Units with stupid weapon choices

P3D · #1 May 27th, 2009, 07:36 PM

There are some units that have units with only suboptimal weapons selections.

The most glaring example being some EA Agarthan troops. Nothing larger than a Buckler shield, weapon is either damage 3 spear, or a glaive that makes the Pale One's abysmal attack skill even lower.
The boulder throwers that have two boulders to throw then wade into melee with fists and no helmet.
MA-LA Agarthan Infantry, your only choice being a shortsword.
Considering that they are supposed to be cave dwellers and great miners, kind of counterintuitive.
Any human infantry with spears only in LA.
Gath slingers - as their missile weapons won't damage anything armored, they got two shortswords to wade into melee with minimal protection.

What else is there?

Tolkien · #2 May 27th, 2009, 09:16 PM

However many of the subpar MA Ulm weapons. Does anyone really use hammers, by any chance?

Rookierookie · #3 May 27th, 2009, 10:28 PM

Actually, a shortsword is the most intuitive weapon to use in caves.

Poopsi · #4 May 27th, 2009, 11:07 PM

TBH: agarthan's light infantry is actually half-decent. Very cheap and reasonably fast and strong.

It's all those useless pale one infantries what hurts them

HoneyBadger · #5 May 28th, 2009, 01:29 AM

Niefel's use of spears and swords isn't that great, either. Swords of that length would be not only extremely difficult to forge perfectly, but very likely to break, especially in the arctic weather Niefels live in. Spears require too much precision. Axes are iffy, and from the graphic they look to be single-bladed axes. They'd be better off using maces and hammers, flails, and longer axes with double, or even triple bits (three moon blades), looking just a bit like this: (O)

chrispedersen · #6 May 28th, 2009, 03:03 AM

Well if you want realism honey, forging weapons of that size would be a ridiculous task indeed.

Giant clubs, maces, mauls would be much more likely ..

Rookierookie · #7 May 28th, 2009, 03:24 AM

Or we could just think tree trunks.

Burnsaber · #8 May 28th, 2009, 04:32 AM

I think that the best weapons for tunnel-like enviroment would be spears, since your opponent lacks space to maneouver out of the way of your thrusts. Two-handed weapons like glaives don't make much sense for me, they need space to wield properly. IMHO, space is something that a giant race might lack in tunnels.

I think that like 50% of mages carry stupid equipment. Daggers? Quaterstaff is same resourcecost, and gives that sweet +3 bonus defense and some lenght. It also looks much more better.

Poopsi · #9 May 28th, 2009, 04:52 AM

thematically a dagger also makes sense, either as a ritual knife or as a sacrificial dagger

Agema · #10 May 28th, 2009, 05:18 AM

Boulder throwers aren't battlefield troops. They're siege machines, and should be used accordingly. Glaives are okay for Agartha. A nation with size 4 ancient giants would presumably make tunnels large enough for their size 2 youngers to swing glaives. As glaives were designed as a combination axe and spear, in a constrained space they'd be preferentially used like spears and presumably be adequate anyway.

The game mechanics make certain items seem nonsensical from a min-max player point of view. But the point is that to a large extent they exist for flavour. When a pretender God foists himself upon a nation, he is forced to work with their culture, not redesign them from scrath.