Half Range and Archery III. Don't think I get it.

[LoneChinchilla]

Related questions:
1. How does the range penalty work for half-range creatures? If they're shooting past some distance then they do half damage?

2. I think I must be missing something. If I'm on a battlefield with no obstacles, it sounds like Archery III just turns half-range creatures into full-range creatures. So, there's not much point in getting Archery III as e.g. Haven, where the only ranged troops are full-range. What am I missing?

3. Does Archery III cause ranged troops to ignore obstacle penalties?

[LoneChinchilla]

Related questions:
1. How does the range penalty work for half-range creatures? If they're shooting past some distance then they do half damage?

2. I think I must be missing something. If I'm on a battlefield with no obstacles, it sounds like Archery III just turns half-range creatures into full-range creatures. So, there's not much point in getting Archery III as e.g. Haven, where the only ranged troops are full-range. What am I missing?

3. Does Archery III cause ranged troops to ignore obstacle penalties?

[Rencol]

I've tried archery 3 with stronghold faction and goblins and here are my findings (but i dont guarantee they are 100% correct!):

Goblins did rly have the passive dmg bonus of Archery I.
Did not notice any periodical dmg increase from Archery II.
Goblins could atack on full distance (from left to right, did not try from corner to corner), but obstacle penalties still applied with Archery III.

[jigglefloyd]

Archery II & III are only potentially worth it on Blood based Necro and Stronghold Might Heroes because they have 3 shooters and at least one half range shooter. Every other faction has 2 or less shooters and they are mostly full range. Breeders for Inferno could benefit from Archery III I guess, but having only two archers really limits the potential of Archery II.

Archery II also may be bugged. I had like 7 stacks of bone archers and had a shooter war once and even after like 10 rounds of only shooters being used I saw no noticeable difference in dmg. Granted this was the beta, haven't tried it since. Anyone else see a noticeable difference?

Archery III is ok. You get a 35% increase from your half damage ranged units, so really only get a 17.5% increase in damage for one unit in your army (two in the case of Stronghold). This is OK, but it's usually better to get Assailent I-III first and other passives like Cleave/Rampage, etc.

[Jev0n]

There are definitely some bugs where Archery is concerned. In addition to what's been mentioned already in here, there are also two bow artifacts (I'm pretty sure it's 2 different ones, but could just be the one) that grant no range/obstacle penalties, hover they don't seem to actually apply in combat (my ranged shooters still suffered penalties).

Pretty buggy release http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_frown.gif

[jigglefloyd]

I did some further testing. Archery II works just fine, I created another post that explains it in more detail.

I retract my statement earlier. Archery II is good on almost every faction as long as you're blood and as long as you can prevent your archers from entering melee combat. It also works brilliantly with Morale boosting skills and items. It's obviously better for factions that have more archers but it's not bad on Haven since the High Morale will trigger more frequently on the crossbowmen. Crossbowmen also make up a huge portion of the damage potential for any Haven army, so improving its damage in any way is largely beneficial.

Archery III is still great with Stronghold since they have two half ranged units. It's not bad on Necro/Inferno since they have one half ranged unit. It's useless for Haven/Sanctuary since they have no half ranged units.

[EasymodeX]

Tbh I think that most ranged units should be half-range, and most melee units should have reduced move ranges. Too much re-tuning though, ahwell.