[DrPraetorious]

Those troops are *not* a waste of space. I would've given the Peshti kite shields (no need to change the artwork, those are kite shields they're holding,) and I think the Malai Druzhina is paying too many RP for his barding, but the army is useable as is.

Firstly, they suck, and you're never going to conquer another player with them, however many you recruit, because other players are geared to fight indies who also have hosts of crud. But hosts of crud are NOT useless...

Against most enemies, I'd rather have 5 Pre 8 shortbowmen than 4 pre 10 shortbowmen, and the combination of fire and air magic practically cries out for wind guide + flaming arrows, which you get relatively quickly for your research bonus, making you much better at this than Shinuyama.

The suck infantry are better than most militia, and they cost 8 gp. Against many enemies, it doesn't matter *what* you have because all your troops are chaff, so cheaper chaff is better.

The heavy infantry really wish they had javelins and a better shield, but:
* With spears, they are relatively low resource cost and have a repel attack, making them useful meat shields for your mages.
* The axemen and swordsmen do quite well against equivalent resource worth of hvy inf from other nations. Their armor isn't great but it isn't hugely resource intensive either.
* The voi infantry are cheap and expendable, and do fairly well as far as blood hunt patrollers go.

The big weakness of their military is the strategic move of 1. No human opponent is going to let you get away with that.

So their military is pretty weak, but you still use it, especially the elite components, and it's balanced against the strength of their magic.