New Archery units!

[onedreamer]

Assassins is a pretty good counter to catapults however.

Yeah but this doesn't make Archers more useful. It makes Assassins useful ^^. Also Assassins are an attacking unit, not defending (I know: best defense is the attack, but you get what I mean). And Assassins are vulnerable to Assassins. Also, Malakim can't build Assassins if I'm not wrong. And there are cannons, too.

 

[onedreamer]

Kinda sounds like Civ 3 where certain units (mainly archer) could get 1 free attack against anyone attacking their stack, even if they won't be the defender

This is a very good thing, both strategically and realistically. Drill V could also increase this defensive first strike of 1.

 

[jenks]

I agree that archers are underused.
...
Linking it to buildings present and terrain would be even better. Bonus with Walls and/or Hill, bigger bonus with Castle, for example.

Fits the theme IMO. Forgetting barrage abilities, new promotion trees or reworking any other units ... the simplest solution to make archers more useful in the game is the easiest to implement.

Make them specifically more suitable for defending cities than melee units.

 

[Roghar]

You can invent whatever promotions you want or change the tech tree however you want, Archers will stay useless anyways because they are inferior to melee units in attack, and their defense potential doesn't compensate enough. To put it in simple words, Archery units should be immune to collateral damage, this for 2 reasons:

I like this idea a lot. It makes them very useful defenders, both in and outside of cities, and helps prevent the near invincible attacks predicated on collateral damage, primarily fireballing (catapults too, but only against cities). It won't in any way invalidate other units, their lack of attacking potential will mean that you can't just stack your cities with archers or your lands will simply be pillaged

The only possible downside is that put enough promoted archers in a city and it becomes untakeable. Well, I guess you then can lay siege to it. It wouldn't hurt to add that feature to warfare, making it so that you can't always take a city in a turn. If it becomes overpowered you could just reduce their collateral resistance somewhat, say 75% resistance.

 

[onedreamer]

The only possible downside is that put enough promoted archers in a city and it becomes untakeable.

Nope, because you can use assassins. Which is why I say assassins real strength is not to take out Mages, but to finish injured units which otherwise wouldn't be killable.

 

[nealhunt]

I think the last re-working of the tech/unit relationship was also a nail in the archery coffin. The single-purpose-unit tech line idea means that all archers (except Firebows) are purely defensive. They can't even effectively stop pillaging because their weak attack strength can't threaten pillagers.

Every other unit tech line has much greater versatility due to the inherent flexibility of the units. The archery line really needs a greater variety of capabilities.

 

[xienwolf]

Or go through all the rest of the units in the game and reduce their defensive strength to be less than their offensive strength. Very few I am aware of who have higher attack than defense.

 

[onedreamer]

I personally dislike the Civ3 stile of separating attack and defense. Civ4 has vs. boni that can be used in a more balanced way. Firaxis' choice was quite a catch IMO.