Reply To: Real Value of Ranged Brothers

[Holy.Death]

Please share your secret of success. My archers have same AP as melee enemies, so I can only delay their arrival as long as possible.

Put a melee brother between enemies and your archers.
Zone of control alone will suffice to force enemy to go a long way around, to avoid getting caught in melee when your foes are trying to reach your archers. It means you don’t even need a thick line to defend an area (think of a spear-wall), allowing you to free some men to do something else than just “plugging the hole”.

Like how? When you begin the battle with enemies coming from all directions, you breakthrough against one direction so you won’t get surrounded?

I let them come.

My archers start firing and either attack the vanguard with mutliple of my melee brothers or wait for them to come even closer and overwhelm certain individuals, while at the same time keeping in mind to have my spare men in positions to block possible approaches to my archers. It doesn’t always work (veteran orcs can just smash into your battleline, that’s why I place archers further away than usual), but it works 90% of the time. The point is to keep my archers firing. Melee brothers can either kill or survive, but for as long as archers can support them their job gets easier as enemies keep falling under the hail of arrows.

Seriously? Seriously serious? Meatshields, I thought that’s the way you address melee brothers. You actually use melee brothers as pure meatshield!!? And you use them as expendables, just like provisions and medicines!!?

Meatshields = raw recruits. Not all melee brothers. Raw recruits are expendable, because they don’t have perks and upgraded stats that my veteran brothers possess.

You need someone to keep the enemy busy so your archers can keep firing, right? So you should keep your meatshields alive, and turn them into super meat- I mean, guardians. The stronger your guardians, the longer your archers can fire, so it aids your purpose.

Who said I am not trying to keep them alive? I just don’t cry when they die. I am more concerned with life of my venerable brothers than I am with someone who is inexperienced and often useless for anything else than holding the line.

My tummy…. it hurts *still laughing*. When I said I recommend you to compare a crossbow and javelin, I don’t mean to compliment javelin. I was actually asking you to compare the most valuable ranged weapon and the worst ranged weapon.

And I said problem lies elsewhere than the ammo count. I find javelin useful as it can complement a melee brother’s capabilities. Provided he has enough stamina left to fight after throwing them. It lets you attack on the move.

They actually already do that, but perhaps not by enough. The likelihood of going for the shield is increased by 1.25^n, with n being the number of allies surrounding the target, i.e. one ally adjacent increases the chance by 25%, two would increase it by 56%, and so on.

I will keep an eye on that. They do nice job when it comes down to smaller shields so far. I will make notes how they behave when stronger shields enter the battle.