Archery or thrown weapon bless

[hanssverre]

What nation and what blesses would be the best build for the purpose of

1) blessing archers

2) units where thrown weapons are a big part of the mix.


I know that there aren't many holy archers but there is a few. Any good builds?
Would weapon blesses be great for them?

For 2 I've tried the holy nagas, but even though I could get a decent poison spit from them... its only meh. Any Other options?

[Nrak555]

I have not heard of any good holy ranged unit build. As they all have been subpar so far. With the EA agartha stone throwers getting the most work so far.

[Mount Nomad]

+Precision is the best bless for sacred archers, and stacks well for sacred evocation specialist mages (EA Caelum has both, for example).

In Dominions 4, you could do an amusing double major bless to get flaming weapons, precision and air shield on LA Man Wardens - basically Flaming Arrows and Wind Guide without researching the spells or using up mage turns (plus their Great Swords flamed too). While not necessarily a game winning combination, it did quite well situationally (Wardens being very tanky when enemies did make it to the far back lines). They mixed very well with mages. The Incarnate requirements would make this problematic in Dom 5.

There simply aren't that many sacred archers, and to bring the power of archers to the fore you usually need numbers, which would ask for Recruit Anywhere sacred archers.

[Eerywax]

EA T'ien Ch'i has an interesting but slow-to-get-rolling possibility in their Demons of the Heavenly Fires. They take mage turns and gems to summon but they are sacred, and the Flame Wheel weapon they have is armor piercing and ignores shields at the same range as a shortbow.

Also note that Nagas' poison spit doesn't benefit from blesses that specify "doesn't apply to natural weapons such as mind blasts" (paraphrased), since poison spit is a natural/intrinsic weapon.

[darkdaze]

EA Caelum is pretty fun with this strategy. I tried it out recently. Huge buff to the Eagle Kings evocation too.
Example pretender

[hanssverre]

EA T'en Chi' sounds fun option. Armor piercing and ignores shields and holy sounds like an option. I'll give them a look.

darkdaze: wow. I haven't tought about that. 7 precision and far shot... Does it work?
And yes, precision helps evocations too...

I have played around with nagas, and I did manage to give them a 20 strength poison spit (AN?) Which on paper sounds great, but combination of range and the disadvantage of being poison, I was somewhat dissapointed. Nagas where great in melee though so all in all ok. But not that great range.

I've also tried early age bandar log, both in dom 4 and in dom 5. They have a neat archer which is actually decent in melee. Give it protection from arrows, and some other neat things and they do ok. The problem is that it's capital only.


I wish there would exist a holy unit with sticks and stones. That could have been so damn nasty fun.

[darkdaze]

I've only used it in SP, but I think it could be pretty good in MP. The archer sacreds absolutely destroy light armored units once you can mass enough. The ice armor heavy units you have can usually hold the line well. Mid-late game you use your eagle kings & air conjurations to crack forts in 1-2 turn sieges. Pretty standard Caelum stuff.

The crazy precision is funny though. Your Eagle Kings have 20+ precision. Thunderstrike is really really good.

[hanssverre]

Definitively worth it for evocations too.

Are there any javelin throwers out there?

[Eerywax]

There's Tir na Nog's sacred infantry guys. Magic spear but mundane javelins. But they're sacred.

[MORROGANDER]

the problem about ranged blessing is they can be easily countered by one single spell "Arrow Fend"

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by MORROGANDER:

the problem about ranged blessing is they can be easily countered by one single spell "Arrow Fend"

Yeah, I'm kind of soured on archery. Too many counters make it useless (Arrow Fend as you said, Storm, Mist, just plain loads of protection and/or shields).

It works fine in EA for a while, but in LA at least, if you don't have crossbows archers are a waste to recruit.

MA is kind of an intermediate era. MA Man's Longbows are about as good as it gets for non-sacred troops that use a bow. And they still aren't useful against units like heavy cav or heavily armored troops with shields.

If you are facing Pikeneers or Militia or something, sure they are handy. But it doesn't take long to start seeing the kinds of troops that laugh at arrows - without the stuff like Army of Gold/Storm/Arrow Fend/Mist, etc.

[hanssverre]

Getting a sacred archer working is for me a fun little project, but I don't think they would be particular powerful.

Weapon-blesses should have been very powerful for them if weapon blesses would have been ok.

Arrow Fend is a bugger though I agree. Thus arrow fend protect you from all ranged weapons?


Having a unit with range weapons which is also decent in melee and you have a much better odds of getting it working. Then you only need the archers, and it would not be that devestating once enemy melee units reach you.

[Mount Nomad]

*See LA Man Wardens.

[hanssverre]

Regarding the EA T'ien Ch'i Demons of the Heavenly Fires... They are indeed interesting. It is armorpiercing damage which SCALES with strength. I gave them an bless of:
+2 defence, +2 attack, farshot, +1 precision, +4 strength, unding 6 and... forrest-survivial.
Far from optimal, but a nice twist as +4 on an armor-piercing ranged attack makes it really deadly. Maybe not super optimal, but some nice damage output.

[onomastikon]

While Arrrow Fend may be a serious detriment to a strong investment in sacred ranged attacks, the number of nations with easy access to Arrow Fend are relatively low depending on the era. Probably one of those nations will already be taken by you. And I guess that not many opponents will reckon with a ranged bless and you may have lots of time before reliable counters are up.

[terve886]

Originally posted by onomastikon:

While Arrrow Fend may be a serious detriment to a strong investment in sacred ranged attacks, the number of nations with easy access to Arrow Fend are relatively low depending on the era. Probably one of those nations will already be taken by you. And I guess that not many opponents will reckon with a ranged bless and you may have lots of time before reliable counters are up.

Rather than counters, I believe that the main disadvantage of ranged attacks with sacreds is the fact that ranged attack focused blesses don't scale as well compared to melee attack focused blesses for the points investment in bless. It is also a problem that archer units in general tend to be very vulnerable in melee fight compared to melee focused units, thus their only advantage is when the units aren't still in engaging melee combat by thinnin out the enemy ranks before they clash into melee. This on the other hand means that there needs to be enough ranged attacks to actually do that and that requires massed archery. Unfortunately sacred ranged units are just extremely hard to mass.

if there was a ranged focused bless, that for example, doubled the amount of projectiles fired, it would fit much better as ranged focused bless effect to bring sacred archer units and throwers in line with other sacreds.