Artillery

Secondary skills
Air Magic
Archery
Armorer
Artillery
Ballistics
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Eagle Eye
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Artillery
	Basic Artillery: gives control of the ballista to the hero, allowing one shot with a 50% chance to inflict double damage.
	Advanced Artillery: gives control of the ballista to the hero, allowing two shots with a 75% chance to inflict double damage.
	Expert Artillery: gives control of the ballista to the hero, allowing two shots which inflict double damage.

Artillery is a secondary skill that gives the hero manual control over war machine Ballista during combat and control over the arrow towers when defending a town during siege. Basic Artillery provides a 50% chance that ballista inflicts double damage. For Advanced Artillery this is a 75% chance and for Expert Artillery a 100% chance. Advanced and Expert Artillery also enable the ballist to shoot twice in a row, instead of once.

Heroes with Artillery as a starting skill

• Arlach the Overlord (basic)
• Christian the Knight (basic)
• Gerwulf the Beastmaster (basic)
• Gurnisson the Barbarian (basic)
• Ignissa the Planeswalker (basic)
• Pasis the Planeswalker (basic)
• Pyre the Demoniac (basic)
• Vokial the Death Knight (basic)
• Zubin the Battle Mage (basic)

Heroes with Ballista as specialty:

• Template:Arlach
• Template:Christian
• Template:Gerwulf
• Template:Gurnisson
• Template:Pyre
• Template:Torosar

Recommended for

Heroes in the early game with high attack (especially Barbarians), since a high attack skill increases the Ballista's damage considerably. Artillery is also a superior skill for secondary heroes whose only purpose is to defend towns, as Artillery gives control of the Arrow Towers during a town siege. However, be cautious of using this skill on main heroes if you think that you will be playing a long game, since Artillery quickly becomes weaker the longer the game goes on.

Discussion

Though not the worst skill, Artillery is of limited use. Whereas it may be useful early on in the game, at least on resource-poor maps of impossible difficulty, later on it usually provides considerably less bonus damage to a hero's army than do secondary skills such as Offense or Archery (see Figure 1). Moreover, given that a ballista has only 250 health and acts last during the combat round, it may be destroyed in battles even before it can inflict any significant damage. Another disadvantage of Artillery is that the ballista is not deployed when attacking creature banks or defending against a siege. However, the control that Artillery provides over arrow towers in sieges can be valuable, also because it enables the defending hero to cast the first or last spell in each round.

Explanation: Imagine that on Week 1 Day 2 you have a ballista and 12 Grand Elves (7 from your town and 5 from your heroes). If your hero has 5 attack, would his army deal more damage with Advanced Artillery (e.g., a level 2 Gurnisson) or with Advanced Archery (e.g., a level 2 Jabarkas)? Figure 1 shows that in this case you need at least 17 Grand Elves for Advanced Archery to do more damage than Advanced Artillery on grass (see I). With only 12 Grand Elves and a ballista, Advanced Artillery may in this stage therefore help you most to advance your hero and kingdom. However, imagine that on Week 2 Day 1, you buy 19 extra Grand Elves (14 from your town and 5 from a tavern hero) and that your hero, after gaining some levels, now has an attack of 9. Would this hero with an army of 31 Grand Elves and a ballista benefit more from Expert Artillery or Expert Archery? Figure 1 shows that because this hero has more than 16 Grand Elves, Expert Archery is the better choice here (see II). This demonstrates that later on in most games Artillery rapidly becomes less useful than Archery (or Offense), An exception may be maps on impossible difficulty with insufficient money to recruit extra troops, which allows heroes with Artillery to gain and possibly maintain a notable advantage. Note: The Figure is also valid for armies with other ranged units than Grand Elves (e.g., 7 Grand Elves on grass equal 8 Medusas on subterranean). Special circumstances such as morale, hero specialties, archery artifacts, spells and ranged units getting killed or blocked during battle are not factored in.

Figure 1: Required Number of Ranged Units for Archery to Deal More Bonus Damage than Artillery Does as a Function of Hero’s Attack and Skill Level.