Cannonneers or Alchemists?

[trentjaspar]

So now we add Catapult to the discussion.

Leadership is so low that I can get more than twice as many Catapults as Alchemists, and almost twice as many as Cannonneers. I love the AOE fire as I don't have many AOE options as a Paladin. And unlike Alchemists, they can shoot every round. The low initiative certainly hurts as you want your archers to fire before theirs, but I do have the Pandemonic Mask which gives all enemies -1 initiative. They won't benefit from the Battle Hammer, but I haven't been using it (been using mostly +1 poison or +2 int weapon).

I suppose for suppression battles they can still be useful, but the low init and fire vulnerability makes them a bit of a liability vs Gremlin Towers. And their low def and HP means I'll be using an Inquisitor res on them a lot (or I can upgrade Res spell to level 2, but that's 15 crystals and 20 mana a pop).

Since I don't like to take losses, I guess the catapults might not be the best idea, unless maybe I'm doing an all-archer build or something.