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!