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[Frumple]

Ho yez. Nine stack of decent prot/defense regenerators has good odds of going through chaff army like knife through butter. If they had a nice bless rolling, too, you were basically sending that army against a thug-level kill squad. Somewhat less than a surprise

[tompliss]

Basically, your longdead don't count because they're undeadn, and your agarthan intrantry don't count because they've got the worst atk skill and are agaisnt mounted units.
So... yeah :/

[Frumple]

Eternal knights aren't mounted :V

The 13 base defense (12, with the armor) makes 'em almost as dodge-y as something on a horse, but they're plain infantry.

[Karlito]

your agarthan intrantry don't count because they've got the worst atk skill and are agaisnt mounted units.

Well, this is LA Agartha, so those guys are humans and have a baseline 10 attack, which is not the worst, even if they still suck. Those crossbowmen though, they are the worst. Honestly, Jacob/Lee, if you had 25 Indy crossbow dudes instead of your national ones, you could've done a lot better that battle.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Hmmm... That's definitely debatable. Agartha's crossbowmen are definitely not the worse, though whether they're better than indie crossbowmen is probably up to the player. In battle they trade 2 precision for 2 extra damage, 2 more morale, and 50% darkvision. And some other stuff which shouldn't factor into a battle. But the point is that while they're less accurate than indie crossbowmen, they do extra damage which will help punch through shields and armour, especially with armour piercing. So whether they're better than indie crossbowmen depends on how much you value accuracy over damage. And whether the extra darkvision/morale is important.

[chaoticag]

Seems the only real place you'd want them would be in underground areas. Losing precision for a primarily ranged unit is pretty devastating. Two extra damage doesn't make up for losing that precision, especially with a long reload time for those crossbows. Even if you wanna argue that the extra damage helps punch through armor, actually hitting gives you a chance of hitting something other than their torso, which may be something less well armored. And the extra damage doesn't sound like it's anything compared to piercing weapons ignoring 20% of protection.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Eh... Like I said, it depends on the player's preferences. The difference between 10 and 12 precision isn't extreme. The crossbowmen are going to have a tighter cluster of shots obviously, but from what I've seen and understand from the manual it's not going to make them a better choice than the Agarthians in every situation. And the extra damage does matter. Crossbows are armour piercing and deal piercing damage, but they also have to deal with shield hits, which increases a unit's protection. And given how likely a shield hit is with missile weapons, this is really important. If I understand things correctly, a generic heavy infantryman has at least a 54% chance to avoid damage from a generic crossbow bolt if it hits his shield, which has a very high chance of happening. Also, hit locations are completely independent of precision. Precision only affects which square the missile will hit, and not which part of the body it hits.

So the extra precision means less than you'd think it does, and the extra damage is actually useful. And if you still aren't convinced I can always quote the manual, all of this is in there.

[ThtblovesDF]

Doesn't it make it more likly you hit your own troops, however?

[Shadowlord]

If you don't want to hit your own troops, use mind-eaters (like olms) instead.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Doesn't it make it more likly you hit your own troops, however?

Yes, but only obscene amounts of precision would fix that. You're going to hit your troops no matter what, it's just that the extra precision cuts down on the friendly fire somewhat. Though if you're Agartha, your troops are probably the best to weather missiles. High protection + kite shields gives them good odds against crossbows and almost impervious against arrows.

If you don't want to hit your own troops, use mind-eaters (like olms) instead.

We're talking about LA Agartha and their crossbowmen though. They don't have access to Olms, unfortunately.

[Shadowlord]

Ah. I haven't played LA at all. (For the record, I also prefer longbowmen over crossbowmen)

[USEC_OFFICER]

I used to like longbowmen too, but looking at the numbers I'm not so sure anymore. Anything with good armour and a decent shield should be able to weather a ton of longbow shots, since they only do 12 damage and lack the armour piercing ability. Crossbows do fire slower, but they pierce armour and thus are much harder to tank.

[Rez]

Mind blast units are relatively expensive to archers and they seem like they're better for supporting your heavy infantry than doing damage of themselves.

[Delta Foxtrot]

Though if you're Agartha, your troops are probably the best to weather missiles. High protection + kite shields gives them good odds against crossbows and almost impervious against arrows.

Since we're talking about LA Agartha, you have easy access to the E/D/W buffs that help your troops against friendly crossbow fire. Though I'm not sure if LA Agartha is quick to consider alteration to be their key research target early on.

[Frumple]

Mind blast units are relatively expensive to archers and they seem like they're better for supporting your heavy infantry than doing damage of themselves.

Playing r'lyeh actually left me kind of curious on that subject -- not nearly curious enough to run the ridiculous amount of number crunching that would be involved to find out in any definitive way, but curious. Mindblasters definitely have a higher upfront cost and immediate upkeep, but I've also found them considerably less vulnerable to attrition and also notably more capable in general of combat-killing (not necessarily removing something's HP, but paralyzing them long enough for something else to kill them). There's probably all sorts of weird breakpoints where mindblasters become more cost efficient than archers and vice versa.

S'like. In one fight, is five archers (nevermind the significantly higher resource cost) going to be able to cause the death of more critters than a single illithid? Which will survive more fights? How much gold is it taking to keep those five archers around (i.e. maintain them in the face of combat losses) compared to that illithid? The equation almost certainly changes when there's 50 archers vs 10 illithids, or 500 vs 100, but... how much?

And naturally enough, those illithids are going to be massively more effective against certain types of armies... and the opposite is also true. It's an incredibly messy thing to consider, heh.