Why are bow-using heroes so terrible?

[jhsidi]

Bow using heroes have a massive list of cons, very few pros, and typically have absolutely abysmal performance in combat.

Here are a few cons of bow heroes:

• No long range trait -- at any range over point blank, they typically do 0 damage, even to low defense enemies; this automatically makes any bow hero less valuable than a magic hero
  
• Fully countered by two of the weakest spells in the game (animate ammo and guardian wind)
  
• No traits that increase ranged attack power (contrast with many magic ranged heroes having arcane power)
  
• No other traits that improve ranged (magic users can get traits like armor piercing, destruction, etc)
  
• Terrible starting power (usually 8 ranged, which is barely higher than some 6-figure units!) and terrible growth (my super-hero level beastmaster is at 12 ranged; my grand lord orc was, I think, at 10 ranged)
  
• Lower chance to get useful artifacts than magic ranged characters (staffs / wands drop far more often than bows)
  
• Usually, no other benefit; note that ALL magical ranged characters get spellcasting power; that spellcasting power is the one thing that makes the beastmaster and ranger tolerable
  
• Weak in hand to hand and can't even be used for hand to hand by the player, since there's no option to turn off their useless ranged attack and just hit something
  

It really looks like the plan with these heroes is to leave them completely crippled in combat and compensate with traits that can give some minimal benefit to the army. The dervish gets noble. The orc gets supply master. The huntress gets pathfinding. And that's literally all they offer. For actual combat, you'd be better off bringing any low-level bowman unit.

Anyway, here are my proposals for bow heroes:

• ALL bow heroes get long ranged; there's absolutely no reason not to do this. How the heck did these people become "heroes" if they can't even shoot their bow as well as a run of the mill elven longbowman?
  
• Higher starting value for bow attack (+1 for orc, dervish, beastmaster and ranger, +2 for huntress)
  
• New random chance traits specific to bows such as quick shot (2 arrows per shot) and power shot (bypasses guardian wind)
  

... I'll stop there because I feel like there's going to be some reasoning of why bow heroes have been kept in their gimped state. But these changes would hardly make them overpowered.

[Anskiy]

In general I don't use heroes much in CoM, thanks to all the anti heroes counters devised. I find that heroes are largely worthless outside of city defense for most wizards, barring some lucky gear finds. It feels like you need to find some very specific abilities to make them useful(Flight, Invisibility, Wraithform, Inner Power, Regeneration, Magic Immunity) else they just die too quickly thanks to everyone focus firing on them and the anti hero counters added.

[jhsidi]

I use heroes quite a lot. Typically I manage to find some unit type the enemy will focus down before the heroes. And casting heroes are massively useful. Melee heroes can be quite powerful. It's just these bow users that are pretty much worthless (unless they cast).

[Intaka]

For what it's worth, I completely agree with Long Ranged, Jhsidi. It is an excellent suggestion. I'm going to make that change in my very next game (modding units.ini).

Default archery heroes are worthless combatants, only useful for their very few ability buffs to the stack. It is only the stack buffs which justify their existence. Logistics (Dervish) allows mages (or bowmen or slingers) to scoot and shoot better. Soul Link (Beastmaster) is one of the most powerful stack buffs in the game (fantastic units +hit% chance for all 8 creatures). Orc Archer's Supply Commander gives a full stack 18 more shots. Huntress' Web cast on turn 1 can be a game changer, plus she has blademaster*. Ranger has pathfinding, resist elements, lucky and 2 random abilities, but the all important more combat casts per turn, as you mentioned.

An argument can certainly be made about the value these abilities bring to a stack being more important than raw combat power, but the question comes up again and again, how to keep a hero alive? For me, that
has always been the central issue. Heroes take a VERY long time to reach their potential. They should be the lynchpin of any assault force. A queen in chess. A force to be reckoned with. The primary target in any wizard battle, for BOTH sides. There's just way too many ways for them to casually die when used for anything but benchwarming, until the game is nearly won.

Not everyone agrees with me about my vision of what heroes should be in the game and that is totally OK. The beauty of modding my single player game is that they don't need to agree. My triple point lairs and nodes wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea either, but I like having to decide if a node is worth the attrition cost to take. In my experience, some attrition stacks of units will die when you go into a 5 archangel, 4 angel tower, or a 6 behemoth and 3 colossi nature node. It slows down research. It gives you something to do during peacetime and even in the endgame.

I did a balance pass on the heroes and gave them all on AVERAGE 3 att, 3 def, 3 res, and 8 hp for the first 10 heroes, 2,2,2,7 for the next 10 heroes, 1,1,1,6 for the last 15 heroes. Although I'm sure someone would think such a vast change would create an unstoppable juggernauts, they still can't solo anything actually dangerous even 1v1 naked and unbuffed. However, with buffs & some starting level gear they can survive that all important first round of ranged defenders, or a stray swipe. Any node or lair filled with Supernatural would eat them alive of course, as intended. For the typical low level hero this brought them ALLLLLL the way up to a single figure unit of Att 11, Def 8, Res 9, and hp 19. So... still worse than experienced Halberdiers or a Golem, but at least they can usually survive to buff the armies they are there to support. The 8 hp change was probably the biggest game changer, because any wizard with nature books casts Crack's Call like it's their go to recreational spell. Unpreventable damage is fine, but one shots are no fun, and make Wraithform feel mandatory in high opponent count games to me.

Roland or Mortu with good artifacts and buffs are wrecking balls. First Strike, Armor Piercing and Might* are such a powerful combo. The question was for me was "What would need to happen to make Brax cool?" Etc. So he got 1 att, 3 def, and 5 res. He can now fight Cockatrices safely, congratulations Brax for having a purpose in life. Gunther had almost all of his attack shoved into his Thrown, so he sucks on defense, but he's a great alpha striker / flier hunter. Etc. Gunther the Barbarian, aspiring Phantom Warrior hunter.

So yes, archer heroes are terrible combatants only useful for buffs they can't stay alive to provide. However, it's fixable with a little creative application and a focus on each hero having a distinct theme. It has really helped my games feel like they have more variety when I'm not deeply unhappy to see whatever hero shows up. It makes Summon Champion feel less mandatory as well, so it's not always the same *cough* Chosen few.

I don't think Seravy shares my vision for heroes, but your Long Range suggestion is imminently reasonable, and would be a very easy change for the 5 heroes it affects. LongRanged=Yes, done.

[Seravy]

Heroes are not affected by range penalty so that problem was solved a long time ago.
Animate Ammo won't work on heroes from the next update unless you turn that on in modding.
You can use melee attacks by holding shift when attacking.

I'll consider adding an ability that increases bow attack strength in the future.

[Intaka]

Awesome. Thanks for the reply.

[jhsidi]

Thanks, I didn't know about them not being affected by the ranged penalty. I didn't realize about shift to attack either.

Although -- those things don't solve the uselessness of the bow heroes. Without knowing that he wasn't affected by range penalty, I was, uh, inspired to this post by playing multiple battles with Baghtru the orc and watching him consistently dink out 0 damage. And he was a champion! My level 0 halfling bowmen could easily outdamage him.

A hero should really perform better than base level units. As-is, several of these heroes are nothing but a mobile trait (supply commander, pathfinder, etc).

By the way, why did the huntress lose her web spell? That was the one decent thing about her...

[Slingers]

How about a critical hit ability to bring more glory to archer heroes?

[Seravy]

Bagthru is more of a support character than someone who is meant to fight though. Fame 0 hero with low attack stats, and no blademaster ability. Unless you give him a +30 to hit weapon, he won't deal good damage.
Either way, I've already added looking at bow heroes and their stat growth to my todo list.
Huntress lost the web spell because weapons can have spell charges in them and a unit can only have one type of spell charge available at a time, at least currently. So equipping such a weapon made one of the two spells unusable.

[Cruel100]

Bow using heroes have a massive list of cons, very few pros, and typically have absolutely abysmal performance in combat.

Here are a few cons of bow heroes:

• No long range trait -- at any range over point blank, they typically do 0 damage, even to low defense enemies; this automatically makes any bow hero less valuable than a magic hero
  
• Fully countered by two of the weakest spells in the game (animate ammo and guardian wind)
  
• No traits that increase ranged attack power (contrast with many magic ranged heroes having arcane power)
  
• No other traits that improve ranged (magic users can get traits like armor piercing, destruction, etc)
  
• Terrible starting power (usually 8 ranged, which is barely higher than some 6-figure units!) and terrible growth (my super-hero level beastmaster is at 12 ranged; my grand lord orc was, I think, at 10 ranged)
  
• Lower chance to get useful artifacts than magic ranged characters (staffs / wands drop far more often than bows)
  
• Usually, no other benefit; note that ALL magical ranged characters get spellcasting power; that spellcasting power is the one thing that makes the beastmaster and ranger tolerable
  
• Weak in hand to hand and can't even be used for hand to hand by the player, since there's no option to turn off their useless ranged attack and just hit something
  

It really looks like the plan with these heroes is to leave them completely crippled in combat and compensate with traits that can give some minimal benefit to the army. The dervish gets noble. The orc gets supply master. The huntress gets pathfinding. And that's literally all they offer. For actual combat, you'd be better off bringing any low-level bowman unit.

Anyway, here are my proposals for bow heroes:

• ALL bow heroes get long ranged; there's absolutely no reason not to do this. How the heck did these people become "heroes" if they can't even shoot their bow as well as a run of the mill elven longbowman?
  
• Higher starting value for bow attack (+1 for orc, dervish, beastmaster and ranger, +2 for huntress)
  
• New random chance traits specific to bows such as quick shot (2 arrows per shot) and power shot (bypasses guardian wind)
  

... I'll stop there because I feel like there's going to be some reasoning of why bow heroes have been kept in their gimped state. But these changes would hardly make them overpowered.

Exactly my thoughts. Thanks.