Flying units -- what is their use?

[Osium]

Blessed Valks are one of the scariest units i've faced yet. Give them fire 9 blessing and for those of you who played MoM its like first strike ability from hell. They will DECIMATE the first unit they attack. Due to glamour and decent defence they are also a bugger to kill off with melee.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Arralen:
- archers .. most archers are less than well-protected, so even light troops could do some real damage here. Furthermore, if only one unit of the squad is engaged in melee, the whole squad will switch from firing to melee.

This isn't true. The units that are far enough away will still fire.

[aldin]

Also, don't neglect the strategic flexibility of fliers. The ability to threaten two to three times as many areas as a typical ground force can be a real asset.

~Aldin

[PvK]

If you have a flying fighter/commander, you can give more detailed orders to their flying troops by giving those troops guard commander. So you then can give the commander something like Hold Hold Hold, Attack Rear, Retreat, and the whole group, or five holds and then attack, or whatever you want, and the whole group will follow the commander. There are still limits though, and Retreat, while it gets the fliers out of there - it also randomly scatters them over the available adjacent friendly provinces, which would generally be obnoxious (though if you have cheapo mop-up gathering commanders, it can be ok). Of course, if your fliers are strong enough, they can be the decisive strike, rather than a harrassing force.

The point about strategic movement is also very important. They can fly over enemy provinces and armies, and can attack provinces they aren't adjacent to.

PvK