In preparation for an event I’m planning, I have been doing some thrall damage tests. This lead to one of my previous posts on best thralls.
In the course of this testing, one of the things I discovered is Archers need a buff to their ranged damage. My sample size is still pretty small, but here is the test:
Thrall Equipped with Flawless Pictish Bow and 100 Serpent-Man Arrows vs. an Elk King.
Result determined by: # of arrows remaining in their inventory. This was easier than trying to determine exact damage. I ran this test using Freya, Cimmerian Archer III and Votaries Archer III. These are the 3 highest level, easily acquired Archer thralls. I also used a Cimmerian Berserker and Daicas the Sharp.
Outcome: After multiple tests of all these thralls pin cushioning Elk Kings, I found that all of them can kill the Elk King in 35 +/-3 arrows.
It was my understanding that that Archer thralls are supposed to have ranged damage bonuses increasing by increments of 5% (T1=5%, T4=20%). I need to run further tests to compare melee damage between these thralls, but currently it appears as if there is no real reason to use Archer thralls for ranged defense.
My point is that you could receive that same benefit from using fighters equipped with bows based on the sample size of my tests. If that’s true, then the only benefit to Archer thralls is that they will keep firing the base arrow if they run out of whatever arrows you stick on them. A fighter would just be SOL.
Edit: So all I’m saying is that Archer thralls need some kind of damage increase to justify why there is a ranged specialist combat thrall. At the very least the bonus damage of 5%, 10% etc based on tier.
Maybe the biggest advantage of the archers is that you don´t need to provide them with arrows, turning them into a free source of ranged protecton for your base.
And maybe that is advantage enough for now…
Reducing ranged damage on melee thralls would be a partial solution.
I Intend to test how many arrows it takes T2 and T1 archers to kill the Elk King as well. At the very least I think we can all agree that higher tiered archers should do more damage than lower tier ones. The difference in damage between a T1 and T4 fighter of the same faction is huge.