Why Kailasa, Bandar Log, and Patala NEVER WIN

[Shovah32]

I'm not sure if buffing your flails would have given you as much help as you expect but I certainly think that you would have atleast survived alot longer if I hadn't hit you out of the blue like that so early on.

Thank you for the game - I hope we get this rematch quickly.

[Lord_Bob]

Next battle, Shovah32 got some really bad luck, but decided to keep playing. So nothing except the battles mean very much.

As for the battles:
68 Flail troops operating in negative dominion without my Prophet for Sermon of Courage(again, bad luck on his part made me sloppy) fought 22 Tigers with strong bless and something like 8 white monkeys. Had light support from mages. Mostly mages cast Strength of Giants. Thier magma bolts killed like two monkeys. Flail troops killed all white monkeys and about 5 Tigers, with 2 tigers dying to Magma bolts. Flails worked well. But my army routed(would have won had they not). I'd like to repeat that. 68 Flail troops and some smiths almost killed 22 White Tigers, 8 White Monkeys, and his prophet. In their dominion.

Next battle, he rushed forward and hit me 15 white tigers. I built the suicidal arbalests using PD. About 35 PD. This worked because they work against things like white tigers. I had my one surviving smith cast Magma bolts and not buff my Flails at all. Flails didn't kill a single tiger. Total tankage. Arbalests kill 10 white tigers and 15 flail troops.

Third battle, Shovah32 gets into the spirit of silliness and buys a large amount of PD. Sadly, this is effective because my now large force of smiths is packing Magma Bolts for Tiger. Instead it gets Markata. So I rain flaming Magma death on Markata. Each casting can kill up to three Markata.
While I have about 100 flail troops and 40 flagellants, I am facing the remaining 5 tigers and something like 14 elephants. Because the Markata screw up my targetting, and the Bandar Warriors do real damage, I lose decisively. However, I do kill like 9 elephants and I think two tigers. By shear luck my armoured smiths escape. Yes they are armoured and have Earth Power waking them up, but they still should have died. My prophet was also in this fight.

Anyway, from the battles, it is pretty clear that Flail troops buffed with Strenght of Giants and used intelligently can do a good job against Bandar.

[Shovah32]

Please note that in the first 2 battles my forces were not scripted to fight Ulm(first battle because it was indy when I attacked it. second battle due to me being lazy).

And in the third battle, your magma bolts actually did target my elephants. Atleast the first volley did.

[Sombre]

So what your saying is you lost a battle due to the GROSSLY INSANELY USELESS monkey pd?

Hahahahahah.

[lch]

ah, you gotta love chaff

[duke_commando]

Lord_Bob said:
Next battle, Shovah32 got some really bad luck, but decided to keep playing. So nothing except the battles mean very much.

As for the battles:
68 Flail troops operating in negative dominion without my Prophet for Sermon of Courage(again, bad luck on his part made me sloppy) fought 22 Tigers with strong bless and something like 8 white monkeys. Had light support from mages. Mostly mages cast Strength of Giants. Thier magma bolts killed like two monkeys. Flail troops killed all white monkeys and about 5 Tigers, with 2 tigers dying to Magma bolts. Flails worked well. But my army routed(would have won had they not). I'd like to repeat that. 68 Flail troops and some smiths almost killed 22 White Tigers, 8 White Monkeys, and his prophet. In their dominion.

Next battle, he rushed forward and hit me 15 white tigers. I built the suicidal arbalests using PD. About 35 PD. This worked because they work against things like white tigers. I had my one surviving smith cast Magma bolts and not buff my Flails at all. Flails didn't kill a single tiger. Total tankage. Arbalests kill 10 white tigers and 15 flail troops.

Third battle, Shovah32 gets into the spirit of silliness and buys a large amount of PD. Sadly, this is effective because my now large force of smiths is packing Magma Bolts for Tiger. Instead it gets Markata. So I rain flaming Magma death on Markata. Each casting can kill up to three Markata.
While I have about 100 flail troops and 40 flagellants, I am facing the remaining 5 tigers and something like 14 elephants. Because the Markata screw up my targetting, and the Bandar Warriors do real damage, I lose decisively. However, I do kill like 9 elephants and I think two tigers. By shear luck my armoured smiths escape. Yes they are armoured and have Earth Power waking them up, but they still should have died. My prophet was also in this fight.

Anyway, from the battles, it is pretty clear that Flail troops buffed with Strenght of Giants and used intelligently can do a good job against Bandar.

Were the tigers blessed? Otherwise it's not to surprising they lost against 3x their number in heavy infantry.
I'd think with a f9w9 bless they'd rip though the infantry. If they can't they might need a cost reduction cause 100 gold is pretty steep.

[Lord_Bob]

They had an W9E9 bless.

F9 gets the Fire Attack, which would make them worse, but the +4 to attack is meaningless. Flail troops have a defence of 5.

[Archonsod]

Lord_Bob said:
I'd like to repeat that. 68 Flail troops and some smiths almost killed 22 White Tigers, 8 White Monkeys, and his prophet. In their dominion.

Not that surprising really, you outnumber them more than two to one. Given sufficient troop numbers you can take out anything thanks to the multiple attacks reduce defence rules.

Sadly, this is effective because my now large force of smiths is packing Magma Bolts for Tiger. Instead it gets Markata. So I rain flaming Magma death on Markata. Each casting can kill up to three Markata.

Cannon fodder has always been useful :

Anyway, from the battles, it is pretty clear that Flail troops buffed with Strenght of Giants and used intelligently can do a good job against Bandar.

I'd think flail troops buffed and used intelligently would do a good job against just about anyone.

You've already lost a battle thanks to the monkey PD, which somewhat disproves your theory of it being useless. The problem with your original premise is that it's based around the value of the troops as toe to toe combatants against another unit, which isn't always the purpose of a troop, nor a good use of the troop. Bandar's PD is pretty much infinitely renewable chaff. They're fairly useless if your relying on them to see off a determined assault, however if their only purpose is to distract your mages and archers long enough for some decent combat troops to engage, or for a mage to get off a particular spell, then they're pretty much perfect. Of course, it means you can't treat defence for Bandar the same as you would for Abyssia, but then I think you could say the same thing about any aspect for any nation. The trick to winning isn't picking the best troops, but using them in the best manner. Sometimes it's crushing your enemy, sometimes it's dying in droves.

I guess to be honest that's the only real flaw with Bandar's little monkeys - thematically, they don't seem like one of the nations which would be happy to sacrifice a few thousand of their own for the 'greater good', but there you go.

[lch]

That was a very good post, Archonsod, which I hope Lord_Bob doesn't ignore, and a good finish to this thread I think.

[Lord_Bob]

Not that surprising really, you outnumber them more than two to one. Given sufficient troop numbers you can take out anything thanks to the multiple attacks reduce defence rules.

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.
22 White Tigers, 8 White Monkeys. 68 Flail Troops and 4 Smiths

The Bless troops had a W9E9 bless. They were fighting in their dominion, with their prophet and only won because my troops didn't have their prophet and routed.(also the -1 from dominion really hurt).

Losses:
7 White Tigers, 8 White Monkeys. 68 Flail Troops and 3 Smiths

You've already lost a battle thanks to the monkey PD, which somewhat disproves your theory of it being useless. The problem with your original premise is that it's based around the value of the troops as toe to toe combatants against another unit, which isn't always the purpose of a troop, nor a good use of the troop. Bandar's PD is pretty much infinitely renewable chaff.

So PD is important now?

And no, it was only usefull ONCE. Now that I know it's there, I can pretty much route any army stationed in that province by having my smiths spam blade wind. There is 2 melee Markate per point, and from the number of Bandar Warriors I think he had at least 40-50 PD. That's 800 gold right there. More importantly, that means I can add 80-100 routed to the army route total with two blade winds. Next, I have to hope the smiths/flails kill enough guys to push the army below 50%. Which, since the total already has 80-100 routed, isn't that hard. Then the Archer Markata(Morale 7 +1 for dominion) must begin making morale rolls every turn. Once they route I will have 120-160+ soldiers routed just from dead markata. I am now closing in on 75% mandatory route.

That was a very good post, Archonsod, which I hope Lord_Bob doesn't ignore, and a good finish to this thread I think.

Since the first line of his post is "logic" which would result in any player using it losing in MP, that's pretty smart.

"My enemy is losing more, and my units only cost 10 times as much!"