Horse Archers

[Sardaukar One]

I'm playing an Epirote campaign.
I'm going to wrap it up soon. I have all of Italy, Sicily and Corsica, Carthage and the surrounding territories; everything from Italy to the Black Sea south of the Danube, Asia Minor, Crete, Cyprus and Rhodes.
I've just taken three cities from the Bosphorus from the Samartians.
They besieged one of my cities and I sallied forth.
My army consisted of two family members, two units of Rhodian slingers, four units of Cretan archers and eleven units of pikemen.
I moved my army out of the city, and deployed my missile troops behind the eleven phalanx units.
The enemy was all cavalry, with about ten units of HA's with the rest being cataphracts and family members.
All of my phalanx units got chewed up. I mean decimated. Each pike unit suffered 80% casualties or higher.
I don't have a problem taking casualties in this scenario. I expected it. But the Sarmartian HA's did way too much damage. If they flanked my pikemen, that would be one thing. But they stood right in front of them and mowed my pikemen down. And they still had enough arrows left to go on peppering those units not routing. My missile troops did some damage, but nowhere near enough.
To me, something here is very wrong. The Sarmartian HAs are world beaters.
They have better armor than my pikemen? Hows that possible?
I don't know enough about the Sarmartians, but this seems a little out of whack to me.

Anyway, I'm just going to see if they siege me and try to storm the city. I ought to be able to get em in the city streets. So goes the plan. I'm not sure how else I can take em down right now.

Typically, I try to get HA armies to attack me. With my army on a mountain top or something.
I take casualties, but nothing like this.

Opinions?

[Quinn Inuit]

??? There is no way normal HA should have that much armour. That's bizarre. What's even more bizarre is that error appears to be several _years_ old and nobody's noticed.

I'll issue a hotfix later today or tomorrow. They should have no armour and 10 defense.

[Caesar Augustus]

Will the hotfix be savegame compatible? I've literally just started a campaign.

[Carados]

I've noticed
It's all sorted for 4.0
Obviously that's a while off though

[Sardaukar One]

Thats all great, but should they be able to machine gun my phalanx to death?

Should not the Cretans be the best archers in the game?

[Quinn Inuit]

Oh, good, I'm glad you caught that, Carados.

The hotfix will just be stat-related, so definitely save-game compatible.

The Cretans should be the best archers in Europe, but I think the Sarmatians and Parthians would have matched them in range and skill.

[Sardaukar One]

I don't know about that. You can surely shoot an arrow further standing than you can from horseback.
More accurate re range too.

[Carados]

Heh. I had to go back and forth so many times to get the "right" stats for them. I think the problem is that the Sarmartians have had a horrible economy and in versions past just couldn't compete at all, hence, someone decided to give them much better stats than they deserve to compensate. At the moment however, the Sarmartians actually fare pretty good with regards to cash and can actually afford some decent armies. However, the stats haven't changed, and so they are actually stupidly powerful. Ah yes! Something else we have to take into account, and something I think some of us won't notice straight away. The size of the units are much bigger than "civilised" equivalents. They aren't that much stronger in terms of individual damage output, but with an ~extra 20% more men, they are 20% more powerful simply due to the number of arrows they can shoot at any one time.

An example for the armour... (going from memory here)
The nobles (not the "cataphracts"?) have an armour equal to the armenian/parthian cataphracts. This is despite the complete lack of armour in comparison!
You probably won't, but just in case, you shouldn't use my revised stats for them because then there would be a discrepency relative to all the other units in the current version.

Oh, by the way. I remember reading somewhere about the mechanics and that the power of a missile actually decreases the further it has to travel to reach the target.

[Sardaukar One]

Oh, by the way. I remember reading somewhere about the mechanics and that the power of a missile actually decreases the further it has to travel to reach the target.

Not disputing that. Its just a hard sell to say that someone on horseback is going to be able to hit a target from distance as accurately as someone standing. I would imagine the power from horseback would be a bit less from distance too.

The Sarmartian HA's also have a larger reserve of arrows. I've reduced that to the same as the other HA's.
I also gave them 0 for armor.
I reduced the number of men from 32 to 24. It doesn't effect current units. Will that effect units the AI recruits later on in the campaign?

Who needs Praetorians when you have armored Sarmartian HA's armed with Tommy Guns?

[Carados]

It was actually a statement in "reply" to short/long ranges in another thread from a while ago. Either way, I have had some experiences of how lethal these Sarmatians are at the moment so I'm all for these changes.

As for shooting from horseback as opposed to on foot I think you have a point. You certainly have more flexibility with movement on foot so can draw the string back further. The advantage of being mounted is, naturally, mobility.

[Quinn Inuit]

Here's the new 3.5.3c hotfix:
http://uploaded.to/file/7r61o9
http://rapidshare.com/files/35496846....3c_hotfix.rar

For the record, changes to the size of units will only affect units recruited after the change. Stat changes take effect immediately.

[Caligula Caesar]

If you have enough practice, I'm sure you would be able to hit your target... but horsebows were generally smaller and used when closer. What's the point in riding on a horse otherwise?

[Quinn Inuit]

I even read somewhere that the kontos was developed partly to stab horse archers who got too close...probably trying to shoot through the face holes on the armour of the slower cataphracts. Not sure that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me. And the best reconstruction I've seen of the events at the Battle of the Jaxartes indicates that the HA were within javelin range of the main body of Alexander's troops.

[Sardaukar One]

The only two files that have been changed are the descr_model_battle and the export_descr_unit file?

Copy both of these over the corresponding files and i'm all good presumably?

[Quinn Inuit]

Yep. The former is actually a different fix from the previous hotfix, so if you'd installed that you may not even need to bother.

[Sardaukar One]

For some reason, the files aren't compatible with the game. It wouldn't start.

From what I can tell, you basically just changed the stats for the HAs?
I agree that the range should certainly be not as much as that of regular archers, but they surely shouldn't be that greatly reduced?
Just a query.

[Carados]

Hmmm.
I should probably reverse the ranges of thrown weapons then. They seemed to behave when I had a couple of tests. What this basically means is unarmoured infantry throw it to 45 with armoured to 40. Unarmoured cavalry throw it to 40, and armoured ones to 35 (I think... I might've knocked another 5 on top of all that already).

What range do you reckon horse archers should have?

I think slingers are currently 100-120. With archers ~80ish

[Quinn Inuit]

If you have any trouble with AI behavior (charging instead of throwing or shooting), let me know.

I would lower HA to 10 below the comparable infantry unit.

S1: All I did was lower the Sarm. HA armour to 0 and increase their defense to 10 (search for "horse archer" in the file to find all the relevant units--you'll actually need to change a couple). I really can't figure out why it won't start for you, though. I change those files mid-game all the time (the patch only includes the DMB and EDU).

[Sardaukar One]

I think that slingers ought to outrange HA's. Certainly the elite units should. But not by that much.

I just reduced the Sarmartian HA's armour rating to 0, and put their defence skill to 10.
A bit more realistic now.
They still kinda do a lot of damage to my phalanx from the front. But i'm able to mow them down much better. I'm fine with it.
I'm shipping units across the Black Sea d time though.

[Quinn Inuit]

Elite slingers vs. recurve bows? That's a tough one. I'm not sure.

My problem is that I have trouble reconciling the Battle of the Jaxartes (where Alexander has good luck deploying javelin-armed units against HA) and the fact that a lot of the horse archers of the period had recurve bows.

btw, I recommend shipping over as many Cretans and Rhodians as you can, especially the former. They'll hold up well against the HA.