to do?), 20 PD would be hard pressed to stop a similar cost invasion force. Against small raiding forces, esp. stealth ones, you have pratically no way to counter.

Then there is this ridiculous animal tag on all their troops and commanders. For god's sake, how can an almost transcend rishi be an animal where lowly peasants are "human"? In game term, it make sieging and defending against siege pointless for Bandar. You better recruit a lot of indies if you want to take any castle. And what happened to yogi's 7 morale? Even indy militias are better motivated. Oh, and what's the reason for guru's 2 combat movement? Since only immobile units (like a fountain) has combat movement of 2, are gurus made of stone?

Bandar do have potential in their summon department. But relying only on summon against others who can both recruit powerful mages and troops as well as summon, will not get you very far.

Well-put. You've touched on all my concerns, and then some.

[Omnirizon]

Kuritza:

the reason BL is better suited to use Siddhas and Gandharvas and other mid to late game summons is because they aren't limited in their possible blesses like Kailasa. Thus, they can choose a bless and pretender design that optimizes these mid and late game tools. It is their slightly more conventional line up of initial units that allows them to do this, yet it is that same line up that lulls people into thinking that BL can be played more conventionally than Kailasa; nothing is further from the truth. BL is more of a summoning nation than Kail, and this isn't something people recognize simply because Kail _looks_ more Conjuration and Celestial oriented. It is Kail's initial availabitity of Celestials that makes them less optimized to use the later Celestial summons (because they _must_ make pretenders that makes these initial units viable, and these designs will not optimize the mid and late game Celestials). Thus Kail is much less Conjuration and more Evo and Alt oriented.


Also, as KO points out, Astral and Nature (I would say especially Astral) is so powerful for late game, so much so that people often exclaim a nation that lacks it is completely crippled. BL is very powerful in this area, to the extent that I don't think they even need a lot of magic outside of astral. Thus why the fact that efficient alchemy is a real boon for them. And this is just another unconventional resource of BL that people discount right out of hand, due to common experience with other nations. BL is a completely different animal (so is Kailasa for that matter).

On a similar note, BL HAS the mid-late game tools in spades. And a lot of their weaknesses that Konming picks up on are moot in late game. PD? Irrelevant. And who by late game is using standard troops for anything but support? And Konming's point about the bless being less important is wrong, and is the kernel of what I'm claiming is the reason people fail with BL. Even their recruitable sacreds are only support to their summoned ones. And their summoned ones are more powerful than Kail's recruited ones, and BL can take a bless that optimizes that; while Kail cannot. And mid game is a turning point, and by late game standard units are almost unimportant. So in that sense BL has stronger sacreds than Kail. --This is why BL is more of a summoning nation that Kail, this is why BL is better situated to use Siddhas, Gandharvas, even Yaksha (even if they must summon them) than Kail.-- People's failure to pick up on this is the reason BL has no victories. Of all the ages (Kail/BL/Patala) BL has the most summoning options. And a sufficient even if lackluster line up of standard units allows them enough flexibility to use them (aka, they don't have to play to a particular weakness or idiosyncrasy in their standard units).

It is hyperbole to say this, but it will help you get the idea:
Bandar Log is like a more colorful Ermor with Astral... and elephants.


PS.
Also, reading through Baalz's guide, he REALLY gets at the point of BL being a nation who's challenge is management, not power. They have power, it is managing it that is the problem. He notes spot on that BL has a tool for everything, a weakness for everything, and in the same sense infinite ways to waste money. It is always about having JUST the right combination, and knowing what that combination is. BL has what it takes to win, does the player have what it takes to win is the question. People are used to playing in a way that there is one unit and one spell and one way of doing things. BL is not that nation. You have to read the situation, you have to play deliberately.

[Tifone]

It's because they are cowards :)

Well, one would expect the years of meditation and self-annihilation into nirvana of Brahmins and Gurus, would greatly help to reduce the selfness and fear of death which lead to run away from enemies :D

[Kuritza]

Omniziron, you keep being an enigma to me.

How come BL has better blessing options? Kailasa has much better sacreds and thus can afford to take any bless it wants to and still have an easier time expanding.
To back up my words, I just started a test game with str. 6 indies as Kailasa and had no problem expanding with A4S4D4 bless. I can repeat the same with E4N4, E4W9 or no bless at all. So about Kailasa that '_must_ make pretenders that makes these initial units viable' - its just nonsense. If anything, Kailasa has more freedom when choosing pretender.

Astral and nature are very powerful indeed, but astral/nature is a rather bad combination of paths for a single mage. Astral/earth opens you gifts from heaven, astral/fire means astral fire, astral/air can lead to a thunderstikers communion, for expample, I'm rather fond of Bogarus astrapelagists... astral/nature makes a noncombatant mage.

Also, Kailasa has enough astral and nature. Yakshas can reliably have nature 2, which is enough to craft important items. Later you can forge thistle mace for N3 and a moonvine bracelet for N4, etc.
Guru can make a Starshine skullcap, astral yaksha then crafts you a crystal coin, voila - you've got S4 to summon Siddha.

BL's problem are sub-optimal troops that only do their job if you use them as a scalpel. Yes, you can kill somebody with a scalpel, but it doesnt make scalpel a good weapon. So far you are saying that scalpel takes finesse to use - but nobody makes you use broadsword as a pinch-bar.

[atul]

Kailasa's recruitable sacreds have high defence and neglible protection, therefore benefiting from WS-like blessing (which will be made near obsolete by Thau6). Summons have high protection and staying power, therefore benefiting from NE, for example. BL recruitables are also of high prot-variety, therefore benefiting from similar blessings as summons instead of asymmetric ones like Kailasan recruits.

[sector24]

Perhaps it is because they are pacifists?

It's because they are cowards :)

These guys make me think of Journey to the West. Sanzang cowers in fear or faints while demons are running around, and then Sun Wukong has to save him.

[Kuritza]

Kailasa's recruitable sacreds have high defence and neglible protection, therefore benefiting from WS-like blessing (which will be made near obsolete by Thau6). Summons have high protection and staying power, therefore benefiting from NE, for example. BL recruitables are also of high prot-variety, therefore benefiting from similar blessings as summons instead of asymmetric ones like Kailasan recruits.

Sigh. What do you call 'high prot'?!! Scale mail with prot 12? Gosh.
Kailasa's recruitable sacreds can do with any bless you like, as long as you place and buff them properly.

[Omnirizon]

Kailasa's recruitable sacreds have high defence and neglible protection, therefore benefiting from WS-like blessing (which will be made near obsolete by Thau6). Summons have high protection and staying power, therefore benefiting from NE, for example. BL recruitables are also of high prot-variety, therefore benefiting from similar blessings as summons instead of asymmetric ones like Kailasan recruits.

Sigh. What do you call 'high prot'?!! Scale mail with prot 12? Gosh.
Kailasa's recruitable sacreds can do with any bless you like, as long as you place and buff them properly.

This is not right. sure placement tricks work agaist the AI. But any player willing to put an equal amount of time into micro-managing placement will cancel out any amount of decoying and placement tricks you might be able to use as Kailasa. With as little as A7, it becomes cheaper to kill a Yavana with a slinger than with a cavalry, and an Apsara would probably remain more efficient to kill with a slinger up to A8 or 9...

Additionally, you gain alot of benefits as Kailasa from a strong Air bless. You can team your sacreds with as many Markata archers as you please and don't have to worry about friendly fire. You can place Yaksha surrounded by Apsaras/Yavanas right on the front line to spam Destruction and Panic. Apsaras are VERY defense oriented and can hold out, the Air bless ensures your mage is protected there... The armor less and feared foes will wilt under the pelting of 1000's of little arrows... You never have to worry about stray blades from your Yaksha spamming Blade Wind. In late game you can unleash Shimmering Fields and Wrathful Skies with impunity. Your own mages (who will be acting as battle mages for Kailasa, rarely as thugs) benefit greatly from the Air sheild. Kailasa has alot of big time AoE missile and artillery support to offer, and it becomes most usable with a strong Air bless.

BL's sacreds do not have phenomenal prot, but it's high enough (and with their sheilds) that they benefit enough from an Earth Bless. The important thing is that they don't need an air bless, and can choose blesses that are optimal for Gandharvas and higher end summons

[Endoperez]

"Benefits from Air Bless" does not translate to "needs an Air Bless to work".

Bandar Log's sacreds might sync better with blesses designed for their late game, but that doesn't mean anything if Kailasa can expand as fast with the same bless.

[Omnirizon]

"Benefits from Air Bless" does not translate to "needs an Air Bless to work".

Bandar Log's sacreds might sync better with blesses designed for their late game, but that doesn't mean anything if Kailasa can expand as fast with the same bless.

perhaps not...

but I have a heuristic I use when designing nation strategies:
"don't do anything anyone else can do better. do something you can do better than anyone else."

for Kailasa, that translates to strong Air bless. Without you're simply disregarding what they have available at every fort. And expansion is only half the story; because when you meet a real opponent if you can't defend it then it is just that much more free land for them. I don't mean to imply that "mid-late game" stuff is better than what Kailasa has available off the bat; because it isn't unconditionally. You have to take everything in context. Kailasa with an Air bless doesn't need those higher end summons, and will do splendid with Apsaras/Yavanas/Guhyakas (well, they want to get Kinnaras eventually for battle magic). They have extra research options that BL will not. They have extra research options many nations will not, for that point. The strong Air bless with Kailasa is simply equal to flexibility and options, in research, strategy, and battlefields.

[Hadrian_II]

Air bless gets obsolete, as soon as you can cast arrow fend. I would use a bless that stays useful until the end of the game. Especially with Kailasa when you are usually fielding all sacred armyes.

[mighty_scoop]

Air bless gets obsolete, as soon as you can cast arrow fend. I would use a bless that stays useful until the end of the game. Especially with Kailasa when you are usually fielding all sacred armyes.

But with Kailasa you have more important things to research if you have an air bless

[JimMorrison]

Air bless gets obsolete, as soon as you can cast arrow fend. I would use a bless that stays useful until the end of the game. Especially with Kailasa when you are usually fielding all sacred armyes.

But with Kailasa you have more important things to research if you have an air bless


Also, you get the 75% SR (which has more relevance in the late game), and without native access to Air magic at all, it's a bit foolhardy to make an Air spell become a pivotal part of your strategy.

[Omnirizon]

Air bless gets obsolete, as soon as you can cast arrow fend. I would use a bless that stays useful until the end of the game. Especially with Kailasa when you are usually fielding all sacred armyes.

But with Kailasa you have more important things to research if you have an air bless


Also, you get the 75% SR (which has more relevance in the late game), and without native access to Air magic at all, it's a bit foolhardy to make an Air spell become a pivotal part of your strategy.

All of Kail's national commander summons have Air magic, and you'd generally start considering them later in the game. Here the SR is a later game tool anyway, used offensively by protecting from FF; but it is never a bad thing to have at any point... Air is considered by some as the most potent combat magic.

[konming]

Yes, 75% SR plus storm warriors let you unleash wrathful sky at will.

[Trumanator]

I heard something about a death bless being fairly effective for Kailasa combined with the sacred archers. Does the Death Weapons effect apply to the arrows? If it does, what about the Fire Weapons from that bless?

[AreaOfEffect]

No, but the increased affliction chance does apply.

[Omnirizon]

I heard something about a death bless being fairly effective for Kailasa combined with the sacred archers. Does the Death Weapons effect apply to the arrows? If it does, what about the Fire Weapons from that bless?

It will also affect your battlemages, which I think Kail must depend on heavily.

potentially a very good bless, but must be weighed against its opportunity cost. archer sacreds are only recruitable in the cap, there are no summonable archer sacreds. I believe that defense blesses are better for non-archer sacreds (but maybe just my opinion/playstyle). is the death bless worth the loss of another that is potentially more useful for your non-archer sacreds? strong astral/weak water/weak nature?

also, the Destroyer of Worlds comes with 2A 2D, and if you want to mix an air bless with anything other than astral, is your best bet; he's kind of already set to go for a death bless. Death bless also gives you diversity.

death bless with the wide AoE of spells like earthquake and bladewind is nice. later when paired with the almost garuanteed damage from spells like shimmering fields and wrathful skies, it would be an intersting tool...

On this topic (but slightly not), the Kailasa archer sacred is one of only three missile unit sacreds in the entire game:
1. Yavana Archer
2. Ancient One[I think is name, those argathan boulder hurlers]
3. Ancestor Vessel[TC cavalry sacred with a bow]

I think we need a few more missile sacreds, KO...

[AreaOfEffect]

4. LA Man - Warden (Crossbow)

[thejeff]

and the Pegasus Riders. A number also have javelins.

[Omnirizon]

and the Pegasus Riders. A number also have javelins.

yeah... i was trying to think of ones that are able to act as committed archers, not just contribute a couple of javelins.

thanks for the catch on man's Warden, I had missed that one.

[Trumanator]

and the Pegasus Riders. A number also have javelins.

They have javelins? Are you talking about the EA Arco Pegasi, or the Crystal amazon ones?

[thejeff]

No, I meant those to be separate.
The Crystal Amazon Pegasi have bows.
There are also sacreds with javelins.

[Trumanator]

Is there really a point to buying the Crystal Amazon Pegasi? It seems like flying units with bows are kind of a waste.

[konming]

If you can do marble warrior or above and weapon of sharpness, they can be a great melee force. Even if you cannot a good bless like F9W9 or F9E9 also greatly increase their effctiveness in melee.

[HoneyBadger]

I haven't had too much success using flying archers, either. It's too bad they're as rare as they are. I think Caelum has them, but other than that, they're Independent or Commander only. If you have a good Death or Air bless, it would also help them in missle (Air would help keep them from being targeted, while Death would give them increased afflictions with their arrows).

[thejeff]

If you've gone a double bless on capital only units, it's worth buying any sacreds you find.

And uber blessed flying raiders can be a great surprise, if it's not your nations shtick.

[Trumanator]

Well yeah, but you're not really using them as archers though. Sure it works, but its not horribly effective. The only way I could see flying archers being useful is if you had flying meelee units but no flying archers. I suppose EA Arco could make fairly good use of the Pegasi archers.

[Loren]

I've been trying Bandar Log against the AI, so far almost always disastrously. Even when I have the biggest army in the game I'm getting ganged up on early on. Since the PD is worthless you don't buy it and that makes you look like a juicy target to the AI.

It doesn't help to get things like a pretender (not a SC type at all!) with a few troops deciding to attack the province I was besieging--one dead pretender and yet another enemy in what was already a 3-front war.

[Jazzepi]

I've been trying Bandar Log against the AI, so far almost always disastrously. Even when I have the biggest army in the game I'm getting ganged up on early on. Since the PD is worthless you don't buy it and that makes you look like a juicy target to the AI.

It doesn't help to get things like a pretender (not a SC type at all!) with a few troops deciding to attack the province I was besieging--one dead pretender and yet another enemy in what was already a 3-front war.

I don't think the AI takes PD's troop strength into account, just the amount that you've dumped into it.

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

Well yeah, but you're not really using them as archers though. Sure it works, but its not horribly effective. The only way I could see flying archers being useful is if you had flying meelee units but no flying archers. I suppose EA Arco could make fairly good use of the Pegasi archers.

I found them once when playing EA T'ien Ch'i with a Water9/Astral9 bless for quickness and twist fate. They were absolutely amazing.

Jazzepi

[Rytek]

Ah yes, the AI. A quick tip to avoid that: If 2 AI's are at war with each other. And one is at war with you and the other is not you must make sure that the AI you are at peace with cannot come adjacent to you sieging the AI that you are both at war with. The AI that has peace with you does not recognize you as owning the sieged castle yet. So, it will attack your force laying siege to the castle. If that happends, win or lose, the AI that you had peace with will consider itself at war with you. To prevent that, you must prevent that peacfull AI from getting adjacent to the castle you wish to siege. If you must, take that sieging army attack all around the castle, cutting the friendly AI off from getting to the castle. Even if both you and the friendly AI hit the same enemy ai province war will not be declared as long as it did not happen in a fort province.

[thejeff]

I'm pretty sure I've had the AI attack my sieging force without starting a general war.
I think the AI treats that the same as attacking a 3rd parties province. The same is true if you attack their besiegers.
In the OP's case he killed their pretender in the battle, which automatically starts the war.

[Loren]

Ah yes, the AI. A quick tip to avoid that: If 2 AI's are at war with each other. And one is at war with you and the other is not you must make sure that the AI you are at peace with cannot come adjacent to you sieging the AI that you are both at war with. The AI that has peace with you does not recognize you as owning the sieged castle yet. So, it will attack your force laying siege to the castle. If that happends, win or lose, the AI that you had peace with will consider itself at war with you. To prevent that, you must prevent that peacfull AI from getting adjacent to the castle you wish to siege. If you must, take that sieging army attack all around the castle, cutting the friendly AI off from getting to the castle. Even if both you and the friendly AI hit the same enemy ai province war will not be declared as long as it did not happen in a fort province.

As far as I can tell such a battle happening as part of a siege doesn't trigger war. It looks like war depends on who owned the province at the start of the turn.

What happened in this case was it was a suicidal attack by his pretender. Kill a pretender and it's war no matter what.

[Ghill]

Read my sig. THANK YOU!

[Trumanator]

kinda OT, but isn't a water bless supposed to give units two attacks? So why doesn't it work on sacred archers, or at least it doesn't seem to.

[JimMorrison]

kinda OT, but isn't a water bless supposed to give units two attacks? So why doesn't it work on sacred archers, or at least it doesn't seem to.

Water bless only gives you a 50% quickness increase. But there is odd behavior with ranged weapons and quickness, that usually results in them just using the bonus AP to advance between each shot. :(

[Endoperez]

kinda OT, but isn't a water bless supposed to give units two attacks? So why doesn't it work on sacred archers, or at least it doesn't seem to.

Water 9 is 50% Quickness, or about three attacks in two turns. Sometimes it works strangely with archers, who move forward instead of firing. Once there are enemies in range, they attack twice about every other turn, or something pretty close.

[Kuritza]

This is not right. sure placement tricks work agaist the AI. But any player willing to put an equal amount of time into micro-managing placement will cancel out any amount of decoying and placement tricks you might be able to use as Kailasa. With as little as A7, it becomes cheaper to kill a Yavana with a slinger than with a cavalry, and an Apsara would probably remain more efficient to kill with a slinger up to A8 or 9...

Additionally, you gain alot of benefits as Kailasa from a strong Air bless. You can team your sacreds with as many Markata archers as you please and don't have to worry about friendly fire. You can place Yaksha surrounded by Apsaras/Yavanas right on the front line to spam Destruction and Panic. Apsaras are VERY defense oriented and can hold out, the Air bless ensures your mage is protected there... The armor less and feared foes will wilt under the pelting of 1000's of little arrows... You never have to worry about stray blades from your Yaksha spamming Blade Wind. In late game you can unleash Shimmering Fields and Wrathful Skies with impunity. Your own mages (who will be acting as battle mages for Kailasa, rarely as thugs) benefit greatly from the Air sheild. Kailasa has alot of big time AoE missile and artillery support to offer, and it becomes most usable with a strong Air bless.

BL's sacreds do not have phenomenal prot, but it's high enough (and with their sheilds) that they benefit enough from an Earth Bless. The important thing is that they don't need an air bless, and can choose blesses that are optimal for Gandharvas and higher end summons

Air bless is almost as useless for Kailasa as for anybody else. As for arrows - they are bane for all monkey nations because their troops are lightly armored and carry no shields.
Yes, thats right, bucklers DO NOT qualify as shields. Monkeys kinda want you to believe they are shielded, but being stupid animals, they screw it up. So basically, you need arrow fend for both Kailasa and Bandar Log.
You *can* take Air bless and compromise your ability to use higher end summons, or you can take a good bless. Its up to you.

[Omnirizon]

This is not right. sure placement tricks work agaist the AI. But any player willing to put an equal amount of time into micro-managing placement will cancel out any amount of decoying and placement tricks you might be able to use as Kailasa. With as little as A7, it becomes cheaper to kill a Yavana with a slinger than with a cavalry, and an Apsara would probably remain more efficient to kill with a slinger up to A8 or 9...

Additionally, you gain alot of benefits as Kailasa from a strong Air bless. You can team your sacreds with as many Markata archers as you please and don't have to worry about friendly fire. You can place Yaksha surrounded by Apsaras/Yavanas right on the front line to spam Destruction and Panic. Apsaras are VERY defense oriented and can hold out, the Air bless ensures your mage is protected there... The armor less and feared foes will wilt under the pelting of 1000's of little arrows... You never have to worry about stray blades from your Yaksha spamming Blade Wind. In late game you can unleash Shimmering Fields and Wrathful Skies with impunity. Your own mages (who will be acting as battle mages for Kailasa, rarely as thugs) benefit greatly from the Air sheild. Kailasa has alot of big time AoE missile and artillery support to offer, and it becomes most usable with a strong Air bless.

BL's sacreds do not have phenomenal prot, but it's high enough (and with their sheilds) that they benefit enough from an Earth Bless. The important thing is that they don't need an air bless, and can choose blesses that are optimal for Gandharvas and higher end summons

Air bless is almost as useless for Kailasa as for anybody else. As for arrows - they are bane for all monkey nations because their troops are lightly armored and carry no shields.
Yes, thats right, bucklers DO NOT qualify as shields. Monkeys kinda want you to believe they are shielded, but being stupid animals, they screw it up. So basically, you need arrow fend for both Kailasa and Bandar Log.
You *can* take Air bless and compromise your ability to use higher end summons, or you can take a good bless. Its up to you.

Not ONLY do you need Ench6 for Arrow Fend, you also NEED Conj7 to cast it. Before you think about that, you'll probably want to get Evo2 and Thau2 for site searching (little, I know, but in the early stages of the game amounts to a significant setback in time until you have your fix). This is all time that you are not getting to Thau6 for Celestial Music.

My strong Air Blessed Kailasa will kick your triple/quadruple/quintuple or whatever but non-Air Blessed Kailasa's butt; and all I need to do it are Markatas. And before you even have Arrow Fend (not to mention you can't cast it yet because you now have to research to Conj6 for Kinnaras) I have Celestial Music and am REALLY kicking ***, and all I need to do it are some cheap-*** Apsaras. By the time you've got something that can cast your Arrow Fend I've now got some big-time battle magic and, not that you'd be alive anymore, will be frying your Arrow Fended uber blessed whatevers with Celestial Musicked Apsaras and battle-magic. By the time you've got Celestial Music and are thinking "Ha! now I've caught up with you and the late-game geardness of bless will really stomp you", I've better battle-magic and Alt spells to further buff my own units and debuff yours.

Not taking the Air bless is putting you WAY behind the curve and locks you into one single path of advancement. With it Kailasa is one of the fastest expanding powers and more than capable of defending themselves (perhaps even rushing another) in the early stages of the game. The options it lends to the player allows them to unfold quickly and take control of the early game, take control of the mid game. Without the Air bless, you have to hide away and simply hope no one decides to attack you. And any player worth their salt will be able to recognize (from pretenders name if nothing else) that you are immediately vulnerable (SC's pretenders are NOT protection from another player) and an easy target. The Air bless lends this nation immediate potency and flexibility that allows them to be played with speed, authority, and power.

[atul]

Well half their number of White Ones can do it without PD. Putting money on PD above the scout-catching limit is commonly considered waste anyway, so can't understand what you intend to gain by beating old dead monkey PD horse.

[Kuritza]

2 Omnirizon

Arrow fend can be cast with pretender; having some air magic for cloud trapeze on a titan-chassis God is extremly useful. And I didnt say anything about extreme blesses - vice versa, I meant some useful bless like nature-earth or nature-water.
Okay, Air bless may be great indeed. I even remember taking it in a blitz as MA Mictlan once; it won that game for me as MA Man (the last survivor) just gave up when he saw my air and missile immune sacreds.
But its highly situational. What are you going to do with air bless against, say, 2-x blessed Mictlan? Or Niefelheim? Sacred demons of Lanka? Hinnom? Fomorian kings? Ctis? Etc, etc.

[mighty_scoop]

An Air bless for Kailasa has a double purpose ... you not only guard your sacreds from arrows you also can mix your troops with archers (and that is a big advantage) ... additionally you may use storm / wrathful skies in the later game phase.

[Maerlande]

Thanks Baalz and all. I'm having a lot of fun implementing these strategies from this thread. I started a Loemendor map game with independents 9 and 5 AI players at impossible. However, I had to try a bunch of starts to get the pretender right. This map and independents 9 makes the early game very tough. Still, once I fine tuned the pretender (RB dormant with almost straight 4's) it's ticking along well.

Again, thanks for some neat new ideas.

[chrispedersen]

This is not right. sure placement tricks work agaist the AI. But any player willing to put an equal amount of time into micro-managing placement will cancel out any amount of decoying and placement tricks you might be able to use as Kailasa. With as little as A7, it becomes cheaper to kill a Yavana with a slinger than with a cavalry, and an Apsara would probably remain more efficient to kill with a slinger up to A8 or 9...

Additionally, you gain alot of benefits as Kailasa from a strong Air bless. You can team your sacreds with as many Markata archers as you please and don't have to worry about friendly fire. You can place Yaksha surrounded by Apsaras/Yavanas right on the front line to spam Destruction and Panic. Apsaras are VERY defense oriented and can hold out, the Air bless ensures your mage is protected there... The armor less and feared foes will wilt under the pelting of 1000's of little arrows... You never have to worry about stray blades from your Yaksha spamming Blade Wind. In late game you can unleash Shimmering Fields and Wrathful Skies with impunity. Your own mages (who will be acting as battle mages for Kailasa, rarely as thugs) benefit greatly from the Air sheild. Kailasa has alot of big time AoE missile and artillery support to offer, and it becomes most usable with a strong Air bless.

BL's sacreds do not have phenomenal prot, but it's high enough (and with their sheilds) that they benefit enough from an Earth Bless. The important thing is that they don't need an air bless, and can choose blesses that are optimal for Gandharvas and higher end summons

Air bless is almost as useless for Kailasa as for anybody else. As for arrows - they are bane for all monkey nations because their troops are lightly armored and carry no shields.
Yes, thats right, bucklers DO NOT qualify as shields. Monkeys kinda want you to believe they are shielded, but being stupid animals, they screw it up. So basically, you need arrow fend for both Kailasa and Bandar Log.
You *can* take Air bless and compromise your ability to use higher end summons, or you can take a good bless. Its up to you.

I really don't agree ... well pretty much at all.

If you have an air bless, you can put your air blessed archers close, behind a few awed warriors. Archers will try to target them. Leaving your monkeys at medium range to decimate them with sheer cheap numbers.

kailasa and mictlan are two nations I like air blesses on.
with mictlan its usually part of a triple bless...

[Trumanator]

While I see an air bless with kailasa as possible, on Mictlan it seems to just be a waste. Your jags already are immune to first hit kills, plus if you take an astral bless you can add another hit to the immunity list. If you give them W9S9F9 bless then you are guarenteed to survive at least 2 hits, will close very fast, and will cut through anything not fire-immune like a hot knife through butter. If you go W9F9A6 or something like that you MIGHT have a case, but I still think that high air on a pretender when you don't have good air nationals to be something of a waste.

[Omnirizon]

yeah. Air Bless wins out for Kail for too many reasons

1. Makes your recruitable everywhere sacreds also be usable everywhere sacreds. Any Kail strat must depend on these guys. Also, the Apsaras are in principle the same as your recruits and benefit from the same blesses. Lastly, consider that Air magic and arrows are particularly fearsome in EA specifically.

2. The nature of the recruits makes bless usefulness breakdown as follows:

blesses that lessen the amount of damage received are useless because the sacreds have no armor to be effected, which in turn also means that they take so much damage from any hit that regen is worthless.
useless = earth, nature

blesses that buff offense are useful but if the sacreds are dead it doesn't matter. this makes defense blesses first priority.
not priority = fire/death/blood

The priority optional blesses are ones that add defense by preventing hits from occurring at all. Twist Fate prevents first damage and weak Water pumps their already high Defense to phenomenal levels, preventing melee hits from landing in the first place.
priority = Astral, Water(weak)

The key bless is Air because without it then then all the Awe, Twist Fate, and Defense in the world are useless.
key = Air

on top of the key and priority optional blesses it would be nice to have an offense bless; but it's not realistic because there just won't be points available, and any points for blesses are better spent on the priorities.


With the sacreds as the axiom of the strategy, Kail also has many ways to fit their other units around them and their blesses so nicely. They come together in an almost Nirvanic symmetry, making Kail one of my top favorite nations.

[Gandalf Parker]

How can someone say that arrows are the bane of a nation, and that air bless is worthless, in the same post? Altho I wouldnt give up the cool Kailasa summons for it.

[Hadrian_II]

As soon as you have Arrow Fend, air bless becomes worthless, and as kailasa is a nation that is not so good early, but can get really strong later. I personally think that a strategy based on compensation their early game weaknesses with sacrificing later power is wrong. A good kailasa should aim to maximize the power of the nation, and not try to make it survive. And the effects of Air and Water bless you get from the spells Arrow Fend and Celestial Music, so you dont take them in the beginning because they will become useless. And for the Shock resistance i had never problems with wrathful skies, as you can finish battles very early, if you have a nice fire bless. (and will of fates :))

Also with S9 you can live long enough to conquer almost any indy you want.

Your sacreds survive 2-3 arrows on average when you get N4 bless you regenerate an arrow every 5 turns, and also make sure that it really needs 3 arrows to kill you.

And if someone is intending to kill you, with Conj 5 you get ghandaravas and they can kill lots of archers :). Also there are not so many nations that have strong archery and i dont think that a sane player would mass slingers, so that he can engage kailasa.

The only Nations that can field heavy archery early are:
Ulm (Mass Maidens)
Sauromantia (Always be nice to sauromatia they have way to much archery)
TC (they have nice archers)
Caelum (they have archers, but kailasa should not be too afraid from mammoths)
Yomi (Bakemono archers are very cheap)

So i would not recommend an air bless, except in a blitz against one of these nations.

I actually played a MP with an air bless, but the only thing that happened was that i got trashed by helheim.

And if someone really wants to play archery duel, you have always the possibility to recruit your own cheap archers. Or just use markate decoys. Or get Ghandaravas. Or Die (id rather use ghandaravas :D).

[Tifone]

While I don't personally agree with THIS...

[...] a strategy based on compensation their early game weaknesses with sacrificing later power is wrong. A good kailasa should aim to maximize the power of the nation, and not try to make it survive

...point, as if you don't survive (survive well possibly) the early game you surely don't arrive to the "maximized" late game where you would shine... :D

...I must admit you have a point. Kailasa has very cheap units to use as decoys and don't really mind losing in squads of five/six for a couple of turns for distracting the archers (or just recruit shielded indeps). If someone really wants to play the archers game with quality archers (Sauromantia?) you can counter with a mass of recruitable anywhere extremely cheap archers.

With that you should have the time to bring your S9N4/6 sacreds to the enemy, one occasional volley of arrows would probably be twisted-fated or regenerated (and be unlikely to produce afflictions). C'mon, you don't really want your sacreds to take arrow fire anyway. And surely the MR and regeneration bonus will keep being useful till the late game while the Air Shield... and expecially that partial Shock Resistance... mmmh...
Not to talk about the difference between an S9 caster (expecially for an astral nation which will probably have many pearls in the mid-to-late game) and an A9 one... :smirk:

[Omnirizon]

While I don't personally agree with THIS...

[...] a strategy based on compensation their early game weaknesses with sacrificing later power is wrong. A good kailasa should aim to maximize the power of the nation, and not try to make it survive

...point, as if you don't survive (survive well possibly) the early game you surely don't arrive to the "maximized" late game where you would shine... :D

...I must admit you have a point. Kailasa has very cheap units to use as decoys and don't really mind losing in squads of five/six for a couple of turns for distracting the archers (or just recruit shielded indeps). If someone really wants to play the archers game with quality archers (Sauromantia?) you can counter with a mass of recruitable anywhere extremely cheap archers.

With that you should have the time to bring your S9N4/6 sacreds to the enemy, one occasional volley of arrows would probably be twisted-fated or regenerated (and be unlikely to produce afflictions). C'mon, you don't really want your sacreds to take arrow fire anyway. And surely the MR and regeneration bonus will keep being useful till the late game while the Air Shield... and expecially that partial Shock Resistance... mmmh...
Not to talk about the difference between an S9 caster (expecially for an astral nation which will probably have many pearls in the mid-to-late game) and an A9 one... :smirk:

I obviously disagree with most of your post except your disagreement with Hadrian about early-late game power balance; i'd like to add to your point that a less than late-game-maximized Kailasa will outperform a late-game-maximized one in early game so much so that they arrive into late game with far more benefits and momentum. In late game things that are maximized through a particular bless become a lot less important while having a healthy economy is much more relevant; meaning the whole argument that an Air bless Kail isn't maximized for late game is really a fallacy, and just wrong.

I'd like to point out to you also that having an A9 pretender with Kail is very important for the magic path provided. First of all, it lets you begin searching out Air sites quickly so that you get a good Air economy built up and ready for when you reach the high-power Air magic and your national summons that can use this magic. Second, you will need this A9 mage to cast Dark Skies which synergizes splendidly with all of Kail's sacreds.

[vfb]

You only need A4 to site-search all air sites. Actually, you only need A4 to search plains, A3 is sufficient elsewhere. And the plains A4 site is both unique and very rare.

You only need A5 to cast Dark Skies, and A4 is enough to boost to A5. Can you please explain how Dark Skies works with Kailasa's sacreds? Sorry, I don't understand that.

Edit: Oh, I get it I think, lower morale = more failed Awe checks. Is that the plan?

As an alternative to an A4 god you could even empower an A2 summon to A3, make a Ring of Wizardry with your S9 pretender, make a Bag with your A3+RoW, and cast any A5 global.

[Omnirizon]

You only need A4 to site-search all air sites. Actually, you only need A4 to search plains, A3 is sufficient elsewhere. And the plains A4 site is both unique and very rare.

You only need A5 to cast Dark Skies, and A4 is enough to boost to A5. Can you please explain how Dark Skies works with Kailasa's sacreds? Sorry, I don't understand that.

Edit: Oh, I get it I think, lower morale = more failed Awe checks. Is that the plan?

As an alternative to an A4 god you could even empower an A2 summon to A3, make a Ring of Wizardry with your S9 pretender, make a Bag with your A3+RoW, and cast any A5 global.

you got it.

but not only is the Air bless worth it. I don't see any point in taking just enough Air on a pretender to cast some spells while not going ahead and getting the strong bless.

[Tifone]

The point is the cost-efficiency.

Because (totally imho) the strong bless costs a lot of points and... well... quite... s*cks. :D 75% SR? Not safe enough to toss around them Thunderstrikes and similar freely (not that you would anyway, you have far better and easier options); good to defend against... Caelum? Some others? Better than high MR and twist fate? ;)

A strong bless is already expensive for the nice ones (F, W). I don't get the points of spending many points for A9, even because as vfb pointed out you just need and A5 caster for Dark Skies. You can have a mage cast it. Why to spend so many design points on A9? For which spells do you need it? S9 gets you Master Enslave on turn1 on battlefield, Arcane Nexus and a very strong Strands of Arcane Power for globals, and Wish as ritual :eek:

If you really want to be have an easy Dark Skies and protect your sacreds from arrows go for S9A5 i.e. but I don't really see many advantages over S9N4/6.

Also, I don't get how can you start searching for air sites "quickly" with an A9 pretender. At least you need it dormant, and anyway far less expensive indie mages can do a fair job in searching for those too.

I really liked your analysis of the A bless advantages (as you can see, I thanked you for that too) but if I really want some Air Shield just a minor bless seems enough to me. :)

[chrispedersen]

Generally I agree with people that an a9 blessing is overkill. However, I believe kailasa is one of the exceptions.

Previous poster made note of some of the points for kailasa. A partial air bless is useful for kailasa. After that you have to look at what to do with your points. Since you are buying sacreds, you need a high dominion. You want a mobile pretender to start with to aid early expansion.

I happen to like the four arm deva that casts lightning bolts. And the way the points turn out, in this particular case, I believe the most effective thing is to run up Air path - the fact that your sacreds are now 75% resistant to the lightning bolts it slings around is just gravy.

PLUS with lightning resistant troops shockwave becomes .. well shockingly effective.

Kailasa can be quite fun this way - you have fun awe, archers - and later on you can cast rusting mist, or armor of achilles or the battlefield equivalent of same...

And then use hordes of markatas!!! to destroy armor - and anything other high prot units. Its quite fun to see markatas mowing through cavalry.......

[Gregstrom]

Add to that the likely investment required to get Arrow Fend on your armies, and an Air bless looks better and better.

[chrispedersen]

You only need A4 to site-search all air sites. Actually, you only need A4 to search plains, A3 is sufficient elsewhere. And the plains A4 site is both unique and very rare.

You only need A5 to cast Dark Skies, and A4 is enough to boost to A5. Can you please explain how Dark Skies works with Kailasa's sacreds? Sorry, I don't understand that.

Edit: Oh, I get it I think, lower morale = more failed Awe checks. Is that the plan?

As an alternative to an A4 god you could even empower an A2 summon to A3, make a Ring of Wizardry with your S9 pretender, make a Bag with your A3+RoW, and cast any A5 global.

you got it.

but not only is the Air bless worth it. I don't see any point in taking just enough Air on a pretender to cast some spells while not going ahead and getting the strong bless.


There is also another rather nice little synnergy for kailasa.
Dark Skies + Melancholia - which is earth- and what do you know.. kailasa is well equipped for casting earth spells.

[chrispedersen]

Regarding Mictlan:

If you are on a crowded map; or if you are in a game with high resources/high money, an air bless becomes more important than an Astral bless for Mictlan.

Mictlans sacred troop production scales slowly, and linearly. So as the resoure/money % gets higher than 100% the balance of how many your troops your opponents will be fielding to your blessed troops gets higher and higher.

I have seen armies of 200+ archers before turn 10. In these circumstances, mictlan is hard pressed to beat archer armies. An air bless drastically incresses mictlans ability in these cases - and yes, it does have a late game cost. But most nations aren't going to get to the endgame....

Mictlan's other option is to build regular troops. However, if she does that, upkeep costs really start make mictlan feel those horrible scales required for a triple bless....

[JimMorrison]

Add to that the likely investment required to get Arrow Fend on your armies, and an Air bless looks better and better.

Seriously. I never understood why the argument against the Air bless, is to cast Arrow Fend - with no national access to Air magic at all.....

[vfb]

National access is through national summons at Conj 6, requiring pearls only.

[Omnirizon]

National access is through national summons at Conj 6, requiring pearls only.

That's still a lot of extra researching on top of that already needed to get Arrow Fend. With an Air bless Kailasa is free to get Celestial Music pronto and then work on whatever they need most.

[rdonj]

Why get any bless at all then? Go conjuration 6 for the summon, enchantment 6 for arrow fend, thunder ward and strength of giants, get alteration 6(?) for celestial music, construction 7 for weapons of sharpness to get an ap attack far better than the f9 bless, GoR all your sacreds and empower them to 1S so they can cast twist fate and personal luck and equip them with a burning pearl to replicate the attack skill addition from the fire bless. Research thaum 5 for growing fury and toss in a ring of regeneration to cover the nature bless and boots of the messenger for the earth bless. Then all you have to do is equip them all with baneblades and research alteration 7 for doom and you've got a death bless also! By the time you get all this going you'll have the most powerful recruitable sacreds in the game. They'll be 30 times as expensive as anyone else's but they'll have the benefits of all 8 blesses, how can you go wrong?

Okay, that was a bit heavy on the sarcasm but taking an air bless would make your armies a fair amount less expensive to maintain. Which is always good.

[Trumanator]

For a moment I thought you were serious. Then obviously I read the bottom. I now believe that the biggest problem with forums is the inability of the written word to consistently communicate sarcasm.

[rdonj]

Hopefully that means I succeeded in preventing my post from sounding mean-spirited :)

[lch]

I now believe that the biggest problem with forums is the inability of the written word to consistently communicate sarcasm.
That's always a problem. Interspersed smileys can help alleviate it a little. :re:

[Omnirizon]

which is why some languages have a 'sarcasm mark'; most notably the Ethiopian Languages.

[Tifone]

That pretty much kills the usefulness of sarcasm :(

[llamabeast]

I dunno. In speech, sarcasm is normally very clearly marked by tone of voice.

Although I've noticed that foreigners often can't tell, so maybe the "sarcastic" tone of voice isn't a universal thing, or at least not universally the same.

[JimMorrison]

Not just tone, but inflection. It's a subtlety that you will pick up on pretty well in your first language, but that must be very challenging to grasp in another.

In fact, I can see how verbally, the difference in inflection may sound to a foreigner more as you deliberately trying to be a prick, than you being sarcastic or goofy.

[Kuritza]

Eh... Has anyone, in fact, SEEN markatas kill heavy cavalry?

It certainly seems that its a pure theorycraft; everyone agrees that its a very good idea and it should work, but nobody tries.
Maybe I just have two left arms (with broken fingers), but I cannot make this work even against AI. Ok, I have some indie swordsmen up front, I have some Yakshas spam armor-ruining spells, and my wave of markatas falls upon AI hordes...
Sometimes markatas even win, mostly when they are backed by real troops. But still I always end up with my markatas decimated and scattered across the neighbouring provinces. Doesnt seem to be a good tactics to me.

[rdonj]

I think the markata tactic was not meant to be used for every battle, but rather specifically to counter elite enemy troops. Using them to fight normal armies is probably not a very good use of your gold.

[JimMorrison]

Indeed, they're not a mainline force, just a tool that can be used in specific scenarios to decent effect.

Also, they really come into their own with Body Ethereal and/or Luck. I've had Ethereal markatas pull off some amazing stunts. Again, they won't do it all by themselves, and with the buffs the real point is to make them very hard for conventional troops to kill, while your Astral mages do dirty things.

Always bearing in mind the moral presented by the author of the guide - Bandar Log is not sledgehammer, but a scalpel. There is no one thing you can do that will be grossly effective against most other things, however, there is always something you can do that will be effective against whatever you're facing.

It makes them complicated to play, because unless you anticipate correctly in the first place, or your opponent fails to switch up his own tactics, you will be constantly changing your composition, layout, and scripting to get maximum effect with your forces.

Even against the AI there is some of that, as you will be fighting highly varied forces. So just remember, markatas alone basically suck, very badly. But in some instances they are marvelously cost effective. :P

[Baalz]

Indeed, rdonj makes my point. It's not very cost effective to use markatas against heavy infantry - though you can do so effectively in a pinch. Where this tactic really shines is against the even more expensive elite units which are more likely to be causing you problems. It takes about the same number of markatas to kill a heavy infantry as it does to kill a heavy cavalry, and also to kill a dual blessed Van.

The AI is actually a very bad scenario to use this tactic as it tends to recruit largish, widely varied hoards. This is very effective against swarm type strategies, but is completely unable to handle most thugs. Against human players however, you're far more likely to see very finely tuned squads with smaller numbers of better units.

Dual blessed Vans are kinda a best case scenario to use this sort of tactic, they cost 90 gold so even if they kill you 15:1 you still come out ahead on cost.

Here's a test I just ran. Lets say 40 heavy cavalry are attacking you. Nothing fancy, just a mass of troops set to charge straight forward. That's 1200 gold ignoring the resources (which are considerable). Defending:
120 markata - 600 gold
6 Apsaras - 6 pearls
1 Yaksha scripted to summon earthpower, destruction X4
1 prophet spamming sermon of courage
30 PD ~ 500 gold

I place the markatas flanking the PD, and scripted the cavalry to charge straight forward. Obviously tactics matter, but this is a reasonable proof of concept.

Turn 1 - cavalry charges forward, markata small bows do no real damage, buffs go off.

Turn 2 - destruction lands in the heavy cavarly, markata small bows and sticks and stones pretty much kill every effected unit, not damaging the rest. About 10 cavalry go down, and the rest smack down a chunk of monkeys but not a significant percentage of the hoard. Some of the Apsaras made it to the front line and their awe is keeping several cavalry from attacking at all. Here and there a bandar warrior from the PD does enough damage to hurt a non-destructed cavalry.

Turns 3 & 4 - very similar to turn 2

Turn 5 destruction misses horribly and effects only friendly troops - but of course this doesn't do anything.

Turn 6 cavalry breaks. Sticks and arrows take down a couple of the armorless fleeing guys.

Final tally (ignoring PD deaths) 28 markatas killed, 22 heavy cavalry down. Solid victory for the markatas.

Lets say, as I suggest you use this tactic in an even better situation where Vans are attacking you. Again ignoring resources and holy limitations 1200 gold is 1 Vanherse and a dozen Vans, and we'll give them a water blessing. This is a non-inconsiderable raiding force which many nations would have trouble stopping on a gold for gold basis. Lets see how our markata defense force deployed exactly the same fares. The Vans are set to hold then attack so they can be uniformly blessed.

Because of their much higher morale, the Vans lasted much longer. They killed 47 of the monkeys and 3 of the Apsara. They were however killed to the last man, only their leader escaping. Another solid victory for the monkeys.

[chrispedersen]

It is *really* hard to argue against a 5 gold 1 resource 16 defense unit. Pure gravy that they come in melee and archery flavors.

[Kuritza]

One last post before I evaporate from here. Yay! :)

Some advise to whoever decides to try the monkeys. Dont get overly excited after reading all these praises to monkey armies. Of course, an avalanche of crazed wild gorillas smashing tiny humans, knights and heavy infantry alike, is truly an awe-inspiring sight. But in real life, gorillas dont kill humans, they are peaceful creatures. Furthermore, hordes of crazed primitives tend to lose against real armies. :)

Of course, monkeys have their uses. With heavy mage support, they can even kill stuff. But dont expect them to win wars - after all the micromanagement hell, when you finally script all the mages to cast right things and put all the markatas into positions, you will face a turn-1 rain of stones. Bandar Log player is not the only one who is allowed to use magic.
So, use your monkeys as a living shield. Do your best to maximise their damage, of course, use all the tricks Baalz has described (except mixing apsaras with markatas, wasting astral is never good especially now that you wont have clams). But your real strength is kinnaras/rudras/other summoned mages.
I am not too excited with Gandharvas, by the way. 12 of them cost more than a Kinnara, and (most of the time) Kinnara is much more valuable. In Lapis, I didnt summon Gandharvas at all: Kinnaras are better damage-dealers and White ones are good enough for absorbing damage.

I used an awake Mother of Rivers, A2E4N4W4. Its a good minor bless, good source of water income (not just the now-extinct clams, but also summoned naga mages) and a heavy cloud-trapezing SC. Something monkeys really need because kinnaras are high in the research tree AND frail.
She can help you to attack your first indie province, catching arrows with air shield, and then start searching for magic sites. She's also capable of the aforementioned turn-1 rain of stones. Enemy communions and mage armies just LOVE that.

As for everyone's favourites, the Markatas... I've seen them rout a random knights attack several times, but their main use is just distracting enemy arrows and fatiquing the enemy. You can easily hire 100 of these annoying pests in one turn and you wont cry when they perish. When your army is big enough, they wont even cause a rout when they die.
Throw in an Ankh of life or cast Life after death if you can for even more annoyance. Chittering poo-throwing beasts are bad enough, but its much worse when they become chittering poo-throwing undead after you kill them once.
Same goes to monkey PD. Its an invaluable tool to all the forum trolls here, but its also very useful in providing your army with some semi-free decoys when you defend. Monkey PD ftw.

And one more thing. Your whole army doesnt have shields. Trust me, bucklers are NOT shields when it comes to defending against arrows. Use some beefy Bandar Log and indie infantry as arrow decoys; better yet, cast Arrow fend if you can. But dont believe anyone who tells you that monkeys have shields to protect themselves against massed indie shortbows.