[ACoK] 4.0 Bowmen Comparison: Freelancers are God tier

TL:DR: Freelancer Longbows are the most cost-efficient bowmen in the game, beating all non-special bows at a fraction of the cost. Of the special bowmen, Nightswatch Longbows may be better, however each variant has a perk (armour for Karhold, movespeed, cost & recruitability, and damage/speed for Raventree). Raventree Archers have the highest dismounted runspeed of any troop in the game, so with the 'Avoid Melee' special command from Tactics they will be able to avoid melee confrontation with all dismounted infantry.

As a brief pre-cursor, Vale Crossbowmen are considered to be top tier for ranged, with extremely high armour and good melee fighting capacity mixed with a heavy crossbow and high weapon skill, at a low cost of $36. However, Crossbowmen do not benefit from the Power Draw buff and have an attack speed of generally half so will never compete with Bows for ranged killing power. The idea behind Crossbowmen is that they are heavily armoured and have a decent melee loadout. So this discussion is discussing ranged specialists.

So, Bowmen: Hands down, at all levels, the Freelancer Archer and Longbow beat all non-special ranged units by a BIG margin, at both price and damage. I'm talking about a $19 upkeep FL Longbowman beating elite counterparts that have a $27 upkeep by a significant margin on all levels.

I won't get into details but just to summarize, Freelancer Longbowmen have 140 weapon proficiency, which is almost what a super-elite $36+ upkeep special like Karhold or Raventree archers have. They can carry double the arrows of other archers- this alone may even make them preferable to elite alternatives for drawn out fights. They have the best melee weapon of Longbow competition, even beating specials by having the 109 reach Arming Sword.

They are almost as good as Karhold or Raventree bowmen, sacrificing 20 weapon skill, 42% damage buff and 7 athleticism for being approximately half price.

The $11 Upkeep Freelance Archer is nearly as good as Elite archer competition that have $27 upkeep.

Ironborn and Westerland Longbowmen have extremely low weapon skill for their cost and the worst melee weapons in the game. Northern Archers are OK but outclassed by Freelancers by a long shot.

Amongst the super-elite high-cost Longbowmen are Karhold, Raventree, and Nights Watch Longbows. IMO Karhold are the worst of the 3, with a 10% upkeep increase over Raventree archers despite having lower attack speed and damage. They do have double the body armour but they run significantly slower with double the encumbrance. I'd value the Raventree damage, attack speed, lower cost, and movespeed over the double armour.

Nights Watch are difficult to recruit en-masse but arguably outperform Raventree archers, they trade 5 accuracy and 4 damage for 20 weapon proficiency and 7 speed. They also have significantly more armour than Raventrees but less than Karholds.

For cost-efficiency, Freelancer Longbowmen win hands down. They cost about half in upkeep but only sacrifice 42% damage, 20 weapon skill, and 7 athleticism. Having double the archer count for the same cost clearly outweighs their competition. However, for a fun high-tier army I would go with Raventree or NightsWatch Longbows. NightsWatch Longbows are the most fun with a machine-gun type firing speed with fairly small maluses. Their difficulty in recruiting makes them not as fun to use since each time one dies it's a big blow, so mass Raventree may be a lower stress approach. Also, Raventree archers can be recruited quite easily if you fight the Riverlands since they often have 20-30 in many of their stacks. Capture them then recruit them from your prisoner stack.

Bonus tip: When you capture Castles, don't assign it immediately. You will get a free stack of ~60 Freelancers in garrison, with a handful of Recruits, Archers (to upgrade to Longbows) as well as Longbows.

Submitted June 21, 2017 at 02:14AM by Sol515 http://ift.tt/2tMF8zK