As those of you subscribed to the commit message list no doubt are
aware, I just committed the Orcish Slurbow into CVS. I thought it
would be wise to have him in as soon as possible (before the next
release), in the interests of being able to test the unit thoroughly.
I gave him a weak increase over the orcish crossbowman in stats,
however, I feel that we should perhaps reconsider the stats of the
entire line, or at least the top two units.
In general terms:
Orcs, I think, should be able to hire bowmen. Their bowmen should not
be very good, though, and should act in some ways as more of a support
unit for their true units - the orcish warriors. To this end, they
should be primarily concerned with wounding (whittling down), but not
killing, enemy units, and soaking up damage.
We should make an effort to coerce smart players into making the
majority of a northerner faction out of orcish grunts; inasmuch as one
is coerced to make an elvish faction out of elvish archers and fighters
- trying to, in multi, hire a force of nothing but, say, shamans, or
elvish scouts, is a foolish move, and players know that. However, I've
seen a number of multiplayer games, and games against the AI, in which
northerner opponents have not hired a single grunt.
Orcish archers should never be quite as powerful as elvish, or even
human archers, in the same way the elvish champions are never quite as
powerful as orcish warlords, but even more so.
One possible complication with the orcish crossbowmen, that I have
seen, lies in the combination of their chaotic bonus, and certain
enemies' vulnerability to pierce. Two orcish crossbowman can, IIRC,
kill a Grand Knight at full health in one turn. I would almost rather
that the crossbowmen were more resilient, but had one less attack,
perhaps.
I'm not quite sure what to do.
