Guide to playing Patala competitively

[KissBlade]

Updated section on awakened e8 cyclops build.

[Kuritza]

Found this thread via the strategies link, gotta add something about the light bandar warriors.
They are actually good. Very good even, in right circumstances. But not as melee infantry - they are archers, with low precision, low range, but two attacks per round and a higher than normal damage.
You might want to recruit them against Pangaea, since it tends to mass lightly armored troops in great numbers. Light bandari take care of them like no tomorrow. I guess same goes to repelling the Ctulhus back to the sea - light bandari are THE unit to take care of chaff troops.
P.S.
Script them to fire, of course.

[Morkilus]

The lower armor seems like they'd be less than ideal against chaff - the point for most front-line infantry is to take less damage over the long run, not deal damage quickly. But I haven't tried it yet. I like Patala, but I went with the Bandar archers with elephants or the chakram-atavi up front.

[Sombre]

They work provided they have some other troops like indy heavy infantry or something to stand in front of them eating arrows and blocking stuff. Or if you mass enough of them, of course. They're really nasty close range missile troops though, it's true.

[Reverend Zombie]

Kuritza said:
But not as melee infantry - they are archers, with low precision, low range, but two attacks per round and a higher than normal damage.

Light Bandar archers shoot twice per round?

[Shovah32]

I think he means light bandar warriors with the sticks and stones weapon, or something like that.

[Kuritza]

Yep. Light bandar warrior throws sticks and stones twice per round, and if you amass them in decent numbers, with some suicidal shieldmen in front of them, they clear chaff very efficienly. They arent that good for small clashes because of their awful precision, but when you go against 300+ meanads, satyrs, lobo guards, madmen etc, precision doesnt matter much.

[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.