Why Kailasa, Bandar Log, and Patala NEVER WIN

[Lord_Bob]

I have had to divert nearly all my reinforcements from the siege in order to prevent him from raiding me with the 10% of his army that is left. My only viable method of cleaning up his current provinces is to leave a skeleton force in the capital and send massive armies versus his provinces. Rather than do that, I'm going to try to break his capital(without the additional siegers, but he is a new player, so hopefully there isn't an army of militia in his capital, HOPEFULLY). I am also attempting a Dominion kill. Since I killed his prophet(by luck) this is possible. There is that luck again. I'm doing well. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. He didn't pre-make 5 Tower Shield Footman Death Squads before I broke his capital, so he only has archers and such to raid me. But because the Cave Drake is an effective unit for raiding, I am stuck with massive armies everywhere.

And that's after a Win-Or-Die attack on his capital. In which he didn't use his research mages to back him up.

I am only doing semi-well by Luck. Luck. Luck.

[Archonsod]

Lord_Bob said:
White Tigers cost 100 gold, and White Monkeys cost 23 gold. Flail troops cost 10 gold and 26 resources. Why don't you do the math.

You do realise that units are balanced among their nation, not necessarily with those of other nations?

So PD is important now?

Only if you choose to include it in your strategy. As I've said in another thread, there are times I won't buy a single point of PD. There are others where I will spend 20 points or so on PD.

I can pretty much route any army stationed in that province by having my smiths spam blade wind.

Assuming of course your opponent doesn't bother moving in a force to defend, or otherwise change the playing field, which if they had any sense would be their next move...

I will have 120-160+ soldiers routed just from dead markata. I am now closing in on 75% mandatory route.

As I said, assuming he simply leaves it alone, and doesn't move up troops who'll laugh at blade wind, or even a mage to counter it. Of course, it would be incredibly nasty if he actually decided to attack that province on the off chance you'd set up the army there to take on the chaff of his PD rather than the heavy infantry of his main army.

You are wrong. I am right.

Only if we forget why you're playing these games in the first place. At the moment, you're only proving you can't use the monkeys effectively

[Shovah32]

Lord_Bob said:
I have had to divert nearly all my reinforcements from the siege in order to prevent him from raiding me with the 10% of his army that is left. My only viable method of cleaning up his current provinces is to leave a skeleton force in the capital and send massive armies versus his provinces. Rather than do that, I'm going to try to break his capital(without the additional siegers, but he is a new player, so hopefully there isn't an army of militia in his capital, HOPEFULLY). I am also attempting a Dominion kill. Since I killed his prophet(by luck) this is possible. There is that luck again. I'm doing well. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. He didn't pre-make 5 Tower Shield Footman Death Squads before I broke his capital, so he only has archers and such to raid me. But because the Cave Drake is an effective unit for raiding, I am stuck with massive armies everywhere.

And that's after a Win-Or-Die attack on his capital. In which he didn't use his research mages to back him up.

I am only doing semi-well by Luck. Luck. Luck.

He has small armies raiding you? Use slightly larger forces to push him back. If he is raiding you then he is most probably close to atleast a few of your castles - recruit a couple of units to take out his raiding forces.

[Gregstrom]

I think these arguments about cost of units are flawed anyway. The limiting factor for Ulm recruitment is resources, not gold. That's their schtick.

Looking at the resource cost, Ulm took more than 3 times as many resources into the battle as Bandar.

Looking at cost of dead units, Ulm lost out on both gold and resources.

(I suspect that both armies in the Ulm vs. Bandar fight mentioned were equivalent to 4-5 turns of maxed-out unit production - perhaps they could be considered equivalent in that respect?)

[Lord_Bob]

So I could send in, maybe 15 Longbow Bandar archers(18 hitpoints and 14 protection) costing 300 gold and a indie commander.

And he could spend 120 gold on 15 PD and have 15 Footmen, 15 Archers(Composite Bow), and 15 Light Calvary(Composite Bow) waiting for me. Then, I could lose the 15 Archers and gain nothing.

Counter-raiding doesn't seem like a very good idea. No. I need 200 gold plus commander armies in every province he can attack to prevent raids. That's only 920 gold! + 60 gold in maintenance a turn. Of course, I can only get away with that because he has no real army left.

[Lord_Bob]

You are quite right that resource cost is the limiting factor for Ulm. That's what makes elephants an effective weapon. They are gold eaters, and even when you win they tend to get Limps and Cripples and Battle Frights that ruin 100 gold elepants. But they are VERY VERY LOW RESOURCE COST. So they can be spammed out aggressively. However, it is also true that W9E9 bless isn't cheap. However, I suspect that Shovah32 was messing around, and had he been serious W9F9 would have inflicted alot more casualities.

But the cost of a good bless should also be included. You can be certain he didn't have Production-3.

[Archonsod]

Those 15 Bandar archers can be moved around the map, join other armies or defend provinces. The PD on the other hand can't ever attack, can't ever move and is a total waste of money if you never attack the province.

It won't even stop the province rebelling ...

[Gregstrom]

On similar grounds, surely the cost of Prod-3 for Ulm should be taken into consideration. Some nations need good scales to get the best out of them, and some need a good bless. As I see it, it's all part of the intricate web of race balance.

[Boron]

Lord_Bob said:
But they are VERY VERY LOW RESOURCE COST. So they can be spammed out aggressively.

I wouldn't call 20 resources low resource cost.

Unfortunately only the ulm guys have even higher resource costs but they also get +25% resources as nation bonus.
So 1 ulm guy takes ulm about as long to produce as another nation an elephant if they have equal production scales.

The elephants are problematic though since they are so devastating. If the elephant user can amass a critical mass of elephants he usually wipes out your whole army and takes nearly zero own casualities.

I don't do tests anymore, but i guess with decent LI that can be produced as fast as the elephants at equal gold costs the LI has a fair chance of winning. Anything that costs only 1-3 resources in huge masses.

[Evilhomer]

Elephants are rather low on resources, if you compare the gold/resource ratio (which is really what you want to do).