Reply To: Real Value of Ranged Brothers

[ManaSeed]

>> One of them is the commander-rally man with armor penetration-tohit chance from offense, having sidestep to escape enemy zones, vampires do not scare him at all.
What’s “penetration-tohit chance from offense”? I assume it’s a perk from offense category but I can’t tell which. I believe you mean Footwork with “Having sidestep to escape enemy zones”, right? It’s understandable that we don’t remember perk names that well (especially when you’re playing several games with a lot of skill names), so I’m just asking for clarification purpose.

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>> The other one is the high initiative high fatigue no armor glasscannon with focus fire and frenzy.
I assume focus fire is Perfect Focus, so what is frenzy? It can’t be Killing Frenzy since you’ve chosen Perfect Focus. Is it Berserk?

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One vampire is no big threat. But when there are three of them, they can easily insta-kill my tunic archers with no melee defense. Especially in forest with a lot of obstacles, they suddenly appeared by teleportation and group attack my archer. He died in first round without a chance to fight back. I can take special measurements to prevent this, either by equipping some armor or group my brothers together there’s no space for vampire to teleport. But there are no other enemies which can attack my units beyond my expectation like this, so I assume this as a great weakness of my archers.
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>> He is not afraid of anyone either. All who come in close are clubbed to death with focus instantly, be that a mere bandit a werewolf or a vampire.

What is the stats growth prioritization of your archers? Do you increase melee skill? What is your archer’s melee weapon?

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>> so only the real hard enemies are a moderate problem
And the real hard enemies are only a minor problem to melee brothers. So I consider this a factor to keep a melee brother rather than a ranged brother.
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>> They are the bait for ghouls vamps wolves etc. With medium armor and shields.
Melee brothers can be bait too if they have low armor, right? Since a bait’s role is to lure enemy towards him, melee brothers should be a better bait than ranged brothers because the latter have low melee prowess.

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>> When the enemy clusters up is a want to scenario after the one when you have the higher ground. You don’t have to hit, just aim in the middle and some will get it anyway.
I don’t want any enemy to get hit, I want a specific enemy to get hit. Killing enemy one by one will “spread the fear” faster, and it enables you to kill even more enemies. It is more ideal than spreading damage evenly to enemies. This is also a core tactic to turn the tide of battle, I think.
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>> start off in row and explode into movement, intercepting incoming enemies with your line fighters and surround them with archers
I never try to flank enemies with archers. The following are my reasons and imaginary results.

Surrounding enemies with archers from left(up) or right(bottom) actually scatters your formation. This is not efficient for Rally the Troops. Furthermore, your flanking archers are more vulnerable to attacks as they become further away from the center. This is also not efficient for your melee brothers as enemy are more dispersed as a result of distraction caused by your flanking archers.
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>> The role of the archers deminishes with time
Now I’m only discussing this part for pure fun. I actually think the opposite. Archers are horrible at early game as they have amazing low accuracy. There are so many times I want to throw away the arrows and switch the bow with a spear. At later stage, my archers are far more accurate. With the help of Rally, they are quite good against light armor or unarmored enemies.

Here comes the serious part. No matter how much the archers have improved, melee units have always improved more. This makes me question the value of archers. Ranged brothers and melee brothers do perform different functions. HOWEVER! Melee brothers can be close substitute or slightly better substitute to ranged brothers. This is what I suspect or fear.
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I understand your general opinion is same with mine. But we have slightly different experiences regarding archers so I’m extending the discussion and asking questions to clear things up.

P.S.
Almost forgot to mention about Ranged Brother’s bane, Skeleton Archer. How can someone perform ranged attack while being resistant to it? (My rational accepts the logic but my sentiment doesn’t accept it, it’s like a bit like cheating)

Can you imagine what happens if Orc Warrior is resistant to melee attacks? I can already see the frowning face of melee brothers.