Footmen can't win agains archers

Gameplay
1

Hi There!
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Aside realism, the big problem for me is how OP archers really are, because footmen still relie on armour to protect themselvs

I’ve found that if you have 2 of all classes, after a while, archers are much more of a better choice to promote

The team said on ome DT that knights beat footmen, archers beat knights, and footmen beat archers,
Problem is, when i order a single maxed out footman to go against a archer, often it’s the case where, the footman hits the archer, the archer runs away, and shoots the footman

And turnes out, the footman tends to lose without any heals(the kobolt having non as well), and on the other hand, while knights do struggle to get the archer’s health down, they tend to be able to survive enough blows to get the archer cornerd on a cliff or wall and finish them of with consistant attacks

What i’d suggest is to make the footman relie on ‘Health’ and not ‘Armour’ for survivability since the archer is an armour penetration unit, and the footmen are swift and hard-hitting damage dealers (and also suppose to be archer killers)

Or make the footmen have a charging dodge exclusive for the use against projectiles(that might be easier for balancing in my eyes)

Anyways, that’s my view on how the archers are (of and btw player archers tend to just crush the AI archers)

I do enjoy how the combat system is at this point and had a lot of fun playing around with it, i just don’t feel like the archers are on the right state

Do feel free to disagree and i’ll see you people soon!

Symbol Out!

Ps: also there’s a bug with the archers, if you didn’t see the post here’s a link
http://discourse.stonehearth.net/t/archers-wont-shoot-if-they-had-a-defend-order-prior-to-an-attack-order/22156/1

2 Likes
2

Bet Bob can win lol!!!

1 Like
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Ha! He is superman! But only one job ability is active!

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look at his hp, the hp carries over lol

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Oh, wait, okay, he wins

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Yeah, I thought the general concept was fast units beat ranged units, which beat slow units. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TacticalRockPaperScissors I’m still not clear if that’s supposed to be the case in Stonehearth or not. I’d agree that footmen are way too vulnerable to archers.

This is the most elegant solution I’ve seen lately, thanks for posting it.

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I use an archer with spikes and a footman together, to cut down archers. Do we need to be able to kill archers with one guy?

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That’s a good idea.

Well, we should be able to kill more archers with footmen than with an equal number of knights (I guess with a 3 level handicap on the knights). Otherwise there’s no class footmen have an advantage over. I’m still not clear how which direction this triangle moves in.

I think there’s precedent for counterexamples, but still, the general idea that faster units can counter ranged units is about as intuitive as tactical rock paper scissors gets. If the classes advantage is range, then the quicker you take that advantage away from them the better you should fare, right?

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My archers always get their arses handed to them. I can never keep them alive in my parties. 2 of each class (including clerics) and they always get wiped out. This esp happens when the kobold archers show up - I send the whole party after the kobolds first, and invariably the wolves/orcs/ogres wind-up on my archers and smack the crap out of them. I’ve found no tactical way to de-aggro my archers, and with the bug where they stop following orders, they invariably die.

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Ok, so I will explain my anti-kobold party tactics to everyone who is struggling, perhaps it helps.

  1. I group up all my soldiers.
  2. I send them at the enemies, letting my knights target the melee units and the clerics stay with the knights.
  3. I attack each Kobold with an spiky-arrow archer and a footman.
  4. I use any excess footmen to attack melee units.
  5. I absolutely wreck the kobolds :wink:

Try it out, it’s working like a charm. Btw. in my main town right now i have 3 archers, 3 footmen, 2 clerics and 2 knights.

In my opinion, footmen are super strong. Why does there need to be a fixed triangle of who kills whom? It’s the combination of your guys that is deadly, i think footmen are superb as they dish out massive damage. Perhaps they cannot win battles on their own, but with the right support, they are deadly.

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Right, I just have 2 Knights, 2 Footmen and 2 Clerics and they slaughter everything without fail, I never get below 3/4 health on any units no matter the fight. Archers are worthless.

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But you don’t play hardmode, right?

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Hell no. I wish there was an Easy Mode, honestly. If I have a hard time keeping Hearthlings alive in Normal Mode (and I’m a competitive gamer) then my wife’s going to get destroyed when she plays this game. And that would be… not pretty.

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It’s a but of a stretch then to say archers are worthless when i just explained a perfectly fine tactic to beat hrad-mode, including archers. :wink:

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Your strat requires an awful lot of micro-management that the game devs do not make easily available right now. I don’t like pausing the game all the time and giving individual commands to specific units. Until they have RTS-style grouping and group selection, your strat is extremely tedious and a hard break from the usual casual gameplay of the game.

If I could break-up units across multiple parties (and more than just four, I might need 6-8 in order to get the granularities needed for varying strategies) and then easily select them with 1-8 keys, then making use of your strat could become fairly trivial once the initial setup is completed. Without ever having to pause. Some more consideration like left-click on an emeny from a party control situation always means “attack this enemy” may also help. Right now the party management and command system is not ergonomic/intuitive in any way.

If players have to pause the game to issue orders in a live tactical situation, you need to rethink your command structure and usability.

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Archers are great and only require micromanagement because of the new bug where they won’t do anything except stand there.

They really benefit from numbers though. Once you get six or so archers almost nothing can stand up to you; they’re better damage dealers than footmen and can also serve the role of crowd control.

edit: to be clear that’s on hard mode. And even then you will need to do a lot of reloading. But archers are the difference between hard mode being difficult or being manageable.

My favorite strategy is to use knights and footmen to “pull” enemy groups past clusters of archers.

Oh, numbers: 2 knights, 3 clerics, 5 footmen, 6 archers. I’d like one more knight and one more footman. Fort is at 33 workers. I do have to reload sometimes but usually it’s due to bugs or soldier nonresponsiveness or weirdly bad luck (enemy kobolds poofing into existence around a lone footman).

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To be clear, what type of Kobold archer are we debating here that a Footman should solo and what level of Footman?

Kobold archers come in varying strengths ranging from HP’s of 350 to 1500 - which one is a Footman trying to solo? :wink:

Pretty sure if the Kobold has a hat, and isn’t going against Bob, there’s a good chance 1 vs 1 won’t work as the Kobold’s with hats are fairly meaty.

As for not wanting to pause, that is an intended mechanic of the combat system. Not using it is tying an arm behind your back trying to jump rope; challenging yes, amusing for others to watch sure, but not too effective. :wink:

My tactic for Kobold archers is to ensure one of my Knights maintains aggro of at least two of them while my footmen, archers or clerics bring them down. General’s and Master’s go down first.

Oh and Knight Commander Bob can solo a Kobold Scout easily but he prefers not to; it’s too much running and he prefers to leave that to the kiddies and pewpew’s. He hasn’t tried a more colorful hat as those groups quickly become 6 vs Bob and Cid hasn’t shown him self-resurrection yet. If I can manage to kite a General or Master away from the group, I’ll post my results.

18

Because this

There wouldn’t be a purpose for footmen if archers do their job and more. Though the cleave ability could change the better damage dealers part depending on the group.

I’m thinking of a general archer and footmen matchup so an archer and a footmen of equal levels (or a level 3 footmen and apprentice archer, since the xp would be equivalent). The kobold archers are just the closest analogue.

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Well, yes, I think footmen are in a relatively bad place right now and agree with you. They’re a little useful for chasing enemy archers but that’s it, especially since the speed boost is as likely to get them killed as not.

I’ve said it in other threads, but i think the armor penetration ability needs to be moved from archers to footmen, and Knights need a “blocking” ability with their shields vs archers, so that the priority becomes footmen > knights > archers >footmen. Right now it’s just Archers > everyone else.

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So by not wanting to micro-manage my troops in a game where you’re not supposed to ever have to micro-manage anything, I’m somehow doing it wrong? Don’t blame me, it’s what the devs promised and continually say here on their own Discourse system - that you should never have to micro-manage anything and where there are places you do it means they need to fix it. So I’m doing what I was asked to do here and sharing my feedback within the confines they’ve defined. They’ve told me I should never have to micro-manage things, but to win in combat right now you do have to. That means something’s wrong that needs fixing.