Archers useless in XGM?

**yiplong** · October 21, 2009, 01:21 PM

I fought a defense battle against a huge army of barbarians (who seems to be most vulnerable to arrows due to lack of shields and low armor). Guess what, my 8 archers (80x8 = 640 solders) killed a total of 20 enemies. I also tried having 4 archers shooting at a Roman legion unit. They killed a total of 2 enemy soldiers.

I know that cavalries and archers are nerfed in XGM, but the creators of the mod seem to have overdone it. While horses are still good in flanking and chasing down routing enemies archers are now completely useless.

**DimeBagHo** · October 21, 2009, 01:49 PM

Do you mean 2 kills in one volley, or by the time their ammo ran out? If you play with 2hp the initial effects can be a bit misleading. The arrows are still doing damage (at about the same rate as in vanilla RTW) but they don't kill many men right away because they only do 1hp of damage with each hit.

**yiplong** · October 21, 2009, 01:56 PM

Originally Posted by DimeBagHo

Do you mean 2 kills in one volley, or by the time their ammo ran out? If you play with 2hp the initial effects can be a bit misleading. The arrows are still doing damage (at about the same rate as in vanilla RTW) but they don't kill many men right away because they only do 1hp of damage with each hit.

2 kills until the archers were left with half the ammo. Then the Roman charged at my line so I had them killed with my infantry. I was playing with 1hp though. It seems as if the arrows just bounce off the armor and doesn't hurt much.

**Dog Fart** · October 21, 2009, 02:55 PM

That's the whole purpose of armor.

**yiplong** · October 21, 2009, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by Soviet Thracian

That's the whole purpose of armor.

I understand the effect of armor. However, my point is that units in XGM have generally higher defense value, but the attack value of archers have seen no increase. The result is that archers are generally ineffective. Some elite archers might have been overpowered in vanilla RTW, but I don't see how it is necessary to render the archers useless in XGM.

**Total Roach** · October 21, 2009, 04:40 PM

Originally Posted by yiplong

I understand the effect of armor. However, my point is that units in XGM have generally higher defense value, but the attack value of archers have seen no increase. The result is that archers are generally ineffective. Some elite archers might have been overpowered in vanilla RTW, but I don't see how it is necessary to render the archers useless in XGM.

I also play with 1HP and yes the Romans are difficult to kill with your archers. It does depend how many you have of course and of what quality they are. Get them gold weapons and armour and at least 1 silver chevron and you will start to notice a difference. Also any height advantage you can get for your archers makes a difference.

Like I said, experience and upgrades help a lot:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**Scutarii** · October 21, 2009, 05:17 PM

Archers suck vs. Rome. Don't use 'em, stick with AP javelins (jav cav are great) and slingers.

I seriously doubt the barbarian thing. 20 kills for eight units? Mine would do more than that per volley. It also helps to manually fire your archers to the least armored units, but still on ones that are useful (gallic swords, falxes, blah). With 1 HP archers certainly don't suck, they do get a little undervalued as the game goes on and more armoured units come into play (and Rome gets bigger

) but they are still very useful.

**DimeBagHo** · October 22, 2009, 01:19 AM

If you play with 1hp then archers in XGM are pretty much the same as in vanilla.

Defense values in XGM are much higher than vanilla, but defense makes no difference to ranged attacks. The relevant stats in XGM (shield, armour, and attack) are all fairly close to the vanilla values.

**Boriak** · October 22, 2009, 03:24 AM

Archers work fine for me, even against the Romans. Of course, I use the 1hp setting...

**Diomede** · October 22, 2009, 09:31 AM

I'm a 1hper too. The majority of my game-play happens after midnight while killing time between work and hockey (colorado ftw!) so I like the swiftness of the battles. I find the most effective aspect of archers to be their panic-inducing fire. They've won my battles for me as Epirus before the main battle lines even clashed against Romans. Of course, that can be a little disappointing at times...

**The Hedge Knight** · October 22, 2009, 11:06 AM

I tried 2 hp, the only reason it was better was that it turns your spartans into super super men rather than just super men.

Reinstall Go with 1 hp, your campain won't be deleted (i think, but to be on the safe side navigate too C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\xgm\saves and make a copy of you campain save in your documents, archers will work pretty well then, its a two way thing though...

**Celt Centurion** · October 24, 2009, 12:36 PM

Is it possible that these archers are having low kill rates when they are newly mustered? I've noticed that with experience comes greater accuracy.

On a side note, I'm presently in a campaign where I use forts to accumulate armies to go to the next conquest. I place on average three units of onagers in each fort before anything else, usually the same onagers I just used to knock a hole in a wall with but sometimes newly built.

Defensively from inside a fort, onagers are proving their worth. I have a trio up in Germania with two and three silver chevrons which are knocking down full stacks by 60%. Last night, during a transition, I had four groups of onagers inside a fort, one with no experience at all. The Germans besieged with a full stack. I lined up my onagers and started firing. The Germans moved toward a "corner" where I had a hard time placing the onagers so that they were not in each other's way.

So I sent the inexperienced one to the side and turned it "off." The other three pounced until they were out of ammunition. Then, I moved them to the town square and sent the "inexperienced" group to fire. They fired one volley and two "lucky" hits killed about twenty men. They continued firing and the entire besieging army headed for the hills leaving 64% casualties.

Experience does help.

**magraev** · October 26, 2009, 02:48 AM

I like the 2hp system myself. Battlelines actually stay fairly static for at least a little while with this system, and I like that. Archers aren't decicive battle-winners by them selves in XGM, but I find that they can do a good job softening up the enemy before the infantry or cavalry finishes the job - probably reducing many of them to 1 hp and lowering their morale before the lines clash. If you can shoot at unshielded men or from the right or back you can kill quite a bit with archers though. Temples that boost missile-weapons help a lot as mentioned above.

I've doubled all ammo-capability for the archers on my game to compensate for the 2hp system, but often they won't get a chance to use it all. Good when facing horse-archers though.