Fire Archers Command

[Edi]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

Oh, mos' def'. An MP game of dominions is not, as you could think, a duel of the minds between armchair strategists. It's actually a separate pair of cursing matches with the battle AI

Allow me to quote Johan K:

It's not supposed to be fair

That's paraphrased from a response to some CoE3 beta testing things, but probably applies just as well to Dominions...

[Torin]

im pretty sure that archers do not care about HP or possible damage dealing. Thats why they fire at lonely "arrow catchers"
I assume they fire the closest archer possible. Perhaps javelineers are archers too. Im not sure exactly wich are archers.

A commander with a bow (equipped or not) shouldnt be targetted since you cannot fire at commander or attack commander.
But i think that if you position him forwars he will be targetted. Someone does this?

[Shangrila00]

There's definitely some preferential targetting going on. Fire archers does target javelins in an army with only melee troops, but will target bow/crossbows over javelins even if the latter is closer. I feel kind of stupid since that was obvious with the way that lots of indy armies mix archers with javelin armed light infantry. So you definitely can't decoy fire archers with javelins. Don't know about slingers, though it doesn't seem worth looking into seeing as how slingers are just as squishy and no cheaper than indy shortbows.

[Edi]

Perhaps it takes the range of enemy missile weapons into account. I expect that it would.

[janthony]

In my experience they always fire at the closest archer, which against the AI is an indie archer or slinger. The best result I've had from 'fire archers' is when I was LA Man playing Rl'yeh. The 'archers' were identified as the mass mind burning commanders. So my front line troops were massacred due to Rl'yeh's unique set up. But I still won the battle because longbows are just that awesome. I have noticed, with mounted archers, if you cast 'hold and attack > enemy archers' they will fire at the closest archers until they charge. That's a great way to flank and decimate a standard battlefield orientation. Of course you'll need infantry fodder to be engaged so your cavalry doesn't get sidetracked. I've even used 'fire archers' with flanking javelin infantry to decent enough effect. You will lose a lot of the javelineers, but they're usually replaceable.

[Soyweiser]

Rl'yeh really has a tough time getting onto land. The mind flayers can be targeted by shooting at archers and large targets iirc.

Ps, shooting at large targets is usually a good way of killing mages/commanders. They tend to stay in the back, and are larger. Setting some storm demons to shoot large targets can be fun.