Make Dwarf's Bolt Thrower recruitable in them main settlement building in T1.

[elkapp]

Let's start with the problem: dwarf's bolt trowers are the worst artillery piece in the game. Their damage is low, penetration is a joke, reload somewhat better than the standard but not enough to compensate, range decent. How can they be usable?

Well, the "easy" solution (not necessarily worse, rather, i think it's equal to mine in overall quality) is to give them a big buff, but then two other problems appear: or you balance it decently for a T2 unit and it still won't get picked because T3 cannons are more versatile, or you buff it too much and make it better than cannons. This can be fixed by buffing cannons and moving them to T4 and organ guns to T5 (this last bit i personally think should be done anyway, since cannons are hard to use and lack dps and basically live because, as anti-artillery units, gyrocopters are unreliable; for organ guns i don't think there's much to write).

You could buff a weak unit, that's true, but as the title, that's not the only option. Might need still a bit of buffs, since grudge throwers are T2, but hey, look at the bright side: expendable artillery. Now, to address the "but it would be too powerful to have it as a T1 unit", i remind everyone dark shards are T1 and, while not techincally T1, as VP you can raise handgunners everywhere.

crossposted from the forum[forums.totalwar.com]

[Sn3z]

You can't just make small changes got to look at the bigger picture. Also the dwarf AI might end up spamming this unit take a look at miner stacks we have atm.

But I think a New T1 artillery building for bolt thrower and the Dwarfs T1 Barracks can be removed. Blasting charges to T2 barracks with prerequisities moved to T2, Dwarf warriors(both) to T1 settlement(this is needed to kill the miner spam)

On the bolt thrower I been using them a lot laterly until cannons they actually not that bad every battle I would come out with about 75 kills, though the grudge thrower was always getting double. So perhaps a move to T1 is good.

edit.. Also just to throw another idea into the mix I have thought about the unit being moved to a new T2 ranger camp where we would get access to also stock rangers. To try and sweeten the whole ranger deal.

[Dakota]

I'll preface this by saying I'm no dwarf main, but having played a lot of factions and having heard all the complaints from people who do main them it got me curious and I tried them out myself. I've honestly found them insanely strong (outside of Yu's usual tactics).

Bolt throwers for dwarfs are like the elven equivalent but 550 cost instead of 700 and proportionally a little weaker, but they still have the damage cutoff to oneshot cav models on impact and so they'll perform equally against groups of large units just as the elf one does. It doesn't have a dedicated anti infantry spread fire mode, but once again with the single shot it'll take out infantry the same as the elf one for cases where killing models is more important such as dealing with ranged units. They're also only tier 2 compared to tier 3 so already really easy to get.

In short, for their cost you get more out of them than higher cost units of other factions, not even considering the crew itself is harder to shut down due to being dwarfs.

Comparing bolt throwers to cannons, you have a T2 550 cost 137 upkeep unit vs a T3 800 cost 200 upkeep unit. Cannons have higher damage for sure, but their reload time's practically double and their cost is so much higher you'd have to be comparing 3 bolt throwers to 2 cannons, which while having lower damage, have way higher volume of fire with 15.4 shots per 20 seconds vs 9.1 cost for cost with 3-2 ratio making it pretty solid at taking out groups in comparison and I notice a bit more spread than the usual cannon shot that just fires all 3 cannon balls to the same spot on a group.

If the cannons don't get to use their range they'll do about equal with a bolt thrower shooting eachother too, which is bad since cannons are much more expensive. It's also the cheapest arty in the game yet trades up favorably against them.

I don't really see them as unusable, rather I see them as extremely powerful and insane that I can get them for as cheap as they are both for easy volume of fire at ranges that defeat anything short of other artillery by range alone and will beat other artillery just through higher volume of fire even if you gotta lose a couple getting into range.

[Chaoslink]

Another point to note, not that I have much data to back it up beyond personal experience, is that they tend to b rather accurate. I feel like cannons miss single entities like lords on foot quite often compared to the bolt thrower. For their niche, they're viable. You just need to know what they can do and use them for that purpose rather than expecting a niche unit to perform in roles it isn't meant to.

Its not a bad unit enough to need changes. It just needs to be used for what it does well and know that, just like other lower tier units, they will be replaced at some point.

[Dakota]

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Another point to note, not that I have much data to back it up beyond personal experience, is that they tend to b rather accurate. I feel like cannons miss single entities like lords on foot quite often compared to the bolt thrower. For their niche, they're viable. You just need to know what they can do and use them for that purpose rather than expecting a niche unit to perform in roles it isn't meant to.

Its not a bad unit enough to need changes. It just needs to be used for what it does well and know that, just like other lower tier units, they will be replaced at some point.

I didn't think to check that in my first post, but looking at the stats:

Both have a total accuracy of 40, both have a calibration distance of 265 meaning cannons firing at their max range will be pretty inaccurate compared to bolt throwers at their max range, also the caliberation area (area they can hit in when they're in this range) is 2.9 for the bolt thrower and 7.8 for the cannon, making the bolt thrower over two and a half times more accurate for dealing with single entities, which much more than makes up for the damage differences especially with cost considered.

[wrought82]

bolt throwers are cost efficient, they are fine

sn3z comments about miner made wonder think how much would change for DW ai if warrirs were recruitable rather than miners in settlement

[zefyris]

I'm okay with the idea of having it in the main settlement, but no need to lower it down to a t1 unit, keep it on the t2 settlement.
That would already make dwarves uniques and bolt thrower way more attractive, as dwarves early on struggle with their buildign slot; they're super slow with growth. Having access to an artillery piece early without having to build anything other than the main settlement for it would be an interesting change.

[Sn3z]

Originally posted by wrought82:

bolt throwers are cost efficient, they are fine

sn3z comments about miner made wonder think how much would change for DW ai if warrirs were recruitable rather than miners in settlement

CA could remove the T2 barracks aswell and put both quarellerers and the miner(blasting charges with it prerequisite) in the T2 settlement. The remaining barracks should be then merged with Hall of Oaths. In this way a ranger cmp could be made possible at T2 with the bolt thrower, the idea is inferior version of a quarellerer/grudge thrower get up..

If you swap the miner for DW's the AI will just spam DW's, really and this goes for every single faction, needs liberal access to its most basic units for dwarfs thats Dwarf warriors axe and shield miners and quarellerers(not AP). Bolt thrower really has no place being in the settlement, its a slippery slope.

[Chaoslink]

Originally posted by Dakota:

Originally posted by Chaoslink:

Another point to note, not that I have much data to back it up beyond personal experience, is that they tend to b rather accurate. I feel like cannons miss single entities like lords on foot quite often compared to the bolt thrower. For their niche, they're viable. You just need to know what they can do and use them for that purpose rather than expecting a niche unit to perform in roles it isn't meant to.

Its not a bad unit enough to need changes. It just needs to be used for what it does well and know that, just like other lower tier units, they will be replaced at some point.

I didn't think to check that in my first post, but looking at the stats:

Both have a total accuracy of 40, both have a calibration distance of 265 meaning cannons firing at their max range will be pretty inaccurate compared to bolt throwers at their max range, also the caliberation area (area they can hit in when they're in this range) is 2.9 for the bolt thrower and 7.8 for the cannon, making the bolt thrower over two and a half times more accurate for dealing with single entities, which much more than makes up for the damage differences especially with cost considered.

So there definitely is something to what I’ve seen. If I didn’t go Grombrindal and use his gyros to snipe orc bosses early on, I used to use bolt throwers for that purpose as almost every shot seemed to land. Glad I was right to do so. Thanks for the confirmation. Much appreciated.

[elkapp]

Originally posted by Dakota:

I'll preface this by saying I'm no dwarf main, but having played a lot of factions and having heard all the complaints from people who do main them it got me curious and I tried them out myself. I've honestly found them insanely strong (outside of Yu's usual tactics).

Bolt throwers for dwarfs are like the elven equivalent but 550 cost instead of 700 and proportionally a little weaker, but they still have the damage cutoff to oneshot cav models on impact and so they'll perform equally against groups of large units just as the elf one does. It doesn't have a dedicated anti infantry spread fire mode, but once again with the single shot it'll take out infantry the same as the elf one for cases where killing models is more important such as dealing with ranged units. They're also only tier 2 compared to tier 3 so already really easy to get.

In short, for their cost you get more out of them than higher cost units of other factions, not even considering the crew itself is harder to shut down due to being dwarfs.

Comparing bolt throwers to cannons, you have a T2 550 cost 137 upkeep unit vs a T3 800 cost 200 upkeep unit. Cannons have higher damage for sure, but their reload time's practically double and their cost is so much higher you'd have to be comparing 3 bolt throwers to 2 cannons, which while having lower damage, have way higher volume of fire with 15.4 shots per 20 seconds vs 9.1 cost for cost with 3-2 ratio making it pretty solid at taking out groups in comparison and I notice a bit more spread than the usual cannon shot that just fires all 3 cannon balls to the same spot on a group.

If the cannons don't get to use their range they'll do about equal with a bolt thrower shooting eachother too, which is bad since cannons are much more expensive. It's also the cheapest arty in the game yet trades up favorably against them.

I don't really see them as unusable, rather I see them as extremely powerful and insane that I can get them for as cheap as they are both for easy volume of fire at ranges that defeat anything short of other artillery by range alone and will beat other artillery just through higher volume of fire even if you gotta lose a couple getting into range.

First, cost efficiency is a problem only if you play poor races, and even then that's not always what you'll be looking in an army. Take for example skaven, definitely poorer than Dwarfs except maybe at turn 300 (didn't do the calculations), they have the skavenslave slingers that is the most efficient unit in the game. Do you bring slingers in the late game? No. Of curse you don't. They can't even deal with a T3 stack.

Second, i wrote at a certain point in my post that i would change how cannons work and are recruited REGARDLESS of the changes to bolt throwers. The reasons are obvious.

Third, aka why i didn't write "make the bolt thrower T1 in the artillery building": grude throwers. For how the game works having an artillery that is specifically anti-infantry and have a lot of range is really good EXPECIALLY in the early game, where the cav and chariots you will find are usually weak af and the few mosters you'll find are LM's rite monsters (which mean the AI don't recruit them normally).
Plus, on a technical side, even if those cav units were dangerous you'll still never get bolt throwers because cav tend to close in and attack asap, which mean quarrellers.

Plus, i don't know how you did with them, but once i tried to use them as anti-lord the problem was that their shots didn't do ♥♥♥♥ for damage. And, well good the range, but if it can't achieve something then i might as well drop it for a quareller, that i know won't be perfect at lord sniping, but at least deal a lot more damage per volley.