Early game archers trigger my “You look weak so I must use you” instinct almost every time. Until I got to FE6 and Wolt missed his first shot and I said “Nope, you’re benched”
Interestingly, when playing Awakening on Lunatic, Virion is arguably more useful on that difficulty than he is on Hard or Normal. Despite the lack of early flying foes, Lunatic opens a new niche for him: A reliable ranged chip attacker who won't die in one round from everything. No longer is he eclipsed by the similarly reliable, more flexible, and more powerful mages, as Lunatic's higher stats create weaknesses for them. On Lunatic, your spells have lost surefire reliability and are prone to missing on occasion, but Virion's higher dexterity and class skills allow him to keep hitting targets consistently, great for setting up kills or finishing weakened enemies or even just boosting a pair-up partner's accuracy. Additionally, just about every melee enemy is either strong enough to one-shot your mages or fast enough to one-round them. Meanwhile Virion's slightly higher defence often allows him to survive at least one hit from those early fighters or wyvern riders, and it hardly matters that he can't counter up close since your mages are likely to die right before or after firing a single counterattack. And lastly, there's the longbow you can loot from an enemy in the midgame. Despite its scarcity and limited uses, having any unit be able to attack three tiles away even a few times is an absurdly valuable advantage, however in Awakening only archers or snipers can use longbows and they need a fair amount of bow proficiency to do so. The only way you're using that bow right away without reclassing and painfully training another archer, or tedious DLC grinding, is if you invested in Virion early. By this point his earlier niche is falling away with due to other units promoting and potentially using bows of their own. But since only Virion can easily use the longbow he can fill a new niche for a handful more chapters, not even as a bow knight, but as a sniper.
Engage made me realize something about early game archers. You can get people to keep using them by just putting a few fliers in every map, especially pegasus knights. It gives people an interesting choice of maybe using a subpar but decent unit to deal with a difficult enemy type really easily, or you can bring more meta units and have a less easy time with the pegasus knights. And if you are in a game with branching promotion paths, if you just kill enough fliers for your archer to get to promotion, you could get a mounted archer out of it, which tend to be pretty decent units.
Me seeing any footlocked archer: if you gain more than 40 experience this playthrough you're lucky. Me seeing any nomad/bowknight: get in loser I brought you this brave bow
Something I think was particularly notable about Etie is that her core stat was Strength. A lot of early game archers do chip damage, and that's it - just *chip* damage, because between a weak weapon and low strength, they don't do much. Etie joins you with a lot of her power coming from her raw strength; and not only does she get fliers in her join map to show off her niche, her damage is still high enough against other foes to *feel* Noteworthy.
That was neat. For some reason it doesn't occur to me that levels with little to no threatening flyers would hurt them due to leveling. Before I play my FE, I thought Mage and Archer are the only range options, so when I notice Hand-axe and Javelin are there, what little practical purpose for me to pick Archer is no more. I think Mage would be a fun for this series. They can be a little fragile early on, but I don't think it's a relevant problem during mid to late game after leveling up a bit.
I love how most early game archers are nothing but weak chip damage for the first chapters, and then Three Houses came in and gave us Bernadetta killing everything with Vengeance
Tbh Bernadetta killing with Vengeance is less to do with archer things and more to do with Vengeance just being a broken CA. If that wasn't in her kit she would be a worse Ashe.
@@MythrilZenith not so sure about that, she gets Persecution Complex which is a skill that allows her to be insanely useful early game whereas Ashe really struggle. She would also still get access to peg for early flying and darting blow. I love Ashe, but even without vengeance being taken into account, he’s still clearly inferior to Bernie
I think archers should by default be 2-3 range. That would give them a permanent niche that only archers can generally do and it is not as overpowered as 1-5 or whatever. I think them lacking 1 range is important but not giving them anything else makes them near useless especially when in a lot of games wind mages do the same thing but better. I also think them having very high skill and strength but low defenses and midling speed would be good to balance them. Allowing them to deal effective chip without taking counter attacks but having a hard time one rounding.
Longbows really should be more common. Make them the Javelins of Archers instead of making them so rare, and bam, there's a niche for archers. And you could even extend that further with stronger, rarer Longbows that can be archers' "Spear", possibly with another bump to range.
I just extended its max range from 3 to 4 in my hack The crossbows fill that "javelin" role in my hack, arguably. 2-3 range, is lighter, as accurate as bows, but weaker than their classic cousins and no flier eff damage.
I also think it worth saying if enemies are of high quality early game archers can become more useful long-term for their ability to do higher amount of damage at range compared to hand axes and javelins but this really depends if the early game archer actually has good to decent bases for reference wolt because wolt is in a game where having high damage two range is useful but his bases are so bad he can't effectively grow into doing high damage without alot of favoritism.
Why insist on keeping the things that make people drop their archers, when you can instead fix them? For instance: 1) Make Archer-base upgrade paths have 3-range instead of 2-range (Warriors, and other non-archer base classes remain at 2-range when they get the bow). Mages have siege tomes for extreme ranged attacks, but archers have generally longer range. 2) Lock ranged Follow-up attacks to Bows and Magic, meaning that Javelins and Hand-axes are for ranged single hit chipping, instead of bows filling that role. Bows should own the ranged physical attack space, so it makes little sense that they have generally lower damage output at range than a paladin with a spear, or a berserker with a hand axe. 3) Bolt-Bows, magical ranged damage that gives an added damage edge over the high-defence-low-resist Wyverns, but less effective against high-resist-low-defence Pegasi. It's weird that there isn't much space for magical bows.
As for your first point, I sorta did that specifically if you promote to Sniper. Lv5 in that class gives Bow Range +1. Sentinel aka Ranger gives you Bowbreaker at Lv5. I made the latter Archer-exclusive, Mercs get something else now as compensation.
This video was really informative. I'm developing a turn based strategy game, and for all of my testers one constant thing seemed to be that the archer in your starting party died in the first battle. (The game doesn't have permadeath, but being knocked out in battle costs morale for that unit, which can lead them to leave your party if it dips too low at certain points of the story) Said archer has the unique ability of moving through vegetation, which both gives him a bonus to defense and lets him hit melees while being out of their reach, but it turns out being the first battle my testers just wanted to rush to the end so they didn't care for placing their units defensively. This led them to neglect leveling him up because they saw him (and the other archer that joins later on) as useless, which led to them having further difficulty in another story battle where there are multiple flying enemies that archers specialize against. So yeah, a bad first impression can snowball really fast...
By following that logic, a possible solution would be to have a situation earlier on (before the multiple flying enemies) where there is an opportunity, in a less punishing way, to have the archers provide unique value that makes them feel worthwhile and worth training, so that in the later stage players are more likely to have a trained archer. You still can never fully predict player behavior so requiring a trained archer to beat that level is probably not the best solution, but if there are opportunities for players to get used to using archers then that might help them learn the game and adjust to what it's asking them to do. I have no idea what the exact situation is though so I'm just going off the vagaries of what you commented. Glad the video is at least conceptually helpful though!
I love this video and video style so much. I also like how you noted that early game archers stats only relate to enemy fliers and enemy avoid as I never realised that yeah that is the only thing their numbers matter for, and that it's ok to make units that get benched. Question, how to you achieve the 6 range with bow knights in gaiden as you said it was possible but I'm not sure how?
Honestly, I always benched Etie in engage, UNTIL i did an all cavalry run, where after a single energy drop, she managed to take out those DAMN FROST WYVERNS IN TIKI'S DIVINE PARALOGUE IN ONE HIT.
Fates did archers best Daggers, along with magic, are the best weapon type and Conquest does use them a lot. The Archer > Sniper line not only has superb stats to counter their lack of range (seriously, if swordmaster, berserker and general can get huge stats why can't Sniper?) but they also counter the most dangerous damage type in the game, quick draw to boost their player phase damage AND they get Sure Shot, in order to have perfect accuracy. Basically, just make them player phase gods and make sure that magic/ranged weapon enemies don't have overlapping ranges too much, in order to avoid an embarassing archer sweep... Or do that, because Niles/Mozu annihilating 8 highly trained ninjas in a turn that isn't even theirs is funny
I'm not as experienced in Fates as other games, only having played each route twice and not really paying much strong attention to all the details going on, but bows are definitely valuable in Fates with how nerfed the 2-range options for melee units are, let alone the bow's new place in the triangle making them the most direct dagger counter.
I think only using an early archer as an anti-flier tool is severely underselling their value. When you have someone like Niles, for example, the man is a whole ass swiss army knife of tools. Accurate 2 range combat that avoids counters, extremely fast speed allowing him to double, higher than normal movement, movement on pair up, res enough that even mages that have WTA against him don't often have a chance at teaming up to kill him as long as you position him properly, and obviously, his personal. Giving archers really good stats might seem like an inelegant way to make them good but it often ends up with way better unit feel (Seeing Takumi do 17x2 100 accuracy to enemies because of quick draw never gets old) and I think it's a little limiting to see the main point of early archers as anti-flier units when, really, depending on enemy composition, the job of high accuracy high damage 2 range combat can be invaluable (See: Ninjas)
Fates was probably worth a more specific mention, specifically with how Niles and Takumi were handled. It's a combination of adding bows to the triangle, giving them a specific enemy to counter that not many other units can, and giving them the stats to reasonably take down enemies on their own turning them from chip support and anti-flier specialists to player phase delete buttons with niche but incredibly valuable enemy phase opportunities.
more of fates archer being good, i used sniper mozu in lunatic cq. niles also can naturally promote to adventurer, giving him ability to use staves and that's just dandy.
Also, something neat about Fates, is that plenty of chapters use their layouts to promote us in archers in ENEMY phase. For example, pots as insurmountable obstacles, tight corridors in both ninja hells, the rafts of opera house, etc
I personally think the biggest issue with archers is 2-range. In a game where damn near every other unit can attack at 1-2 range (tomes, throwing weapons.) Archers are dead weight WAY too often especially on EP. Three houses was kinda onto something with the curved shot to buff to 3 range and then eventual deadeye going to 5 range, although IIRC I very rarely used that because it tanked your hit so badly. Longbow should give you an idea of how useful that extra space of range is. Even the close counter thing was kinda cool, although I wouldn't personally want that to be part of the archer identity. Archers need to be significantly more accurate (10-20 more accurate) than other units AND be able to shoot range 2-3 or even 2-4 at base. Pretty fuckin silly that an armor can move twice the distance that an archer can shoot in one turn. Yeah, range 4 doesn't entirely fix that, but it gives archers a niche as the only unit that can shoot at range 3-4 (other than siege tome ig) making it easier to kill fliers and still get consistent PP experience.
I think the most insightful point you made was the "It's ok to make them to be benched." A bit like how the devs (presumably) expect you to bench your Jagen, expecting the player to bench their early-game archer is a bold yet simple solution, but having a weapon-type that you just don't use doesn't use after the early game feels like bad design, so having those unique bow qualities is an imprtant design feature. What I think you have missed though is that the archer doesn't compete most with hand-axe and javelin using units, but the mages, who have the 2 range and 1 range as well.
You mention that archers should have unique capability to maintain usefulness. That actually brings up a point I made with balancing range attacks in my PALBal patch for Game Boy Wars 3. What happens there? Well, what happens is that attacking from a distance actually comes with penalties, with moving right before attacking giving a significant attack power reduction and even attacking from further away still providing an attack power loss. In base GBW3, you received no penalty for any of that, which wouldn't feel disconcerting to a Fire Emblem player, but in any other game of the Nintendo Wars series (discounting the Battalion Wars games which involve their own different gameplay style to begin with), you can't do movement and range attack on the same turn, so I obviously implemented a happy medium in that regard, since the idea is involving them making use of fortress buildup. I'm going to go over 2 unit types that have 36 Lite Land ATK, since the role aspect you brought up on Discord is a good point and 36 Lite Land ATK absolutely wrecks Work Cars (bulldozers that can develop properties for added income, among other things) for faster session closures: -Anti-Air Tank (1 Range, 6 Movement Power Treads, 20 Armor ATK with explosive weapon) -Rocket Launcher (2~4 Range outside junk MG weapon for EXP manipulation, 5 Movement Power Treads, 25 Armor ATK) Both of these are powerful, but for different reasons, even if the end result is the same. The Anti-Air Tank is basically use-and-forget when an applicable target is around without sufficient protection. The range penalties are obviously not a concern, when the attack power is such that even a leveled up Work Car struggles to avoid being 1HKOed on the property terrain you can expect it to be on. It's really the existence of Armor type units, as well as the direct fire that keeps the Anti-Air Tank susceptible to anti-armor hammering, that keeps the Anti-Air Tank under control. The Rocket Launcher is just as beastly even with the higher cost. It's slower and it also has worse defenses, but if it comes out early enough without too much compromise, hitting foot soldiers from possibly 9 spaces from initial position even with effectively 18 Lite Land ATK is still going to be clear free damage, and things can only get better from there with significant 1HKOing potential to be able to manage alarming amounts of EXP for the level ups that will inevitably boost the range power in particular with the 3.6 point increase per level up in effective Lite Land ATK. The Rocket Launcher particularly gets helped by the Work Car being slow at 5 Movement Power and arguably the most lamentable Movement Type in the game, meaning the Work Car can't outrun it either. Summary is, the Rocket Launcher is capable of some very dangerous zoning, and while Armor type units are capable of resistance, even the MB Tank would want to be considerate about being any closer than 5 spaces away. Even then, the Rocket Launcher still wants technical gameplay in its usage to avoid being walled or subject to a burst mobility anti-armor option without enough payoff. Still, this does reward more thoughtful positioning. Now it's true that Fire Emblem does involve some key differences. For one, GBW3 may use subtraction defense as well, but it's to a lesser and more opaque degree by simply happening only with the terrain bonuses and such rather than the unit types' DEF values. And you did mention about Fire Emblem wanting to emphasize mobility compared to in Advance Wars. Still, at the end of the day, the concept is worth looking into. The reason I came up with it was as a global solution to balancing the relationship between close range and long range combat was especially because GBW3, both in base and in the PALBal patch, has Bazooka soldiers' anti-armor be Javelin/Hand Axe range (even practically being based off of the FGM-148 Javelin...let the name speak for itself), which by itself was as insane as it sounds, never mind with other factors that I ended up nerfing, and I wanted to keep that in for the sense of individuality without compromising or especially fully overshadowing options in either direction. So yeah, always good to figure something out. In the meantime, since you haven't yet covered about Armor Knights, I'm going to want to get back to my stuff with Super Mario RPG since my current project is inevitably going to showcase why Armor Knight: The Super Mario RPG Character is actually so much better in the remaster than in the original.
I like how Archanea, particularly FE3 Book 2, handled the Archer class. Game throws threatening Wyvern Knights at you as early as Chapter 2 which Gordin, Ryan, and Warren unequivocally have the best combat against, giving them important utility earlygame, and exclusive access to high experience yield kills. Then the game gives you Partia much earlier than any other legendary weapon, giving Archers an uncontested 20 Mt weapon that doubles exp yields, effectively making your archer of choice able to accrue more experience (and importantly abuse Star Shard-boosted level ups) at a quicker pace than any other unit. It's not uncommon these days for people to say Book 1 Tomas or Book 2 Gordin are some of the best Archers in the franchise and Partia is a great booster to keep those units relevant way longer than they otherwise would be.
I think when designing archers its also important to think about early game mages, who fill the two range niche while also doing more damage due to hitting res instead of def. I think this is especially prevalent in shadow dragon and where Gordin gets outclasses by both Wendell and merric as well as binding blade where you get lugh, who is a better answer to the chapter 7 wyverns due to their low res and fire's high accuracy. Archers need something to help them stand out from mages, whether that be in the form of skills, higher stats, 2-3 range, etc
I often use archers to "crop" enemy HP for other units to get the EXP upon slaying that enemy. I give them EXP with enemy fliers. It hurts me when the archer has nothing else to offer as soon as my axe and lance users get enough skill/dexterity to use their variable range weapons consistently. As for bow knights, it gets worse, to the point of being present in FE11 and FE12 early on as if they were unpromoted units... I really agree archers shouldn't be a "disposable" class and giving them some extra range (Like 3H and SoV) could make them actually valuable.
FE11 was built off the FE1 maps that were designed with horseman as a non-promoting class, and in FE1 and FE3 the experience system meant they could be scaled down or up and given exp values to match either unpromoted or promoted units. FE11 and FE12 were kind of hamstrung in what they could do with horsemen because of the different exp and promotion system while being rooted in the base game map and gameplay wise as remakes.
That was an interesting video. One more element I think should be brought up is how for PoR is how you get to use Shinon before Rolf. Due to being promoted and having some of the best stats in your early army after Titania, Shinon manages to be effective as not just an player phase cleaner, but also as a reliable dodge-tank during enemy phase, which is especially good since his skill makes the enemies target him in priority. But then he leaves, and then you get Rolf at the begining of chapter 9, where Rolf joins with chapter 1 stats and a upgraded iron bow as his personnal weapon. He is just so bad in comparaison, especialy since the enemies have got stronger since Shinon resigned from the Grail Mercenaries. Any significance he could have had by now by doing chip damage is gone as your early training project should start to be able to handle themselves by that point. Now considering how PoR has effective damage be only x2 while also be an enemy-phase game, he was never going to be good, but even then I find way more use cases for Rebecca and Neimi to chip down some random enemies in the early chapters. Really, the best way I could find to make Rolf not be that much of an insane dissapointement is to just make him playable in the early chapters to fufill his function as an early archer of doing small chip, but also add some dialogue between him and Shinon about how he admires Shinon and how he wish he could be as strong as him one day. That would encourage the player to get Rolf on Shinon's level eventually, and it could also be an hint that Rolf will need to talk to him to rerecruit him later in the game. In short, I just really don't like how Rolf was handled in PoR, and it really frustrate me that just making him playable way earlier could have fixed most of those problems I have with him.
It was really difficult to figure out how to talk about Shinon and Rolf in a way that didn't completely kill the pacing of this otherwise pretty structured video because PoR is SO different from any other game before or since with how it handles its archers. Shinon is just a straight up tank, not even a dodge tank, and makes chapter 4 and chapter 7 SO MUCH easier just by existing. But when he comes back in c18 he's so outclassed it doesn't even matter. Rolf also comes too late to do classic early archer things and ends up being one of the worst units in the series, buoyed up only because the bar of uselessness in PoR is so low anyone can be made good as a meme without seriously weakening the rest of your army.
Rolf is far from unusable. Sure por is very much a player phase game but there is strong enemies you’d want to delete on player phase. And telius gamble snipers are one of if not the strongest player phase builds in the series. So he kinda functions as a trainee in practice you need to baby him but feed him enough exp in his starting map and he’s fine to just use from then on. You basically need to give him the entire map’s worth of exp but that effort becomes rewarded shortly after with a crow based map soon after. You can just surround him to protect him with bulkier units like Boyd ike and titania since birds can’t attack at range barring their class skill. Pretty much all units are pretty usable in path of radiance. Rolf’s no where near one of the worst units in the series even if he’s worst in the game ( personally I’d argue one of the sword units that isn’t named ike is worse then Rolf but he’s definitely on the lower end competing for that slot)
In my experience, Gordin is surprisingly viable long-term. Even if Jeorge provides access to the Sniper class with no investment, investing in Gordin gives you a Sniper that blows Jeorge out of the water. Sniper's insane promotion bonuses make him a powerhouse combat unit with a staggeringly high crit rate.
@@gamerkyle2402 Depends on what game you're playing. FE1 has class bases promotion, so Gordin literally becomes equal to George unless his own Growths put him over. If you're talking about FE3, FE11 or FE12 though that's a different story.
Despite the fact that I use 3 archers in Engage (as soon as I get my 3rd), and only 2 in Blazing Blade (throughout the whole game), I feel more attached to the Blazing Blade archers. And even more so to Neimi in Sacred Stones as she is that game's only archer that I feel like is useful. The thing with Rebecca and Neimi is that they don't need to just chip damage so other units can kill, they can clean up missed kills from the other units. This use allows my other units to clear forward while my archers clean up making them naturally form a front-line back-line dynamic. Another thing you didn't mention is that early archers need high Speed. To avoid damage and double enemies so they can kill weaker units. This is why Rebecca > Wil, because Rebecca's base speed and speed growth is higher, making her more valuable. Though, using both units lets them support each other for the much needed atk and crit bonuses. Killer bows are also my most used Killer Weapons, as they will never provide a critical hit in a situation that could cause the critical hitter to die due to another enemy phase hit. I need a higher speed, high luck, high skill archer with a killer bow.... Or Panette w/ a killer bow, because Panette is broken with bows. Also, my most cherished clip of streaming sacred stones is when my level 18 unpromoted Neimi at 8 hit points enemy turns 3 enemies and dodges a melee hit.
Archers (and to a lesser extent mages) illustrate some of the fundamental problems with rigid phases. When the only real limitations are move and counter attacks it benefits a very specific build, and it's hard to balance any sort of specialized unit. They'll either have decent bulk, one shots, *AND* some extra benefits on the side (like most of the better mages), or they'll have nothing going for them outside of their specific niche (like archers). These types of units work better with turns based around a stat. The game doesn't have to be balanced around counter-attacks so units that can mainly deal chip damage aren't as disadvantaged. And since the turns go back and forth there's a much more meaningful difference between dealing damage from afar as opposed to rushing down with high move units. Games like Shining Force tend to have way more usable Archers. They're still not the best, but they don't become bench warmers as soon as you get better units.
Fun fact: Many of them can grow up to be the best in their games. I have yet to meet an enemy Rebecca can't double, and as soon as you start tackling Bern, there are plenty of Wyvern Knights for her to kill. By that point you get Louise, yes, but for some reason I dislike using prepromotes. Her low strength is still high enough to be relevant, because late game maps in FE7 swamp you with so many enemy units, especially Cog of Destiny and Victory or Death, everyone has their role and it almost feels like a Tower Defense game. By Light, however, Rebecca starts dealing no damage unless she's really blessed with strength, so I bench her.
I always like tot ry to have one archer spot in my army as long as I have one that feels remotely competent partly because, the games are primarily medieval fantasy settings, NOT having an archer would feel really weird when a lot of real historical tactics were about protecting archers because of how good they were (lagely due to real life equivalent of 2-5 range)
I’m surprised you neglected to mention that Echoes SOV making archers able to attack at 1-5 range instantly made them one of the best classes in the game, along with mages being a very close second. When I started playing SOV i literally deleted my save the first time I ran into a 1 range archer and made my villagers promote to one. When they get to bow knight they can fall off a little, but if they have respectable str growths they will just be one of the best units in the game hands down. It’s funny how quickly the class breaks if you try to make them viable.
People dismiss Wolt for being a gba archer, but actually, his stats are about as good as Lance's, so, with a little investment (picking on the 1st boss) he reaches doubling thresholds on early lancers and fighters. Plus with enough supports and weapon rank, he can reliably use Dorothy's Steel Bow to weaken early Wyverns
Also archers from FE2/Echoes are able to attack enemy mages without being counter attacked thanks to their extra range. Also FE6 archers are worst archers though.
FE6 had so much potential to be good for archers with the game basically being the most flier-heavy FE ever and having terribly inaccurate javs and haxes. But it's the one time their stats REALLY wall them out of usefulness. Sages with Aircalibur and legendary weapon users end up crushing wyverns hard enough to make not bringing a sniper not feel that bad.
@@MythrilZenith not mentioning that pretty much everybody would rather pick nomads and also we still get 2 good prepromote snipers units later in the game also.
I dunno. FE6 archers aren't that bad. While they arent great for some bosses (mostly early armor bosses like Ruud and Debias) Wolt was able to meaningfully contribute against them even just a little bit, and it matters a LOT unless you're throwing Marcus at them, and even then Marcus isn't taking them down in one round and is open to counter attack. I think the bigger problem just ends up being that MOST of the Binding Blade cast feels very weak compared to Hard Mode bonus receivers, and the only archer line character that gets them is Klein. As a result, most Archers are underperforming because most of the cast is underperforming without frequent exp and level ups. Unless you're only going to use Rutger, Fir, Sin, Gonzales, Klein, Thea, Cath(technically) Melady, Percival, Garret, and Zeiss (admitedly not a small group, but you can bring 15 people to fight Zephiel), then you're gonna be scraping the bottom of the barrel for something. edit: added Cath to list of HMB units
The biggest problem that I find with archers is that they're fine, albeit a bit weak, in the early parts of the game, but once you start promoting your army there'll be classes like warrior that can also do the "bow niche" that a sniper should be able to fill, leaving them with ... nothing special anymore that's why the only true solution for snipers is to either make bows exclusive to them, which feels wrong to have a whole weapon type just for one class, or have them have 1-2 or 2-3 range once promoted, but neither sounds so good because with 1-2 range you can't try to kill the snipers with your flyers before they can fire back at you, and 3 range can be quite gamebreaking if the level design don't take it into account well (project ember tried, and bows became pretty broken since only bow users can match your range (which do terribly against generals that can wield bows in this game), so once you kill them you can just free fire without much retaliation) So yeah, we don't even know how to fix this class without breaking it, it's that bad
Or you could also give achers actual stats. Seriously, the difference between a gba archer and a mirm or cav is simply absurd. With this, we can forget doing silly stuff
I too have quad gens. Bows however, dont have 2-3, that's the Crossbow line's claim to fame. There's a catch: weaker base mt, no flier eff damage. All so that the regular bows dont get overshadowed.
I just don't see any reason other than tradition why they must have bad stats. Being ranged is not some very special thing when almost every class is capable of it. Flier effectiveness is not that special when archers basically never get cavalry or armor effectiveness. Not having 1 range is already paying the price for those advantages, there is basically 0 reason why their stats should be terrible. Even if you find value in having a purposely bad unit with Niche early game utility, well, there is an entire archetype intended for that. Less Gordins, more Vanders.
Fe4 spoils the player by giving them good archers. A mounted archer with canto, an archer with good stats whose only drawbacks are that he can't double reliably and has poor movement for the game and another archer whose weaknesses are lessened by her holy blood.
GBA FE editor: I upped weapon weight slightly, weapon might a bit more, added a crit modifier, and gave bows 1-2 range. Snipers get the swordmaster crit bonus as well. End result; archers are now longer free xp as they retaliate to any attacks. They even can be dangerous on a bad (good) roll. Mages tomes are weighted more, for more damage as well, and get 2-3 range. They're free xp in melee, but can nuke you from afar. Javelins and Hand Axes are now heavier, for less might and accuracy. It takes a unit with good skill to use them well. Cavaliers and Paladins don't use axes.
Javs and handaxes are lighter, but weaker. They also have a similar evolution like their melee brothers. I did the funni 1-2 Short Bow thing and rounded out the uses even to 25, but at the cost of no flier eff because that shit broken. In addition, Archers learn Certain Blow at Lv5(+40 hit on your turn) and Opportunist(+4 dmg if foe cannot counter). Also, Longbow is now 2-4 rng, drawing inspiration from AoE2 Britons who draw inspiration from the historical Longbow units. Crossbows also make an appearance, having 2-3 range, are lighter, but weaker than their traditional cousins and do not have flying eff(subject to change) For now, Snipers learn Sure Shot upon promotion, and then learn Bow Range +1 at Lv5 that class. The format for class skills goes like: Tier 1 Lv5 > Tier 1 Lv12 > Tier 2 class skill > Tier 2 Lv5.
Early game archers trigger my “You look weak so I must use you” instinct almost every time. Until I got to FE6 and Wolt missed his first shot and I said “Nope, you’re benched”
Honestly using Wolt is pretty fun, though he needs that Roy B Support.
At the end he will be a 2nd Klein/ that female Sniper
@@asafesseidonsapphire tan woman erasure, smh poor Igrene
@@aetherius6221 I forgot her name, my FE6 playthroughs always die at literally the next chapter after her joining...
This is exactly something I've been craving with FE, someone talking about FE classes. Happy to have been YT recommended this
Thanks, TH-cam! Hope you enjoy the videos, I'm always working on more!
Interestingly, when playing Awakening on Lunatic, Virion is arguably more useful on that difficulty than he is on Hard or Normal.
Despite the lack of early flying foes, Lunatic opens a new niche for him: A reliable ranged chip attacker who won't die in one round from everything.
No longer is he eclipsed by the similarly reliable, more flexible, and more powerful mages, as Lunatic's higher stats create weaknesses for them.
On Lunatic, your spells have lost surefire reliability and are prone to missing on occasion, but Virion's higher dexterity and class skills allow him to keep hitting targets consistently, great for setting up kills or finishing weakened enemies or even just boosting a pair-up partner's accuracy.
Additionally, just about every melee enemy is either strong enough to one-shot your mages or fast enough to one-round them.
Meanwhile Virion's slightly higher defence often allows him to survive at least one hit from those early fighters or wyvern riders, and it hardly matters that he can't counter up close since your mages are likely to die right before or after firing a single counterattack.
And lastly, there's the longbow you can loot from an enemy in the midgame.
Despite its scarcity and limited uses, having any unit be able to attack three tiles away even a few times is an absurdly valuable advantage, however in Awakening only archers or snipers can use longbows and they need a fair amount of bow proficiency to do so.
The only way you're using that bow right away without reclassing and painfully training another archer, or tedious DLC grinding, is if you invested in Virion early.
By this point his earlier niche is falling away with due to other units promoting and potentially using bows of their own.
But since only Virion can easily use the longbow he can fill a new niche for a handful more chapters, not even as a bow knight, but as a sniper.
Engage made me realize something about early game archers. You can get people to keep using them by just putting a few fliers in every map, especially pegasus knights. It gives people an interesting choice of maybe using a subpar but decent unit to deal with a difficult enemy type really easily, or you can bring more meta units and have a less easy time with the pegasus knights.
And if you are in a game with branching promotion paths, if you just kill enough fliers for your archer to get to promotion, you could get a mounted archer out of it, which tend to be pretty decent units.
Me seeing any footlocked archer: if you gain more than 40 experience this playthrough you're lucky.
Me seeing any nomad/bowknight: get in loser I brought you this brave bow
Something I think was particularly notable about Etie is that her core stat was Strength. A lot of early game archers do chip damage, and that's it - just *chip* damage, because between a weak weapon and low strength, they don't do much. Etie joins you with a lot of her power coming from her raw strength; and not only does she get fliers in her join map to show off her niche, her damage is still high enough against other foes to *feel* Noteworthy.
That was neat.
For some reason it doesn't occur to me that levels with little to no threatening flyers would hurt them due to leveling.
Before I play my FE, I thought Mage and Archer are the only range options, so when I notice Hand-axe and Javelin are there, what little practical purpose for me to pick Archer is no more.
I think Mage would be a fun for this series. They can be a little fragile early on, but I don't think it's a relevant problem during mid to late game after leveling up a bit.
Mage is a crazy ride, definitely going to cover it at some point in time
I love how most early game archers are nothing but weak chip damage for the first chapters, and then Three Houses came in and gave us Bernadetta killing everything with Vengeance
Bro you literally have a Leo profile picture why are YOU enaging in this Fates erasure
Tbh Bernadetta killing with Vengeance is less to do with archer things and more to do with Vengeance just being a broken CA. If that wasn't in her kit she would be a worse Ashe.
@@MythrilZenith not so sure about that, she gets Persecution Complex which is a skill that allows her to be insanely useful early game whereas Ashe really struggle. She would also still get access to peg for early flying and darting blow. I love Ashe, but even without vengeance being taken into account, he’s still clearly inferior to Bernie
don't forget Cyril one rounding most enemies on his join chapter (technically ch5 is not *early* early game but still)
@maximeminassian6002 yeah persecution complex alone makes her valuable in a lot of different areas
I think archers should by default be 2-3 range. That would give them a permanent niche that only archers can generally do and it is not as overpowered as 1-5 or whatever. I think them lacking 1 range is important but not giving them anything else makes them near useless especially when in a lot of games wind mages do the same thing but better. I also think them having very high skill and strength but low defenses and midling speed would be good to balance them. Allowing them to deal effective chip without taking counter attacks but having a hard time one rounding.
Longbows really should be more common. Make them the Javelins of Archers instead of making them so rare, and bam, there's a niche for archers.
And you could even extend that further with stronger, rarer Longbows that can be archers' "Spear", possibly with another bump to range.
I just extended its max range from 3 to 4 in my hack
The crossbows fill that "javelin" role in my hack, arguably. 2-3 range, is lighter, as accurate as bows, but weaker than their classic cousins and no flier eff damage.
I also think it worth saying if enemies are of high quality early game archers can become more useful long-term for their ability to do higher amount of damage at range compared to hand axes and javelins but this really depends if the early game archer actually has good to decent bases for reference wolt because wolt is in a game where having high damage two range is useful but his bases are so bad he can't effectively grow into doing high damage without alot of favoritism.
Why insist on keeping the things that make people drop their archers, when you can instead fix them?
For instance:
1) Make Archer-base upgrade paths have 3-range instead of 2-range (Warriors, and other non-archer base classes remain at 2-range when they get the bow). Mages have siege tomes for extreme ranged attacks, but archers have generally longer range.
2) Lock ranged Follow-up attacks to Bows and Magic, meaning that Javelins and Hand-axes are for ranged single hit chipping, instead of bows filling that role. Bows should own the ranged physical attack space, so it makes little sense that they have generally lower damage output at range than a paladin with a spear, or a berserker with a hand axe.
3) Bolt-Bows, magical ranged damage that gives an added damage edge over the high-defence-low-resist Wyverns, but less effective against high-resist-low-defence Pegasi. It's weird that there isn't much space for magical bows.
As for your first point, I sorta did that specifically if you promote to Sniper. Lv5 in that class gives Bow Range +1. Sentinel aka Ranger gives you Bowbreaker at Lv5. I made the latter Archer-exclusive, Mercs get something else now as compensation.
This video was really informative. I'm developing a turn based strategy game, and for all of my testers one constant thing seemed to be that the archer in your starting party died in the first battle. (The game doesn't have permadeath, but being knocked out in battle costs morale for that unit, which can lead them to leave your party if it dips too low at certain points of the story)
Said archer has the unique ability of moving through vegetation, which both gives him a bonus to defense and lets him hit melees while being out of their reach, but it turns out being the first battle my testers just wanted to rush to the end so they didn't care for placing their units defensively.
This led them to neglect leveling him up because they saw him (and the other archer that joins later on) as useless, which led to them having further difficulty in another story battle where there are multiple flying enemies that archers specialize against. So yeah, a bad first impression can snowball really fast...
By following that logic, a possible solution would be to have a situation earlier on (before the multiple flying enemies) where there is an opportunity, in a less punishing way, to have the archers provide unique value that makes them feel worthwhile and worth training, so that in the later stage players are more likely to have a trained archer. You still can never fully predict player behavior so requiring a trained archer to beat that level is probably not the best solution, but if there are opportunities for players to get used to using archers then that might help them learn the game and adjust to what it's asking them to do.
I have no idea what the exact situation is though so I'm just going off the vagaries of what you commented. Glad the video is at least conceptually helpful though!
I love this video and video style so much.
I also like how you noted that early game archers stats only relate to enemy fliers and enemy avoid as I never realised that yeah that is the only thing their numbers matter for, and that it's ok to make units that get benched.
Question, how to you achieve the 6 range with bow knights in gaiden as you said it was possible but I'm not sure how?
Did I say 6 range? Maybe it's only 5. I might be getting confused with something from SoV, or maybe in 3H bow knights get +2 range or something.
Honestly, I always benched Etie in engage, UNTIL i did an all cavalry run, where after a single energy drop, she managed to take out those DAMN FROST WYVERNS IN TIKI'S DIVINE PARALOGUE IN ONE HIT.
Fates did archers best
Daggers, along with magic, are the best weapon type and Conquest does use them a lot. The Archer > Sniper line not only has superb stats to counter their lack of range (seriously, if swordmaster, berserker and general can get huge stats why can't Sniper?) but they also counter the most dangerous damage type in the game, quick draw to boost their player phase damage AND they get Sure Shot, in order to have perfect accuracy.
Basically, just make them player phase gods and make sure that magic/ranged weapon enemies don't have overlapping ranges too much, in order to avoid an embarassing archer sweep... Or do that, because Niles/Mozu annihilating 8 highly trained ninjas in a turn that isn't even theirs is funny
(It's called Certain Blow, not sure shot, but you've got the spirit)
I'm not as experienced in Fates as other games, only having played each route twice and not really paying much strong attention to all the details going on, but bows are definitely valuable in Fates with how nerfed the 2-range options for melee units are, let alone the bow's new place in the triangle making them the most direct dagger counter.
@@lagspike7763 too much sacred stones I guess (I don't even use Neimi or Innes lmao)
I think only using an early archer as an anti-flier tool is severely underselling their value. When you have someone like Niles, for example, the man is a whole ass swiss army knife of tools. Accurate 2 range combat that avoids counters, extremely fast speed allowing him to double, higher than normal movement, movement on pair up, res enough that even mages that have WTA against him don't often have a chance at teaming up to kill him as long as you position him properly, and obviously, his personal.
Giving archers really good stats might seem like an inelegant way to make them good but it often ends up with way better unit feel (Seeing Takumi do 17x2 100 accuracy to enemies because of quick draw never gets old) and I think it's a little limiting to see the main point of early archers as anti-flier units when, really, depending on enemy composition, the job of high accuracy high damage 2 range combat can be invaluable (See: Ninjas)
Fates was probably worth a more specific mention, specifically with how Niles and Takumi were handled. It's a combination of adding bows to the triangle, giving them a specific enemy to counter that not many other units can, and giving them the stats to reasonably take down enemies on their own turning them from chip support and anti-flier specialists to player phase delete buttons with niche but incredibly valuable enemy phase opportunities.
more of fates archer being good, i used sniper mozu in lunatic cq. niles also can naturally promote to adventurer, giving him ability to use staves and that's just dandy.
Also, something neat about Fates, is that plenty of chapters use their layouts to promote us in archers in ENEMY phase. For example, pots as insurmountable obstacles, tight corridors in both ninja hells, the rafts of opera house, etc
I personally think the biggest issue with archers is 2-range. In a game where damn near every other unit can attack at 1-2 range (tomes, throwing weapons.) Archers are dead weight WAY too often especially on EP.
Three houses was kinda onto something with the curved shot to buff to 3 range and then eventual deadeye going to 5 range, although IIRC I very rarely used that because it tanked your hit so badly. Longbow should give you an idea of how useful that extra space of range is. Even the close counter thing was kinda cool, although I wouldn't personally want that to be part of the archer identity. Archers need to be significantly more accurate (10-20 more accurate) than other units AND be able to shoot range 2-3 or even 2-4 at base.
Pretty fuckin silly that an armor can move twice the distance that an archer can shoot in one turn. Yeah, range 4 doesn't entirely fix that, but it gives archers a niche as the only unit that can shoot at range 3-4 (other than siege tome ig) making it easier to kill fliers and still get consistent PP experience.
100% agree with the javelin/hand axe comparison. Archers need more range to be decent.
I think the most insightful point you made was the "It's ok to make them to be benched." A bit like how the devs (presumably) expect you to bench your Jagen, expecting the player to bench their early-game archer is a bold yet simple solution, but having a weapon-type that you just don't use doesn't use after the early game feels like bad design, so having those unique bow qualities is an imprtant design feature.
What I think you have missed though is that the archer doesn't compete most with hand-axe and javelin using units, but the mages, who have the 2 range and 1 range as well.
You mention that archers should have unique capability to maintain usefulness. That actually brings up a point I made with balancing range attacks in my PALBal patch for Game Boy Wars 3. What happens there? Well, what happens is that attacking from a distance actually comes with penalties, with moving right before attacking giving a significant attack power reduction and even attacking from further away still providing an attack power loss. In base GBW3, you received no penalty for any of that, which wouldn't feel disconcerting to a Fire Emblem player, but in any other game of the Nintendo Wars series (discounting the Battalion Wars games which involve their own different gameplay style to begin with), you can't do movement and range attack on the same turn, so I obviously implemented a happy medium in that regard, since the idea is involving them making use of fortress buildup.
I'm going to go over 2 unit types that have 36 Lite Land ATK, since the role aspect you brought up on Discord is a good point and 36 Lite Land ATK absolutely wrecks Work Cars (bulldozers that can develop properties for added income, among other things) for faster session closures:
-Anti-Air Tank (1 Range, 6 Movement Power Treads, 20 Armor ATK with explosive weapon)
-Rocket Launcher (2~4 Range outside junk MG weapon for EXP manipulation, 5 Movement Power Treads, 25 Armor ATK)
Both of these are powerful, but for different reasons, even if the end result is the same. The Anti-Air Tank is basically use-and-forget when an applicable target is around without sufficient protection. The range penalties are obviously not a concern, when the attack power is such that even a leveled up Work Car struggles to avoid being 1HKOed on the property terrain you can expect it to be on. It's really the existence of Armor type units, as well as the direct fire that keeps the Anti-Air Tank susceptible to anti-armor hammering, that keeps the Anti-Air Tank under control.
The Rocket Launcher is just as beastly even with the higher cost. It's slower and it also has worse defenses, but if it comes out early enough without too much compromise, hitting foot soldiers from possibly 9 spaces from initial position even with effectively 18 Lite Land ATK is still going to be clear free damage, and things can only get better from there with significant 1HKOing potential to be able to manage alarming amounts of EXP for the level ups that will inevitably boost the range power in particular with the 3.6 point increase per level up in effective Lite Land ATK. The Rocket Launcher particularly gets helped by the Work Car being slow at 5 Movement Power and arguably the most lamentable Movement Type in the game, meaning the Work Car can't outrun it either. Summary is, the Rocket Launcher is capable of some very dangerous zoning, and while Armor type units are capable of resistance, even the MB Tank would want to be considerate about being any closer than 5 spaces away. Even then, the Rocket Launcher still wants technical gameplay in its usage to avoid being walled or subject to a burst mobility anti-armor option without enough payoff. Still, this does reward more thoughtful positioning.
Now it's true that Fire Emblem does involve some key differences. For one, GBW3 may use subtraction defense as well, but it's to a lesser and more opaque degree by simply happening only with the terrain bonuses and such rather than the unit types' DEF values. And you did mention about Fire Emblem wanting to emphasize mobility compared to in Advance Wars. Still, at the end of the day, the concept is worth looking into. The reason I came up with it was as a global solution to balancing the relationship between close range and long range combat was especially because GBW3, both in base and in the PALBal patch, has Bazooka soldiers' anti-armor be Javelin/Hand Axe range (even practically being based off of the FGM-148 Javelin...let the name speak for itself), which by itself was as insane as it sounds, never mind with other factors that I ended up nerfing, and I wanted to keep that in for the sense of individuality without compromising or especially fully overshadowing options in either direction. So yeah, always good to figure something out.
In the meantime, since you haven't yet covered about Armor Knights, I'm going to want to get back to my stuff with Super Mario RPG since my current project is inevitably going to showcase why Armor Knight: The Super Mario RPG Character is actually so much better in the remaster than in the original.
I like how Archanea, particularly FE3 Book 2, handled the Archer class. Game throws threatening Wyvern Knights at you as early as Chapter 2 which Gordin, Ryan, and Warren unequivocally have the best combat against, giving them important utility earlygame, and exclusive access to high experience yield kills. Then the game gives you Partia much earlier than any other legendary weapon, giving Archers an uncontested 20 Mt weapon that doubles exp yields, effectively making your archer of choice able to accrue more experience (and importantly abuse Star Shard-boosted level ups) at a quicker pace than any other unit.
It's not uncommon these days for people to say Book 1 Tomas or Book 2 Gordin are some of the best Archers in the franchise and Partia is a great booster to keep those units relevant way longer than they otherwise would be.
I think when designing archers its also important to think about early game mages, who fill the two range niche while also doing more damage due to hitting res instead of def. I think this is especially prevalent in shadow dragon and where Gordin gets outclasses by both Wendell and merric as well as binding blade where you get lugh, who is a better answer to the chapter 7 wyverns due to their low res and fire's high accuracy. Archers need something to help them stand out from mages, whether that be in the form of skills, higher stats, 2-3 range, etc
two of marias 3 favorite characters are early game archers (gordon and wolt)
(the third one is roshea)
I often use archers to "crop" enemy HP for other units to get the EXP upon slaying that enemy. I give them EXP with enemy fliers. It hurts me when the archer has nothing else to offer as soon as my axe and lance users get enough skill/dexterity to use their variable range weapons consistently.
As for bow knights, it gets worse, to the point of being present in FE11 and FE12 early on as if they were unpromoted units...
I really agree archers shouldn't be a "disposable" class and giving them some extra range (Like 3H and SoV) could make them actually valuable.
FE11 was built off the FE1 maps that were designed with horseman as a non-promoting class, and in FE1 and FE3 the experience system meant they could be scaled down or up and given exp values to match either unpromoted or promoted units. FE11 and FE12 were kind of hamstrung in what they could do with horsemen because of the different exp and promotion system while being rooted in the base game map and gameplay wise as remakes.
That was an interesting video. One more element I think should be brought up is how for PoR is how you get to use Shinon before Rolf.
Due to being promoted and having some of the best stats in your early army after Titania, Shinon manages to be effective as not just an player phase cleaner, but also as a reliable dodge-tank during enemy phase, which is especially good since his skill makes the enemies target him in priority.
But then he leaves, and then you get Rolf at the begining of chapter 9, where Rolf joins with chapter 1 stats and a upgraded iron bow as his personnal weapon. He is just so bad in comparaison, especialy since the enemies have got stronger since Shinon resigned from the Grail Mercenaries. Any significance he could have had by now by doing chip damage is gone as your early training project should start to be able to handle themselves by that point.
Now considering how PoR has effective damage be only x2 while also be an enemy-phase game, he was never going to be good, but even then I find way more use cases for Rebecca and Neimi to chip down some random enemies in the early chapters.
Really, the best way I could find to make Rolf not be that much of an insane dissapointement is to just make him playable in the early chapters to fufill his function as an early archer of doing small chip, but also add some dialogue between him and Shinon about how he admires Shinon and how he wish he could be as strong as him one day. That would encourage the player to get Rolf on Shinon's level eventually, and it could also be an hint that Rolf will need to talk to him to rerecruit him later in the game.
In short, I just really don't like how Rolf was handled in PoR, and it really frustrate me that just making him playable way earlier could have fixed most of those problems I have with him.
It was really difficult to figure out how to talk about Shinon and Rolf in a way that didn't completely kill the pacing of this otherwise pretty structured video because PoR is SO different from any other game before or since with how it handles its archers.
Shinon is just a straight up tank, not even a dodge tank, and makes chapter 4 and chapter 7 SO MUCH easier just by existing. But when he comes back in c18 he's so outclassed it doesn't even matter.
Rolf also comes too late to do classic early archer things and ends up being one of the worst units in the series, buoyed up only because the bar of uselessness in PoR is so low anyone can be made good as a meme without seriously weakening the rest of your army.
Rolf is far from unusable. Sure por is very much a player phase game but there is strong enemies you’d want to delete on player phase. And telius gamble snipers are one of if not the strongest player phase builds in the series. So he kinda functions as a trainee in practice you need to baby him but feed him enough exp in his starting map and he’s fine to just use from then on. You basically need to give him the entire map’s worth of exp but that effort becomes rewarded shortly after with a crow based map soon after. You can just surround him to protect him with bulkier units like Boyd ike and titania since birds can’t attack at range barring their class skill. Pretty much all units are pretty usable in path of radiance. Rolf’s no where near one of the worst units in the series even if he’s worst in the game ( personally I’d argue one of the sword units that isn’t named ike is worse then Rolf but he’s definitely on the lower end competing for that slot)
In my experience, Gordin is surprisingly viable long-term. Even if Jeorge provides access to the Sniper class with no investment, investing in Gordin gives you a Sniper that blows Jeorge out of the water. Sniper's insane promotion bonuses make him a powerhouse combat unit with a staggeringly high crit rate.
@@gamerkyle2402 Depends on what game you're playing. FE1 has class bases promotion, so Gordin literally becomes equal to George unless his own Growths put him over. If you're talking about FE3, FE11 or FE12 though that's a different story.
Despite the fact that I use 3 archers in Engage (as soon as I get my 3rd), and only 2 in Blazing Blade (throughout the whole game), I feel more attached to the Blazing Blade archers. And even more so to Neimi in Sacred Stones as she is that game's only archer that I feel like is useful. The thing with Rebecca and Neimi is that they don't need to just chip damage so other units can kill, they can clean up missed kills from the other units. This use allows my other units to clear forward while my archers clean up making them naturally form a front-line back-line dynamic.
Another thing you didn't mention is that early archers need high Speed. To avoid damage and double enemies so they can kill weaker units. This is why Rebecca > Wil, because Rebecca's base speed and speed growth is higher, making her more valuable. Though, using both units lets them support each other for the much needed atk and crit bonuses.
Killer bows are also my most used Killer Weapons, as they will never provide a critical hit in a situation that could cause the critical hitter to die due to another enemy phase hit. I need a higher speed, high luck, high skill archer with a killer bow.... Or Panette w/ a killer bow, because Panette is broken with bows.
Also, my most cherished clip of streaming sacred stones is when my level 18 unpromoted Neimi at 8 hit points enemy turns 3 enemies and dodges a melee hit.
Archers (and to a lesser extent mages) illustrate some of the fundamental problems with rigid phases. When the only real limitations are move and counter attacks it benefits a very specific build, and it's hard to balance any sort of specialized unit. They'll either have decent bulk, one shots, *AND* some extra benefits on the side (like most of the better mages), or they'll have nothing going for them outside of their specific niche (like archers).
These types of units work better with turns based around a stat. The game doesn't have to be balanced around counter-attacks so units that can mainly deal chip damage aren't as disadvantaged. And since the turns go back and forth there's a much more meaningful difference between dealing damage from afar as opposed to rushing down with high move units. Games like Shining Force tend to have way more usable Archers. They're still not the best, but they don't become bench warmers as soon as you get better units.
I always use at least 1 early game archer, it feels like the best zero to hero experience to me.
Fun fact: Many of them can grow up to be the best in their games. I have yet to meet an enemy Rebecca can't double, and as soon as you start tackling Bern, there are plenty of Wyvern Knights for her to kill. By that point you get Louise, yes, but for some reason I dislike using prepromotes. Her low strength is still high enough to be relevant, because late game maps in FE7 swamp you with so many enemy units, especially Cog of Destiny and Victory or Death, everyone has their role and it almost feels like a Tower Defense game. By Light, however, Rebecca starts dealing no damage unless she's really blessed with strength, so I bench her.
I always like tot ry to have one archer spot in my army as long as I have one that feels remotely competent partly because, the games are primarily medieval fantasy settings, NOT having an archer would feel really weird when a lot of real historical tactics were about protecting archers because of how good they were (lagely due to real life equivalent of 2-5 range)
I’m surprised you neglected to mention that Echoes SOV making archers able to attack at 1-5 range instantly made them one of the best classes in the game, along with mages being a very close second. When I started playing SOV i literally deleted my save the first time I ran into a 1 range archer and made my villagers promote to one. When they get to bow knight they can fall off a little, but if they have respectable str growths they will just be one of the best units in the game hands down. It’s funny how quickly the class breaks if you try to make them viable.
People dismiss Wolt for being a gba archer, but actually, his stats are about as good as Lance's, so, with a little investment (picking on the 1st boss) he reaches doubling thresholds on early lancers and fighters.
Plus with enough supports and weapon rank, he can reliably use Dorothy's Steel Bow to weaken early Wyverns
Also archers from FE2/Echoes are able to attack enemy mages without being counter attacked thanks to their extra range.
Also FE6 archers are worst archers though.
FE6 had so much potential to be good for archers with the game basically being the most flier-heavy FE ever and having terribly inaccurate javs and haxes. But it's the one time their stats REALLY wall them out of usefulness. Sages with Aircalibur and legendary weapon users end up crushing wyverns hard enough to make not bringing a sniper not feel that bad.
@@MythrilZenith not mentioning that pretty much everybody would rather pick nomads and also we still get 2 good prepromote snipers units later in the game also.
I dunno. FE6 archers aren't that bad. While they arent great for some bosses (mostly early armor bosses like Ruud and Debias) Wolt was able to meaningfully contribute against them even just a little bit, and it matters a LOT unless you're throwing Marcus at them, and even then Marcus isn't taking them down in one round and is open to counter attack. I think the bigger problem just ends up being that MOST of the Binding Blade cast feels very weak compared to Hard Mode bonus receivers, and the only archer line character that gets them is Klein. As a result, most Archers are underperforming because most of the cast is underperforming without frequent exp and level ups. Unless you're only going to use Rutger, Fir, Sin, Gonzales, Klein, Thea, Cath(technically) Melady, Percival, Garret, and Zeiss (admitedly not a small group, but you can bring 15 people to fight Zephiel), then you're gonna be scraping the bottom of the barrel for something.
edit: added Cath to list of HMB units
Clearly the solution to archer viablity is telius gamble
The biggest problem that I find with archers is that they're fine, albeit a bit weak, in the early parts of the game, but once you start promoting your army there'll be classes like warrior that can also do the "bow niche" that a sniper should be able to fill, leaving them with ... nothing special anymore
that's why the only true solution for snipers is to either make bows exclusive to them, which feels wrong to have a whole weapon type just for one class, or have them have 1-2 or 2-3 range once promoted, but neither sounds so good because with 1-2 range you can't try to kill the snipers with your flyers before they can fire back at you, and 3 range can be quite gamebreaking if the level design don't take it into account well (project ember tried, and bows became pretty broken since only bow users can match your range (which do terribly against generals that can wield bows in this game), so once you kill them you can just free fire without much retaliation)
So yeah, we don't even know how to fix this class without breaking it, it's that bad
Or you could also give achers actual stats. Seriously, the difference between a gba archer and a mirm or cav is simply absurd.
With this, we can forget doing silly stuff
I too have quad gens. Bows however, dont have 2-3, that's the Crossbow line's claim to fame. There's a catch: weaker base mt, no flier eff damage.
All so that the regular bows dont get overshadowed.
I just don't see any reason other than tradition why they must have bad stats. Being ranged is not some very special thing when almost every class is capable of it. Flier effectiveness is not that special when archers basically never get cavalry or armor effectiveness. Not having 1 range is already paying the price for those advantages, there is basically 0 reason why their stats should be terrible. Even if you find value in having a purposely bad unit with Niche early game utility, well, there is an entire archetype intended for that. Less Gordins, more Vanders.
Fe4 spoils the player by giving them good archers. A mounted archer with canto, an archer with good stats whose only drawbacks are that he can't double reliably and has poor movement for the game and another archer whose weaknesses are lessened by her holy blood.
Takumi is the best fe archer
Archers should have a skill called assist. Which grants them kill exp if another unit kills the enemy they chipped during the same turn.
GBA FE editor:
I upped weapon weight slightly, weapon might a bit more, added a crit modifier, and gave bows 1-2 range. Snipers get the swordmaster crit bonus as well.
End result; archers are now longer free xp as they retaliate to any attacks. They even can be dangerous on a bad (good) roll.
Mages tomes are weighted more, for more damage as well, and get 2-3 range. They're free xp in melee, but can nuke you from afar.
Javelins and Hand Axes are now heavier, for less might and accuracy. It takes a unit with good skill to use them well.
Cavaliers and Paladins don't use axes.
Javs and handaxes are lighter, but weaker. They also have a similar evolution like their melee brothers.
I did the funni 1-2 Short Bow thing and rounded out the uses even to 25, but at the cost of no flier eff because that shit broken.
In addition, Archers learn Certain Blow at Lv5(+40 hit on your turn) and Opportunist(+4 dmg if foe cannot counter).
Also, Longbow is now 2-4 rng, drawing inspiration from AoE2 Britons who draw inspiration from the historical Longbow units.
Crossbows also make an appearance, having 2-3 range, are lighter, but weaker than their traditional cousins and do not have flying eff(subject to change)
For now, Snipers learn Sure Shot upon promotion, and then learn Bow Range +1 at Lv5 that class.
The format for class skills goes like:
Tier 1 Lv5 > Tier 1 Lv12 > Tier 2 class skill > Tier 2 Lv5.
Castor ☹👎