Revisiting the Arthur Faction in Multiplayer

[Asophix 113]

Hi All!

On the day of writing this post, I had a very intense match with @ Lord_Chris  as Arthur against Ice.

I also wrote a detailed article about a year ago to-date about how the Arthur faction is vastly the underdog compared to Ice and Evil, at least when it comes to utilising their faction-specific toolkit. This prompted me to revisit the idea and share my findings with you.

Point 1 - Arthur is not a muscle faction

Like in my previous post, I pointed out how Arthur's Knights of the Royal Table are geared towards controlling an area and exerting control there at an opportune moment. They are indeed excellent and there are definitely a few who you always want on the battlefield. This doesn't mean however that they are the workhorse of your military. Quite the contrary.

Special units are very expensive and given how Legends feeds you only so much honor with a proper economy, you can't always rely on them, not to mention their gynormous ability cooldown time! Siege Tower concentrations with missile troops and casters are a common thing, which you can't immediately remove by your siege engines, or your Green Dragon. Even if you manage to take out a bunch of enemies, they will just print reinforcements. Moreover, the enemy caster often comes in under the forest of mantlets to safely erase your army. Not even hundreds of men-at-arms chew through that much wood. This is where a paradigm shift comes into play: you are supposed to play by trying to overwhelm your enemy with control. You are supposed to divert their attention.

Let's just face the fact: Arthur's army's unit power is the WORST among all three factions at maximum size. Ice can always pump out Giants, Evil can always bring Werewolves, not to mention Bats and Stake Hurlers can just rain on your carefully constructed siege position at whim. Instead, if you create a second or even third army and try to create opportunistic attacks elsewhere, the enemy will suddenly be unable to solve all their problems right away. Getting around an entrenched position may mean running down enemy estates left vulnerable, flying in your Dragon or sending in Percival as a major threat, only to strike somewhere else by setting up a second siege camp and running down their defenseless flank.

Point 2 - Men-at-arms should be your core unit

Men-at-arms are cheap units that are easy to sleep on: their staying power is relatively low, they don't generally do much damage, and they are bad in sieges. What they excel at however, is mobility and skirmishing. 

Usually with Arthur you can't afford all those shiny troops right away, and even if you do, you will find how your other options all come with a drawback:

• Macemen are very expensive and they tend to get bogged down in melee once engaged. Even though they are a decent shock troop, they have problems taking over garrisoned village halls or wall defenses.
• Crossbowmen are very slow, even though they declare an area a pin-cushion in their immediate vicinity. They make a bad response troop, due to their abysmal movement speed. The same can be said for Pikemen and Swordsmen.
• Archers are another mainstay unit, however once the enemy starts fortifying its key positions, they barely put a dent into shields and crossbowmen. Moreover, their firepower is insufficient when the enemy approaches en masse.

On the contrary, Men-at-arms are a great candidate as a core unit, because:

• They are cheap. Even if you don't build poleturners, their equipment is easy to come by on the market, consequently they are always available for recruitment.
• They are fast. As interceptors, Men-at-arms can traverse the battlefield quickly. It's not uncommon for an enemy to throw a bunch of troops against your outlying guards or flanking your position into your Siege Camp. These interceptions are what give you the option to intercept, or show up on another front to cause mayhem, where the enemy forgot to put sufficient troops.
• They throw javelins. Believe it or not, Men-at-arms' javelins actually cause respectable damage against light troops and siege engines, even Mantlets. If the enemy tries to wear you down by deploying Catapults, streams of White Wolves / Hellhounds, or other shooty things, Men-at-arms can run them down and pick them apart in a cost-efficient way.
• They can bait expensive stuff. Men-at-arms are such units that could be thrown into the mouth of the enemy army with impunity. An Ice Queen or Sorcerer is attacking them, or a caster is throwing an ability at them? Who cares! Replacing 30 weak units isn't as regrettable as replacing 50 Crossbowmen, or heavily armored units. Baiting out abilities and drawing firepower to an extent can make room for your own special units to attack or strike with your own ability.

Surely, Men-at-arms are a one-timer, which loses efficacy as the game goes on, however their mobility and ability to counter certain ground units makes them a prime affordable troop. Their reinforcing and intercepting ability is second-to-none, and they may even stand their own ground if controlled correctly against smaller formations.

Point 3 - Bedivere & Gawain can always find value

In the previous post, I alluded to how Gawain has insane potential, but wrote off Bedivere. Turns out they both carry value throughout the game.

Gawain is the core unit beside Merlin and Percival. His ability to conjure a shield that absorbs all types of projectile attacks can declare a zone safe for quite some time, giving your main army a good way to advance from a bogged down area. While a large army doesn't fit under it fully, this protection can make all the difference for attacking the enemy's impenetrable defenses, or allow your casters to fire off an ability or two. 

A lesser known fact is that Gawain's shield negates the projectile-based effects from the Ice Queen's and the Ice Dragon's freezing attack, divebombing Bats and even siege projectiles' knockback. Consequently, it can also be used to protect against these devastating abilities as a reactionary tool, if your army is caught bare out in the open, or in an entrenched position.

Bedivere is kind of a one-trick-pony due to his very obvious niche ability. What however cannot be underestimated is his ability to circumvent an area and create an opening in the opposition's defenses, causing a quick ruckus. On larger maps where the enemy can be attacked from multiple positions, the Horn of Camelot assigned to an attacking infiltration group can cause the enemy to react haphazardly, or divert reinforcements from their main position to deal with the threat. Combined with Men-at-arms and Archers, a commando can cause noticeable damage or even conquer the Keep, if the enemy forgot to fortify it even slightly.

Point 4 - Streamlined build order trumps economy

This section is obviously geared towards games with peace time and/or with low starting tech. Probably moreso than the other factions, Arthur loves to enjoy a fast Rank 8 due to the unlocked units and Automarket. Getting to this point ASAP however comes at a cost of your ability to partake in the arms race that comes with the expiry of peace time. Here is a build order that served me well in various versions throughout the eco phase (assuming 10-15pt, rank 1):

• Immediately set taxes to -16, build the granary and give +8 rations. Buy 5 non-meat food if starting with no food.
• Build two or three chicken farms from your sold stone and starting gold. You may be able to squeeze in a dairy farm if you are extra greedy. Build a wood camp when you can't build anything else.
• Until you build your first hovel, you can freely sell food and buy wood for additional farms. We prefer buying wood over having it delivered from wood camps, because the workers are considerably slow and peasants come at a premium early on. Keep selling meat whenever above 5 units and try to get at least one unit of food of each type to leverage potentially +12 honor per month.
• Don't forget about popularity. If your rate approaches 55, dial back taxes to -8 to break even with your granary.
• After the first hovel we prioritise building farms, slowly shifting to cheese. Build chicken farms for 'firefighting' purposes, however dairy farms will eventually bring in cheese. Because of the increased granary consumption, we switch to a pantry without any production, set royal food consumption to double and buy royal food there. Keep selling cheese and meat whenever above a combined 10 food.
• Keep buying wood for your industry, building hovels whenever low on free peasants (constant influx is required due to reduced migration speed!). When your farms bring in a steady stream of food, you can eventually start adding iron mines. Add tethers only when the miners produce ingots, or ingots start piling up. Also build an eel pond fairly early to slowly ease the burden on your coffers. Always sell excess iron.
• Build stone quarries once you are nearing 5-6 minutes peace time left. About 3 or 4 quarries should do, constantly add tethers to prevent storage overflow.
• Once your stone quarries deliver, start investing into a Church and chandler's workshops. Keep a keen eye on your stocks and once your production is steady (about one chandler per hovel), then raise the mass to extravagant level to cash in on honor and raise your popularity back to 100. Once done, set taxes to -12.

By this point, you should be nearing the end of peace time. Buy assorted weaponry (a little bit of everything) for your preferred troops, and be ready to face thine enemy!

Closure

Hope this tablet of text has entertained you and provided you valuable insights. Any time you would like to ask questions and leave comments, you can do it either here, or in a DM to happily discuss the matter further.

See you on the battlefield!🙂 

[Planewalker 16]

The single biggest thing I agree with is how much people sleep on men-at-arms. I think people instinctively equate them to Spearmen from previous SH games too much.

Arthur's ability to produce honor early on is also fantastic due to four granary food types plus a full lord's kitchen.

I am also very impressed to find out that Gawain's shield protects you from Ice Queen and Ice Dragon. Does it also defend against Ice Mirrors? 

[Asophix 113]

The thing is, men-at-arms are quite capable as a shock trooper, but not as a prolonged fighter, which makes them less attractive then e.g. a maceman. For years I didn't recognise this former value. 🙂

Granary variety is fantastic, but seems redundant or at least very difficult to keep up very early on. After 90 population or so, you can make room for the bread chain, or replace a few dairy farms with apple farms; I've not yet arrived to this stage. A gradual build-up of both bread and apple production may however very well be viable. In early peace time I'd still buy in food only until rank 3 or 4, then the Pantry offers a similar source of bonus honor. I used to play by buying up food aiming for max variety, but this drains a lot of gold, and you may be losing out on the arms race, when peace time ends.

Gawain's shield protects against projectile-based stuff, which the Ice Mirror also qualifies for. There are a few cases, such as Merlin's or the Sorcerer's area ability, which I haven't tested yet. The rule of thumb is that the projectile landing inside gets negated, but splash effects don't. In some cases, a unit running into the shield and being shot at by the Ice Queen's regular attack can still get frozen, as the ice bolt connects with the area in the unit's wake.