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.
Re: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?
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