Drill versus Combat Promotions

[BvBPL]

I think both the Drill and the Combat promotions have been boosted in FFH2 compared with the vanilla promotions. Since both promotions lines seem to be useful, I was wondering if someone could explain what the overall effect of each promotion line is, particularly for melee units. Examples of how you use these promotions would be halpful as well.

It seems obvious to me that archery units receive more benefits from early drill promotions than comparable melee units because drill plays to archery’s existent strengths. Similarly, drill is likely to be less useful against those fighting the Hippus or others who field a lot of horse archers who are immune to first strikes. Of course, formation is only available after combat II, not combat I like shock and cover so that’s another reason to start w/ combat against the Hippus.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

drill is kinda lame in FFH until you get to the good ones + blitz.

 

[Jarrema]

I see 3 uses of drill promotions:
1. on defensive units in an attack stack. At least one defensive unit in a stack should have drill promos, for defensive strikes
2. on defensive units in cities (mostly archers) - sometimes it is better to have drill1 than combat 1, I like to have one defender with drill and one with combat
3. on most experienced attack units (especially heroes and vampires) - mostly for blitz

Against AI drill is considerably good. And I will even give it to most units instead of combat. But against humans... first strikes are too easy to avoid (spells!), the same goes for defensive strikes. Against humans, drill goes only to one defender for stack and for high-experience units

 

[xalien]

If your unit has good combat odds (90%+) drill usually means that your unit will receive no damage at all. Great for heroes or that 1st hunter explorer, especially if you get Orthus axe which lets you blitz right away.

 

[avalonnn]

If you have the raiders trait, all units can have blitz and drill