[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.