Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

So is there? They're pretty cheap at 10 for 5 death, but the requirements are a lot harder to reach than the same priced banefire crossbow, and according to the db, banefire bows only do a decay effect on hit instead of the aoe that the crossbow does. (am I right here?) For 5 death, it seems the crossbow is better at inflicting decay than 10 archers, much better against tower shields (does arrow fend stop the aoe decay?), as well as being easier to make, and the bows themselves have stats no better than a regular crossbow.

Maybe a nation without national archers, but even then, aren't indy crossbows plus a banefire xbow better?

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Honeslty, the big issue with summoning Longdead Archers isn't the cost or how useful they are. The big issue is that you are using a mage-turn for ten fairly fragile archers. That's not to say that they are never worth it, merely that you will want to carefully weigh that against whatever else it is the mage can do.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

The biggest benefit of longdead archers is that they use magic bows. This can actually be pretty huge, mainly because this means that they ignore ethereal/mistform/etc. If an opponent is using seasonal summons, ghosts, or green lions, this is a form of conventional forces that can kill them, and generally for a much lower cost. The decay itself is usually not a big deal and I would never recruit them just for that.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Without the decay, it's seriously just a crossbow with double the rate of fire, albeit magical, and a bow of war is so much better at just spamming magic arrows against ethereal summons or popping fog warriors, while a piercer or vision's foe would be better against mistformed thugs/SCs. Though, as you say, the decay really isn't worth much, since you have to actually score a hit, which would already be doing physical damage which would probably kill the target first. The Banefire crossbow's decay effect is so much more useful since it's an unavoidable aoe on enemies not actually hit by the physical attack.

I just can't see any circumstance in which it's useful to spend a F2D1 mage turn, over a single path mage turn on a magic bow. Besides the odd case of facing tons of summons and better able to afford spending death than air gems to counter, are there any cases in which Reanimate Archers is better than doing something else?

On an unrelated note, the wiki has a size 6 divine mummy with awesome stats as a possible result of ritual of rebirth. How do you get it? I tried RoRing Hannibal, the size 6 elephant mercenary and still only got a giant mummy.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Decay has some very small situational uses iirc. Disease + decay works, and if BoT is up it also helps a bit. But not enough usually. And there is a small bug with disease + decay on the battlefield and demon units. (Demons normally do not get diseased, or at least it heals every turn. But they can still get disease damage if they are decayed and diseased on the battlefield).

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Zmey's are also good targets for decay bows. Very short lifespan and no parry :).

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

A mummy thug backed up by a bunch of banefire xbows sounds like it could be pretty powerful.

Though I've wiped out entire armies with that banefire spewing artifact wand. The direct damage only obliterates a single square at a time, so I've always thought aoe decay was pretty powerful against normal and short lived enemies. Maybe it only works against the AI.

There's an idea, a single target vulnerable to decay without parry, so lots of single target decay rolls works better than a single aoe.

Any other thug/SCs like this? Still it's seeming like there's just no general use for longdead archers. Too bad, as they are pretty cool, and the fire/death combo is so rare that I really want to leverage it for more than just flaming skulls.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Fire death works great for battlefield spells. Banefire spam!

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Being able to pull that off is even rarer than having F/D.:(

A reasonable number of nations can scrounge up enough F/D for rituals/forging, but besides LA Agartha/C'Tis and Shinuyama, I can't think of anybody that has expendable recruitables that can cast banefire without expensive shenanigans with boosters or forced communions.

It would be nice if longdead archers were good enough to reward having modest F/D instead of just another extreme niche that almost never becomes useful...but then again, it's not as if most options in Dominions aren't extreme niche.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

[02:30] [Trumanator] umm, someone ought to point out to shangrila on srapnel that Banefire Bows are AP
[02:30] [Trumanator] or at least
[02:30] [Trumanator] i'm pretty sure they are

fyi

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

I did see that, though low precision 10 AP damage is still no good against a shielded thug, and no better than indy crossbows against unshielded thugs barring any special vulnerability to decay. And ethereal summons have so little protection that AP means nothing when comparing with the bow of war.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

You know, a single volley of those banefire arrows can wither an entire army.
And they're really cheap.
Assuming people still even use armies in MP, not just tricked out thugs and mages with lots of gems to spam fireball.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

I'm not sure if it's actually possible to get these in any way other than wish, size 6 units just give you giant mummies. The description seems to suggest you should get them from using ritual of rebirth on a pretender but you can't do that.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

I'll try to explain this better then. 5D gets you the equivalent of more than 20 crossbowmen who you don't have to pay upkeep on, can see in the dark, and have magic weapons. These magic weapons will counter a large number of things, and remember that anything can be made ethereal, not just things with no protection. And these banefire bows are far more versatile than a bow of war is, because they can actually hurt things that have decent protection. Reanimated archers are actually some of the best ranged units in the game.

Further, consider what else you're going to be spending 5D on that would be as effective in battle. Banefire crossbows decay things, but they attack much more slowly and kill very slowly. For 5D you can buy maybe two wights, or a number of weak undead. You really can't do much to beat the cost vs versatility by using death gems. So I would call their niche "cheap, effective fire support".

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Hold on... Are you cerain the arrows of a bow of war are considered magical? I could swear I have seen them do absolutely nothing against mistformed armies and the like. (Though I will admit it's been a long time, and I've never used them extensively. Not a big fan of magical bows in general myself, I generally find other things to do with my gems. Also the fact no one else picked up on this probably means I'm wrong...:down:)

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

The divine mummy is a random indy pop type. No other way of getting that one.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

What if a wished-for pretender unit, like a titan, is RoRed? Still a mere giant mummy? Even the unit graphic hints on a titan, not unlike tartarian.

(the part about "does not work on undead or lifeless units" in conjunction with "can be used multiple times on a hero" is a bit misleading since a mummy is both lifeless and undead, heh)

And to further derail the thread, does RoR work on uniques? I have a bunch of archdevils in HoF thanks to Flames spam, what if I kill them off and try to RoR? And then resummon them again? :D

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

RoR doesn't work on uniques iirc. And RoR a titan gives normal large mummy, not a divine one.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

20 crossbowmen with only 6 rounds of ammo each, and die like flies without lots of archer and undead decoys since they have no hp, no protection, and terrible MR on top of undead vulnerabilities, rendering the lack of upkeep somewhat moot.

I do see your point that they are rather more versatile than the magic bows, being better against soft targets than the magic xbows and better against hard than the bow of war. Though since by the time you get Reanimate archers, you also have flaming arrows, even that's questionable.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

If you have air as well as fire and death, missile protection and wind guide would remedy most of the problems.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

What now? 20? you get 10 for each casting, they have bows, not xbows, and have 12 shots each. (Both in cbm and vanilla).

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Fire/Death doesn't seem to coexist much with air. None of the major F/D nations have A except EA Ermor. LA Man could also get longdead archers through 1/16 judges, but they really don't benefit with how many good archers and crossbows they already have and their inevitable use with flaming arrows, plus how their opponents will definitly stress defence against arrows.

Though if you do get arrow fend, regular xbows and magic bows would be mostly protected from counterattack while longdead archers can still get banished.

@soyweiser: the idea is that their stats are identical to xbows barring the generally useless decay on hit effect, except without the precision bonus or the only 1 shot every 2 rounds limitation. So they're like 20 slightly less precise xbows that run out after only 12 rounds.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Trumanator: They also have darkvision and are magical.

Me:
Banish spam is preventable by just dropping more low level undead in the mix. Esp if those other undead have higher hp. Also, you can spread out archer units, and boost the mr. They are unbreakable, cold and poison res. Which helps in some situation. And decay has some situational used, if foul air is up, the decay effect will cause any old units to die pretty quick.

Please say Xbows when you mean xbows and bows when you mean bows. It helps people understand you.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Hmm, maybe massed longdead archers plus skelly spam for screen plus darkness. Can anybody besides LA C'tis pull that off?

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Maybe if Ermor took a fire pretender, they could bolster their longdead archers to protect against banish.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Decay on hit effect functions like "poison on hit effect" of androphrag archers. That is, it effects units even if their shield or protection blocks the hit. The fact that "on hit" for arrows means "even if blocked or protected against" is a serious upgrade to the worth of androphrag archers and it is the same with reanimated archers. Decay is 5 years per round, with old age afflictions popping up quickly after young units hit old age. Many high prot units have maxage of 50, I think, and start around age 20-25. This means that low-MR, high-prot, slow units are having serious difficulty by the time they reach your front line troops (who don't have to attack at all and can just form a wall around some indie commander).

Decay is definitely not a useless effect! Run some tests with it in raiding scenarios against Abysia or some other high prot, slow army like Ulm.

Re: Is there a niche for Longdead Archers?
 

Decay is very effective in combination with fear effects. I've executed some pretty nasty ambushes using LA Abysia warlocks to gateway in longdead archers & drop blood rain + a couple horrors (the archers will make short work of the horrors after the enemy routes) on big armies that have been starving for a couple turns to siege my empty-ish castle in heat/death scales. Situational to be sure, but can certainly be very effective and it makes me cackle to see all that blood fountaining up at the battlefield escape line.