Archery poll
 

Please read this post - but not the rest of the thread - before answering the poll

This is a poll about archery in Dominions II, to help guide the Recruitable Rebalance mod.

For reference:

g means 'gold'
ap means 'armor piercing'
sn means 'shield negating,' caused by the '#flail' command. Normally, missiles must roll versus shield defense to hit a unit.

The questions are usually phrased as, "Is unit x too weak, just right, or too strong?" This should be answered in relation to other possible uses of money and resources. In other words, if you think that the combat effectiveness of slingers feels just right, but that they are too expensive... or if they have the right cost and power, but eat too much food or don't have enough strat moves... please answer "too weak."

Also, please answer all questions based on default Dominions II, not based on modded units. And feel free to explain or qualify your responses in this thread - that's really more valuable than the poll results! Wombats and others posted some excellent historical data on various bows and crossbows in the Recruitable Rebalance thread that you may want to consult, but answering the poll based on gut instinct with no knowledge of anything but strategy games, RPGs, or fantasy novels is fine too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

If you are unsure about a question, please choose answer 2, which (unless I made a mistake) means you like the current value of the unit or weapon.

Re: Archery poll
 

There are imho some problems with missile units that lower their efficiency :
1. and most important you can use decoys . If you place your troops e.g. like that :
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
rear front
xxx x &lt;-- decoy
xxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxx
xxx x &lt;-- decoy
</pre><hr />
Then likely a few volleys are wasted on the decoys for no effect at all . With scripting of archers you can avoid this a bit but not completely . PD archers can't be scripted and will always waste their volleys on the decoys .

Then there is the next problem :
2. Archer protection and storm :
If you have no staff of storms some strong fliers like devils or fiends of darkness will slaughter your archers quickly . If you have a staff of storms then your archers are protected but less effective because of the storm .

So basically archers are weak imho , but there is the exeption wind guide + flaming arrows .
With these 2 buffs archers are quite powerful .

But to that there are other counters . The various kinds of archers are all low hp and low protection . If you use wind guide + flaming arrows you normally try to gather 50-100 archers . This leads to supplyproblems . You can cure that with vinebags etc. but this leads normally to a quite big army : 50-100 archers , 20-50 fodder troops at least and at least 1 wind guide and 1 flaming arrow caster .
This kind of army is a good target for flames from the sky , ghost riders , ashen angel etc. .
And the archers are quite bad in battles , any of the massive damage spells wipes them out quickly .
While knights etc. can survive earthquake , rain of stones , flame storm etc. the archers die extremely easy to it .

And last but not least they do massive friendly fire casualities http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

Re: Archery poll
 

The targetting algothrithms have gotten better through Dominions II, but decoys are still a major problem, and FF casualties happen often. And, as you say, food, fliers, and frailty are disadvantages, not to mention arrow fend. Still, some of these problems affect other units too, like battlemages and infantry.

Re: Archery poll
 

Yeah so i would say make the archers quite strong http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

Cause as it is any decent infantry like principes owns archers in combat without enchantments .
2 principes cost 30 gold , so do 3 archers .
The principes own them .
If you do 40 principes vs. 60 archers then you use decoys to your advantage and they own them even more http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .

Balancing them is quite difficult though because otoh the longbow of accuracy is cool . It hits almost always .
Imho giving all archers +2 precision and +3 damage would be a good first try .
I think you suggested this already also yourself in the other thread :
Giving x-bows a rather short range like 20 but an extremely good precision would be worth a test also .
So new x-bows fire every 3 turns , have 20 range but 14 ap damage and at least 25 precision .
They were the ancient sniper rifles imho http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .

Re: Archery poll
 

I figured everyone would be down on slingers but I find them useful. Not so much as deadly archers, but I think they serve a purpose and it is in line with their logic. I find that I can cheaply create a cloud of small rocks flying at an army. This is sufficient to rout many of the cheaper bulk units (yeah I know, you disdain using them also) and things like elephants or Call of the Wild. They also get archer benefits for patrolling. I think upping their damage would be illogical. Like many aspects of the game, their lack of use is not from lack of usefulness but more from lack of experimentation. IMHO


As for the decoys and friendly fire comments, I think if you use the page-down key and up-arrow key in a battle replay you will see that they are fairly realistic. If you stick a big statue up front, I will shoot it. If you put me behind your infantry, I will shoot them (setting to the side, or in front with a fire-retreat tactic, or having the target rear units avoids alot of friendly fire)

Gandalf Parker

Re: Archery poll
 

Are you really trying to say that there is any circumstance in where a person who understands how the game works would rather make 7 gold 3 resource militia instead of 10 gold 8 resource crossbowmen?

I think not.

When someone who understands the game has the misfortune of receiving militia they sent them to their slaughter as soon as reasonabily possible.

Your never ending platitude that "every unit has it's place" is tiresome. Some units are simply better than other on a cost basis given the costs and abilities in the game today.

Re: Archery poll
 

Being able to produce 3 slingers to one archer is something I do often. You dont find that 30 slings causes more route than 10 shortbows? Or that 30 slingers patrolling does more good than 10 archers?

Of course maps and settings can matter alot. I tend to play epic maps so I build many units in many places. On small maps, or high resources, slingers would probably be a waste.

Re: Archery poll
 

I voted 'I find them useful' for blowpipes, even though I don't actually use them. They are niche weapons, and don't really deserve to be given serious attention. They're fun to fight against, though, and add flavour the game.

Re: Archery poll
 

First a question because i never tested that :
Do the slingers benefit from flaming arrows also ?
It is only 15 slingers vs. 10 archers resourcewise and goldwise it is 40 slingers vs. 35 archers if you take the 8 gold 3 resource archers which exist rather as indy archers or as machaka archers .

Problem is that the shortbow has 30 range while a sling has only 20 range . The shortbows get this way 1 freeshot and very often the slingers with only 7 morale rout then from this first salvo already .

Unless you do extremely resourceheavy troops like knights not resources but gold is normally the limiting factor .

So Huzurdaddi is just correct . A plain shortbowman is better then a slinger and longbowmen or x-bowmen are defenitely better then slingers .

Longbowmen are only 6 resources also , x-bows from marignon 8 resources , then there are indy x-bows for 7 resorces if you are lucky and finally if you are uberlucky the hoburg x-bowmen for only 7 gold and 7 resources .
They are imho the best recruitable missile unit in the game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Archery poll
 

Does everything have to be usefull?