Kwarezm: Persian Horse Archer vs Armored Horse Archer

Seriously I wonder if nobody has posted about this before but the armored horse archer (AHA) for Kwarezm blows balls compared to the Persian Horse Archer (PHA) :disgust:

Are they intetionally this bad or is it an oversight?

What is going on (the details)?


I checked their stats and they have so few things going for them I wonder why they even exist other than for show...their mount is armored, they have a higher armor rating and they have more men in their unit and they have low maintenance cost...Oh yeah and they can do a cantabrian circle...:rofls: That's it! Everything else is worse!


The downsides?

>Lets start with the basics: They cost a whopping 1755 gold!!! And take 5 turns to recruit!!! vs 585 gold and 1 turn to recruit for persian horse archers. I can recruit 3x as many with that gold. The only grace is that they cost 250 gold to maintain vs 400 gold for the persian.

>They have a measly 3 bow attack vs 5 bow attack for the persians...and their secondary their melee is only 5 attack and 4 charge vs 6 and 6 for the persian! They suck even more at melee than their counterpart despite them ''supposedly'' being better geared towards more melee...Okay so they probably have more accurate bow attacks right given the lowered attack values? No...no...not at all...persians get elite arrows and shoot 20 meters further while they get regular joe shmoe arrows.:disgust:

> They have 9 armor vs 4 for the persian. I suppose a 1000 gold does get you better jeans despite that non upgraded the armored horse archer just looks like a peasant on a horse...his upgraded versions do look very sweet though...the gold upgrade for the horse archer is really badass...you can't go wrong aesthetically after the first upgrade but the regular schmoes just look like peasants on an armored horse..the horse literally has better gear than these dudes riding it...

> they have 4 defence skill vs 5 for the persian... I guess those extra 4 turns of training really helped out in forgetting how to block...

> they have 3 shield vs 2 shield for the persian..Aha! That's where the 4 turns extra training came into effect!...Rather than being better at trained blocking they just get a fancier shield...(no...no wait...they only get a fancier shield if they are upgraded)

> Despite having 4 more turns of training and sinking 1000 gold in their gear...they have 12 mental vs 14 for the persians...thats it...they even run away faster as wimps...

> To finish it off...they endure heat waaay less than persians and have much bigger penalties in most terrains. They're basically useless unless on flat terrain.

Sooo for 3x the initial hiring cost you get a half baked horse archer unit that is slower, less accurate and has less punching weight in melee than its counterpart.

It honestly feels like all the negatives of the Armored Horse Archer should be the base stats for the Persian and the awesomeness of the Persian should be transferred to the Armored Horse Archer. There is literally no other reason to hire these guys other than for their TINY improved survivability rating vs arrow fire (due to increased armor rating + 1 extra shield) they are literally worse at everything else...from melee to shooting...

So to summarize.

Worse at shooting by far, (half as effective)
Worse at melee by a bit, (about a quarter less effective)
three times as expensive, (:wub:ing expensive)
takes 5x as long to recruit, (Takes forever to recruit)
Worse moral, (run like wimps at first sign of trouble)
Without upgrades looks like peasants stole the kings horses...

I think the last statement pretty much sums them up...

Looks like the Shah gave a bunch of peasants horses from his own personal stable and armory and then trained them in lolligagging for 4 years until he got fed up with them and sent them to the actual field.

Anyone care to explain???

I forgot...they are also slow as :wub:...so they will get easily picked off by other cavalry units...and considering their poor melee skills...they are like easy pickins...

I noticed I made a mistake, they do actually have 6 melee, the same as the persian, but still less charge 4 vs 6 for the persian...no clue how I did not see that...

Well it seems I've found out what they ''are'' good for...lots of play testing of trying out various counters, etc.

> They are effectively horse archer deniars...yup...their slightly higher armor rating allows you to walk them up to other horse archers and kill theirs before they are able to kill and pierce your troops armor. The more armored horses and men allow you to take arrows more effectively and thus ''tank'' your way through the arrow hail as you slowly whittle down their horse archer troops with return fire. You can't actually catch any other horse archers by speed so all you are doing is denying the opponent the ability to hit your weak spots with their horse archers...You can't engage with them...you've just got heavily armored archers who are slightly faster than men...''tanks''...essentially...with poor bow skills and poor accuracy...Guess they are not entirely pointless...but considering how little and ineffective AI horse archers are these are practically useless in campaign mode. I do ever love their upgraded version for the looks though...they look badass...all swag with that armor they look like a professional horse archer army...too bad they still suck at shooting and melee is mehhh at best...they are only really effective in melee against other horse archers...

These two units (Persian horse archer and Armored horse archer) seem a lot like the turkish variants of Fari cavalry (pretty sweet imho) and those Iqta dudes...but the difference isn't as great as with these two units.

Still I think they need a buff...or persians need a debuf but then they'd such against the turks...sooo...idk...

I would have edited my posts but it seems I have no permission to do so...anybody know why?

Alright what do you guys think of these units? What's your favorite horse archer if any? I love the persians...I've decimated entire stacks with just a handful of these guys...What's that? a whole stack of spear militia and some cavalry? no probs...pick off their cavalry first by focus fire and defeat in detail and then rape the poor guys with only spear left...if they have archer units...charge them and decimate them before they can do significant damage...(I usually pair up a kwarezmian cavalry with a few turkopoles or persians) and have the heavy cav take care of archers while my persians focus fire down all the enemy generals and other cav they got...works great...They all gain like 3 experience per battle...it's insane..

You need to reach 25 posts to be able to edit them ;)

k here are your options

1. keep complaining, arguing bla bla bla, nothing will be done about it, nobody is working on a patch or anything, mod is dead

2. open the EDU and balance it yourself

3. use a submod, either titanium or sship

I am pretty sure the Armoreds are Average quality vs the Persians being Elite.

They are both Missile archers, ie can stand off at range and shower their targets with arrows. The additional armor on the Armoreds makes them significantly better at this - they don't really have to chase anyone. Light HA can't hurt them too much, and heavy cav will be no faster and will have to take a bunch of arrows in the face to close with a target that is still quite strong in melee. Can't remember, do they also have more armor upgrades? They might have maces instead of swords too.

Regarding recruitment, as Late Pros they begin with a replenishment rate of 0.5 as against a third of that for the Early Pro Persians, so once they get a production line going you can have at least one appear every 2 turns, and they also have lower maintenance. They are also probably Disciplined and maybe Highly Trained. In addition they have 82 men on Huge vs 48 Persians I think it is; cost is worked out on a per-man basis.

So, overall they are in fact pretty good units and nobody else in the region really has anything like them. It might be worth considering bumping them up to Superior quality in which case they would get +1 melee, +2 defense, -1 heat, faster attack delay, +2 morale, improved accuracy, better quality weapons and a faster shooting animation, though their cost would go up along with +1 to their training time.

In any case, things are not quite as simple as they might seem at first glance.

Cheers,
PB