Two questions: settlements and archers

[Somerandomdude2]

1: Managing settlements.
Typically my focus is pretty heavily on growth and economy in the vast majority of my settlements. The only exception is a castle or three which focuses on military first and growth second. However, once my cities get big, I have a hard time keeping public order (and the first buildings I build are pretty much always public order boosting + I leave generals when at all possible).
I usually run my settlements with a low tax rate. Either to encourage growth, or to keep it's public order up above 100. Should I do this, or am I shooting myself in the foot by making my cities grow so much, often faster than I can build everything?
If that's not it, how do I solve this, or work with this?

2: Archers.
I normally like archers in games, and I'm generally pretty decent with archer tactics.... but I suck with these and pretty much only train archers for defending positions (I still like them on walls ), or if they're sitting on a horse.
Can they (without extreme circumstances) anhilate entire units; or are they, as they seem to be, only useful for softening up the enemy units a little?
Also, about the pinnacle of effectiveness of my archers so far has been those who engage in melee. This is the exact opposite of my thinking with archers so it took a while to figure it out, but most archers with skirmish mode turned off are semi-decent vs infantry if they shoot, then fight in melee. I can't be sure, but I think this might be a factor of their secondary weapons being more accurate than their arrows (or faster). Have I got this completely backwards?

Basically, despite my best efforts, running archer heavy armies around the place has proven pretty futile for me. They miss their targets, they shoot friendlies (or more often, are forced to stop firing entirely to avoid this).
Enlighten me on this one, please.

[Om noml]

On settlements: Generally, the bigger factors in city happiness are religion,law,population, gov chivalry. In most cases low taxes will benefit you in the end, because as long as you build wisely you should be able to keep order. If squalor is the trouble, I believe health is the antisqualor. I can't think of many examples at the moment, but I'll give you an example. Let's say you build a brothel to try to make your city happy. This will be effective in some cases, but lets say you have squalor problems. Now having a health bonus of some sort is of much greater use. Lastly, upgrading settlements strategically is important. Sometimes Durazzo can hold off a turn or two on a wooden palisade if Constantinople is a large city that should be a huge city.
Sorry if this isn't too helpful, it's hard to explain.

Archers
Firstly, if you aren't already use fire arrows. The slight difference in accuracy(?) is worth the morale damage caused to enemy units. If a unit loses 10 to 20 men to fire arrows, they're morale will be lowered unless they have very high morale. If you can then charge these shaken men from behind or the front and do enough casulties, generally you can force a rout.

Use ground archers as support units. An archer heavy army would have 6 or 7 archers and they would have heavy inf/cav to back up the archers.
HA are a whole 'nother story. It sounds like you know this.

Some of the higher up archers are pretty decent infantry, and you should get a modder or someone familiar with the EDB to help you with the accuracy factor.

Sorry if this is confusing. I'm tired >.>.

[PrestigeX]

As for the settlements, you shouldn't put them on low taxation unless you are very unpopular there, or you want to stimuate the growth rate. When you get them all on low taxation, and then they all need wall upgrades you most likely won't be able to upgrade them all for quite a while due to cost, and keeping a settlement with a big population and small walls always causes unrest so try to avoid "bitting off more than you can chew".
Keep a decent sized garrison in new settlements that have a lower public order for approximately 10 turns it will give you enough time to build something. If they are non-catholic, I wouldn't recommend building a church there until you've had the settlement for quite a while. If you are building the buildings with public order benefits then you are basically doing everything right.

Some settlements that are far from your capital, or of a different culture may require that you sack them before taking over. Otherwise, i wouldn't do anything other than occupy them.

Archers... they take a while to figure out in this game, but once you get the hang of their use you will master them. Some of the things that really help are... A - ALWAYS taking them off skirmish. Just retreat them manually, it saves a lot of headache in the long run because on skirmish mode they're always running away in disorder ... B - make sure that you lower your vision down to their level so you can see their line of sight, even though when zoomed out it may look like they're in a good position , zooming in closer you can often spot small things in their way. C - Do not use archers (all non crossbow troops) to shoot at DFKS, or simillarly heavy armor units... you won't be able to kill enough of them. Focus on the militia, spearmen, and all the "regular' style troops -- you will kill more of them, damage their morale more because of it, and so what if the 2 or 3 units of DFK's arrive with full numbers, with half their spearmen and militia gone they be surrounded and killed off in no time at all. D - sometimes putting them on Guard mode is important so that they keep in a proper position/formation and don't try to run down and chase the enemy to get in range. E - taking them off fire at will and manually selecting which units to fire at can help them conserve ammo, this isn't as important with crossbowmen since their slow reload means they virtually never run out of ammo, where as archers can easily run out.

[FootSoldier]

I think you're shooting yourself in the foot (though by inclination I would do the same). You're probably getting bad traits for your governors, too.

First, as you're thinking, it sounds to me like your cities are growing too quickly, and you can't keep up with the amenities. Based on "feel" I like to keep cities growing at around 2%. This gives you time to build most things before new walls are required. I mostly end up with mature cities with 40K to 50K population with green faces on normal taxes, and just a couple of garrison units.

Just to add to this, rightly or wrongly the game will penalize governors in low tax/high happiness settlements (Poor with taxes). Unfairly, this seems to apply to castles too, where you can't change the tax rate. To get "Good with Taxes" you need to run the population as discontent (blue face) with tax rate at Very High.

I careful with high taxes since it stops population growth. (I seem to get a lot of tax farmer ancillaries :d). I think the game design may be imbalanced here ...

You're also probably aware that the brothel series of buildings can afflict sedentary governors with a variety of undesirable traits and ancillaries. I've read you should get them to use up movement points each turn in a city with a brothel or better (although this counters other possible beneficiary traits and ancillaries. M2TW is so unfair sometimes :d)

[Somerandomdude2]

Thank you, kind sirs, for your advice.

[FootSoldier]

I've got a related archer question - does the range make a difference?

If you bring your archers up close to enemy lines do they make more kills? How about for muskets?

I know it makes a difference depending on height and angle, and that xbows and muskets need unrestricted lines of fire.

Also, does the level of experience make a difference to archer effectiveness. The missile attack value doesn't go up in the stats - but are they say, more accurate?

Mostly I use them to soften up enemy lines. If the the enemy has few or no archers I let them take their time - might even rest them. They seem able to completely wipe out enemy units in that situation.

In long battles where the archers are firing for extended periods, they (and the xbows) seem to easily get up to 60 - 100 kills. Sometimes more. Obviously peasant and militia archers are rubbish, and their effect is as much about lowering morale as the number of kills, but sometimes they surprise me. Mostly though I like to attack quickly, so the number of arrow kills is lower - in the 30's.

[Ishan]

@FootSoldier
Greater the range faster they come in contact with enemy meaning rounds they can fire.
Lesser the distance greater the accuracy they don't miss and more kills
& Yes experience increases accuracy.

[FootSoldier]

Wow, thanks Ishan. That's info I really wanted to know.

[painter]

I've just fully experienced the effect of a heavy thunderstorm can have on your archers. Took only a general and two units of retinue longbowmen to assault a three unit rebel stack (crossbowmen, sergeant spearmen and armoured sergeants). On a clear day, the two units of retinue longbowmen will easily decimate the enemy and cause a rout. During a thunderstorm, they only managed to kill 58% of them before running out of arrows. As a heavy user of archers, I'm not going to fight in a thunderstorm any more if I can help it.

[Jools_Jops]

I've just fully experienced the effect of a heavy thunderstorm can have on your archers. Took only a general and two units of retinue longbowmen to assault a three unit rebel stack (crossbowmen, sergeant spearmen and armoured sergeants). On a clear day, the two units of retinue longbowmen will easily decimate the enemy and cause a rout. During a thunderstorm, they only managed to kill 58% of them before running out of arrows. As a heavy user of archers, I'm not going to fight in a thunderstorm any more if I can help it.

i had absolutely no idea weather affected line of sight or whatever you want to call it. i thought it was just something to annoy the player by making it harder to see where everything is. i hate fog/rain almost as much as really dense forests where you cant see bugger all

[Ishan]

I've just fully experienced the effect of a heavy thunderstorm can have on your archers. Took only a general and two units of retinue longbowmen to assault a three unit rebel stack (crossbowmen, sergeant spearmen and armoured sergeants). On a clear day, the two units of retinue longbowmen will easily decimate the enemy and cause a rout. During a thunderstorm, they only managed to kill 58% of them before running out of arrows. As a heavy user of archers, I'm not going to fight in a thunderstorm any more if I can help it.

Fog has no effect on gameplay other than annoy our eyes.

However rain -vely affects the accuracies of units that use:-

• Arrows with or without flame.
• & Rockets.

Artillery is not affected by rain.

[Double A]

Or, to encourage growth, put a high chivalry governor in your city, and build farms. This will allow you to run taxes at very high while the people stay happy and the population keeps growing.

Very High taxes decrease Chivalry.

[Silverheart]

Does experience increase the accuracy of artillery units as well?

[Ishan]

Does experience increase the accuracy of artillery units as well?

Yes.

[Double A]

Solution one to public order: Don't build farms. Farms encourage growth, and people are dicks to each other. The more dicks you have in a settlement, the more unhappy everyone is. And everyone is counted as a dick.
Solution two to public order: do build farms. Except when your population gets out of control, make Ivan the Terrible the governor to scare people off and increase public order.

Archers... you need to put them on a hill if they're behind your troops, or at the least on a slope. Archers (especially crossbowmen) on the same level as your melee troops tend to kill more of your own guys than if they were above them. This goes doubly for siege machines, and gunners won't even fire unless they are above or in front of your guys.

If the enemy is lacking in the cavalry department (or if you've killed it all) you can put your archers in front of your guys for a volley or two, but I wouldn't suggest it. You'll have to move them anyway. Once the enemy is engaged in melee with your troops, a good strategy is to circle around with your archers and fire into their backs. Not only does this scare the out of them (use fire arrows for this) it does MASSIVE DAMAGE due to them not being protected by shields.

[tudor93]

Don't build farms. Farms encourage growth, and people are dicks to each other. The more dicks you have in a settlement, the more unhappy everyone is. And everyone is counted as a dick.

ahahaha

[shikaka]

Solution one to public order: Don't build farms. Farms encourage growth, and people are dicks to each other. The more dicks you have in a settlement, the more unhappy everyone is. And everyone is counted as a dick.
Solution two to public order: do build farms. Except when your population gets out of control, make Ivan the Terrible the governor to scare people off and increase public order.

That is what I wanted to say as well.

If you build only level 2 farms as a standard, and bigger farms only in cities close to my planned capital.


Also, if there are public order problems because of overpopulation, a chivalry-based general will only delay the outbrake of the problem (chivalry makes them happy for a while, but it also encourages growth!), so a dread general is better in this situation.

[FootSoldier]

Or, to encourage growth, put a high chivalry governor in your city, and build farms. This will allow you to run taxes at very high while the people stay happy and the population keeps growing.

[Jambat]

1- I usually don't have any difficulty with settlements. The governor (if it's big enough/important enough to have one) is always a Chiv Gov instead of Dread, I have tons of priests swarming everywhere keeping my Religion in total control of the areas, I always build the wall upgrades as soon as they pop to keep overpopulation down. I however keep a moderate to high tax rate on all cities, only dropping to low if a riot is approaching, and only long enough to build some sort of +Public Order building or move a character into it. If I find that a city is constantly losing order for what seems like no reason at all, that's usually a warning sign that enemies have moved spies into town. Moving my own in to root them out usually fixes it.

2 - Archers are great in my experience when used in mass formations to concentrate fire. I've run a bunch of 1 unit on 1 unit custom battles just to see how units stack up against each other, and ranged vs melee pretty much never take out the melee unit before getting charged and destroyed one on one. However, when I'm packing six-ish archer units and mass fire, I tend to tear their lines up and my melee just dominate with what is usually a high numbers advantage when they get there.

The big thing with archers is not to have any units in front of them when they fire (so they fire straight, semi-accurate shots vs the enemy, instead of lobbing it in their general direction), and if you are going to shoot into a melee, position them to the targets side or rear before the volley (wherever friendlies haven't lapped around) and they seem to increase the enemy vs friendly kill ratio by a decent amount.

[murder_mayhem]

and if you are going to shoot into a melee, position them to the targets side or rear before the volley (wherever friendlies haven't lapped around) and they seem to increase the enemy vs friendly kill ratio by a decent amount.

Yup, what I was gonna say, but if you can not get behind the enemy lines, position your archers on your left flank like so:
\
x\
0x\
000==========
x x x x x
note: 0 is for spacing, \ is archer, = is spear, x is shocktroops

only do this after the enemy is engaged and cant attack your archers, have a couple of shock troops (x) behind your archers (\) and behind your spearmen (=). This way when they go to engage your archers throw some axe murderers at them . I said the left flank as the enemy does not get a bonus from their shield if you attack their right, so their right is your left and so, use the left flank