Marksman

[Charlie_B]

As a magic lover, units with the marksman trait are my bete noir. That's fair enough - I usually find waging war against the AI with strong magic to be pretty easy, so I can understand them having a shot at countering.
What has made things really annoying in my last few games is the fact that these units (or at least, Clan Assassins, who are the only ones I've come across recently) seem to be broken in a way that makes them significantly more dangerous.
In a stack of, say, A Champion, An Archmage, A Wizard, an Adept and a Skeleton all with no promotions, I would assume that the Assassin should attack the unit with the least strength - so either the Adept or the Skeleton. Instead, every time they target my strongest mage units first, so would kill the Archmage (strength 5), then the Wizard (strength 4), then the Adept (strength 3). Is this a bug, a misunderstanding on my part, or some 'special feature' which isn't yet listed in the literature?

 

[it-ogo]

Algorithm of selection target by marksmen is rather complicated now. Namely promos Channeling I,II,III increase the chance of being attacked and Chan III is more attractive then Chan I. (Also hero promotion is very attractive.) As you feel this algorithm is very effective.

 

[Demus]

which is exactly the reason marksman was introduced in the first place. Think about it, if you've got 2 tents next to each other, with an adept sleeping in one, and an archmage sleeping in the other, which one would the assassin enter?

 

[Charlie_B]

Thanks for the replies. I can see the reasons for working it this way, but the civilopedia needs to be updated to register this change. After a number of battles carefully orchestrated to protect my best units it was getting pretty frustrating to see them magically targeted every time

Am I right in assuming the Guardsman trait still effectively defends against this?

 

[Demus]

yes, it is. The problem with guardsman at the moment is the fact that it causes the unit to defend ALL the time, until it's demise. Imho, this needs to be fixed to just being immune to the "stack defend turnaround" trick of marksman, if that's possible

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

agreed with Demus, that would be best imho

 

[Guale]

The civilopedia is very out of date, most of it hasn't changed at all since vanilla civ. It isn't that channeling makes you more likely to be attacked by an assassin but it makes you less likely to defend the stack. If a normal unit attacked a stack with and adept, a wizard, and an archmage then it will go after the adept first and I wager you'll be damn glad your archmage gets the chance to run.

 

[it-ogo]

It isn't that channeling makes you more likely to be attacked by an assassin but it makes you less likely to defend the stack.

Let's agree on both.

If a normal unit attacked a stack with and adept, a wizard, and an archmage then it will go after the adept first and I wager you'll be damn glad your archmage gets the chance to run.

Yeah, I was so happy when found that my Stoneskinned lich was unable to protect my badly wounded 12lvl champion from enemy horseman and gain some more XP.

Maybe odds should be also taken into account?

Actually I sooner don't like this new targeting mechanism (marksman and normal) because it is less predictable and harder to control.

 

[xalien]

All my mages that are designed for combat only master one sphere like Shadow 2, Air 2 etc, then the rest of their promotions go for aquiring stoneskin and combat str. 4/6 mage with combat 5 can hold pretty well against average assasin.

 

[lordrune]

If they could somehow make it so that the guardsman only 'always defends first' when a marksman-promoted unit is attacking, that would fix the issue to some extent. I don't imagine this is very simple however.

 

[Breez]

I THINK FF changed the Gaurdsman promo to simply cancel the marksman effect and +3% def to cities

 

[Valkrionn]

yep, the FF version of Guardsman is alot more useful.