archers and experience

[Iceciro]

If archers could range attack then defensive attack on the next turn I'd actually consider building them as more than token defenders in inland cities or to boost Social Order. As it is I usually don't bother sending them in with attack stacks.

 

[Riot_Starter]

I also think that you should be able to ranged attack and defensive strike. Mostly because the promotions that allow taking ranged attack boosting promotions are the ones that improve defensive strike. You have to take drill to take the ranged attack promotions. Only allowing one per turn makes half your promotions worthless. Either allow both per turn or separate the promotion lines.

 

[Honor]

Doesn't defensive strike happen on the opponent's turn anyway? Since melee units can attack on your turn and defend on the opponent's turn, the same logic should apply to bows and arrows imo.

 

[readercolin]

Actually, the best use I have found for archers is with the grigori. Having multiple heroic archers capable of bashing through the enemy, with numerous backup archers to soften them up first. Being able to start longbowmen out with 10-12xp base also drastically increases their usefullness. And using the heroic archers to attack means that the regular archers don't have to worry about being the primary attackers, and therefore dying in mass quantities. That means that they can easily take drill 4 and archery 3, and possibly blitz (especially if you take charismatic).

There are a few major problems that I have with this strategy. Firstly, great commanders. It is reaaaaly difficult to level up a great commander to useful levels via archery, and it is also difficult to level them up with the heroic archers. Sadly, the best use for the great commanders is to spam warriors and let them die under their command, which really doesn't seem to make much sense. That however is an entirely different conversation.

On a different note, is it possible to actually kill an opponent with ranged attack? I have managed to get a 70% damage with an archery 3 longbowman. The archery 2 promotion from the great commander adds another 20% to that damage limit.

-Colin

 

[WarKirby]

On a different note, is it possible to actually kill an opponent with ranged attack? I have managed to get a 70% damage with an archery 3 longbowman. The archery 2 promotion from the great commander adds another 20% to that damage limit.

-Colin

Yes, it is possble. Most notably, Teutorix has a high enough base damage limit, that with Archery III, he can kill with ranged attacks.

With the commander boosts, and perhaps some equipment from a master fletcher, it may be possible for norrmal arquebusiers or crossbowmen to do it. As well as perhaps Gilden silveric and Arthendain. Normal longbowmen are pushing it a bit, I'm not sure if they're capable.

 

[Valkrionn]

Quite a few high-tier Mechanos units are able to in FFPlus... Most notably Goliath.

 

[funky munky]

Hi-- not sure where to put this observation, or if it's come up a lot before in AI discussions, but this seemed close enough/ just thought I'd mention that I've been playing through a few games as the Svartalfar on 051 (emperor difficulty, large map, epic speed, flavor start) and have been seeing some AI civs pretty brutally mismanage early wars with archer stacks..

The basic pattern has been that I'll rush to FoL -- regardless of whether the Svarts would actually worship Succullus, I find that it just makes the early game survival to midgame thriving phases of the game a lot easier for me under those playing conditions.

Then I'll spread the religion as far and wide as I can with the nice new tech trading at writing feature, so the extra gold from eventually building the Song of Autumn will actually support a military force.

Then fairly early by epic game standars, some neutral, diplomatically friendly, not-so-warmongerry, and pretty frankly underpowered at the time neighbor like the Kahdi or the Scions will declare war on me out of the blue.

Maybe becuase they're boxed in? Bored? Probably not paid off because I haven't had other wars on at the time.

Anyways, they come in with a ridiculous party of at least 30+ archers-- and in the last game they were only supported by 2 smallish Kahdi cities-- to just sit there outside one of my cities and shoot arrows in. They could have easily destroyed all of the improvements in my territory, made moving my workers around really hard, and possibly even taken an under-defended city of mine at the cost of maybe half their stack, but the just sat there.

And while I'm not quite sure where they got the time to get a stack like that in place to start with, and it was a nice gift/ xp farm / ultimately free vassal state once Alazkahn and Feudalism came along, which let me fight on for longer than usual when Dierdra's stack of 150+ trackers came knocking around a bit later..

they definitely did not have the economy to support doing that, and I'd like to think a civ like the Kahdi would be a bit smarter than that, and either stay at home, or get a bit of pillaging going.

Maybe they were scared of moving too much in ancient forests/disturbing the Treants?

Somehow I don't think that was the specific issue, and while something like this might have been a bit more frightening under the old/ way-broken ranged attack xp system, I never saw an invasion at all like this in 050, and all my 051 games have seen at least one. Am I overlooking something, or should just be thankful for the target practice?

thanks
-fm

 

[Neomega]

That has been my experience playing fall further too.
Perhaps if I turn off AI building requirements, it will build more offensive units. For now, it just looks like it thinks archers are the best units ever.

But they should at least go around and pillage.

 

[WarKirby]

Just idle speculation, the 10% defence boost from fletcher/archery range may have something to do with it. I'd guess that bonus makes the AI more likely to build them, and in turn more capable of making archers.

 

[Honor]

In Orbis there was a problem with archer-containing stacks: if they used their ranged bambardment ability, the stack couldn't move on that turn (as the ranged attack removed the archers' move points), which resulted in an offensively crippled AI. Just saying to make the team aware of this, if they aren't already aware.

 

[WarKirby]

In FF, ranged attacks and movement are entirely unrelated to each other, neither has any effect on the other, so that's definitely not our issue.

 

[Iceciro]

Well, the issue isn't so much having the archers only bombard as only having archers in the stack.

I've seen the Archos with more than just archers - but they still have more archers then they do say, Brutes, which is really bad considering how generally awesome Archos melee is.

 

[Darksaber1]

All i can say is, that the Dwarves actually get the best ranged attack: they spam slingers for what ever rezon.

 

[Iceciro]

I eventually had to put a Python block in for the Khazad to see them build anything BUT slingers - I wouldn't let them build the damned things if they already had three times more slingers than they did cities. This let them have three defenders in each city, and then they actually started to build units capable of carrying out a war.

I think Fall Flat actually had an AI block like that for ALL archer units, and then the AI got a lot smarter. I HIGHLY recommend it. If anybody wants the code I've already got it sitting around, and it will be going in my next playthrough for sure.

 

[vivictius]

The current soft cap seems to be a big improvement on exp from ranged attacks, it is still possible to get a few early levels but then it seems to really slow down, more so if you did not take the archery promotions. Ranged attacks do seem to be next to useless for leveling a great commander however.