Bandar Log advice
 

I've been trying out new nations and just recently decided to give Bandar Log a go, but I'm having trouble deciding on a good pretender build. I've been trying various bless strategies as they get some okay sacreds and even better ones via summons from what I can tell. However, I am having trouble expanding early without a SC pretender.

Anyone have some advice on pretender builds for this nation? Or just general advice? Is an awake SC pretender pretty much required for this nation or can I use some sort of bless? I'm assume a high bless probably wouldn't be very viable...

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

I've never played Bandar Log but IIRC it is famous for its trampling elephants. I expect that a bless or awake pretender would be superfluous. (Blessed units would probably still be inferior to elephants for expansion.)

-Max

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Sacred White One mages benefit from Earth bless reinvigoration. Gandharvas (Conjuration 5/astral summon) have two attacks and prot 17, and can use both the reinvigoration and the protection from E9 bless. You have nation-spesific Celestial Music that gives all sacred magic beings Quickness, so Water 9 effect will eventually become useless.

You can summon Yaksha and Yakshini from Conjuration, given enough Nature; Yakshini can do Clams and Yakshas can forge Dwarven Hammers. For an astral nation, that's quite a deal.

You have weak mages and weak PD. You have to work around that. No doubt someone will soon start throwing fecal matter about monkey pd being a joke.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Go with a E9/N9 on a Sleeping Earth Mother with good scales. You shouldn't have any trouble expanding with White Ones and atavi archers as long as you avoid the trap of Tiger Riders and/or Elephants.

Shoot or Ghandarvas(Conj5) ASAP and look for death scales in the wrong place so that you can Akashic Record them for death sites (possibly letting you use your awesome death summons).

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

As K says, White Ones are solid with bless that strengthens their armour. Dunno how "good" scales you can get with E9N9 though, even if you get free points from heat and semi-free (for shorter games) with heavy death.

I've tried to use Elephants, but they just cost way too much. You can get same indy-bashing power from the combination K suggests with way less money - resources might become an issue though.

And btw, check the EA Arcoscephale thread for advice how to use Oneiads. Your astral commander summons have similar qualities (awe and good buffing magic), with even more hands to wield weapons and shields with.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Thank you guys for the input and advice, I'll definately try these out.


I also noticed that Bandar Log has access to the same blood summons that Lanka has. Is it feasible in any way to acquire these as well? Some of these summons are very nice

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

You can bootstrap to blood by blood hunting with many scouts in several provinces (5000+ pop, preferably low income) to get enough slaves for the first empowerment and going forward from there.

Or taking a pretender with blood.

But wouldn't make that a cornerstone tactic, more like an extra trick in your sleeve. After all, researching blood with what is essentially a non-blood nation isn't necessarily that cost-effective.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Sure. Regular commanders can get blood slaves, just at a very very bad rate (1-20, in my calculation). Scouts are the favored unit since 20 of them is only 400 gold.

There are also some summonable commanders that get Blood on randoms (one of the three Treelords and Lamia Queens).

Btw, you can go E9/N9 with: Order0/Sloth3/Heat3/Growth3/Misfortune2/Magic1 and dom 8 on an Earth Mother. If the scales scare you, then drop the Earth. Nature 9 is the keystone of most good bless strategies for the regen and most importantly the Beserk. It's a little hard to break out of your province with the low production, but once you have the provinces around your capital cleared you are good to go.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Taking the first province seems to be my biggest problem. Seems like the starting Bandar Log army is pretty much garbage, which is why I was wondering about the SC pretender approach.

How late can I take my first province without worrying too much about being too far behind with Bandar Log?

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Also, how much am I going to hate taking 2 misfortune? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Grab four elephants in the beginning with your starting money, and those should last you forever as long as you protect them correctly. Hold / Attack against cavalry, straight up rush everyone else. This is assuming indie provinces are on 5 as normal, and not buffed up. That's what I did in my current game and I had no problem expanding really quickly. As for pretender, I took an awake rainbow pretender to make sure i could find enough gems to summon awesome stuff and decent scales (luck especially) to make things a bit easier.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Haha, I hate misfortune but as long as you took some Order you shouldn't hurt too bad. You did take Order right??

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Expect to take your first province on turn 3. Four white ones, your crap army, and your Prophet smiting can take a tribal province(you will lose a ton of your crap army and some of the white ones). For tougher provinces, ten white ones is a recipe for indie battles with 0 losses (avoid barbarians and elephants which need masses of archers, and use screens of markata for calvary).

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

K, I'm curious: why Order0 and Growth3 instead of other way around? And I assume that build is imprisoned instead of sleeping?

BL starting army is full of archers. You don't need that many sacreds to hold the line if you choose your first battles carefully. I've managed to attack with first turn's recruits on Sloth1, maybe with Sloth3 you could wait a turn more. Or not.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Misfortune 2's only real problem is no free gem events from luck and barbarian attacks. The attacks are aren't a big deal as long as you keep an archer army around home for that.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Mmm, yes. Imprisoned, not sleeping.

Growth is a better income for games that last longer than 30 turns. Also, bandar eat a lot of supplies, so the Growth is necessary.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

I just tried out the E9N9 bless and am quite pleased with the results thus far. However, misfortune plain scares me. What about turmoil 3 sloth 3 heat 3 growth 3 luck 1 magic 1 instead?

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

It's actually not as difficult as you'd think to bootstrap into blood. There's two components to blood-hunting cost, the cost of the units doing the blood-hunting and the reduced income from unrest/reduced taxation. An unsuccessful bloodhunt causes d6-1 unrest, a successful one causes IIRC d(number of blood slaves found x3 plus 4) unrest. In most cases a successful bloodhunter will get 4-5 bloodslaves and cause ~10 unrest, so you can support ~3 bloodhunters in a 5000-pop province indefinitely by turning taxes down to 0. You can support 8 or 9 scouts blood-hunting (poorly) in that province. The scouts will produce only 1/6 as many blood slaves as the real blood hunters, but you can probably get enough blood slaves to forge into Bloodstones or something. I don't know if you can get enough to support Kailasa's national summons.

-Max

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

The heavy turmoil cuts into income pretty fiercely, and after some experimenting I've found that it tends to eat you up slowly.

I wouldn't be afraid of Misfortune, as long as you avoid Misfortune 3.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

I habitually take Order-3 Misfortune-3 in SP. I doubt you'll hate Misfortune-2 at all if you have more than 30 provinces (bad events don't scale with empire size). It doesn't stop me from getting good events (I got the 1500 gold event in a Misfortune-3 province last night and I commonly get gem events). With Misfortune-2 but no order events will be slightly more frequent but more often good. The key thing is to have PD good enough to beat barbarian attacks (forget about beating the knight attacks, just clean them out later or leave them alone). In some games I suffer about 1 barbarian attack per turn, in others (current one as MA Ashdod) I've had only a couple in 30 turns. I'm not sure why.

-Max

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Growth is better for provinces that you hold for 30 turns with your dominion. If you have an aggressive playstyle it may be inferior to Order.

-Max

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Bootstrapping into blood means empowerment on a massive scale. Once you have a Blood 1 guy, you have him make a Sanguine Rod and you empower more as needed

Ideally you empower one Death guy to summon vampires who are very good at blood hunting at only 77 slaves; lamia queens sometimes pop up with Death 3 and Blood 1 so with a Skull staff and minimal empowerment they are perfect for this tactic, and Bandar Log is very good for summoning lamia queens.

Blood is a mid-game advantage at best, but if you bootstrap into it then it is a late-game advantage. Basically, the only reason to do it is that it is so cheap and at the very least it is a few extra mages for research.

There are several decent guides on the subject in the strategy section.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

So what's generally considered the safest bad scales to take? Sloth? Heat/Cold? Drain?

Death seems pretty heavy to me and I don't think I've ever take it in a long game unless I was playing an appropriate nation ie Ermor.

Misfortune seriously scares me. Maybe I haven't had enough experience with it but nothing annoys me more than a temple being destroyed or a lab burning down or barbarians! But that brings up another question- I remember reading that random events may be tied to what scales you take, is that true?

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Heh, I honestly think misfortune is the best bad scale to take because it doesn't give you any "hard" penalties such as minus to income. Sloth is pretty good pick too but once you play with misfortune a bit, you don't even notice it's there. With heat/cold one step further than the nation preference is also my standard procedure.

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

I think most people would go with Sloth. Aside from the minor hit to income all it does is force you to build more fortresses--most nations are more gold-limited than resource-limited anyway.

Yes, events are known to be tied to what scales you take. An (incomplete) list from Dom2: http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/events.html

-Max

Re: Bandar Log advice
 

Bad troops, weak mages, weak pd, expensive castles. Great summons. I think what you need is lots of luck, and I dont mean scales here.
Expansion-wise, with a strong bless you can put 4 of your starting atavi up front with a 'guard commander' order, and attach them to your big monkey prophet who's in the upper left corner. Then enemy archers wont kill your sacred troops and they should be able to kill the indies.