Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Interested to hear of community members that have effectively leveraged a mass of indy commanders armed with forged bows. Seems like that could be an effective mid game tactic. Are the gems and money just best spent elsewhere? With CBM you can make some decent bows at low research levels. Please share any experiences being on the giving or receiving end of leveraging the "buy anywhere" indy commanders with bows or other items...
-ssj

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I've seen Banes with Bows of War used on occasion. It semed pretty effective.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

My perception of magic bows on heroes is that by and large you're still just hitting one unit per turn, and when I say "hit", I mean IF the arrow hits a square with a unit on, and IF it isn't parried by a target's shield, all of which means your average magic bow is pretty ineffective in terms of stopping an army.

The exceptions would be bows with area effect or multiple arrows. I figure 5-10 indy commanders with a bow of war would be a good archery force instead of about 50 archers, but you've probably got better things to do with your gems. Banefire crossbow I think has AoE 1, and a few others.

Where you may well get most leverage is assassinations and tackling thugs, and even then you probably need a precision booster to make sure you hit. An assassin with the right bow should be dangerous to the average mage without a bodyguard, and several bows might be very effective at downing or disabling thugs if can deploy them.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

One important note is that Flaming Arrows apply to Bow of War.
If you're playing an air nation, I think, it may be quite effective because one commander with BotW is nearly equal to 13 archers but he costs MUCH less in both basic cost and upkeep, doesn't need supply and can be given an Eye of Aiming. A drawback is, of course, that if he dies, it is also an equivalent of 13 archers:)

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I've killed raiding SC's with indy commanders wielding Ethereal Cross bow. Just put 40 of the cheapest possible chaff as bodyguard around him, and the commander will get two (hopefully three) shots on the SC. Combine a few such groups, and you have a cheap hunting group. Does work wonders against those Vine/Eye shield + Frost/Firebrand SC's, but pretty much suck against SC's with some massive AoE spells.

I've found the Ichtyids to be the nice for such a cheap bodyguard unit, as they even have a change to web the target, and they have a mapmove 2 (so you can try to outguess the SC movement, move the hunters to position and hope for the best). And if led by a Ichtyid commander (although their precission is nothing to call home about, but with CBM the chance to deviate is low), they can go underwater to hunt stuff there too.

One additional bonus with the Ethereal x-bow is that it is "safe" to craft even with a hostile Arcane Nexus up. Not that it os of any great importance, but everything counts ;)

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I don't believe the ethereal X-bow works underwater... so the commander(s) would need to switch to the piercer or incinerate wand for underwater battles.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I could see Banefire crossbow being fairly nasty against expensive troops.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

With EA Tien Chi one of my favorite tactic is to give the N1W1 or A1W1 mage commanders bows of bewolf. Script them to quicken self + eagle eyes/aim, then set them to fire large monster. Seed one in each of your border provinces. When an enemy attacks with thugs or SCs, they'll be retarded fairly quickly.

Jazzepi

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Actually the ethereal x-bow *does* work underwater :)

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

First, great turn of phrase at the end there.

Second, does the "quickness" casting actually work for you? In my experience (which is limited after early failures), quickness results in an arrow being fired and then the unit merely advancing forward without taking a second shot.

On a more general note, check out Fire Ebola's for some interesting "bow" options. They are single handed, so a high preciscion unit can equip two (and hopefully an eye of aiming) and throw them into the enemy ranks causing some attrition to units on the front.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

on the other hand, fire bolas are range=strength, so that can hurt your options.

I think the quickness problem is only w/units, as it seems to work with commanders.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I dunno, I've heard conflicting reports on this from all angles. TC makes great use of a cheap W9S9 bless, so I generally also throw in a bless which gives the commander natural blessed quickness + quicken self + aim/nature's eyes. You could test it by putting two commanders out, one with no quicken self, and one with quicken self, then see if one fires more often than the other.

Really, though, any commander that can buff his accuracy is going to be highly effective. Quickness isn't necessary. Most people don't buff their thugs with air shield (or give items that do it) so bow of bewolf can be a 5 death gem answer to a 50 gem thug. Even if you suicide your guys into battle, they only have to hit once to render the thug/SC useless.

Jazzepi

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Bows of Botulf are good as mentioned, but the vine bow can be, too (edit: and fire bolas).
It has a short range, but that doesn't matter much since the spell has a very short effective range (precision) anyway, so instead of putting a mage into your frontlines and watch him die to a stray arrow you can put that bow on a bane. Additional benefit: thanks to the lower range your thug won't target the decoys the enemy has somewhere but the SC that's mopping up the infantry a few steps away.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I've had some success with the idea. The key is not to put them not on crap indie commanders, but commanders with high natural precision. Toss in an Eye of Aiming and you can be firing a seriously devastating volley with a Bow of War (gets even better with Flaming Arrows). Bows of War are also a natural source of very good archery for nations that don't do it at all.

The other bows also have situational uses, and in general the "items army" can use the gems better with items that don't run out of ammo. My personal favorite is using four guys with Rods of the Phoenix and boots of Quickening and some basic Reinvig.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Piercers can be quite effective against the right opponents. Super elites with average hps (dual blessed vans, knights of the chalice, etc.) don't last very long when you can pop 4-5 per turn while they try to chew through your PD. Not that hard to mass, if you've got a spare hammer they're only 3E in CBM. Vision's foe can also be pretty good, though it fires 50% slower making it better against really big guys like Neifels or SCs.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

One other option that i use sometimes is equiping a bow on those cheap/sacred indy mages (shamans, etc.) that have 1N and scripting them to Eagle Eyes and Fire Moster. Its even more effective with nations that have cheap nature mages (LA Pythium, etc.) as you use a secondary castle to keep producing these units and equiping them...

BTW: A commander with Bow of War casting Eagle Eyes can potentially hit 13 targets? or 13 times the same target?

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Thats actually a superb idea! Plus, you'll usually have a bunch of them anyway as you're trying to bootstrap into E/A/D!

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

13 targets. Or, I suppose 13 times the same target if there's only one to aim at.
They appear to be separate attacks. Aimed and resolved separately.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I was attacked in a recent game by massed BoW, banefire bow wielding Banes from MA Ermor. The player was using Banes to cart most of his undead hordes around, so he needed quite a few of them, and they don't really have much to do once the battle starts. In a 5-10K unit army, I would usually see 10-12 Banes carrying bows of war or banefire bows. Their effectiveness in those numbers was actually quite good. Just like having a mass of archers along.

Granted, this is an extreme example, and it was very late game, but the tactic worked well. I would occasionally have a unit that could cast arrow fend, or storm, in the battle, but often I did not have one available.

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What script, without additional forged items, can keep a non-mage commander with a bow from attempting to melee when they run out of ammo? Even if I script "Firex5 + Stay Behind Troops" they still attempt to melee (and don't stay behind troops) when ammo=0. I would rather not add in a "Retreat" to the script either. I thought I found a solution/script awhile back, but I believe I forgot it.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Give him a personal guard (with the order Guard), and the commander will dance with him without marching forwards. Of course, squads with one member can rout just like that, so make the bodyguard five men strong, and the commander will stay back with them

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

With CBM EA agartha you can effectively use the Ancient lords with 2 fire bolas and boots of giant strenght. The bolas dont just have range=strenght but also do strenght based damage.

My tactic is to put like 4 Ancient lords on the front line set to fire closest. The other sacreds are divided in 4 groups set to guard each commander. Placed so they all form a single front line.

Each lord will fire 4 bolas each turn (4X4=16) with a range and damage of 24 and 10 precicion(bolas are +3 prec). First rounds this will break up the enemy formations when the imprisoned units fall behind and when melee starts the fire bonds will allow your sacreds to hit even with their low attack score. (since it lowers defence to 2) At this point your lords are firing straight into the fray at point blank range and will rarely miss.

In practice it will be more like 28 damage and range since you will have an oracle casting strenght of giants. And those lords rack up experience fast so you´ll be looking at 12+ prec.

Add darkness and fire ward + magma children to that and you have something interesting.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

But the same thing can be accomplished a great deal easier with prison of fire.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

It sounds like a cool plan to me. I'm not sure if the boots and the spell stack though.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Thats not comparable, the lord fire indefinitely and don´t get fatigeued. Prison of fire is thau 3 and requires a f2 oracle casting phoenix pyre. How many capital turns do you want to spend 350 gold just for that role instead of getting a death mage? How many oracles can you spare for each army? Plus the spell dont do 24 damage either. And the oracle will tire quickly and cast something else after your script runs out.

The lords cost 60 gold each, practically nothing. And then 9 gems(you´ll have lots of hammers with Agartha) You can easily mass them into a VERY capable artillery line before the end of year two.

I found out it´s better to put the troops on hold attack orders since the lord stops firing when bodyguars are in melee for some stupid reason, other than that it works great.

@vfb: No it seems they don´t stack unfortunately, but that´s no biggie. They DO stack with girdles of might though bringing range and damage up to 27.

Another thing is that these lords are still badass in melee if they get flanked since they keep their battle axe (now hitting for (31 or 35 damage) and probably have a earth/nature bless.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

I have successfully used bows and had bows used against me in a few games. One handful of piercer-wielding commanders killed a SC surprisingly quickly, and I've used black bows and vision's foes to cripple opposing SCs myself in the same game.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Awaken Sleeper is your best bet for a summoned archer. They have 15 precision right out of the box and are very survivable. The only thing a bane has over them is that they do better while under the effects of darkness.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

...and, of course, ya know, well, they cost less...

Sleepers also have a large standard effect, which can be helpful if standing in a block of normal archers of puny morale. Though that's semi-OT for the present purpose.

Assassins, w/precision 13, can also make decent snipers (inside or outside of assassination attempts.)

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Your talking about a cost difference of 2 gems (4 in CBM). Yet I like the sleeper cause it saves me more on death gems, which are used to make many of the better bows (Vision's Foe, Banefire Crossbow, and Black Bow of Botulf). Not to mention that death gems are also used towards some of the best summons, remote spells, and construction items in the game.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Don't know if this was mentioned at all, but the bows are best used on scouts from my experience.
Especially if you get several of them with bows of war, you get a really big archer army that is completely unexpected.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

A sleeper with a Horn of Valor and a magic bow amongst archers is a wonderful boost to morale (not to mention the sleeper is quite a killer shooter with his high precission, as mentioned above).

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

With a strength of 17, they're rather nice with the lightning bow, too; especially if you can give them quickness.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

If cheap scouts is your preference, try playing Caelum (pre 11 flying scouts), Man (pre 12 foresters), Tir na n'Og and Formoria (pre 12 fir bolg scouts), Vanheim and Helheim (pre 12 glamored van scouts), and Jomon (pre 14 ninjas).

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

It's not so much that cheap is my preference, rather the stealthy part with the scouts, so you can surprise your enemy with a rain of arrows.
Chances are that he most likely won't be preparing for archers if he doesn't see them in the army, eg. mist, storm, darkness, while you can prepare flaming arrows, wind guide.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

If stealthed archers are what you want, they're really accessible already as national troops and many indies. No need to spend precious gems.

Re: Leveraging Magic Bows
 

Yes, however while I do find stealthy units reasonable often, I rarely find stealthy commanders to lead the units.