Bannor Strategies

[Hawe Hawe]

What religion are you using?

with Capria you should only keep a few good cities and build lots of wonders, choose Runes religion and go for elite troops rather than massed and spread your religion around everywhere (youll get more than enough gold)

for what youre doing tho youd be better off with Sabathiel/Order, and then you won't have many money problems and can keep all the cities you capture

I am also doing a bit of role playing. That means its Bannor as The Order against the evil rest of the world. Runes haven't been founded yet. The Illians founded Leaves, Overlords, Veil and Council of Esus in these stages. Illians were surprisingly strong in general, befor eliminated them. All other civs were evil and have all adopted leaves, because it spreaded early.
You are probably right that Runes would allow a much better economy. But there is only one true god and the Bannor won't follow Kilmorph. Sorry! But i hope you will understand this.
I selected capria because i planned more switches between war civics, including crusade and some turns of peaceful build up and economic recovery.
Now it seems that a return to a peaceful game isn't necessary, so i didn't use the spiritual trait as much as planned.
I am using military state, thats already reducing upkeep for a big amount.
Thanks for all your comments.

 

[Roghar]

I started my first bannor game at the weekend, took Sabathiel with the plan to go all warlike aggressive with swarms of melee troops. It didn't go anything like that in the end, i started on an island pretty heavily blocked off (2nd city was right up against another civ's cultural zone), I was on the coast surrounded by forest, and now well past turn 400 I still don't have iron, gunpowder or mithril, despite earth mana and having beelined for the metal techs to hopefully pop them as quickly as possible. My main neighbour (after i bashed through the first one) and for most of the game points leader was Charadon, so I didn't feel very inclined to try to bash through him without upgrades and a much smaller army. We were on very good relations until i recently attacked, so I was able to mostly sit, finish off a weaker civ he was fighting and populate some islands.

So, instead, I went the magic path. Organised and charismatic work very well together - command post and reduced xp targets. I have gone Apprenticeship throughout and built Form of the Titan, so it doesn't take too much to get sorcerers or conjurers. Confessors and priors are useful offensive priest units, and the Social Order civic makes happiness very easy to maintain.

Due to my failure to metal up, I now have a full complement of priors, archmages, summoners and liches, and have started blasting my way through Charadon, adopting Crusade and casting Rally for the grunts required to support my mages. I'm part way through building the T4 melee units, phalanxes, beserkers and war chariots (no paladins as no iron), and they provide useful melee support along with the Donal and Sphener. As long as I can weather the initial storm of chariots it should be an easy walk through, I have heaps of T2 spellcasters to complement my power units, and the healing Sphener and the Priors provide really means you can keep going without slowing down too much.

Has anyone ever done a comparison of time to reach sorceror with Arcane and Charismatic respectively? In combination with other xp boosters I wouldnt'b e surprised to find that charismatic is better for reach level 4 at least, and certainly in combination with battle to level them up it becomes comparable at the higher levels. Having softened up defenders with lvl 3 spells its easy to use T3 casters as frontline troops

 

[Rod]

Actually the Divine Units are pretty mean.

Inquisitors with str. 9 anyone ?

Even Confessors with access to City Attack 3 and Combat 1-5 and March can be a force to recon with. What I mean to say is that if you run an army even with only 5 Confessors and additional 5 Battle (Fireball) Mages (and additional 3-5 Support Mages for Haste, Regeneration, Valor, Dancing Blade etc) then nothing will stop you.

The 5 Fireball Mages can bring down any defense in one turn. The Confessors will cast 5 times ring of flames which leads to opponent units who have a maximum strength of 50 %. Then the Confessors attack and afterwards the Mages attack for the measly rest.

As all the BattleMages (Fireball) will have Combat 5 pretty soon and the Confessors will have Combat5, City Attack 3 quite quick as well you effectivly attack with str. 10-15 units against str. 5-8 units all the time .. Sphener and Inquisitors (and this Order Knight Hero Valin , who can get Blitz after Drill 4) are there to handle some special opponents but for the average defender your Confessors are all you need.

(btw. as your Confessors stay with you even when you switch Religion you might even power your Divine Army a little more by trying to aim for Stonewardens. But on the other hand .. you do not really need them .. )

But apart from all this. How comes that you do not have access to Iron and Mithril despite being on quite a rampaging way already ?? I mean there has to be Iron somewhere, isnt it ?

 

[Roghar]

you'd think so, and there was iron, just not anywhere near me

 

[Humakty]

I think a good strategy for traitors like thou would be to renounce to your heathen faith, and recognize once again Bhaal has the One Almighty Goddess, or your fate will be worse than the one of Brigit, forever imprisonned so that she can medidate on the consequences of her actions.

More seriously, I think guardsman promotion should be tweaked to work only against marksman, for the moment it is far too easy to crush Bannor people.

 

[TheJopa]

More seriously, I think guardsman promotion should be tweaked to work only against marksman, for the moment it is far too easy to crush Bannor people.

Either that, or marksman mechanic should be changed somehow.

 

[Darkheart]

Just an idea as a follow up to TheJopas post.....

Make it so that with marksman you can select a target in a stack and guardsman having a chance to intercept.