Stonehearth Hardmode experience

[TheWayREAL]

SO basically my first time playing about 10 months ago I had lots of problems with
performance, that was fixed and now i’m playing quite fine.

I got to about day 40 or 50 on hardmode. I basically had everything on a tank maxed 2 swordsman, 2 archers, and 2 clerics. Basically came down to 7 people defending my town. I died to 1 archer that kept kiting my guys he would shoot arrows that almost one shot my guys taking huge chunks out of my hp. and nothing to really do besides chase him down to the other side of the world, and then was attacked by goblins on the other side. I honestly like how hard “hardmode” is it really makes things great and fun. But one archer basically killed 7 of my guys. I kinda think this is a balance issue rather than anything else. I had everything on my people max. The best armor/weapons, and level 6. I feel everything was balanced up until this point I had encountered all types of bosses and it was really fun struggling to stay alive and also keep teching into better equips and mining the right stuff. Everything was great I honestly can’t think of anything that was wrong besides this 1 random archer that killed everything I had. Another problem with archers is they run so far away and seem to be really fast risking everything and killing you’re guys slowly over a long period of time. Maybe i’m doing something wrong vs archer type mobs not sure. So overall I like this hard mode and can’t say its not balanced because it is for the most part but yea I got rekted. the part was 1 tank ish orc that died isntently to my archers, and next was 4 archers. 3 of them died but 1 was super tanky and kept kiting my guys really well and attacking in between periods of distance. Idk what the reason for this 1 archer to be so strong was but meh the 40 days I spent were great. And I love most of the experience

[TheWayREAL]

Hopefully someone can tell me if they are playing hard mode what experience you have would be great. Also if anyone knows a way to fight archers if there is something specifically let me know!

[hutch]

Were your archers using spiky arrows? Or at least one of them? They make a huge difference on guys that like to run.

[ShuyinVardiz]

Playing on hardmode too, currently on day 175? (25. Goldmun).
The first time their archers appeared they were not much of a
problem, just now and then quite tricky. After I advanced too
much in the story I got destroyed absoluetly. Took me 2-3 full
hours of intensive gameplay to defeat the Master Gong-Event,
even had to improve my hearthling cap by 5 since 20 people
cant handle the fast respawn of the waves.
The next gong (General’s golden Gong) is death. Made an extra
savegame just to check how hard it would be. Meanwhile I am
on the following level:

• six full armored, fire arrowed and max leveled archers,
• five full armored, max leveld clerics
• six full armored, max leveled knights
• eleven other hearthlings for jobs and one worker to ‘spare’

It is plainly impossible to show the least thread against the camp
of the golden gong. The waves are huge, have extremely strong archers
and at least half a dozen tanks with them. Usually I split my army in
Archers under green flag and everything else under red flag. While the
red flag takes up the tanks and basic melee orcs I order my archers to
take out their archers one after another as they are the real thread. It
works good enough to fight off one wave without casualitys, but takes
way too long and in the meantime their camp spawns another wave
instantly sent towards me.

I havent tried so far, but the only way I see to take them down is either
by exploiting the mechanisim of Stonehearth: sending all forces into
their camp while the textmessage of their leader is still showing since
they dont start attacking / spawning waves while its up - or just try to
increase my hearthling-cap to 40+ and take a few days to increase town
worth until I can afford 40 hearthlings and build a 25+ army.

But that is the only problem I have currently.
I never had a problem with single archers. Knights just follow them until
they hit a stonewall and can be engaged in close combat while beeing
healed by a single cleric.Otherwise a 1:1 is won by my archers I think

• but I prefer to keep my units close to each other. Too dangerous in
  small groups of 3 or less hearthlings.

[SePax]

Have you tried such a building structure? In the center cross archers can with support from clerics deal damage while the melee’s defend at the doors. Especially the assigning of secific targets for the archers is good and with firearrows the enemy archers ar spending most of their time running in circles and burning. The bonus since alpha 17 are the placeable turrets on the positions on the left side of the picture which, although expensive, provide a bit of bonus damage.
Didn’t test it in the gong events yet but works for normal waves on hard quite well.

[Lonarius]

My exp: Stonehearth: Alpha 16 DevBuild Combat++ HARDMODE WORKING GREAT, not

[LePheel]

How did you even make it that far with only 6 soldiers?

[TheWayREAL]

ah ok guys i will just try again with the help of what you guys said!

[Lonarius]

I just built on that platoon only, going to harvest wood around not very often. But then I got destroyed.