Bowmen are not overpowered... (long text, want your opinion)

[Hunter168]

...they are only unbalanced...

Why? They annihilate some features of the game.

1st - the encourage-abillity of the general (That one where the general sit on a chair.)
If you use it close to your army, the enemy bowmen slaughter the general in seconds.
If you use it far away from the army the enemy flank him. That can be prevented by leaving 1-2 units back, but that weakens the front.

2nd - veteran units
The armor can only be increased by one point. Even a veteran that is on lvl 9 is as vulnurable to arrows like its lvl 0 pendant, but can cost 3-5times more than a simple bow unit. And... no lvl 9 veteran can cut fast enough trough another melee unit to reach the bowmen befor he is slaughtered by 3 bow-ashiguris. (Which cost less than the veteran.)

3rd - counter to bowmen
Most "heavy bowmen armies" have also massive yaris in it.
cavalry - no chance against the yaris
katana - could beat the yaris, but are slaughtered by the bowmen
naginata - more armor but need more time to beat the yaris -> in the end the same effect as katana
yari - much less effective than naginata/katana
monk bowmen - outrange themslightly, but cost 3times more than one ashiguri bowmen and have less men per unit -> not effective
flintlock units - heavily outranged by bowmen
artillery - enemy stay out of range or if he attack it can't take out enough bowmen
bowmen - they help to thin out the enemies bowmen and it relies on the rest of the army which side wins

In the end... If you have only a fair chance against a unit by using it by your own there is no balance.
Bowmen have to get a accuracy penalty against veterans and generals...
...or have to cost more.
...or have to consist of less men per unit.
...or have less reload speed.
...or have no homing effect AND do friendly damage to their own army.
...or have a unit-cap of 4 bowmen units per army.

The last 2 solutions are my favorites.
The "no homing+friendly fire" will prevent the player to have automatically an advantage. If his bowmen are behind his own troops he will fire in their back or fire at high angle (less accuracy and still friendly fire). If he move so he can shoot in the back of your unit the bowmen are vulnurable to other of your units.
The "unit-cap" will encourage the players to use veteran bowmen instead of 5 or more lvl 0 bow-ashiguris and in higher levels (more starting money) it will prevent from "heavy bowmen armies".
So it is ensured that bowmen are taking their role as support-unit and not as "allround-killing-everything"-units.

What do you think?

[amore555]

I think they are fine, just the AI needs a tweak to stop spamming them. Archers are by rights deadly soldiers, and have been centuries.

[Daneboy]

I agree. The game has a slight problem with archer heavy armies. A good way to go about it would be to increase the ashigaru archers reloading time.

That way an army of 5 or more archer units will no longer be unbeatable.

[StormtrooperDan]

The archer section of the enemy army usually does not do enough damage to your melee army if you just charge in. Make sure you have skirmishers or heavy armor in the front line to take the brunt of the arrows before your main melee line moves into the kill zone.

Your skirmishers can be your own archer or ashigaru in loose formation, and the heavy armor is usually Naginata Samurai with their base 9 armor. Somebody posted a thread that Naginata Samurai will only lose 1-2 guys per volley from an archer unit, while an ashigaru may lose like 20.

You can also use your cavalry to cause the bowmen to prematurely skirmish back, saving your main infantry from fire.

The counter to Bowmen are cavalry and melee units. You just need to make sure to take minimal damage while crossing the range of the bowmen.

[nameless]

The archer section of the enemy army usually does not do enough damage to your melee army if you just charge in. Make sure you have skirmishers or heavy armor in the front line to take the brunt of the arrows before your main melee line moves into the kill zone.

Your skirmishers can be your own archer or ashigaru in loose formation, and the heavy armor is usually Naginata Samurai with their base 9 armor. Somebody posted a thread that Naginata Samurai will only lose 1-2 guys per volley from an archer unit, while an ashigaru may lose like 20.

You can also use your cavalry to cause the bowmen to prematurely skirmish back, saving your main infantry from fire.

The counter to Bowmen are cavalry and melee units. You just need to make sure to take minimal damage while crossing the range of the bowmen.

What he said.

I use mainly Naginata heavy armies with 6 bowmen to support. I keep them in loose formation and just right before charging home I set them to standard formation to engage.

Though I still say they're OP.

IMO this is what they should do.

I'd say leave the archers allow as they are.

However, reduce arrows' effectiveness against heavily armored units. Therefore, the higher the armor rating, the more resistant they are to arrows. Even with the Naginata's 9 armor rating they still fall like flies to arrow volleys.

This would boost the Naginata's role (which is a jack of all trades and doesn't excel at any role) in dealing with heavy archer armies and allow the player to "punish" those who rely such so. Because even against heavily archer armies I still take heavy casualities. The AI is very good in directing the shots.

This would make armor more important in that the more armored a unit is, the arrows will be much less effective.

This would also make Matchlocks seem more important as they themselves ignore armor and give them a much better role.

[da_bradler]

put matchlock ashigaru in loose formation on advance, they are cheap and either they draw the archer fire or they are free to shoot at the front line. rush in afterwards with melee no dachi my favorite since they kill quickly, then try and work the flanks and rear with cav.

I haven't faced it too often though, without cav supremecy it could be a real disaster.

[OTZ]

I haven't had problems facing the AI's archer spam. You can counter them, and win without too much difficulty. The unit speeds decerease their impact. All you need to do is disrupt an archer formation in order to gain an advantage over them. Light Cav, or your General do the trick just fine IMO. You don't need to rout or destroy them outright - just mess them up a bit, make them lose their composure. It works every time (unless you're facing hordes of monk bowmen, then you may as well grab Yo Daim ankles!)

[snuggans]

Bowmen have to get a accuracy penalty against veterans and generals

this is a terrible idea, i'm sorry.

experience does not give you the ability to telepathically deviate arrows, or is this for a Star Wars mod?

[braydog92]

...or have no homing effect AND do friendly damage to their own army.
...or have a unit-cap of 4 bowmen units per army.

I thought they did have friendly fire.
And no.

Other than that, this argument is well thought out. I however, disagree and I like bowmen the way they are.

[Kazang]

Arrows already do friendly fire so I don't know what are talking about with wanting that added.

[Dubh the dark]

I agree with the general premise that the archers aren't overpowered, but the lock-on the arrows have is ridiculous. Wile I enjoy watching a spear unit cut to ribbons with each man in the enemy unit getting three or four free arrows of their own it is a bit much, that my common bowmen can't miss.

[Hunter168]

"I haven't had problems facing the AI's archer spam."
Don't feel offended, but I talk about the multiplayer. AI and real human is very different.

"Arrows already do friendly fire so I don't know what are talking about with wanting that added."
Maybe there is friendly fire for bowmen, but with homing arrows that don't make much difference. If there is a skirmish there have to be much more arrows landing into both units. You see it if the general has only 2-3 men left and the bowmen shoot at him. There is no area where the arrows hit, all bowmen shoot exactly at the 2-3 persons.

"this is a terrible idea, i'm sorry. experience does not give you the ability to telepathically deviate arrows, or is this for a Star Wars mod?"
Star Wars mod? Maybe the arrows with their little infrared-camera and lock-on-cpu in their arrowheads are from a Star Wars mod. And yes, experianced units should get a bonus against arrows. The matchlock units are for taking down strong units not the bowmen.

[Aeon221]

Slightly lower accuracy would basically handle this just as well without massive, gamebreaking changes like nuking reload on ashi archers, making them worthless.

Anyway, if you're just freaking standing there while archers pound you, you deserve to die.

How you can deal:

Charge, engage all their inf with your inf, flank with your leftover inf and cav -- if they're bow heavy, you have more inf and can do this while maintaining parity or superiority on line. Works great on AI, I do it all the time.

Fake being a couple units down through hiding in cover (only works against humans). I once beat a dude who had archer superiority by hiding two units of light cav in some trees and then retreating most of my dudes into a different set of trees further away after the initial skirmish. He moved close enough that I could charge safely, so I rammed his spears with my spears and dusted his archers with the cav he didn't expect because they had been hidden the whole match (and thus had no spears free to counter).



I had another battle where a dude swarmed me with loan ashis and I made the mistake of engaging on an island where flanking wasn't possible, because I was scared he'd win if he held the building. Sure, I killed way more dudes but he just freaking overran my position. I lost because I played like a moron, when I'd have probably won if I had sat on the coast near where he was and slaughtered him while his men tried to push over with my archers, then flanked with my cav while my spears held firm. I've won other games where I've charged light cavalry into nodachis to keep them engaged away from the main line, rather than hitting enemy archers. Basically a sacrifice play that was totally critical to my victory, as he himself said. Another battle I won by slowly walking a pair of loan ashis through trees until they were right behind the enemy, then charging with them right into his general and archers before moving my main line up and locking the battle line in place.

So, in other words, archers aren't overpowered, brains are. Use yours and win, or do the same thing every time and lose.

[homefry]

the only reason why bows appear stronger is because the walk/run speed has been dramatically increased. in order to balance the quick run speed, they had to buff archers.

[nameless]

Just did a quick test on a 1v1 between katana/naginata vs. bow Ashigaru.

Note: I was the bow, the AI was the Katana/Naginata. No upgrades.

Right before the Katana closes the distance they were down to at least 83 units.

Right before the Naginata closed the distance they were down to about 100 units.

So yeah armor does make a huge difference in regards to the bow.

Though I still say they're OP but it maybe because it looks that way and the AI DOES field armies with tons of archers at times.

So I guess if you use Katanas as your main you can boost their armor from 5 to 10 (2+3 from armor and smith) or with Naginata from 9 to 14.