Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuritza
Regarding luck/skill... skill wont make you win with Bandar Log, they just lack the tools to win with what they are guaranteed to have. Bad combat magic, terrible troops, inability to craft many important items etc.
Luck isnt much better, because even if you are lucky, you wont have enough nature gems for everything. Clams, thug items, yakshas (whole strategy seems to be based around these) - too many uses for your nature gems, which are rarely abudant.
Which sums up why Bandar Log doesnt win games.
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I think this is quite the mischaracterization. As I stressed above, if you insist on only using the "best" stuff - aka the most expensive, then you certainly have a point that you can have trouble coming up with the gems you need. If you reread my guide though, the point I didn't explicitly say (and apparently isn't clear to several people) is that the ability to use the less expensive units effectively is the finesse that is required to play Bandar effectively.
If it was as easy as blasting straight for gandarvas, summoning a ton of them, buffing them with every spell imaginable then marching straight towards your oppenent's capital while dozens of fully kitted Yaksha thugs grabbed every other province along the way then I dare say it wouldn't require much finesse at all. I give several examples above of ways to be very effective with very few gems if you're clever enough to use the right tool for the right job. Much of what I discussed above can be perfectly devastating with no more than the gem income you get from your capital. Again, to repeat what I said you'll put every gem to good use, but at the end of the day your most critical needs can be met by a couple Yakasha, a Kinnara, several Rishi, and the proper research.
IMO, the reason Bandar often does poorly is because people don't want to use the 'crappy' stuff, they only want uber double sacreds and SCs - which are priced accordingly. That's fine, but that's not gonna work with Bandar. You have to use your Asparas when in makes sense rather than Gandharvas. You've got to leverage your markatas against the super expensive stuff your neighbor insists is the only thing worth using. You've got to use your stealth archers to catch people with unexpected arrow volleys. You've got to compensate for your low morale with good battlefield tactics. You've got to use iron bane and destruction to even out the field on the protection front. Trying to wield the Bandar army like a blunt instrument is going to get you cut to pieces - which is why that happens a lot.
Just like any nation, the more gems you get the better off you are by a good margin. Just like any nation if you have *no* gems by mid game, you're pretty much screwed. It's absolutely not the case though that the only way to win with Bandar is to pray you get an abnormally large supply of gems. You just have to be willing to use what you've got and what you can afford.
Ps. Another thing I wanted to restress is that almost all your nature gems should go to Yakshas. One or two Yakshini for clam forging (if that's appropriate for your gem income), then everything else straight into Yakshas. You don't want to forge any nature items for them. They've got awe, so skip the vine shield. They've got good reinvig, so skip those items. They've already got regen, so skip that as well. If you don't spend your nature gems on anything but Yakshas, and you've made site searching a priority you absolutely shouldn't have any trouble summoning one every 2-3 turns by mid game even if you're forging a clam (with a hammer!) every turn.