Archers on Walls Not Firing

[Chimander]

I've noticed that in my games, when I put archers/xbowmen on the walls, they refuse to fire at all. When I turn fire at will off and target an enemy, maybe 1/3rd of the unit actually shoots. The bow and arrow icon is always there, and the status appears to stuck at "firing missiles."

Does anyone know what's causing this and how to correct it? Thanks.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I'm on 6.0 with no other mods.

[Bacon!]

Perhaps they just cant get a good aim on the enemy from where they are =/, sorry no good answer available from me >.<

[Gorrrrrn]

Chimander

could be a variety of problems:

target unit is routing but part of it is still on walls;
the target unit is only within range of some archers;
part of the castle wall is obscuring the target for some archers.

I'm playing English without RR/RC and Byg but with kingdoms 1.5 patch and SS6.1 patch - my bowmen on the walls are deadly. (unless it's raining.)

[Chimander]

Thanks guys. However, I don't think it's any of these problems. I tried a few more siege battles: the archers were (supposed to be) shooting at a unit standing still well within their range, with nothing blocking them. When I first target it, the whole unit shoots, but then they mysteriously stop after one volley. In order to get them to start firing again, I have keep clicking the target.

[redmanPH]

i've the same problem, though nobody replies to my posts. not only siege battles, but open field ones, gunpowder units just won't fire

[kichinko]

Man! I finally got my SS 6.1 to stop crashing during battles, I start a Genoa Campaign... and none of my stupid xbowmen will fire while positioned on the walls of the city. I've tried placing them ALL over, and they just sit there while the stupid sicilian army approaches!

GRRRRRRR

[Gorrrrrn]

I don't know what the problem is - all I can say is that my english bowmen can regularly kill 80 -100 enemy soldiers per battle firing from the walls if they fire all their arrows. (normal size units)

nb the fewer archers fire per volley, the longer they take to exhaust their ammunition.

[DrunkNIrishMan]

It likely has to do with the angle of firing allowed in the edu. I know its a big problem with xbows because they are more straight-line in direction, and often the only units that fire are those between the crenelations on the wall. Shouldn't be a problem with regular bowmen though. Like someone said, in my English campaign, archer militia and longbowmen alike generally decimate enemy armies waiting for the gate to come down.

[Wolfgrin]

I have the same problem in SS 6.1 with xbows and bows on walls. It seems that if I don't move them after setup, they fire fine. However, if I move them or they get into melee, they never fire normally again. Open field battles are fine as are battles in the streets when defending a city center. It only happens on walls.

[Gorrrrrn]

suspect it's down to limitations of game engine.

one has to balance the ability of bowmen to fire over walls with the defensive ability of walls to protect from incoming missiles. If you lower the crenallations so bowmen can fire over them , then they become very exposed to missile fire.

so you have to put up with some bowmen not being able to fire.

(another problem is scale - if you wanted "realism" you'd have far smaller bowmen units defending walls - they could be spaced out more and then all could fire - if they lined up in the right places that is.)

another limitation of the game engine is moving bowmen along walls - it happened in vanilla M2TW and no-one has been able to get it fixed properly. So you have to keep shifting them around until they set-up where you want them. very annoying.

[Vasquez]

Also all the firing straight up in the air does nothing. But I think it's a vanilla issue.