YES
Well, because you're a hybrid caterer/fighter. A pure caterer might disagree.
TL;DR Edition:
- Buffs light range to one-shot kill enemy mages without ELR or feeding Fire Phoenix to give you fighting advantage for the entire encounter
- Speeds up barrack production, which helps offset increases in troop stacks from techs and other variables
- Bulwark lowers number of armories you need and therefore saves you space
- Free light melee from Bulwark lets you take them out of barrack production to train other more frequently used units
Archers are my most used units. Needles lets you natively 1-shot kill mages
without ELR buffs or having to feed Fire Phoenix. Light Range act before enemy mages. By the time the enemy fires its first shot, they might already be down a unit or two! This means you take that many
less shots each round, which is a huge advantage. For example, instead of having to take 5 retaliation shots, you now only have to take 3 for that round if you managed to kill 2 mages already with your light range's opening round. This is beneficial to your non-light range units too because enemy AI tends to hive mind targeting light range first. Therefore, your heavy melee, heavy range, and mages live longer to do their thing.
Secondly, besides buffing light range, Needles speeds up your barrack production. Barracks make the strongest units. Also, if you understand the math behind the formulas, it's raising the number of troops taken to battle. Therefore, your ability to go really deep in Spire or Tourney is really figuring out how to replenish the dead troops in time. Bigger stacks = more dead troops. Making troops faster = replenish more dead troops. It's helping to offset the increase in troop size from techs and other variables.
Lastly, Needles and Bulwark kinda work together. If you have a really high Needles, you're not going to have enough space to feed it enough armories to cover your overnight production because the early armories are super wimpy as each armory level only increases training size by 1 or 2. Overscouting to gain plots risks hitting the Orc Wall or you'd have to buy premo plots to have the space to support all the armories. Bulwark is like a magic armory that keeps increasing your training size without getting bigger in footprint.
BULWARK IS A HUGE SPACE SAVER. Since I had a really high Needles already by Fairies, I had 8 fully upgraded Fairy-level armories and it still wasn't enough to extend my queue time to cover my overnight. Bulwark lets me get rid of half of those armories so that was TONS of tiles recovered. HOWEVER, the free light melee Bulwark gives is meh and when you finish Orc chapter, Shrewdy gives you free archers. Shrewdy also works to increase training size, but magnifies via number of armory levels you have. I have both because I love me some free archers, but it does mean I have to be careful not to over-upgrade my Bulwark before I get to Shrewdy or my training size would get too ridiculous. Free light melee* (edit) does mean you get to take them out of your barrack production though. I never train any sword dancers anymore.
My advice is to build both because you might be able to get rid of some armories via Bulwark. In my case, I put down 1 building and removed 4. Hope that helps.
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