Mr.X said:
captain lust said:
There's no room for your trolling here. I don't know who you think it's amusing but just take it elsewhere.
I'm being serious. 10 good archers honestly beats 10 good infantry or 10 good cavalry on pretty much every map (except maybe cav on a really open plains). If the players are at the same level, the archers will win.
That's not the argument now is it. The argument is that 10 good archers will beat *anything* on pretty much every map, when it's been clearly shown that most maps at 10vs10 on Medium reward a fairly well mixed class distribution.
Orion said:
BkS and LES have successfully used all-archer strategies (both LES & BkS were Sarranid against Nord teams). LES was actually black-listed by another clan for doing so, and they wouldn't scrim us for months because of it. If I recall correctly, these matches were 7v7 or 8v8. Archer spam is better than any other class spam because they have so much presence on the field and are the dominant class in terms of map control. Enforcing an archer class limit only supports this conclusion, lust.
What archer limit? Where? Also, 7vs7 and 8vs8 are less class balanced than 10vs10, which is what I'm saying never needs class restrictions (wouldn't be affected by them unless they were very tight restrictions).
Part of the problem is that you play on Fastest, which shifts the balance of power away from archers, since melee fights are resolved faster and archers have less time to shoot into them. Also archers lack long weapons, which get a ridiculous boost to power in fastest. Those things are fine and that's just the way balance has resolved itself in the US scene but what you're asserting about larger numbers is simply wrong.
There may be something I haven't considered about Fastest that means greater numbers of archers scale in a certain way. I don't know. But at medium, in 10vs10 matches, archer spam (over 50%) has been tried and it always fails. The only exceptions are pretty much Snowy Village with vaegirs and sometimes Field by the River, depending on the opposing faction. Defending Village, with some setups can also benefit from archer spam and crossbows do a pretty good job doubling up so spamming them on village can work too.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that archers also scale better than infantry or cavalry. There are only so many people that can fit around a single opponent in a melee, but exponentially more archers can simultaneously fire at that target. A widely spread team of archers can protect its own flanks from range, and cover the majority of any map. If you want to argue that cavalry will beat archer spam, or that you can just pressure them with infantry, then you've not had the (dis)pleasure of running into a gigantic crossfire. The only way you could pull it off is with perfect coordination. You would need to hit all parts of the spread simultaneously so that no cluster of archers could cover the others.
Hmm... how to hit all parts of a line of archers simultaneously. Maybe a direct charge from spawn? Would a complex tactic like that achieve such an impossible goal? Also, don't forget that we don't play plains in Europe, so archer lines aren't really a thing.
Orion said:
Of course the map will dictate how effective an archer spread can truly be, but all of the native maps can be horrendous with archer spam. From what I've seen of the 4 custom maps in this year's rotation, they can also be played with a predominantly ranged team successfully.
Good luck archer spamming on San'di'boush.