Are archers ever worth having?

[Kalvix]

Just started playing so I'm not sure if its worth training them up, but the first couple you get seem to have about a 10% hit rate... the chance to hit SAYS its higher but its definitely around 10%

[the dark wizard]

Originally posted by Kalvix:

Originally posted by the dark wizard:

So I hope the OP got the information he needed, and I believe this thread could either get moved to one of the other "is archers worth it" threads, or closed (especially if people are going to argue about not related stuff).

I'd agree with that, general consensus seems to be they are needed eventually but will be annoyingly not that useful in their early levels. Though honestly I'm starting to think it might be more because I've not got 7 melee people and 1 archer as nobody is good at archery so when the one archer I have misses its 100% of my ranged attacks missing.

Well, I am sure you see the potential in the ranged brothers eventually, having a brother that can kill 3 units each turn due to berserk is such a great feeling.
And honestly, as soon as they reach 55-60 they become usefull, but even before that, having ranged units makes the enemies attack you.

Just write me or ask questions in the future, there is tons of people on the forum that wants to help...

[Genyl]

I have always used 2 archers and I will certainly recommend them to a new player. The archer companion you get is quite good.

Recently I have been questioning the general wisdom and wonder if it will be better to not have any archers at all.

My main problem with that would be goblins/brigands that turtle. I used to think that they turtle if they have range superiority but I just got a fight against 17 brigands with 4 archers against my 2 archers team and they charged. I reloaded and fought without archers and they still charged, so I am a bit confused about the IA now

My archers (90+ skill) seem to have slightly lower damage than the rest of the team and the benefits of more shields, polearms or 2 handers to surround/avoid being surrounded/share damage is there. Archers also require a bit of babysitting like avoiding nights, necrosavants fights, high ranged skill etc

Certainly if I had enough brothers I would add or remove them depending of the fight

Not sure, I will try to run a playthrough without archers and see what happens :)

[Playing]

Always have at least 1 ranged brother. Otherwise orcs will be defensive, because of their ranged advantage with throwing weapons.

[Belial]

Arbalest are only viable early game. Bowmen have decent DPS, but terrible armor penetration. So unless you have good ways to strip armor bows are also sub-optimal.

[NixBoxDone]

I run with at least 4 in my full setup - 2 bows and 2 crossbows so that I have someone to clear out the trash and someone to pierce armor and get into the chunkier enemies. ^^

I even thought about making the two other backline guys (that are currently heavy armor long axe bros) into archers first and long axe second to get even more punch.

The situation where archers aren't useful vs the ones where they absolutely murder enemies are just too few and far between and most of them depend on your bad judgement (i. e. starting a fight against orcs at night, fighting in dense forests, engaging spoopy skellingtons without first switching Robin Hood for Brother Tuck, etc. tt.).

Trust me: they'll be worth it.

[76561198074709395]

Originally posted by Belial:

Arbalest are only viable early game. Bowmen have decent DPS, but terrible armor penetration. So unless you have good ways to strip armor bows are also sub-optimal.

Arbalesters are viable all game long, especially once you hit 90+ rattack later in the game and get your hand on a unique bow (or the T3 equivalent). Furthermore, the xbow's 6-hex range means you can outfit your bowman with super-heavy armor (since they don't need as much fatigue as longbow bros, nor do they shoot as far). A plated xbowman is a sight of misery for the enemy - you can't snipe him due to 250+ armor/helm and Battle Forged; you can't run away because he still has ok-ish range and ranged attack; you can't melee him to death due to Footwork; and even if you get him, he has 60-75HP to facetank your puny attacks while his friends come to murder you.

All of this is very achievable by day 100, without a lot of fuss.

As for longbows, you're not supposed to use them to kill tin cans - that's why you have other bros. Longbowmen are for sniping unarmored enemies, or, if there are no other targets, applying Overwhelm to dangerous elites like bosses and hedge knights and orc warlords.

Either way, both longbows and xbows are useful. They're not as as superbly good early game, but once mid/late rolls around, with proper builds, perks, gear, and tactics, they become beasts.

[=]

For archer recruits you ideally want someone with 50+ starting ranged skill and at least 2 stars in ranged. Archers really need a high ranged skill to be worth fielding as there are many things that can reduce your chance to hit, not least range, and archers are 'pure DPS', they don't have any other role.

I tend to look for poachers, hunters, bowyers, militia, deserters, witchhunters and sellswords.

[Belial]

Just for the note I disagree with Fritz, if you chose to build crossbowman you're screwed. They can only shoot once per turn and also have limited moblity meaning they fall HEAVILY behind on DPS to everyone else. Bows at the very least have some of the highest dps in the game 50-70 twice per turn) so you can use it to shoot down cannon fodder.

I strongly advice to specialize your archers towards one of the 3: a) throwing weapons (can work with duelist, but you will need bags and belts) for archers who dont have melee skill b) polearms for lower fatigue archers (polearms are very fatigue efficient and also superb with berserk) c) daggers for these sellswords and witchhunters that come with stars in both offensive attributes.

[Madman666]

Archers are pretty much a must in the mid-late game, otherwise xbow wielding brigands will eat you for breakfast. In early game giving archers pitchfork makes them double as decent back row polearm users later changing for pikes from brigands, dishing out serious hurt while being out of harm's way themselves. I do agree that at first they can feel useless, missing eveyrthing they try to shoot. So to upgrade them faster and get some kills, I usually make them use polearms much more often than bows, at least until I can get some decent skill on them.

With a Fearsome perk a couple of archers can chain panic ridiculously large groups of enemies and leave them open for total slaughter. So if someone tells that archers are useless early game or mid game or late game - thats rubbish. That person probably didn't get right builds or made wrong person an archer.

Crossbows are seemingly less useful than bows, because of lower fire rate and distance, but once you start getting friggin plated hedge knights in regular brigand groups - you'll change your tune. A plated crossbow user with crossbow mastery can put a lot of hurt on any heavily armored type of target - orc warriors, bandit leaders, hedge knights - you name it. While I don't use the builds which utilize Battle Forged perk like Fritz does, half my archers (i use 5-6 of them) have both bow and crossbow mastery, so I can switch to armor piercing for specific fights. Crossbows can turn the tide of big battles the likes of noble war events to your favor, just by injuring and disabling heavy knights, so that your guys and allies can get rid of them more easily. And because all my archers have fearsome perk - one hit from a crossbow can not only injure people through layer of heavy armor, but also panic him and his allies, to the point that after 3-4 shots half of the enemy force just tries to run away.

On the other hand throwing weapons I find ridiculously useless. On melee people they suck because those guys can't hit anything with them. On ranged guys - its much more useful to have bow, polearm and 2 quivers of arrows.

[Redvenge]

Originally posted by Belial:

Just for the note I disagree with Fritz, if you chose to build crossbowman you're screwed.

As someone who really loves his Throwin' Bros, I have to disagree slightly. I believe it is more a matter of playstyle.

Crossbows get 70% armor piercing with Crossbow Mastery. Javelins get 70% armor piercing with Duelist. Is getting that extra armor piercing a few levels earlier better? Maybe? Depends on your playstyle.

A Throwin' Bro can move and attack every turn. A Crossbowman can move and attack once during the whole battle. Is the extra mobility of the Throwin' Bro always better than the Crossbowman? Again, it depends on what you are doing with that Crossbowman.

Javelins can consistantly cause enough damage to inflict "lesser" injuries. Being able to injure 2 to 4 enemies a turn, means my front line now does 20% more damage against many foes (since I gave them all Executioner). On the other hand, a Heavy Crossbow has a better chance of inflicting a "major" injury. If someone built their Heavy Crossbowman to do this very thing, it's a deadly debuff.

I do think Throwin' Bros are better than Crossbowmen, but that is different from thinking Crossbowmen are useless.

Originally posted by Madman666:

On the other hand throwing weapons I find ridiculously useless...On ranged guys - its much more useful to have bow, polearm and 2 quivers of arrows.

Yeah... well, I guess you can have your Archers swing axes to break Ancient Dead shields while my Throwin' Bros use Throwing Axes to actually contribute to a battle against the Ancient Dead.

[Belial]

Maybe I was too rough on wording. Of course you can use crossbowmen. Basically you can tell how annoying crossbowmen are by fighting against them. They are the sole reason I bring 2-3 archers along. Its the thing with BB that they seem sort of balanced in everything and its hard to deduce which is better.

However my argument against crossbows is that all their cons outweight the pros. their dps is good but bows and throwing weapons still do better. Their debuffing powers are good too, then again, bows can do better with overwhelm and fearsome should you chose to use archers to debuff. Even posion works better on bows. The only big advantage crossbow has in my eyes is ability to shoot, swtich to polearm and swing in one turn, but that's sort of rare occurence. You can also shoot reload shoot under berserk but only once, where bows have steady dps. On top of it bows have more range.

To sum it up, crossbows are good, but not best, and ranged weapons are already underpowered in general.

[Barahur]

I always field one Heavy Crossbowman/Polearm hybrid. Once you get a Spiked Impaler, he can reposition enemies in addition to being able to facetank that Orc Warrior that tossed aside your front rank mercs like ragdolls for a round or two if necessary.

One strength of the crossbow that people are forgetting is that you can move up to 3 hexes depending on the terrain and Pathfinder perk and still fire as long as your weapon is loaded. A nearly point blank range, the crossbow has a large +% chance to hit. Often times, you'll even go through a shield wall.

[=]

[quote=Madman666;1319961618827782548
On the other hand throwing weapons I find ridiculously useless. On melee people they suck because those guys can't hit anything with them. On ranged guys - its much more useful to have bow, polearm and 2 quivers of arrows. [/quote]

I'm not impressed with them either. I tried a dedicated throwing axe brother who was entirely built around throwing weapons and he had even less kills than my Sgt. He was basically dead weight.

[MotherAce[NO]]

Originally posted by Kalvix:

Just started playing so I'm not sure if its worth training them up, but the first couple you get seem to have about a 10% hit rate... the chance to hit SAYS its higher but its definitely around 10%

Yes, you are indeed new to the game. They are in fact the best archetype you can have lategame. I often frontline 6-10x of them with 2handers on flanks. But you are also right, do not use them early game until long bows starts becoming regular. They need high stats.

[Sigi_Reuven [CH]]

Even on my first try i took 2 xbows and 2 archers in the backline ^^ with a secondary polearm weapon. i recommend the long axe, 2 tiles, for shield crushing.

A necromancer and other archers and everyone without shield are much easier to kill with archers and they´re worth to train up.