Guide: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by Kristoffer O

Compare them to tiger riders. Would you rather have One ghandarva or two tiger riders after your second turn? If so they should be more expensive than the tiger rider. Perhaps not double, since it is easier to kill one than two with single strikes, but still substantially more expensive. If you prefer rate the ghandarva three times as efficient as the tiger rider you might price them two to three times as expensive.

Since ghandarvas are midgame summons they they do not fit smoothly into the recruitment system. If you do not like high gold cost you might give them an increased resource cost.

Basic way of balancing: how much would I buy this unit instead of other units. As long as you prefer to buy the ghandarva they are too cheap.
When the opportunity cost is too high for you to buy them there are still many niche uses for them, and you are close to right about pricing. Unless you want them to be a ghandarva nation, that is.

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The Devala is costly because she increases your dominion like the juggernaut and also the magic scale where she stays (unless I'm mistaken).

Kristoffer,

Thanks for your comments. (As an aside, it's refreshing to have a game developer frequently interact with the player community. In fact' it's unprecedented among at least the games I play). My response:

1) I actually think a lot of the sacred cavalry in the game is overpriced, and the Tiger Riders for Bandar Log are no exception. So I am not sure Ghandarvas ought to be priced with the Tiger Riders as comparison point.

The other issue is whether a unit ought to be priced in comparison with units of its own nation at all. Wouldn't it make more sense to price them against comparable units of other nations? Of course, the problem is that--as you imply--there aren't too many peer units for Ghandarvas. I don't think it's quite as nasty as the uber-sacreds like Niefel Giants or the Hinnom/Ashdod ones; but it's certainly nastier than the glorified human or human-level units that comprise many sacreds.

Anyways, what I did was slightly boost its stats and price it at 125g and the default resource cost. Let's see how it works. I've also given Ti'en Ch'i Celestial Soldiers as a recruitable, as well as giving Mictlan Jade Serpents. They are priced at 125g (Celestial Soldiers were slightly boosted as well), and 150, respectively.

The reason I gave several nations medium-level summons as recruitables was because I felt that national units--with notable exceptions like the giant sacreds--quickly become out-dated in mid- and late- game, and that was one of the game deficiencies (to my eyes) that I wanted to address.

2. I did not realize that Devalas change scales; that would partly explain the cost.

Perhaps our approach to game developers ought to be what the Christian fathers demanded of their flock: Believe, rather than question!

[Kristoffer O]

> The other issue is whether a unit ought to be priced in comparison with units of its own nation at all.

Yes, you must. Otherwise units of your nation will be obsolete (not that there are not obsolete units in dom3 , but it is good to keep the numbers down). Nations are not balanced vs other nations based on the cost of the most popular recruit, they are balanced as a whole.

So try to keep units relatively balanced within the nation and if they are too expensive compared to other nations, lower the cost of all units of the nation. This way you get the nation internally balanced, which is preferable.

[JimMorrison]

In case you return to this thread once more KO, I'd like to second the comment that sacred cavalry are, on the whole, a tad too pricey for what you get. It seems that perhaps there is just a multiplier being applied to cost, and while that multiplier is correctly applied to infantry, cavalry with their higher initial costs and higher initial stats do not gain any greater additional benefit from the bless than infantry do. Most blesses do not magnify a units power, but simply add to it.

So my point being, I think Tiger Riders are a bit high priced. I did a number of tests on different bless builds with Bandar Log, and by and large none of them are effective at early growth as the tried and true elephants. This just seems a little sad to me, that dual blessed tigers can't beat the ele. Sure, they are superior in some ways, but with no bless at all, there's almost no point whatsoever in purchasing them over elephants.

I think that perhaps your argument of how many of what units you would value more, breaks down a bit when you add the distinction of capital only. Capital only troops perhaps deserve to be just a little more cost effective, to encourage you to make use of them in your armies as you can afford to. Otherwise people will gravitate towards more easily replaced units to fill that particular niche.

On the other hand, I do think that recruitable Gandharvas may be a bit much. Though mid game summons like that might not be too bad with high resource cost, so that it's not worth buying them early on when you can't get a good squad together in any timeframe. Boosting gold cost may make them unattractive at all points of the game, especially if you are modding the summoned unit rather than copying it - as that will mean that summoned units gain the same high upkeep costs.


One other thing this made me think of (dear god, does he ever stop??), was that looking at what people will pay in gold for a particular summonable unit, brings into stark contrast the poor returns that you get from alchemizing. It seems people value units in the range of 30-50g per gem or more in some cases. Just makes me think that the pace of the game could be kept in check a bit if people had more incentive to alchemize gems for cash, rather than saving for more SCs.

[Tifone]

Well maybe... and I say maybe... Tiger Riders are like one of the many other sacreds not worthy of an high bless so, if they're so pricey... ^^

Like many others, they may be one unit which you buy a couple sometimes to add to your troops (let's say, to go with elephants to help their morale) and which may have nice qualities with the many little blesses coming i.e. by Baalz's strategy, with a rainbow pretender.

It doesn't sound so strange to me ^^ Many nations are not worthy for an high-bless strategy for their sacred units being having small survivability, or small map-movement... in this case, it's just their small cost-efficiency ^^ I think we can live with it - Bandar Log doesn't work too well with a bless strategy, or better, it doesn't work better than if it goes with just elephants ^^

May I be saying something stupid, just tell me I'm not getting offended ^^

[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.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Tifone

Well maybe... and I say maybe... Tiger Riders are like one of the many other sacreds not worthy of an high bless so, if they're so pricey... ^^

Well the Tigers have niche usefulness (and are still fairly effective units where the elephants outshine them - but they're 100g whether one calls them worthy of a bless or not. I think they are (not by themselves, but since you bless White Ones as well, and have many sacred summonables), but if they are worthy of a bless but just not quite worth the cost, then they're not going to be more cost effective as units without that bless.

I rather like the White Ones themselves. They're low on the ladder of the MA sacreds I think, but they're cheap and plentiful, so they add good value to the use of a bless.

But as KO was saying, if you can buy 4 White Ones for every Tiger Rider, would you? A squad of 20 White Ones, vs 5 Tigers. 90% of the time you're going to want to buy the White Ones. Which is sort of a shame - I'd like to see people use cap only sacreds a bit more often, as they're usually very distinctive and flavorful units.

[Endoperez]

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.
Clams, thug items, yakshas(whole strategy seems to be based around these) - too many uses for your nature gems, which are rarely abudant.

So you're saying that Bandar Log would need both skill and luck to succeed, because neither are good enough on their own? That's true of most nations.

[Kuritza]

So you are saying that most nations are equal in power?

I have heard claims that nations power matters little because its skill that makes you win. But strangely, these who claim such things tend to play extremly strong nations, such as Mictlan and LA Rlyeh.
If nations arent equal in power, then least powerful nations need most luck and skill. And thats true for Bandar Log.

[Baalz]

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.

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.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Kuritza

So you are saying that most nations are equal in power?

I wasn't trying to say anything, but trying to understand what you had meant. Most nations aren't grossly imbalanced, in either direction, and I doubt Bandar Log is too far down, personally.

On your original post, the tone suggested that you tried to belittle Bandar, but the arguments weren't spesific to them. I tried to point that out.