Guide to playing Patala competitively

[KissBlade]

The problem is, the purpose you described are better served by Elephants/Blade Winders. I can't really picture scenarios where you're not better off just saving your gold for those instead. The Longbows serve a more specific role as artillery. STick and stones might shoot twice and all but considering the price and the lack of durability, it's pretty meh since Patala has access to lots of crappy missile anyway.

[Edi]

I suppose a lot of that depends on what research difficulty you're playing. Just bumping research to hard makes the wait for Bladewind significantly longer.

[Kuritza]

Elephants -
No, sometimes they arent a better answer to chaff. Maybe if you can hire 30 of them all of a sudden, they are. But if you can only hire 5 elephants (imagine you're short on gold), they are quite vulnerable and wont hurt enemy as 25 light bandari.
Bladewind -
For Patala (late age) maybe... against Pangaea. Because Rlyeh will easily mind duel your bladewinders into untimely grave. Same goes for elephants btw, they are 5x times easier to mind blast than light bandari.

Price and durability is the same as for bandari longbowmen. And stone is not such a crappy missile when a big bad bandar is holding it, dmg 12 is better than a longbow arrow. Its only downside is terrible accuracy, which wont matter when enemy chaff is everywhere.

[Humakty]

I am a wannabee Arcos player (more success with fire nations...)and what I learned is that elephant are too costly to rely upon if you want an empire.

If you want them to be in sufficent numbers, so that they can literally crush any opposition before getting tired, you'll have too few battle groups, and you won't be able to fight on a sufficent number of fronts.

I've been able to win some battles with monkeys without using elephants, I think the big problem with them is having reinforcements after each noticeable engagements, as your troops tend to die easily.

[KissBlade]

I can't feasibly picture hiring those light bandar warriors over longbows in the beginning. And early mid, when elephants come into it's own and national troops are just about to be useless, they're still way more effective than light bandar warriors. The scenario you gave was mass chaff. Mass chaff allows you to build troops of your own too. 500 gold is still better served with elephants because those elephants will last you and it's not difficult to script them and place them to do heavy damage. You don't have to worry too much about friendly fire either as you will if you went light bandars. You can't go, well Ryleh is going to blah blah blah. That's nation specific because I can just as easily say light bandar warriors drop like flies to any sort of falling fire/frost, blade wind, archers etc. There's a lot more counters to them than elephants. And if you're forced to scatter into too many armies without a big solid main army you're fux0red anyway. In any MP, you should have ONE maybe TWO main armies around mid games with thugs/mini SC's scattered about to put out any small fires.

In short, Light Bandar Warriors are not good with their current stats cost. You can argue this until your blue in the face but until they have better range and better precision, I doubt I'll be changing my mind anytime soon.

[WraithLord]

I'm hereby bringing this thread back from the dead

I've read carefully through this guide and truth be told I'm not in agreement with some of the notions raised here.

I've come with some recommendations, as below:
-> Initial expansion. Use elepahnt groups. When you can, mix with Bandar infantry for morale.
-> recommended scales, magic+1 or +3 for research bonus. Prod is not required. Order +3, Possibly Growth.
-> Use a complementing pretnder to nations magic (W,E,S,N), so either a rainbow mage, or an SC with B,D,F,A,N for example.
-> Expand early on using groups of elephants, they're awesome early game and terrible mid to late game (since their low MR means they're toast to competent players using MR spells like soul slay)
-> In mid game switch to Bandar based armies with some Atavis for stealth if needed.
-> Important magic schools are, Conj. (great summons) and Evoc (For Nagarishis)

I also have a couple of questions regarding Patala summons I couldn't find an answer for in this thread (or others for that matter):
1. Are Apsaras worth it?
2. Are Yakshas and Yakshine (conj. 4) the same as Kailasa recruited mages?
3. Gandharvas are supposedly good summons for EA. Are they also useful for Patala in LA?
4. Devala and Rudra. Any information is welcome. Are they unique? Can they be made into good SCs?

[Renojustin]

One point in favor of bandar infantry is that fire arrows, wind guide, and strength all increase their damage much more significantly than they would for longbows.

At least I think flaming arrows works for sticks and stones...

Drop a few strength buffs and flaming arrows with Wind Guide on an army of bandar infantry and watch the feces fly!

You now have: shortbow range with massive (magical) missile damage.

[Gregstrom]

1. They're unarmoured sacreds with only average defence and two attacks (although 1 is a kick - wow...). Probably not.
2. Yes, right down to having an upkeep cost.
3. They have about 17 prot, a buckler and a falchion or similar (and I think a kick too). Good MR and attack/defence make them able to stand up well in fights with LA troops.
4. The Rudra is a big 4-armed SC chassis, and is pretty handy. The Devala is a spellcaster who's not much good in a fight IIRC, and the side-effect of boosting magic scales makes it a good boost to researchers if you haven't gone for magic 3 in your scales.

[WraithLord]

Good suggestion. (I think it was already made earlier in this thread.)

I also found that markata units do have their uses. For one their small size allows them to swarm larger enemies, secondly they have high defense, meaning as long as they're not under direct enemy arrow fire they tend to bring relatively good results (for 5g units).
For example, in some of my test games I've seen the markata archers stop and handle a charge of a group of knights. This feat was repeated several times in my tests.

[WraithLord]

Thank you Gregstrom.

May I ask what you mean in your comment about point #4. The one about side effect of magic scale?- Does the Devala boost magic scales or some such?