Upgrading Archers

[Tango]

Can someone tell me how to upgrade archers. I have looked everywhere and cant find how to do this. I am still running around the map with tier 1 archers. In fact I find the whole business of levelling up units to higher tiers quite confusing and hit and miss. New to this franchise, any comments would be appreciated.

[Bob]

Unit tier is separate from medals. Units can get medals (or ranks, those are the same thing) by battling and getting unit experience. Unit tier is more a measure of how strong a unit is at its baseline and determines upkeep. Aside from some specific evolving units, units won't go up in tier on their own or through experience. To get higher tier units, you must unlock them through Research and by upgrading your city town halls so you can recruit them there.

[Blanch Warren]

Not every unit evolves. Units that evolve have an icon that will display a tool tip that indicates they evolve. It would be alongside the other icons indicating things like what kind of unit it is. If you check these icons, you can't miss it.

If you want a tier 2 archer, pick a culture or tome that has a tier 2 archer. Or go to the suggestion forums and put a vote in for your desired game design. There are also units like Skirmisher or Mage that are ranged.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/age-of-wonders-4-suggestions.1137/

[CrUsHeR]

Only the Barbarian culture has a T2 archer. And its use is somewhat questionable compared to the other T1 cultural archers, or the T3 tome archers.

For example the Feudal, Dark or High T1 archers can perform just as good at only half the price tag. Like the Dark archer stacks the Weaken debuff with every hit, or the High archer gets +1 range and bonus spirit damage.

IIRC none of the archer units evolve. You can check this by the "butterfly" icon in a unit card, or its experience progression would state if- and to which unit it can evolve at the Legendary rank bonus.



Tome of Alchemy is pretty good with its Afflictor, and you get an extremely useful special province improvement for research.

Otherwise the Tome of the Winds is the most obvious choice with its Zephyr Archer.
It also gives a unit enchantment with +1 range to all archers (so they can actually outrange infantry units with their combined range bonus from XP), an amazing damage+debuff spell, and a very useful summonable T2 unit.

It has no special province improvement or buildings though, so it has no bonus ecomony value like some other tomes you'd grab on the side (like Tome of Teleportation).

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Only the Barbarian culture has a T2 archer.

Well no, the Magelock is an archer unit, it just has a gun.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Only the Barbarian culture has a T2 archer.

Well no, the Magelock is an archer unit, it just has a gun.

Technically yes, but it works more like either a crossbow unit, or it has its own category with the "take aim" skill which encourages it not moving at all (opposite of crossbow use)

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Technically yes, but it works more like either a crossbow unit, or it has its own category with the "take aim" skill which encourages it not moving at all (opposite of crossbow use)

Okay, the Arbalest is also an archer unit.

[Tango]

Thanks, this helps a bit.

[Torvah]

There is nothing wrong with running arround with t1 archers. They are only slighlty weaker than t2-3 archers and much faster to recruit. So with proper build, playstyle and tomes
you can spawn 4 champion archers per turn and overwhelm even brutal ai.

For me three tomes are always essential: -cryomancy, -scrying, -amplification
From there you can flavour your t1 archers in any way you want, but for me another 3 specific tomes have always been best: -horde, -pandemonium, -winds

these tomes work best with the dark culture.
with traits: -Prolific swarmers and -Scions of evil

[huey30]

if you want a better archer, research a tome that has an archer in it

[Moo]

I like the beastmaster a lot. It comes with another unit, and the 48 movement lets you do flanking damage almost all the time. Getting this early on makes a big difference due to the extra hound unit. Only bad thing is, this unit tends to die a lot in auto combat in my experience.