How do you use the amazons effectively?

[Sneakimus]

I am curious, how do you use the Amazons effectively in tactical combat? What are their strenghts?

I've played mostly with Vanguard, where I can spam armies of infantry and tanks with a few aerial stacks of gunships, OWLs and Monitors; and mostly won through making a solid, interlocked gunline.

This tactic obviously does not work with the amazons though, due to their shorter range and lack of overwatch. Defeating mixed stacks is relatively easily, but I find the amazons struggle the most against Kir'ko xenotech melee rush stacks or psynumbra long range stacks, and so far I haven't found a way to effectively handle the latter two short of just outnumbering the enemy.

[Jeffreyac]

The special attacks on your core troops - blind/stagger on the archers, and sleep on the biomancer. Initially I was underutilizing these skills, and struggling, but proper use of them can really boost your effectiveness by limiting the bad guy's ability to hurt you. Sleep one, blind a few others, and mop up - save the slept guy for last!

[snuggleform]

Archers - blinding arrows, blinding arrows, blinding arrows. This more than makes up for lack of range and overwatch. You are doing it completely wrong if you are not using blinding arrows. Holy crap blinding arrows are disruptive.

Biomancer - sleep is OP. Take some key units out of the battle for two turns oh my.

Lancers - avoid like the plague unless you got them for free. They are too easy to kill and don't do much damage.

mods - use grounding harness (protect against stagger is hot), bioregeneration (this counters most aoe/tac ops), and ceberal poison (80% chance to stun a unit is wtf).

If you're looking for units to mass later on, try harriers with blinding mod, stagger mod, and evasive mod, or go with the bombardier (it's slow, but it has good range as far as amazon units go). The tyrannosaurs are just too short range.

The secret tech can also help your playstyle; if you go xenoplague the parasitic infections give -2 biochemical resistance which gives your archers a lot more dps.

[Exit]

Gotta stress the importance of biomancers.

[The Mott]

Using Amazon lancers with celestial secret tech, and having them hang until the enemy is nearly in range then charging straight at them is a good diversion, especially if you have mods that enhance the melee overwatch. Then fliers, tanks and heros can help pick off anything that is troublesome.

[BigRockWall]

The lancers are awesome if you pair with echo walkers. Think of them like fast moving shotgun units. Good mobility with both melee option and 5 range 1 ap solid damage attack. Move walkers up and pop clone, hit same enemy with both original and clone. Lancers clean up and handle air or tough heroes you cant fit any more melee units around to take down in 1 turn. People complain they are fragile, but those same people probably aren't tanking with echo walkers. Also stick with defensive mods. The tier 1 stagger resist, the regen, and the tier 1 voidtech mod that gives phase walk and 20% miss chance. On both the lancers and echo walkers.

Hero on a lancer +2 more lancers and 3 echo walkers. The whole stack moves 40 so good campaign range. And all tier 2 so relatively affordable to spam. You just have to play aggressively in fights. Trying to stationary gun wall doesnt work.

Also suggest stacks of harriers to support. The voidtech flyer is a nice 40 range support unit to mix in with either stack type.

[MattStriker]

Amazons also get a very good regeneration mod as well as probably the best anti-stagger armor in the game very early in their research tree. Both of these will give you an early edge as well as remain very useful all the way through the game.

[Prometheus]

I dunno why people think Lancers are bad. I haven't played as much Amazon as other races (especially Synidcate) but when I see an Amazon settlement I do a little dance because I will get to pick up Lancers. They are amazing flankers. Do not be afraid to run in and only get a single melee hit in with them. The stagger from the hit plus melee overwatch does tons of good work.

Definitely go for the animal taming tac op. This is a source of cheap and easy units that you definitely should go for. You can fill out an extra stack of units to join on the flanks of your main force easily.

The first tree monster unit is very helpful. Immobilized units are easier to hit and it has that shields buffs. Its not deep in the tree so definitely go for it soonish.

Amazons get the most variety of and often the most powerful variants of the tier 2 secret tech unit (Void, Prom and Celestian especially). Its easy to rush this tech and they usually add another layer of depth to your starting army.

[MattStriker]

The main thing I use mindcontrolled animals for is securing my settlements away from the frontline. My defense stacks tend to be kind of circus-like near the end of a game :P.

[snuggleform]

Well I may be slightly overstating how bad lancer is, but it's definitely not a unit you can just mass and hope to make work. It's kind of like the vanguard bike - if you can sneak in one through the side, it can some decent work, but it's just not spammable

[frank327]

Except Lancers with grounding harness are spammable. With their defense mode shields up they can approach the enemy without taking serious damage and without getting staggered. Then you can get into melee range and your enemies will have an extremely difficult time doing anything anymore.

Also having an equal number of Arborean Sentinels and Lancers means your lancers will have 7 shields in defense mode. That's pretty insane for a tier 2 unit without many mods.

[snuggleform]

You can do reasonably well with just archers, who can also use harnesses. The blinding arrow also means the enemy can't do much. They also cost half the energy and upkeep. I don't think you are meant to spam lancers, which is fine.

[Sneakimus]

What are your experiences from using the Arboreal Sentinel? Is it good? Essential? Meh?

[snuggleform]

They're generally good frontline because of manipulate shields, pretty hard to destroy.

[Aeonax]

Don't miss the fact that all Amazon bows (hero items, archer squads etc) does gain 1 bonus range in cover and also ignore unit in the way and cover bonuses

[Sneakimus]

Originally posted by Crippelito:

Don't miss the fact that all Amazon bows (hero items, archer squads etc) does gain 1 bonus range in cover and also ignore unit in the way and cover bonuses

It's something I've noticed, and I've found it allows great synergy between Huntresses when paired with an Arboreal Sentinel or Laser T-rex to work as mobile cover.

And the harrier stacks work surprisingly well. Especially when combined with a proper laser mod, they can literally destroy any unit attempting to flank or alphastrike exposed targets from an impressive range.

I am curious if anyone knows which Secret Tech provides additional attack range.