Artillery

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Revision as of 14:57, 3 July 2014 by Kapteeni Ruoska (talk | contribs) (small caps as in manual / only one hero gains control)
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Secondary skills
 Air Magic
 Archery
 Armorer
 Artillery
 Ballistics
 Diplomacy
 Eagle Eye
 Earth Magic
 Estates
 Fire Magic
 First Aid
 Intelligence
 Interference Horn of the Abyss
 Leadership
 Learning
 Logistics
 Luck
 Mysticism
 Navigation
 Necromancy
 Offense
 Pathfinding
 Resistance
 Scholar
 Scouting
 Sorcery
 Tactics
 Water Magic
 Wisdom
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 the Ballista. Basic Artillery provides a 50% chance that attacks from a ballista deal double damage. For advanced Artillery this is a 75% chance and for expert Artillery a 100% chance. Advanced and expert Artillery also allow the ballista to shoot twice per round, instead of once. When a hero with Artillery defends during a siege, the player gains manual control over the arrow towers.

Heroes that specialize in Ballistas:

Comments & debate

Though not the worst skill, Artillery is of limited use, especially later on in the game. As armies grow in size, expert Archery starts providing more bonus damage to the ballista and other ranged units combined than expert Artillery does to only the ballista. For a hero with 23 Attack, this starts occurring when bringing approximately 45 Grand Elves (or an equivalent thereof) to battle. For a hero with 13 attack, this already starts occurring when bringing approximately 20 Grand Elves. A similar argument can be made for expert Offense. Moreover, given that a ballista has only 250 health and acts last during the combat round, it may be destroyed in main battles even before it can inflict any serious damage. Artillery can be quite valuable, however, early on in resource poor maps of impossible difficulty when Gurnisson is used as a main hero. The control that Artillery grants over arrow towers during sieges can also be useful, especially because of the resulting spellcasting initiative, though it must be noted that the Ballista is not deployed in such battles.