Archery poll

[Gandalf Parker]

well Ive played games where resources were the deciding factor. It wasnt worth me saving gold to make bowmen somehwere else. I dont care as much about "best" as I do pros and cons.

If you nitpick the numbers to "best" then we will only have 6 units in the game. You might as well be playing chess.

[Boron]

Gandalf Parker said:
well Ive played games where resources were the deciding factor. It wasnt worth me saving gold to make bowmen somehwere else. I dont care as much about "best" as I do pros and cons.

In SP yeah but i have to admit that i am even there kinda a powergamer . In MP most other ppl are also .
But that's only personal taste . I made 3 quickfights in your nice minimap 35 machaka archers vs. 40 slingers and in one of the 3 fights , entertainingly the first one , the slingers won .
So thnx to the really good dice roll system though the slingers are a bit worse as shortbowmen they are not so useless that they are never worth being bought also .
Especially by arco cause they are their only missile troop . It is always a question of availibility too . 99% of the Man players will always buy longbowmen instead of slingers but some Arcoplayers will buy slingers until they find e.g. cheap indy x-bowmen or archers .

Gandalf Parker said:
If you nitpick the numbers to "best" then we will only have 6 units in the game. You might as well be playing chess.

Which 6 units that would be ? I would say that at least 50 units are very useful

[NTJedi]

Boron... Gandalf...

Slingers would be worth considering if their purchase price dropped by 2 gold per unit... otherwise they're rarely worth it based on morale and precision.

by Sandman
I voted 'I find them useful' for blowpipes, even though I don't....

I rarely have seen the blowpipe dudes use their archery poison pipes even when able to... so I rarely get them except for those extreme/scary conditions. Also their precision would have to be more accurate for me to consider them seriously in a marching army.

[Saber Cherry]

Molog said:
Does everything have to be useful?

Yes! If something is never useful, it has no reason to exist, as it detracts from the game (like rotten sea-slug entrails at a salad bar). More importantly, if something was never historically useful, it would never have existed (or been remembered). Slings, shortbows, axes, and militia were not deployed for centuries because they were useless (that's a double-negative, meaning "they were deployed because they were useful") - so if a game makes them seem useless, something's wrong!

[Oversway]

More useful units leads to more variety, which I find enjoyable.

[PDF]

NTJedi said:
Boron... Gandalf...

Slingers would be worth considering if their purchase price dropped by 2 gold per unit... otherwise they're rarely worth it based on morale and precision.

I rarely have seen the blowpipe dudes use their archery poison pipes even when able to... so I rarely get them except for those extreme/scary conditions. Also their precision would have to be more accurate for me to consider them seriously in a marching army.

Mmmf, even at -2 gold I wouldn't buy slingers if their weapons still are so much crap.
Same for blowpipes, they have a very limited usefulness for sneaky tactics, but are horribly weak, only 1 time out of 10 (100?) do they manage to use their pipe before routing !

[sushiboat]

For reference, what is the distance from one end of the battlefield to the other, in terms of range? What is the distance between two opposing units who are at the very front and center of their formation spaces?

[Chazar]

sushiboat said:
For reference, what is the distance from one end of the battlefield to the other, in terms of range? What is the distance between two opposing units who are at the very front and center of their formation spaces?

According to Liga's Manual addenda, the entire battlefield is 58x28 squares wide, that is 24x28 per army plus 10 neutral columns in between the opposing forces. However I did not count that myself...

[Cainehill]

Saber Cherry said:
Yes! If something is never useful, it has no reason to exist, as it detracts from the game (like rotten sea-slug entrails at a salad bar). More importantly, if something was never historically useful, it would never have existed (or been remembered). Slings, shortbows, axes, and militia were not deployed for centuries because they were useless (that's a double-negative, meaning "they were deployed because they were useful") - so if a game makes them seem useless, something's wrong!

Except that Dominions doesn't model some of the things that made those things useful. For example : militia were used for ages because, "real" troops required training and equipment, while militia could simply be pulled from the farms when it wasn't planting or harvent time.

Similarly, axes and slings were used for ages because they were cheap and easy to make - slings could be made almost instantly from rags, while an axe required a piece of wood and an axe head, both of which could be turned out in good quantity by trained people in a single day. A sword, on the other hand, took days of work for a single weapon.

Finally - many of those were useful for centuries because there weren't demons, undead, demi-gods, and mages on the battle field, nor were there entire armies that were all heavily armored, making the sling and short bow almost totally useless. Look at Ulmish armies - if there had been entire armies wearing heavy plate mail in historic warfare, a long of tactics and weapons would have been useless.

[Cainehill]

I think there are several flaws with the poll, but I've been working 12+ hour days so I may not be reading / thinking right.

First : Asking whether units were underpowered / useful / overpowered, without mentioning whether people should be compared to normal, recruitable troops, or considering summoned creatures and whatnot. ( On the one paw, a person might think it was normal recruitable troops, but on the other paw, banefire archers were included in the poll. )

Second : All the questions about "what damage should X be :" were .... Well, lets just say that I didn't have time or energy to look up what their damages currently were, so simply picked choice #1 for each and every one of those. From a methodology POV, too many questions is a bad thing, especially when all questions need to be answered to see the results. Especially when giving any old answer for them gives the instant gratification of seeing the results. Bad wolf, no cherry. Bad Cherry, no wolf.