!!!!Point Blank's "Real Combat + Recruitment" for 1.4.1 (doesn't work with 2.1)!!!!

[Point Blank]

In data/unit_models folder.

[imp8ct]

strange my eldar archers don't shoot very synchronised...with syncronised I mean they shoot all at once and not all in 2 seconds...you know what i mean?

[Achilla]

Just thought about something ... what if Noldor archers acted like snipers and shared the animation of Ithilien rangers? +1 attack and better projectile would come in place. Since they are Eldar nerfing their range wouldn't necessarily make sense, although ...

Well, the point is, personally I see them as armoured, very well trained and equipped potent melee fighters with amazing bow capabilities. For that reason I don't really see them as barrage archers =) Plus, it would diverse High from Silvan Elves a bit. Perhaps Mith could share his point of view ;d?

[Metallistic]

In data/unit_models folder.

So I scahge it to:

6 sicily
72 unit_models/_Units/EN_Lmail_Hmail/textures/en_xmail_xmail_poland.texture
72 unit_models/_Units/EN_Lmail_Hmail/textures/en_xmail_xmail_normal.texture
45 unit_sprites/sicily_fountain_guard_sprite.spr
1
6 sicily
58 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final guard_poland_diff.texture
58 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final guard_poland_norm.texture 0
1
4 None
17 MTW2_Pike_primary
17 MTW2_Pike_primary
17 MTW2_Pike_primary
17 MTW2_Pike_primary

Really confusing.

[Lap]

I've been doing a bit of archer testing after being terribly disappointed at their effectiveness in my Gondor campaign. I typically was seeing my archer militia and archers go through all of their ammo in a battle and only the most experienced and lucky of those groups would even kill one orc per man. Considering the milita are shooting 35 arrows that is a bit ridiculous. The Gondor archers tend to kill about the same amount due to their reduced ammo. I really don't like seeing thousands of orcs standing without a care in the world as over 1000 archers fire at them for ten minutes. If you don't deal with archers you need to be severely punished. All but the higher tiered archers can be totally ignored and you won't really suffer much from them.

Anyways as for some basic tests:

1 orc band vs 1 Gondor archer militia. Orc band formation slightly blocky and tight to give a good target. Once the archer militia gets firing I move the orcs a bit closer to give the archers a better target. After a very long time the archers finally run out of ammo after they fire 5285 arrows at a close stationary target. They have killed 130 poorly armored orcs. So under almost the very ideal circumstances the archer militia can't even kill 1 orc per archer with their bows. Even more embarrassing is that afterwards the militia charges the orc band, kills the orc general and still routs and loses. I repeated this battle with the same results.

Attempting the same type of test, but having the orcs get shot by the terrible snaga archers went a little better. They ending up killing a little more of the orcs before running out of ammo despite them having 1/3 the ranged attack of the milita (due to their huge unit size). It was still only slightly more than archer milita, but the snagas eventually crushed the remaining orcs in melee.

I tried these types of test with varrying archers and changing up some of the targets. What I was seeing was that the large unit sized archers like snagas and orcs seemed to "feel" right in how many they killed (maybe ever so slightly underpowered). The smaller sized archers of the good side did not feel right at all though. They're only woth fielding if they can get through all their ammo and even still their power was laughable against all but units far worse than them.

I then decided to use all the RC stats, but change the ranged damages of arrows weapons to vanillia values. Battles seemed to go much more as expected. I took a full star general with 7 archer/militia archer troops and 5 spearman/infantry militia (gondor) and marched straight at a full stack of captain commanded mordor orcs and uruks. I eventually lost after killing 1.5k orcs or so, but I was pleased that the battle went as expected. The archers that were defended were able to kill at least their number in orcs/uruks after going through 2/3 of their ammo. Playing on siege defense worked much better, as expected.

I then switched sides to see if I was just enjoying being on an overpowered side. On both siege attack and open fields orcs can still win out if I don't simply ignore the archers. It was still winnable using tactics even giving the enemy large advantages. Ignoring the archers brings heavy loses as expected. Reverting back to the current RC version and playing orcs I could simply win battles by letting lines clash and then have the superior unit sizes start to erode flanks of good units. I didn't even have to spook the archers into stopping fire. I could just deal with all the melee units and then move on to the archers. No tactics needed.

Conclusions: Large unit size rabble archers like snagas and orcs could use a slight boost to their ranged attack while good sided/smaller unit sized archers need their ranged attacks restored back closer to vanilla values (perhaps not fully, but one or two points below vanilla values). Archers need to be able to do significant damage to enemies simply ignoring them (like the massive blocks that will stand outside during sieges) without becoming too effective in less ideal situations. A good solution to this might be to also decrease the accuracy of low level units further. The accuracy, morale, armor, and melee ability of the archers should be the main things that differentiate different classes of archers. Their actual damage per hit should only increase slightly.

I did not address javelins because they seemed to work well enough in practice.

[zowrath]

Another thing, it says it includes the Diplomacy mod Keep Alliances, but as far as I can tell it is a bit different from that mod itself as the good factions doesn't necessarily start out allied in the RC. If other sub-mods are included, but altered in this way, it is good to let us know so we can restore it to what it was supposed to be

Any other of the listed included sub-mods that are much altered?

[Drathmar]

I've been doing a bit of archer testing after being terribly disappointed at their effectiveness in my Gondor campaign. I typically was seeing my archer militia and archers go through all of their ammo in a battle and only the most experienced and lucky of those groups would even kill one orc per man. Considering the milita are shooting 35 arrows that is a bit ridiculous. The Gondor archers tend to kill about the same amount due to their reduced ammo. I really don't like seeing thousands of orcs standing without a care in the world as over 1000 archers fire at them for ten minutes. If you don't deal with archers you need to be severely punished. All but the higher tiered archers can be totally ignored and you won't really suffer much from them.

Anyways as for some basic tests:

1 orc band vs 1 Gondor archer militia. Orc band formation slightly blocky and tight to give a good target. Once the archer militia gets firing I move the orcs a bit closer to give the archers a better target. After a very long time the archers finally run out of ammo after they fire 5285 arrows at a close stationary target. They have killed 130 poorly armored orcs. So under almost the very ideal circumstances the archer militia can't even kill 1 orc per archer with their bows. Even more embarrassing is that afterwards the militia charges the orc band, kills the orc general and still routs and loses. I repeated this battle with the same results.

Attempting the same type of test, but having the orcs get shot by the terrible snaga archers went a little better. They ending up killing a little more of the orcs before running out of ammo despite them having 1/3 the ranged attack of the milita (due to their huge unit size). It was still only slightly more than archer milita, but the snagas eventually crushed the remaining orcs in melee.

I tried these types of test with varrying archers and changing up some of the targets. What I was seeing was that the large unit sized archers like snagas and orcs seemed to "feel" right in how many they killed (maybe ever so slightly underpowered). The smaller sized archers of the good side did not feel right at all though. They're only woth fielding if they can get through all their ammo and even still their power was laughable against all but units far worse than them.

I then decided to use all the RC stats, but change the ranged damages of arrows weapons to vanillia values. Battles seemed to go much more as expected. I took a full star general with 7 archer/militia archer troops and 5 spearman/infantry militia (gondor) and marched straight at a full stack of captain commanded mordor orcs and uruks. I eventually lost after killing 1.5k orcs or so, but I was pleased that the battle went as expected. The archers that were defended were able to kill at least their number in orcs/uruks after going through 2/3 of their ammo. Playing on siege defense worked much better, as expected.

I then switched sides to see if I was just enjoying being on an overpowered side. On both siege attack and open fields orcs can still win out if I don't simply ignore the archers. It was still winnable using tactics even giving the enemy large advantages. Ignoring the archers brings heavy loses as expected. Reverting back to the current RC version and playing orcs I could simply win battles by letting lines clash and then have the superior unit sizes start to erode flanks of good units. I didn't even have to spook the archers into stopping fire. I could just deal with all the melee units and then move on to the archers. No tactics needed.

Conclusions: Large unit size rabble archers like snagas and orcs could use a slight boost to their ranged attack while good sided/smaller unit sized archers need their ranged attacks restored back closer to vanilla values (perhaps not fully, but one or two points below vanilla values). Archers need to be able to do significant damage to enemies simply ignoring them (like the massive blocks that will stand outside during sieges) without becoming too effective in less ideal situations. A good solution to this might be to also decrease the accuracy of low level units further. The accuracy, morale, armor, and melee ability of the archers should be the main things that differentiate different classes of archers. Their actual damage per hit should only increase slightly.

I did not address javelins because they seemed to work well enough in practice.

Um... No. Archers shouldn't be army killers (Vanilla Kingdom and TATW have this wrong). Archers should be used for harrassment only (unless elves). It is unrealistic to take heavy losses from archers.

Taking a page from PB's book. There was less than 1 in 100 arrows at Agincourt that caused a casualty. So you should only be doing like 1/100th of the amount of arrows shot in kills . So for the 5200 arrows shot you should have around 50 kills... you had 130 which is better.

Gondor Archers, nor Gondor Milita should be killing enemies at a 1:1 ratio though.

[Achilla]

I've been doing a bit of archer testing after being terribly disappointed at their effectiveness in my Gondor campaign. I typically was seeing my archer militia and archers go through all of their ammo in a battle and only the most experienced and lucky of those groups would even kill one orc per man. Considering the milita are shooting 35 arrows that is a bit ridiculous. The Gondor archers tend to kill about the same amount due to their reduced ammo. I really don't like seeing thousands of orcs standing without a care in the world as over 1000 archers fire at them for ten minutes. If you don't deal with archers you need to be severely punished. All but the higher tiered archers can be totally ignored and you won't really suffer much from them.

Anyways as for some basic tests:

1 orc band vs 1 Gondor archer militia. Orc band formation slightly blocky and tight to give a good target. Once the archer militia gets firing I move the orcs a bit closer to give the archers a better target. After a very long time the archers finally run out of ammo after they fire 5285 arrows at a close stationary target. They have killed 130 poorly armored orcs. So under almost the very ideal circumstances the archer militia can't even kill 1 orc per archer with their bows. Even more embarrassing is that afterwards the militia charges the orc band, kills the orc general and still routs and loses. I repeated this battle with the same results.

Attempting the same type of test, but having the orcs get shot by the terrible snaga archers went a little better. They ending up killing a little more of the orcs before running out of ammo despite them having 1/3 the ranged attack of the milita (due to their huge unit size). It was still only slightly more than archer milita, but the snagas eventually crushed the remaining orcs in melee.

I tried these types of test with varrying archers and changing up some of the targets. What I was seeing was that the large unit sized archers like snagas and orcs seemed to "feel" right in how many they killed (maybe ever so slightly underpowered). The smaller sized archers of the good side did not feel right at all though. They're only woth fielding if they can get through all their ammo and even still their power was laughable against all but units far worse than them.

I then decided to use all the RC stats, but change the ranged damages of arrows weapons to vanillia values. Battles seemed to go much more as expected. I took a full star general with 7 archer/militia archer troops and 5 spearman/infantry militia (gondor) and marched straight at a full stack of captain commanded mordor orcs and uruks. I eventually lost after killing 1.5k orcs or so, but I was pleased that the battle went as expected. The archers that were defended were able to kill at least their number in orcs/uruks after going through 2/3 of their ammo. Playing on siege defense worked much better, as expected.

I then switched sides to see if I was just enjoying being on an overpowered side. On both siege attack and open fields orcs can still win out if I don't simply ignore the archers. It was still winnable using tactics even giving the enemy large advantages. Ignoring the archers brings heavy loses as expected. Reverting back to the current RC version and playing orcs I could simply win battles by letting lines clash and then have the superior unit sizes start to erode flanks of good units. I didn't even have to spook the archers into stopping fire. I could just deal with all the melee units and then move on to the archers. No tactics needed.

Conclusions: Large unit size rabble archers like snagas and orcs could use a slight boost to their ranged attack while good sided/smaller unit sized archers need their ranged attacks restored back closer to vanilla values (perhaps not fully, but one or two points below vanilla values). Archers need to be able to do significant damage to enemies simply ignoring them (like the massive blocks that will stand outside during sieges) without becoming too effective in less ideal situations. A good solution to this might be to also decrease the accuracy of low level units further. The accuracy, morale, armor, and melee ability of the archers should be the main things that differentiate different classes of archers. Their actual damage per hit should only increase slightly.

I did not address javelins because they seemed to work well enough in practice.

Arrows were not even 1/10th as deadly as you describe them.They work perfectly in the current RC if you use archers to break enemy lines and greatly damage your opponent. Enemy weakened by arrows can be easily finished off in melee by militias/average infantry or even cavalry in melee. What you want to see is returning back to vanilla nonsense where longbowmen with ridiculous power and armour-piercing ability (rofl) could easily destroy 2/3 on range and then rush in to the melee. Actually, at best shooting from higher ground, you would kill 1/5 or 1/4 of enemy and severely damage the rest, easily taking them out.

What I see is that it's too challenging for you to actually combine forces on the battlefield, weaking the enemy from far, flanking with cavalry and charging onto melee. If you believe that killing enemy off in range is realistic like you describe it then you are wrong even lore-wise.

What you need to change is your attitude and perhaps perception of archers overall. They are not crossbowmen or siege equipment with precise accuracy designed to butcher units. Armoured, even lightly, soldiers on individual basis could easily withstand at least 100 arrows being shot at them from range of 150+ meters. It's because most of these arrows didn't precisely hit them or injure them badly. Shields come in handy, too. When you set up your archers to fire onto defenseless from such threat pike units you will notice how powerful bows are. At this stage, like I said, you need to change your perception of the bow as a weapon. It's not crossbow, it's not rifle either. As for the orcs you mentioned, all of them got shields and light kind of armour. It helps more than you think to withstand poor missile fire of militia units. At this point you are better-off shattering their morale with fire arrows, then changing to normal arrows once they are close with skirmishing option off. That way their morale is already damaged and they will take more casualties up-close. It might be eventually enough to just charge at them routing them quite fast. Note also that morale bonuses vary differing on battle difficulty.

Sad to see good feedback get jumped on like that. Especially with justifications based on earth's history instead of lore, sad indeed.

Well done for making the effort, Lap

Rofl. It's least kind of post I would expect from you ...

[Drathmar]

Lol as Point blank said... less than 1 in 100 arrows caused a casualty at Agincourt... your causing like 1/45th the amount of arrows in damage, so thats even better than realistic . (5200 arrows causing 130 kills = 1/45th very roughtly estimated)

[abbews]

Okey, im confused, after i downloaded the Rc for may 12, there is a data folder and such, should i put all that in mods/third age or just those that are written about in the first post. Happy for quick answer.

[Soul Firez]

plus rep on spanking the vanilla wanting guy down damn arrows have never been a brutal weapon against armoured men try a real life test of arrow power take a recked car bonnet which would be even lighter metal than light armour stick it 150 metres away with a pig hide from the butchers under it and fire a modern bow with modern tech arrows at it and even then you will see at that sort of range little penetration so infact it would be more painfull than leathal to a light armoured man unless a lucky arrow hit a weak or un armoured spot !!!!!! for armoured trops it really is merely a moral dropping weapon breaking there lines etc it really only lethal against unarmoured opponents

just put the data file in your sega/medieval2 tw/mods/third age file saying yes to all for over writes and if you want to use agostinos additional units you need to copy and paste the 4 files inside that folder called additional units into the data folder of the third age files

[Taiji]

Sad to see good feedback get jumped on like that. Especially with justifications based on earth's history instead of lore, sad indeed.

I hope they work out that there is no need at all to attack feedback, it's a shame on the community.

Well done for making the effort, Lap

[Drathmar]

Um we didn't attack the feedback we just showed why the changes he suggested shouldn't be implemented. Because arrows are not that effective at all. Also... this whole mod is made using "earth history" realism for armor and weapons... with changes based on lore for racial factors and such, so the point is valid.

Also, it is the same exact point Point Blank has brought up numerous times... PB... the creator of the mod... so that also makes it valid.

Good Feedback= Feedback pointed at creating greater balance, NOT feedback to create overpowered archers again. (And I am an Elven player which means archer player for the most part so... ya)

[Ketchup]

Sad to see good feedback get jumped on like that. Especially with justifications based on earth's history instead of lore, sad indeed.

I hope they work out that there is no need at all to attack feedback, it's a shame on the community.

Well done for making the effort, Lap

Whilst I agree that the backlash was pretty harsh, the suggestions aren't actually based on facts. In fact, they go against factual evidence. Although it is good to see such detailed feedback, for sure.

[raistlinmajere8]

can someone please tell me what this may 12 update includes?

[alexej]

With last RC for TATW, twohanded axes are still WEAK against much lower stats shield/onehand weapon goblins. Its allmost impossible to win

[zowrath]

Thirdly, I just noticed as I thought the Good vs Evil/Keep Alliances was included in this mod the Silvan Elves declared war on Dale just now. Strange?

[trance]

I discovered a rather concerning issue. I was testing Dismounted Knights of Dol Amroth against Loke Flag-Rim in custom battles, but after a short period of time, my computer simply shuts down. I tried it an additional two times, and the results where similar. Computer shutting down after a slight period of time, between 30seconds to 1 minute or so. Anyone else experienced this issue and/or does anybody know what could cause it/how to fix it. I never had this problem before installing RC, so I'm guessing it's somehow RC-related. Can't be too sure though.

[ivanhoex]

i am with taiji, you guys went overboard.
and he did try to expose his info in the better way, or it looks so.

there is only one thing i missed and it was Trance´s post with his classic "GTFO"


this guy believes arrows should behave differently. and he stated why. maybe he is wrong, maybe not.
maybe just not completely or maybe he is totally wrong because of something.

being polite with other people is nice.

i know how bad can feel to be flamed like that.



@pb:

i believe it was you who said southron pikes to go superior, but hey! no prob, as i posted, i have already done harad my way, so i can edit harad on seconds.

what is the RR difference between superior and average troops? (so when RR is out i can update my files accordingly)

Good Feedback= Feedback pointed at creating greater balance, NOT feedback to create overpowered archers again. (And I am an Elven player which means archer player for the most part so... ya)

i agree overpowered archers wont do. but... you should be aware that there is some wrong expression from you here...

i mean.. cmon.. you cant really shun off any feedback that claims something to be back. that is just too conservative.
once a change is made, if it is bad, it can be undone. or tamed. or kept. but there is no such thing as "feedback that should never be mentioned again"

[Radagast the Brown]

I didnt realy tested archers till now.
But if archers are nerfed to the point where they are useless you dont need to field them anymore at all.