Archers with Sniper Scopes

[Darkheath]

Am I crazy... or are the archers in this game incredible (ie: incredibly overpowered)?

I just saw some of my regular bowman ("8" in archery) wipe out an entire calvary unit running full speed, perpendicular from them (so they'd have to be able to lead the shots), through an open field... from, and I'm guessing here, about 300 yards away. Yes, my guys had a height advantage somewhat... and yes, they were shoooting from the safety of the woods... but that's still ridiculous.

Was this ever addressed in any of the expansions? I'm playing "vanilla" KA and I'm wondering if I need to install the Saxons for any fixes like this (and still play the original campaign).

 

[frags]

Yeap. There is an option to use weaker archers in the gameplay option section to tone it down a bit(pretty sure it is available in vanilla). But they are still pretty powerful.

 

[unmerged(129811)]

They are not really that powerful against some of the more powerful units like golden gryphons and kings guard. They also cannot take down most of the seelie/unseelie units, but against a huge army with lots of targets, they can be fairly effective.

 

[ranbir]

They are incredibly fragile. The fun of tactically manoeuvring to take them out can be very satisfying.

 

[Kjeld]

Especially at the beginning of the game, archers are brutal, learning to deal with them is very important. And learning to protect them too, AI will aggressively use flanking cavalry and spells (curse of shadows is deadly) to take them out. There is, as other people have mentioned, a parameter in the vanilla game to weaken them (they are still powerful however).

 

[BeRse]

Curse of Shadows = archer killer
easy going

 

[Azkor]

To echo what several others have said archers in the beinging of the game are massively powerful. However, that power erodes quickly. When you start facing heros with lvl 2+ of curse of shadows your archers are going to be toast.

The best way to handle enemy archers is as follows, in my experience.

Always use horde formation while moving up to combat, reform at the last second to what ever is the best formation to hit the enemy with. Never underestimate the value of using light cav to hit the archers with. Combine light cav with mist of avalon, or storm of avalon to take the enemy archers out of the equation quickly. Area of effect spells work well on archers, as the AI tends to keep them in close formation and stationary, such as curse of shadows, lightning bolt, rain of fire, heavenly sword, wall of fire, meteor. Use your archers to counter battery the AI archers. Archer defense spells also work wonders, arrow deflection.

Assuming you are playing the base game when you start to get access to mid teir units archers become more of a detrement to you than an asset, archers really cant hang once the AI is using Sangrael knights or seelie/unseelie units. You can of course continue to use your archers if you wish, deepwood archers and (un)seelie archers, but they just dont do enough damage fast enough to survive, though use of creature of darkness and nightfall works ok with unseelie archers.

 

[Darkheath]

Hey guys.. thanks for all of the input. But honestly... I've never heard of most of what you are talking about. I'm sure I'll figure it out as I go. I really didn't even know there was that much "magic" involved in this game. I knew it had some, but thought it was a little more straight-forward strategy, so to speak.

 

[Sekenr]

Hey guys.. thanks for all of the input. But honestly... I've never heard of most of what you are talking about. I'm sure I'll figure it out as I go. I really didn't even know there was that much "magic" involved in this game. I knew it had some, but thought it was a little more straight-forward strategy, so to speak.

The best advice I can give you is to realize that this is not a TW game. At first I was pissed at archers too, but than I realized that this isn't TW, game mechanics are different, so you have to play it differently.

 

[Achab]

The extreme here are the Saxon Archers, who make an ultimate combat unit in the expansion. Not only are they ranged, but they also move very fast, can trample, turboconquer the locations and can get the ranger and dodge advancements. With a fresh Saxon Archers army you can win most of the engagements by just sending them to the victory locations, set horde, ranged and fullspeed, go afk for few minutes and return to a victorious battle.

 

[Darkheath]

Turboconquer?

 

[thesword88]

It's a skill, I can't remember the name, that allows you to take victory locations twice as fast as normal. It is really good on light cav.

Also if you didn't realize there was magic I would recommend playing the game a bit more before worrying too much about archers or overpowered units or what not.

Like a lot of strategy games it take a bit to really get into the gameplay. Book 1 of the story is basically an extended tutorial.