Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

In the countless efforts to bring down SC's, I rarely see massed longdead archers cited. It seems these guys are ridiculous value for the money against high value troops & SC's. You can easily get more and the bane venom effect will kill off the SC/devil/summons at the conclusion of the battle. Groups of 40 archers are so ought to be able to carry the field vs single SC's. Larger groups would inflict heavy damage to massed expensive troops that are not as easily replaced as the archers.

Am I missing something on the effects of bane fire/venom? Is there a good counter for the SC focused player against these guys and massed undead as support?

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

no, it is a good tactic.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

the only counter i can think of is air shield+flying

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

well, they're pretty fragile, so they are fairly vulnerable themselves.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

which is why i said airshield+flying. you can avoid their arrows and then fly up and kill them (try a golem with amulet of missle protection, flying shoes, charcoal shield and a weapon of your choice. script him like this: personal luck, body ethereal, attack archers)

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

or you could not use sc's in the first place... a few mages + scrap troops would work just fine...

but they are great troops, no doubt

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

or massed cheap priests (see mans monks)

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Ordinary archers set to fire at archers are an efficient way to fight bane archers too, but the point of course is that bane archers are one of the few things available to efficiently deal with super-combattants.

They can also accidentally take out your own good units, too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

PvK

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Yeah, nothing like sending your pretender to melee enemy SC and send longdead archers to cover his back - with bane arrows. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

id say that the cheapest priests you can find would be the best way to deal with them the only exception being hwen theres a wall of longdead ect infront of them to absort banishments

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

But if you have priests, you don't have a lone SC anymore. And you have to protect the priests somehow. And if you afford that much protection, you might just as well bring in a mage or too, to distract the enemy, and spam something nice (Frozen Heart would be ideal with cheap W mages, False Horrors with Air, etc).

The fact that Banefire Archers work well against a lone SC is unchanged.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Wouldn't it depend heavily on what SC it is?

Air Path, or Water Path sc's have something in their toolbox to counter arrows. And once you see them and figure out they are a counter, getting amulets of missle protection would negate that.

What about Astral SC's, or natural Eth SCs? Do the arrows pass through their defenses?

But having an undead counter is really interesting, as a lot of thug/sc builds use life drain in some form.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

The archers have some serious issues imho.

Most of them have been said already, i'll summarize all the problems:

-Only 5 Hp, so very fragile. Some nations have even a priest as PD, so if they are your only undead you'll even lose a few to pd each attack.

-2d1f, not so easy to get paths. Only Ctis + Ermor get them fairly often (or always as Dtombs Ctis).
All nations can get them via spectres, but that's then enchantment 6 and conjuration 6, so not earlygame but midgame and you need quite a few spectres, so they are no longer cheap. You might have to use the spectres as leaders for the archers too.

-The nations that get them easy are the death nations. So your enemies will have plenty of undead counters anyways.

-Friendly fire. As Daynarr said, this is really ugly if you kill 10% or so of your elite troops through friendly fire in every bigger battle.

All in all i find the longdead archers not really good. Imho a spectre is the better investment for your deathgems normally. And in lategame then either demiliches or tartarians.

Finally keep in mind they are archers too, so they are vulnerable to the classical archer decoy tactics too.

And last but not least the banefire decay effect is MR negates iirc, so you will need a ton of hits vs. a good SC or really insane luck to infect him with banefire and they have only 10 precision.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Ethereal and Astral Shield cannot block magical arrows. Luck and Twist Fate can.

SCs are usually regenerating (if alive) or immune to Bane venom (if dead). Live SCs are also often poison-resistant to some extent. Bane venom is not automatic death; with high HP, poison-resistance, regeneration, and reinvigoration, an SC will normally survive Bane venom unharmed. But it will certainly make it easier for other units to take out, as the reinvigoration and regeneration will have to deal with Bane effects in addition to normal damage and fatigue.

Staff of Storms is also a pretty effective counter, if the SC is not solo.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Machaka also gets them right out of the box. Machaka is under-appreciated, it seems, so you should not forget about them. We demand equal employment opportunities for all nations!

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Hey, I like Machaka.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Well, your avatar has a certain "death-oriented" feeling, and also includes fire. Death and Fire is the trademark for Machaka, so you definitively look like them. Besides, you pretty much look like Spiderman, and what else is more Machakanesque than spiders?

It shouldn't come as a surprise then that you like Machaka. Show me your avatar, and I will tell what is your favourite nation. *Coughs*

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

as ive said a decent thug/SC (try banelord) with charcoal shield, flying shoes, amulet of missle protection and fire resistance (is it needed?) can work well against them due to his ability to survive arrows and their abysmal h2h ability. fill up his last misc with a ring of regen and he can tackle most undead

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

out of the box is an exageration - they need to have 2d on their pretender, or get a lucky 2d black sorc.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Woopsie. Looks like I got their paths mixed up. Thanks for catching that one.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Wouldnt' a banelord with a shield be punching?

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Machaka is a good nation... except for province defense. Machaka is one of the few which will have their province defense lose to call of the winds.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

just give him a cheap weapon (even punching hed probably kill them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif)

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

I thought longdead attacks caused decay, which did affect undead and did not cause fatigue, no?

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

My recollection is that decay simply adds poison and fatigue to the commander every turn. Undead are immune to both, so decay won't affect them. Bane venom is described as causing a fast-acting disease, only undeads can safely carry Bane Venom Charms; Banes (the source of Bane Venom) are undead and the Lord of Banefires is undead, and neither of them are affected. So there are various precedents for Decay to only affect the living, and they agree with my memory of the mechanics.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Based on a small sample, being baned by an archer does 0 to 15 points of fatigue per round and, since the victims were themselves longdead archers, does effect undead. The effect is not poision.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

I think there's poison too, but with 100% poison immunity for undead, it would never be added to the poison pool.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

also, it seems at least some troops die at the end of combat when decay is cast on them. probably the undead.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Troops only die from decay at the end of combat if their regeneration can't keep up with it. It's the same way troops die from poison at the end of combat. A Wyrm that gets hit by decay, and is at 256 HP in friendly dominion, won't die at the end of combat.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Decay/banefire seem to have the same effect (the banefire spell/shield/arrows also gives some initial damage). The troop gets a reddish glow and looses a small amount of hp per turn, but for the rest of the battle, even after they have won. It is possible for regenerating or really high hp unit to survive.

I have not seen any poison damage associated with decay or banefire. Undead are immune to both, though.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Undead are not immune to either decay or the decay caused by banefire. There are no units that are immune.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Yeah - in the artifact game, I had a very well equipped bane lord die to the longdead archers despite nothing else being able to hurt it. Cost me the Soulstone of the Wolves even though I won the battle.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Dide the Bane Lord die to the direct damage of the banefire arrows, or to the decay effect? Banefire is pretty strong even without decay.

(note that "FP" means "Fatigue Points")

I looked it up, and it turns out I misremembered/misunderstood the wording. Decay adds IRRESISTABLE poison to the poison pool, implying that only regen and (optionally) reinvigoration can save you, not poison immunity or resistance or even being undead. Sorry if I added to the confusion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Hmm, I thought undead were immune, my mistake. Does anyone know if the king of banefires immune? Probably not http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Anyways to get back to the point - killing off your own troops may be a reason why people don't mass longdead archers as much.

Re: Longdead Archery vs SC\'s/High Quality Summons
 

Maybe this post about decay damage by Kristoffer O helps for this discussion as well: Post#325726 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

...as I had already written some time ago. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif It also explains why high HP might sometimes be enough survive decay.