The hacking damage only gives him an advantage against infantry with high pierce armor, such as destroyer, huskarls, smashers, etc. This has no impact on cavalry. He’s slightly worse at killing regular infantry than the toxotes. Lower attack speed makes him less mobile. The shorter attack range makes he more vulnerable and less effective in sieges and defense. More expensive in gold. He has 15% more hack armor. He dies 15% slower when attacked by cavalry.
More effective against siege engines.
A niche unit to counter Norse. I didn’t see the need for it to have two tags. If he also killed cavalry faster than the Toxotes, then yes, I agree that he should have two tags.
Edit:
They are insanely worse against cavalry than the Toxotes.
There are several reasons to build a throwing axeman at this moment:
The enemy has samurai
The enemy has fanatics
The enemy has shorn ones
Your enemy is Norse
In all other cases, it is better to use other units.
oh one big advantage of Throwing Axeman is that they benefit from Infantry upgrades and are build in the same building as other Infantry. So you don’t have to invest into an Archery Range and Archer upgrades. You can easily mix them with Berserks and Hirdman.
The thing is, throwing axemen have lower attack speed and accuracy. Without the Skadi upgrade for 100% accuracy, using them isn’t really advisable. Godi have almost twice the range and piercing damage. They also generate passive favor and counter myths.
As for buildings, I wouldn’t say they’re particularly good at killing them. A single Hersir against a building does more damage than 4 TA. The unit is very situational. In the Classical Age, Norse shouldn’t fight at all, but in the Heroic Age, they can fight with Jarls or Berserkers.
You couldn’t list who you were talking about. I didn’t understand anything.
Because this is their only ranged unit that needs to be upgraded.
Previously, the cavalry was also built there… Those were the days!
I don’t see any benefit in your archers being countered by peltasts, toxotes, hippeuses, and hypaspists at the same time and they need to get close to the enemy.
It does have a niche against siege units and, for example, huscarls, but the problem is that such targets are already effectively killed by regular melee infantry. Therefore, in real-world play, this “unique role” creates almost no additional capabilities, while its weaknesses (short range, vulnerability to missile units and cavalry) always become apparent.
Excellent at killing any non-siege myth units. They also perform normal against any regular infantry with low piercing armor. In most cases, range is what matters.
With 4 arsenal upgrades, anyone will be quite a menace.
They are very bad archers. Very bad.
They’re slightly better at tanking infantry and ignore the Athena upgrade. That’s all.
They can buff Axemen when they gut all cav including norse cav and half them do half the damage of any infantry unit per second as a proper mobility axe. How about that?