Guide: Bandar Log - you whipped me with what?!?

[konming]

After playing my first ever Bandar game (SP or MP), I must say they have potential but serious weakness.

Typically Bandars are played with either good bless or good scale. Good bless is much weaker for Bandar than for Kailasa, since Bandar's sacred is not nearly as powerful as Kailasa. While Kailasa's sacred has some obvious weakness, it can be mitigated with bless. I have not seen anyone pointing out a great way to bless white ones. Sure with the right bless they smash indies quick, but elephants are just as quick against indies. Against decent human player, who uses arrows, low level evocations,heavily armored troops and so on, they are at disadvantage against most of the middle age nations.

Now about their mages. First, many of their summoned mages cost money to maintain. This is bad after paying 20N, you now have to pay 12G per month for a mage. Second, summons are less numerous than recruits. Can you get as many Yakasha as in Kailasa? And nature gems have many great use, like GOR and GOH. So if you use all your nature gems on summons, you lose out in other important area. Third, all their mages require lab+temple to recruit, wasting lots of money plus valuable time on your summoned mages, since none of your recruited mages is priest.

And there is their PD. Even backed up by Yakasha casting destruction (shouldn't he have better things to do?), 20 PD would be hard pressed to stop a similar cost invasion force. Against small raiding forces, esp. stealth ones, you have pratically no way to counter.

Then there is this ridiculous animal tag on all their troops and commanders. For god's sake, how can an almost transcend rishi be an animal where lowly peasants are "human"? In game term, it make sieging and defending against siege pointless for Bandar. You better recruit a lot of indies if you want to take any castle. And what happened to yogi's 7 morale? Even indy militias are better motivated. Oh, and what's the reason for guru's 2 combat movement? Since only immobile units (like a fountain) has combat movement of 2, are gurus made of stone?

Bandar do have potential in their summon department. But relying only on summon against others who can both recruit powerful mages and troops as well as summon, will not get you very far.