English Archers nerfed?

[Tacitursa]

Hey all has anything happened to English archers mainly late tier ones.

They just dont seem to do much atall which is completely wrong imo and archers like scots guard are just as good if not better.

Archers were englands bread and butter and made up for there lack of cavalry.

If its indeed a balance issue then why do other factions like france have just as good archers yet incredibly stronger cavalry? i dont see the balance there.

[jonny duck]

England should in theory get access to the good archers earlier than france or scotland with the scots guard etc. English archers were good circa the 100 years war, I guess other nations soon developed good, if not better archers, and England stopped concentrating on producing such good archers.

[Tacitursa]

England outclassed all other archers in europe if not the world from around 1200 to 1450

Battle of crecy i think it was 1346 english longbowman could unleash 6 arrows a minute at one point in the battle it was said there were upto 25 tonnes of arrows in flight. The french lost pretty much whole army in a thew hours with minimal cassualties to the brits.

Yet get 10 stacks of longbowmen on SS in 1350 and they are rediculously shite

And scots guard werent even introduced untill around 1420 and werent really experienced and trained archers for at least another 20 years.

Plus the english have over 200 years of archery experience and training

[Tacitursa]

just edit them in the export_building and export_unit files to be better and recuritable eariler.

I'd love to but im unexperienced at editing and would probaly make them too strong thus make my game too easy and broke

Just want a small tweak that would make the difference between highest tier archers the same as English knights cavalry vs Frances highest tier.

Idea of france having better archery and cavalry is just painfull to a brit lol

[strife1013]

just edit them in the export_building and export_unit files to be better and recuritable eariler.

[Sher Khan]

What made longbowmen effective was their sheer numbers.

And logistically speaking, the ability to amass huge numbers of them. This was the advantage for England.


I'm playing an English campaign right now with 1/3 infantry and 2/3 archers, and destroying everything in my path... which is historically the ratio used by successful English armies. I think your troubles can be solved tactically.

[Tacitursa]

I'm playing an English campaign right now with 1/3 infantry and 2/3 archers, and destroying everything in my path... which is historically the ratio used by successful English armies. I think your troubles can be solved tactically

Yeah thats not to bad against scotland but my problem with archers is mainly in europe. Against the french and HRE im ussualy against 4-8 units of cavalry and my archers just start running all over the map which isnt very fun

And with 2/3 archers currently you can hardly kill 1 unit of cavalry let alone 8 before your screwed

I can perfectly understand them running and such thats fine but 500 men shooting 1500-3000 arrows at 500 cavalry and only killing 30-60 is stupid , at least half should die if not more

[Sher Khan]

You'll need to play it like Henry V at Agincourt - direct the enemy army into your dismounted knights and men-at-arms while your archers pound them from the sides.

Plus, you have stakes. Cavalry should not be a problem at all if you deployed your army properly and on favorable terrain for infantry combat (while protecting your archers). If your archers are running around the map, something is terribly wrong with your battle plan... Skirmishing should be turned off, stakes at front, and if need be a line of infantry to protect your archers in the flank or in front from other infantry.

Because with stakes the last thing you'll need fear is cavalry. You should be more worried about enemy infantry approaching your archers.


Getting flanked means death. So unless you can properly direct the enemy towards your center and away from your archers on the flanks, you'll be in trouble.

[Tacitursa]

Plus, you have stakes. Cavalry should not be a problem at all if you deployed your army properly and on favorable terrain for infantry combat (while protecting your archers). If your archers are running around the map, something is terribly wrong with your battle plan... Skirmishing should be turned off, stakes at front, and if need be a line of infantry to protect your archers in the flank or in front from other infantry.

Im not a newb i play very tactical my problem isnt with tactics atall its just the fact archers arent doing anything. Much the same as a modern battle with Tanks shooting balloons or cushions isntead of shells.

The entire idea of archers is to lower numbers before your frontline engages. This just isnt happening in SS as it should be and its not just a problem with English archers althought is effects england more so.

a good example of this is make a custom battle with full stack of high tier archers of any faction give them full chevrons vs a full cavalry or infantry stack.

[Sher Khan]

Im not a newb i play very tactical my problem isnt with tactics atall its just the fact archers arent doing anything. Much the same as a modern battle with Tanks shooting balloons or cushions isntead of shells.

The entire idea of archers is to lower numbers before your frontline engages. This just isnt happening in SS as it should be and its not just a problem with English archers althought is effects england more so.

a good example of this is make a custom battle with full stack of high tier archers of any faction give them full chevrons vs a full cavalry or infantry stack.

Pal, unless you form a hedge of stakes at the corner of the map, a full stack of archers cannot win against a full stack of cavalry, and will probably never win against a full stack of infantry.

The belief that the point of skirmishing was to reduce enemy numbers before the melee works only when skirmishers are a marginal proportion of your army. That's was the point of view of the French and most other kingdoms.

The view and purpose of the English archers historically was to break up enemy formation and cohesion, and this could only be accomplished with well trained archers en masse and in cooperation with the infantry.

In SS, this translates to demoralizing arrow showers while your infantry engage from the front. This is effective even without longbowmen, as this same tactic allows me to win against High Era stacks with Archer Militia and Peasant Archers, even against units of knights and armored infantry.

I'm afraid your expectations of your archers is distorting just what they could and should do historically and in-game. With just SS6.1, they are very devastating and as good as archery gets. If you want to beef them up, try out SSTC in conjunction with RC&RR.

[Ketchup]

Mate, archers are fine. I personally use 8 units of longbowmen in my English army and I decimate 20-30% of the enemy before they reach my line. then my DFK and light swordsmen kill everyone else

[Tacitursa]

Well i dont know maybe my installation has messed up my units stats.

I just did a custom 10 Retinue longbow Weapon upgrade , 3 gold chevron and Armor upgrade vs 10 French lancers no upgrades or anything.

Now they walked towards by archer formation it took between 20-30 seconds for them to reach my formation and only 3 lancers died :S

Could someone else do exactly the same setup as this and give me there results , it was on grassy plains on very hard difficulty.

[jonny duck]

Well i dont know maybe my installation has messed up my units stats.

I just did a custom 10 Retinue longbow Weapon upgrade , 3 gold chevron and Armor upgrade vs 10 French lancers no upgrades or anything.

Now they walked towards by archer formation it took between 20-30 seconds for them to reach my formation and only 3 lancers died :S

Could someone else do exactly the same setup as this and give me there results , it was on grassy plains on very hard difficulty.

Wrong test, you want to see if your archers are ineffective, test them against dismounted knights, but have 5 or 6 units of archers fire on a single unit. If they dont kill much then yes, you have a problem.

[Sher Khan]

No, no, like I said that very test is wrong.

First of all, 10 Retinue Longbows should not win at all vs an equal number of super-heavy cavalry, the same way the French could and did run down English archers when they were in small numbers and unsupported by heavy infantry.

Second, 10 archers vs 10 lancers means your fire is dispersed between those 10 lancers, and it would be the same as if you were testing only 1 unit of archers vs 1 unit of lancers. Test something more likely in proper battlefield settings: 4-5 units of longbows vs 1 unit of lancers. Massed fire like this is both more accurate and tactically sound. Even so, don't expect many kills in only 20 seconds, especially against units so well armored.

Thirdly, VH difficulty gives the AI a morale bonus. Medium difficulty is the correct way to test anything, where everything and everyone is on an equal setting.

[meese]

I won't comment on expectations of that particular fight but if those are the results, then it would seem you haven't installed SSTC as Sher Khan said earlier on. Also, upgrades do nothing for the archer's missile attack so that's useless with regards to how much they do before melee.

[Tacitursa]

I was using 6.1 SSTC RC and RR 1.7

I just installed RaJ 1.3 to see what thats like but now im getting CTD's when i reach SS load screen

is RaJ incompaitable with SSTC/RC+RR?

[The Englishman]

I was using 6.1 SSTC RC and RR 1.7

I just installed RaJ 1.3 to see what thats like but now im getting CTD's when i reach SS load screen

is RaJ incompaitable with SSTC/RC+RR?

RR takes the AP attribute away from missile weapons. That's why your longbows are so ineffective.

[Gogolometro]

Imagine gotic armor at horse and knight was developed for this, to stop the enemy arrows.Ideea is your archers are suited for kill medium infantry and demoralise heavy infantry and heavy cavalry.Longbowmans are not Maxim maschineguns, just tomahawk atackers of red tunics.Versus cavalry english have 2 well units, billmans and english knights and of course gunners and cannons.You can't win vs late gothic armor with arrows, you need the guys who put turneys in legend, the gunpowder units and their support.You maded a simple mistake remaining connected to a path.
War mean you need to adapt.A pattern can give you satisfaction, see the vanilla tactics of english versus mongol horde, but never can be same answer for everything will happend on battlefield.English armys don't have only arrows, they have at late period superb units, like demilancers and mortars, don't play at turn 300 like at turn 50 ok?

[TheLastPrivate]

Longbows and bodkin arrows were great but later renaissance armour was simply better. In an arms race nothing stays at the top.

[ace4455]

Wizav85 install SSTC first (all the patch and hotfix with RAJ 1.3) then install RR 1.7, SSTC's installation instructions are outdated use this one

-SSTC
-SSTC patch
-SSTC hotfix (install RAJ 1.3)
-RR 1.7