Why Kailasa, Bandar Log, and Patala NEVER WIN

[Lord_Bob]

Hey, T'ien Ch'i this turn attempted what should have been a highly successfull strike back against my empire.

You see, I pretty muched totally destroyed his army and sieged his capital last turn. But. 4 Archers, with Protection 9, and a single commander escaped into another province. T'ien Ch'i launched a devasting, massed attack on one of my province. I know what you guys are thinking. What could stop 4 unarmoured archers and a commander. Well, it turns out 11 Monkey PD can do it if your lucky. Now, the Melee Markata routed, and one of the Atavi groups failed it's mandatory roll and routed, but, within one round of my whole army routing the bowmen finally failed their morale roll. I won. Woo-hoo.

Another attack only failed because the Morale 14 Cave Drake inexplicably failed it's morale roll on round 2. Also, he targetted my archers, not my melee units. Oh, the Cave Drake was backed up by 6 archers, a commander, 2-3 crossbowmen, and a single pale one. That force should have won. PD 10. But if the Cave Drake hadn't wussed out it wouldn't have matterred how much PD I had. My own archers would have killed enough PD to rout my own army.
[Not inexplicable. I remember now that a Pale One was in the battle group with the cave drake. When the Pale One died the "group" was brought to 50% strength and suffered a severe morale penalty. Alone the Cave Drake would have won.]

But I could take these provinces back?

That's funny! You silly people make me laugh! For 55 gold he can put 10 Footman, 10 Archers, and 10 Light Calvary in the province!

As a result, my entire siege army is now diverted, lest the 4 Archers of Death strike again.

They are terrible to behold in their 4 archer glory, are they not?

You are wrong. I am right. That is why there is no discussion, only whining on your part.

[Shovah32]

Is Tien Chis PD considered strong? Yes.
Is the PD of the monkey nations considered among the worst in the game? Yes.
Do either of these facts make/break these nations? I think not.

Are you trolling now? I have a suspicion that you are.

The monkey nations CAN win as I have proven to you. Sure, their PD is a weakness but it can be compensated for. Every nation has pros and cons - One of Tien Chis pros is it's strong PD, one of the cons of the monkey nations is their weak PD.

It may change their multiplayer effectiveness but they CAN still win.

[Lord_Bob]

Oh I know exactly what I'm dealing with.

[Lord_Bob]

I have had to divert nearly all my reinforcements from the siege in order to prevent him from raiding me with the 10% of his army that is left. My only viable method of cleaning up his current provinces is to leave a skeleton force in the capital and send massive armies versus his provinces. Rather than do that, I'm going to try to break his capital(without the additional siegers, but he is a new player, so hopefully there isn't an army of militia in his capital, HOPEFULLY). I am also attempting a Dominion kill. Since I killed his prophet(by luck) this is possible. There is that luck again. I'm doing well. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. He didn't pre-make 5 Tower Shield Footman Death Squads before I broke his capital, so he only has archers and such to raid me. But because the Cave Drake is an effective unit for raiding, I am stuck with massive armies everywhere.

And that's after a Win-Or-Die attack on his capital. In which he didn't use his research mages to back him up.

I am only doing semi-well by Luck. Luck. Luck.

[Shovah32]

Lord_Bob said:
I have had to divert nearly all my reinforcements from the siege in order to prevent him from raiding me with the 10% of his army that is left. My only viable method of cleaning up his current provinces is to leave a skeleton force in the capital and send massive armies versus his provinces. Rather than do that, I'm going to try to break his capital(without the additional siegers, but he is a new player, so hopefully there isn't an army of militia in his capital, HOPEFULLY). I am also attempting a Dominion kill. Since I killed his prophet(by luck) this is possible. There is that luck again. I'm doing well. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. Luck. He didn't pre-make 5 Tower Shield Footman Death Squads before I broke his capital, so he only has archers and such to raid me. But because the Cave Drake is an effective unit for raiding, I am stuck with massive armies everywhere.

And that's after a Win-Or-Die attack on his capital. In which he didn't use his research mages to back him up.

I am only doing semi-well by Luck. Luck. Luck.

He has small armies raiding you? Use slightly larger forces to push him back. If he is raiding you then he is most probably close to atleast a few of your castles - recruit a couple of units to take out his raiding forces.

[Gregstrom]

I think these arguments about cost of units are flawed anyway. The limiting factor for Ulm recruitment is resources, not gold. That's their schtick.

Looking at the resource cost, Ulm took more than 3 times as many resources into the battle as Bandar.

Looking at cost of dead units, Ulm lost out on both gold and resources.

(I suspect that both armies in the Ulm vs. Bandar fight mentioned were equivalent to 4-5 turns of maxed-out unit production - perhaps they could be considered equivalent in that respect?)

[Lord_Bob]

You are quite right that resource cost is the limiting factor for Ulm. That's what makes elephants an effective weapon. They are gold eaters, and even when you win they tend to get Limps and Cripples and Battle Frights that ruin 100 gold elepants. But they are VERY VERY LOW RESOURCE COST. So they can be spammed out aggressively. However, it is also true that W9E9 bless isn't cheap. However, I suspect that Shovah32 was messing around, and had he been serious W9F9 would have inflicted alot more casualities.

But the cost of a good bless should also be included. You can be certain he didn't have Production-3.

[Boron]

Lord_Bob said:
But they are VERY VERY LOW RESOURCE COST. So they can be spammed out aggressively.

I wouldn't call 20 resources low resource cost.

Unfortunately only the ulm guys have even higher resource costs but they also get +25% resources as nation bonus.
So 1 ulm guy takes ulm about as long to produce as another nation an elephant if they have equal production scales.

The elephants are problematic though since they are so devastating. If the elephant user can amass a critical mass of elephants he usually wipes out your whole army and takes nearly zero own casualities.

I don't do tests anymore, but i guess with decent LI that can be produced as fast as the elephants at equal gold costs the LI has a fair chance of winning. Anything that costs only 1-3 resources in huge masses.

[Lord_Bob]

So I could send in, maybe 15 Longbow Bandar archers(18 hitpoints and 14 protection) costing 300 gold and a indie commander.

And he could spend 120 gold on 15 PD and have 15 Footmen, 15 Archers(Composite Bow), and 15 Light Calvary(Composite Bow) waiting for me. Then, I could lose the 15 Archers and gain nothing.

Counter-raiding doesn't seem like a very good idea. No. I need 200 gold plus commander armies in every province he can attack to prevent raids. That's only 920 gold! + 60 gold in maintenance a turn. Of course, I can only get away with that because he has no real army left.

[Archonsod]

Those 15 Bandar archers can be moved around the map, join other armies or defend provinces. The PD on the other hand can't ever attack, can't ever move and is a total waste of money if you never attack the province.

It won't even stop the province rebelling ...