Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

Water bless means the sacreds reach the enemy faster and kill them faster, and after they rout get to the archers faster. It doesn't protect from the arrows, but the archers won't get to fire as much.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

Alas, white ones aren't jaguars who can indeed owerwhelm chaff quickly and with little casualties, when blessed with W9.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

I tested them in a quite long game, and chaff gets crushed by W9, F4, N4. True they tire quickly, but they are easily replaced.
Edit : forgot to admit morale 7 on many commanders is a pain in the but. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

All in all it is not my favored faction, but I wouldn't rank them the lowest position, because of recruitable everywhere sacreds, which makes for pretty efficient early games(I've reached astonishing rates with them, as with any other sacred oriented faction)on which you can capitalize, and efficient magic, even if they are crippled by somewhat heavy flaws.
In fact it is hard to say which is the worse, but personally I hate the animal tag, for the reasons listed above and the dreaded animal awe.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

Machaka is okay, but having the ultimate worse province defense is definitely noticeable and painful for large maps.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

Markata have a morale of 7. In your dominion it gets bumped to eight, which is enought that the little cowards MIGHT make a morale roll. In enemy Dominion, they have a morale of 6. Six.

I ran three fights with 5 Heavy Infantry and an Independent commander against 10 Monkey PD in enemy dominion. The Monkey PD lost every fight. 2 total Heavy Infantry killed in all the fights.

I then ran three fights with 5 Heavy Infantry and an Independent commander against 20 Monkey PD in enemy dominion. The Monkey PD did win. But in one of the fights the Melee Markata had broken, and they are half the PD, so auto-route was looming.

It seems pretty obvious that 10 Heavy Infantry and an Independent commander could easily take 20 PD. And that is absurd.

Even giant PD would probably win that fight. They do have 10 militia. Weak units, but they would be able to break through the enemy armour and kill them.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

I agree. They take a little more subtlety to play than the average nation, but with elephants, strong astral and very strong non-unique summons they've got obvious good options for early, middle and late game. With a little bit of cleverness/luck they've got a bunch more options from awesome blood summons to recruitable/easily summonable national thug chasises.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

I agree with Baalz. Blood summons is a key.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

I'd hardly call it a key.

Additional asset after those astral magicks, elephants and summons is more like it.

Of course you could take the KB route, but it's hardly, erm, competitive.

Though, siege penalty hurts. But it just means some trading for siege bonus items will be necessary. I hope.

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

Of course elephants and astral magic give a good start, but the problems begin already at the end of the second year. At this moment there are not ehough gems for good summons. But in case of the right development and pretender one is able to summon the first Dakini

Re: Monkeys cry for changes?
 

If you want to reach Blood6 within 20 first turns with what essentially is not a blood nation I would claim you're not exactly playing to your strengths.

But, having not played Bandars much apart from couple of duels, I can't comment with much authority. I'll have to get back to this after some time with next megagame where I'm playing them.