On Improving Archers: A page from Fireball? Or even better...

[Cuteunit]

Little offtopic, you didn't play oblivion, did you Cuteunit?

Yes I'm the same person. Hiho.


Firebows were the inspiration for the thread titles. Firebows don't suck. Though when you get them it's a bit late and you probably have mages with much better fireballs out there...

 

[it-ogo]

So archers are always secondary. You may rely mainly on melee and rush metal promos, may emphasize recons with sinister-poisoned blade-Aeron's guild, may use disciples with spiritual trait - Spiritual hammer - Altar, may rush mounted as Hippus, but archery line is never so universal and you just research them when have some free beakers. But if the game is difficult you never have them.

 

[onedreamer]

Have you tried playing the Age of Ice scenario? That's exactly how it works there.
This is not desired for FfH2 since the niche of "I damage you with no risk to me" is already filled by caster units.

not really, no. Very few mages can do that (have to wait for archmages for most), and very few priests either.

 

[Uberness]

Their main use is to prevent small stacks from taking your cities, and for that purpose they are very hammer-efficient.

Problem is in ffh the early archers cost the exact same as the horsemen and axemen, and the later longbows can't easily get the experience for defense while it's easy to get city raider 2 or 3, also archers lack the benefit of the aggressive trait.

And I knew I remembered Cuteunit from somewhere, was looking forward to your mods, but they never came out.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

In case anyone wants to know, I've gone ahead and implemented a barrage ability like the one in AoI my modmod (plus a few improvements, like making the ability stronger in forts, castles, citadels, cities with citadels of light/walls/walls of stone, on hills/peaks, and in forests if the archer is elven. Also, the barrage ability of an archer with flaming arrows has a chance of causing smoke, thus eventually fires, in forests/ancient forest/jungles.)

I also made it so that archers have a small chance to gain free xp in cities with archery ranges/Ljosalfar archer ranges (recon get a similar bonus from hunting lodges, siege from siege workshops, mounted from hippodromes), and longbowmen/firebows/flurries get twice as much (when they get any).

I removed the weapons promotions from archery units except for Javelin throwers (which I let use iron weapons, previously they had no weapons) and crossbowmen. I made Crossbowmen a little weaker and cheaper, and longbowmen a little stronger and more expensive. The units I improved never go obsolete.


Unfortunately I'm having a few major bugs with my modmod, otherwise I'd go ahead and release it.

Edit: barrage was working perfectly before I tried to make it stronger based on forts/castles/citadels/walls/walls of stone/hills/peaks/forests, but that apparently broke it. I'm trying a new way of giving the bonus now (changing how much damage it does, rather than changing the limit to the damage or to the number of units it can hurt), and hoping that will work better.

 

[Cuteunit]

MC, your thought processes caress me.

And yes, Bethesda drove me out of my mind with frustration so Adrenaline never materalized as envisioned :/ Well, that and buttnose forum moderators.

 

[EverNoob]

The problem is, a warrior is around 60-70% cheaper then a archer so you have 3 or 4 warriors to one archer, doesn't require a special building to make, also has the 25% city defense bonus, gets stronger as the game continues with bronze and ironworking and not every single city can always be on top of a hill, for the minor 25% hill bonus, where a warrior still excels because of access to guerilla promotions with 40% defense, and the warrior has the benefit of being able to be upgraded into something stronger like a axeman or maceman at any point for counterattacking or higher strength.

A good idea might be to make the archery range optional like a stable in Civ4, so you don't need to waste a large chunk of production to make your city defense, but you have the option of getting them more experienced.

I'm not sure comparing archer vs warriors is fair, especially since warriors can't get city garrison. You could compare warriors vs axemen and come to the same conclusion. Axemen only have a +1 strength and +10% city attack over warriors. We should keep the comparison to units of the same tier, ie: axemen vs archers.

I didn't suggest building every city on a hill, only the ones of strategic importance. Like border cities, or ones near strategic resources. The hill defense bonus with archers is quite significant in the case of hilltop cities. In those cases, the defensive bonus is worth the less than optimal city placement.

Archers are "useless" because they are expected to do too much.

Their main use is to prevent small stacks from taking your cities, and for that purpose they are very hammer-efficient. In a medieval setting, castles were for delaying attackers until reinforcements arrive, a staging point for attack, and generally making it costly to take over. Archers, combined with cultural defenses and city defense bonuses, do this job quite well. 5 longbows do not stand against 15 units, but it shouldn't - it's there to make a castle or city defense functional, not a national military. In a defensive war, cities give you a LOGISTICAL advantage, and archers maintain this function, quite well in fact.

I tend to agree. Everyone expects archers to be the staple defensive unit like in vanilla. An archer defending a city usually kills a copper axeman of the same level. But you can't expect handful of archers to hold off a horde of axemen +5 level higher. In FfH you can't build just a bunch of archers and expect your cities to be impregnable, and maybe that's ok.

As it stands, the only civs that should use archers as their staple unit are the Ljosalfar.

 

[Cuteunit]

In FfH you can't build just a bunch of archers and expect your cities to be impregnable, and maybe that's ok.

But you CAN build just a bunch of axemen and expect your enemy to fold like a house of cards.

 

[EverNoob]

But you CAN build just a bunch of axemen and expect your enemy to fold like a house of cards.

Only if that enemy doesn't build a proper defense...

I'm beginning to confuse this thread with this one

Personally when I do use archers alot, I only get them after warfare, for the CG. Then I go for an enchantment mage for flaming arrows.

But why would you want to build alot of archers unless you're Ljosalfar anyway? Building alot of archers is only worth it if you're gonna research archery techs all the way (actually building alof of any unit is only worth it if you're gonna research that tech line all the way). There's only a few civs you'd wanna go archery all the way with.

 

[Calavente]

I tend to agree. Everyone expects archers to be the staple defensive unit like in vanilla. An archer defending a city usually kills a copper axeman of the same level. But you can't expect handful of archers to hold off a horde of axemen +5 level higher. In FfH you can't build just a bunch of archers and expect your cities to be impregnable, and maybe that's ok.

As it stands, the only civs that should use archers as their staple unit are the Ljosalfar.

well If I understood correctly the idea from Kael & co, the idea for the archer IS the ultimate defense unit.

melee units are do all units : that is why archers are less interesting.
siege, disciple, mounted lines were created sufficiently different so that in their field of work they are better. (mounted is better for raiding)
but archers are not better for defense :
comparisons :
warrior + iron : 5str, + 25% city defense : # 6.2str
archer : 3/5 + 25% city defense : # 6.2str
axe + iron in city : 6str
-for defense only, archer in city (save on hill) is almost the same as a warrior and the same as axe !!
-axe is better than warrior because it attacks with 6 (normal)
-warrior is better than archer because you can defend your countryside with 5str vs only 3 and identical for city defense. + costs less + no building (needs iron and smelting though)
-axe is better than archer : same City defense, + can defend country-side + can attack ennemy, costs the same in tech and in hammers.

the aim is to make so you can defend with archers only if you are a builder-type.
but :
- with archer you can only marginally protect your cities !!!
- you cannot proctect your country side, (with axes you can because you can attack the raiders + gain more xp)
- archers are not on the builder tech path (save X-bow), while melee units are : forges and all are needed for a builder

conclusion : either melee line is too strong, either the archer line needs a unique mechanisme to balance it. (currently archers are melee line units -1attack/+1defense, while melee gets weapon promos...) the archer line need another mechanisme, different than this.

so archer is the ultimate defense units if you can't have any metal is right and gives a purpose to the line, but in my book, that doesn't make the line worthwhile in FfH where you can switch to disciple or mage if you can't get metals.

Well, maybe this recap was not interesting for some people, but maybe it was ...

 

[oyzar]

Make AI use archers as they do in normal civ and you will see that they are actually quite ok at making it take harder to take cities(starting with archery etc). They do suck in any humans hands though. Just like in normal civ. The very advanced units might be ok sometimes and lojsfar units might be ok and firebows are obviously playable. Other than that they aren't of much use however. Of course the biggest problem with improving archers is that defense is not actually fun. If it was possible to build an impregnable fortress/cities the game would be less fun and stagnate as noone would be able to do anything..

 

[EverNoob]

the aim is to make so you can defend with archers only if you are a builder-type.
but :
- with archer you can only marginally protect your cities !!!
- you cannot proctect your country side, (with axes you can because you can attack the raiders + gain more xp)
- archers are not on the builder tech path (save X-bow), while melee units are : forges and all are needed for a builder

conclusion : either melee line is too strong, either the archer line needs a unique mechanisme to balance it. (currently archers are melee line units -1attack/+1defense, while melee gets weapon promos...) the archer line need another mechanisme, different than this.

so archer is the ultimate defense units if you can't have any metal is right and gives a purpose to the line, but in my book, that doesn't make the line worthwhile in FfH where you can switch to disciple or mage if you can't get metals.

This brings up an important point. If you were a builder going down the metal tree, the bulk of your defense should be melee units. You'd save tons of production just using iron warriors, though they can't get CG or have a first strike. That's good vs AI but vs human they'd just give shock II to all their attacking troops. I think the main difficult people face with archers is the huge gap between archers and longbowmen.

I'm not sure the archer being the ultimate defender means that it's most appropriate for builders. It might actually be more useful to warmongers, who are at war more often. Better defenders means need for fewer units to defender your cities, which translates to being able to field a larger army for attack.

If I were a builder going metal, I'd be focusing more on melee units and cats since you want to be able to defend your improvements from raiding anyway. Defending your cities doesn't imply huddling behind city walls. It's more effective to destroy invaders before they get to your cities or have a chance to raid your improvements. An effective (non-arcane) defensive army is moslty melee, with some cats, archers, hunters+hawk. The archers in your cities are mainly to discourage cavalry from maneuvering around your melee units to get to your cities.

 

[Nefelia]

comparisons :
warrior + iron : 5str, + 25% city defense : # 6.2str
archer : 3/5 + 25% city defense : # 6.2str
axe + iron in city : 6str

Unless you are playing the Khazad, Archers come a lot sooner than Iron. A better comparison would be with Bronze weapons, or none at all.

Even so, the Archery line could definitely use a few enhancements to make it more attractive. I noticed the Archery Range gives +5% defence to the city, maybe that could be beefed up a bit, or changed to something more generally useful, such as a free Drill I promotion to all Archer and Recon units.

 

[Calavente]

well, not my fault the archer line was tagged "the defense line" by one of the team... and that was a reason the shieldwall was removed (the best defender comes from the attack line) and the flurry went elf only (one of the best attacker is from the defense line ?) -the words in brackets are "almost quotes"-

so if for playing a defense-only style you need the melee line and not the archery line, you make my point : it shows that while your playstyle agrees with mine and is the one adapted to the current working of the game, it is not The One That Is Supposed To Be.

Oh Nefelia: I disagree,
taking the effecitve power a warrior or axe will gain, without spending gold, is to be taken into account. just a tech to pop, or RoK to found and intantanely, all your warriors get +1str...

when you get LB, your archers do not upgrade to LB while when reaching iron, your Axes and warriors become respectively 6str and 5str
So maybe you can temperate my math by saying : "may gain +1" but that is still something the archer will never do.

and in all my games, iron comes before archers... because the units sucks, and the tech are not attractive. (Longbows are good -5/6 +weapon promo, but I will always get champion instead of LB ... if LB were 5/7 + copper/iron promo it might be different) but at the axe-archer level, the choice is obvious.

 

[jenks]

Four of the best suggestions from this thread (and many others) for making Archery useful again:

1. Reduce the Archery tech cost from 300 to 200
2. Move the requirement for the City Garrison promotion to Archery tech from Warfare tech
3. Improve the Archery Range to be more useful in a city as well as for producing Archer units by increasing to +10% defense, +2XP for Archery units(currently provides +5% and allows archers to be built)
4. Reduce Archer unit build cost from 60 to 50, making them cheaper than the comparative Axeman / Horseman

Every one of these is easy to implement, adds value to archers, requires no new game mechanics to be created, and together imo would be easily as effective at balancing the Archer vs. Melee unbalance

 

[Tlalynet]

100% Agreed with Jenks.