[duke_commando]

From playing against dual blessed Kailasa in a game I gotta say they are not weak.
Sure they have some glaring weaknesses but their bless troops are monsters.
I mean look at this...
S9W9 Ghandarvas have
-enough moves to reach your front line in about two turns
-17 armor
-20 mr
-17 moral (blessed)
-and a +5 standard so they give each other moral. Basically these guys arn't gonna rout.
-16 defense (they take a hit here from the plate)
-two attacks (so four every other round)
- 25 hps
-twist fate
An S2 mage can summon 6 of them for 18 pearls and the spell is at conjuration five.
Their only weakness seems to be fatigue(kind of) and a somewhat non-impressive attack skill of 13.
Oh yeah, they're also magic beings so if you cast unraveling and wait 500 turns or so they'll die of old age.
If you don't go with a bless/summon strategy I guess you'd have a point about the pd...but why the hell wouldn't you with troops like these??

imo raiding wouldn't work too well against them anyway since they don't seem to need a lot of gold with the 1/2 upkeep of sacreds and also iirc summons don't need upkeep at all.
A squad of like five Ghandarvas with a piest will obliterate your 200 gold raiding force in about five seconds, and could probably take on a much larger raiding force as well.