Crossbow -> Marksman

[WCH]

Any particular reason crossbowmen can't upgrade into marksmen? I favour end-game total war, like to build up four of each national unit... but since you can't upgrade crossbowmen to marksmen, and my firebows (Amurite this game) are useless in battle at this point, it's impossible for me to get Marksmen.

If it's for balance purposes I guess it makes sense, but flavourwise it doesn't make sense that an exceptional crossbowman couldn't learn to be a marksman... and it'd be nice to have an access to marksmen that didn't require training up longbows.

 

[jwin]

Cossbows are now tier 4 units. It wouldn't make sense for a tier 4 to promote to another tier 4. They also have different uses, nd it is goo to have both.

As a side, your firebows never really obsolete. A massive stack of units hat can fireball can take on anything, even late game. Just pound them down with fireballs before you attack.

 

[WCH]

Yeah, but a massive attack of berserkers, paladins, knights, beast masters and war chariots, led by a lvl 22 war chariot (something like 450 XP... 6 movement + use enemy roads + blitz + haste = insanity. Get him behind enemy lines and he razes three cities a turn... and keeps freaking leveling up) also get the job done pretty well, especially when led by 4 archmages and about a dozen wizards. Once you've got an army like that, the idea of building up an army of firebows seems kind of pointless, especially since they're all going to start at lvl 2.

 

[xienwolf]

Don't forget to have Govannon train your Firebows so that they can summon Spectres and other fun Mage tricks. Helps them quite a bit.

 

[WCH]

True. First time as Amurites, gave Govannon some spell spheres that he can't train because I didn't have the right kinds of mana when I built him... stupid of me. So he can only train blaze and haste right now, but I'm going to cast the world spell soon, maybe that'll give me access to other things... I've got almost every kind of mana now (despite no freaking nodes in my entire massive empire... I control a third of the map and I'm 1000 points ahead of the next best civ even AFTER giving out all my tech... and I have three mana nodes to work with. Hurray for wonders and vassals to make up the difference!), so should make better use of him.

How much XP does the Amurite spell give, anyway? Like, roughly... and is it divided among all arcane casters evenly, or does each get the same whether you have 1 or 50?

... but yeah, off topic. Point is, firebows have a pretty weak defence, and anything I can do with a stack of them I can do better with my main army.

... which is also off topic. Point of that is that, while Marksman and Crossbowman fill different niches, and are both very powerful, it makes logical sense for a crossbowman to switch to become a marksman. Nobody has to upgrade them like that... if you like them as crossbowmen, cool, keep 'em that way. But Marksman has an XP requirement, so there needs to be a way to get that XP.

 

[Bad Player]

True. First time as Amurites, gave Govannon some spell spheres that he can't train because I didn't have the right kinds of mana when I built him... stupid of me. So he can only train blaze and haste right now, but I'm going to cast the world spell soon, maybe that'll give me access to other things... I've got almost every kind of mana now (despite no freaking nodes in my entire massive empire... I control a third of the map and I'm 1000 points ahead of the next best civ even AFTER giving out all my tech... and I have three mana nodes to work with. Hurray for wonders and vassals to make up the difference!), so should make better use of him.

I thought Govannon could only train in about 3 spell spheres Are you saying that if you have more types of mana available that you can train in all? spheres???

 

[Ecofarm]

Last I heard he can train 5 spheres:

fire, body, death.... umm...

Xienwolf, where are you?

 

[Blackmantle]

shadow + chaos I (blur and dance of blades both rather nice if casted on Masse) for sure and i believe Mind I (Charm Person) as well. (since shadow he can also train that so may very well be 6.) But i could be wrong on that last one though.

Before the axing of dimensional he could also train escape which has been quite hefty on nonarcane for porting.

 

[xienwolf]

Aye, you guys covered the list. But he cannot train Mind I. So he can do Body, Chaos, Death, Fire & Shadow. Resulting in Haste, Dance of Blades, Summon Skeleton, Blaze & Blur.

My general preference is to set him in a city which is producing 1 unit per turn. Train the first one Dance of Blades, send him to war. Train the next one Blur, send him to war. Train the third one Haste, send him after the other two. As he catches each of them up he'll start to caste haste on them as well. Thus you wind up with 3 units arriving at the same time and carrying the best of the stack buffs.

 

[WCH]

I just put him in my staging point city... one city produces mounted units, one produces archers, a couple produce champions, one produces recon... they all go to the staging city and get sent out from there once their stack is sufficiently impressive. Govannan can buff them while they wait.