Archers have really been nerfed throughout the TW series huh?

[eugenioso]

another thread reminded me of this. but it seems that archers have been nerfed unintentionally throughout the series.

in Shogun/mtw, the archers rocked. they didnt really have a lot of range, save if they were firing from a hill, but the arrow trajectory and the firing animation made them do realistic damage to the enemy. the Longbowmen in that game, when properly supported and in a suitable position, could absolutely rape the enemy forces. the bowfire went in an arc rather than as a mortar, aiming directly at the enemy. and everyone fired like that, not only some units. the higher tier archers simply rocked, with longer range and high damage arrows. even then, if only a few enemy units made it to melee your archers were pretty fkd. archer armies were simply not possible.

then came RTW, and the archers remained a strong force. they still had arched fire so they still caused lots of casualties. you could even play with the firing animation to a certain extent (in a LOTR mod, the numenorean archers could fire by waves instead of all at once, like in the movie). also, they were far more difficult to make and build at first. it would take at least 30 turns before a decent archer unit could be created.

then came MTW2, and the cycle was broken. the archers became mere shadows of their former selves. the archer animation was, and in my opinion still is, broken. archers on walls in RTW? they all fired constantly, with a huge range bonus. in MTW2? they fire sporadically, the second and third/4th, all ranks behind the first barely fire. they fire in the most retarded ways possible, insuring a low kill count. they COULD fire directly at the enemy, but NOOOO! lets fire straight up into the air, killing our own men in the process. friendly fire wasnt an issue in past TW games, but here, oh boy. the archers will go out of their way to fire in the lowest possible arches ever, making sure that the men who are making sure they dont die get shot in the back. many, many times.

all of this of course because MTW2 was rushed to the market and the devs never managed to fix the archer animations. its just plain stupid.

[SonofaBooyah]

Not really, it was only M2TW, and that was because Crossbows were taking over during the period. The animations on the walls were still terrible though. On all other TW games they've been fine for me.

[Garriath]

Odd. I remember being rather underwhelmed by archer performance in the original Shogun. They did a nice job of annoying the enemy and picking a few off, and they were handy for outmaneuvering the enemy, but I never found them especially effective, while here in TATW, if you play games as the high or silvan elves, you can often win massive battles with barely a casualty because of how strong your archers are...

[Holy Harry]

I'd say good archer units in M2TW like longbowmen are still pretty epic, and especially in TATW with elves and such. I agree that archers on the wall are retarded and they love to shoot your own units in the back or rain arrows down from the sky on them as they decide they can't just fire a lower trajectory, particularly on the wall. And crossbows firing into the sky like that... where did they get that? Its utter rubbish. I find archers are still very effective across the TW series, but they REALLY messed up the trajectorys on M2TW.

[paradamed]

It is just such a simple thing to improve the archer stats it shouldnt even be complained about. Besides this dont belong to the TATW forum.

[Liamar]

The archers retarded behavior on the walls is not the only frustrating thing about this game. (And I'll complain about it here because TATW for me is a stand-alone masterpiece and I don't at all care about vanilla.)

The worst thing for me is the mechanics of cavalry. One charge is powerfull and devastates entire enemy unit, another, for some, unknown reason stops in front of enemy and turns into mele...
But the worst thing is when I send my cavalry against enemy archers in spread-out ranks in particular... In charge they only kill 3-5 of them, and then go into mele getting OWNED by freakking SNAGAS. They should slaughter them without one casualty. It's just so infuriating I can't stand the stupidity of it.

In fact, can I disable AI from ever sending their units in the spread-out ranks formation?

[muller227]

Archers on walls is easy though a bit time consuming to in battle layout, first put an infantry unit longest formation, then deploy archers behind them long formation. Then remove infantry unit, archers historically destroyed light formations, and did well against Cavalry until full barding, Heavy shielded infantry were largely immune to them, unless they did something stupid like adopt Testudo in which case Heavy Horse would eff them up. Crassus found that out, as did the early Generals who faced the Huns.

[Dwarven Berserker]

Archers on walls is easy though a bit time consuming to in battle layout, first put an infantry unit longest formation, then deploy archers behind them long formation. Then remove infantry unit, archers historically destroyed light formations, and did well against Cavalry until full barding, Heavy shielded infantry were largely immune to them, unless they did something stupid like adopt Testudo in which case Heavy Horse would eff them up. Crassus found that out, as did the early Generals who faced the Huns.

Testudo was still usefull for besieging cities, though. It wasn't used very much in open fields, and as you said, Crassus found out why But when you're besieging it gives quite a big advantage over your opponent, as you don't have to worry about horses (at least in most cases) and the only things that can really do something about a testudo would be either horses, boiling oil, and people tossing really big rocks at you (Using catapults and stuff like that(or Hulks ))

Anyways I agree with the archers on walls being sort of glitched out. I usually deploy them as spread out as possible on the walls to get most of them to fire straight. But besides sieges, it has never really annoyed me much.

[Conqistador]

Playin' as Eriador once, i got a half stack of archers, some generals' cavalry and the rest were infantry. The archers were in majority militias, some "hobbit wearing blue coats" and a unit of dunedáin rangers. Battling with the Carn-Dûm garrison script army and another stack, the archers took more than half of all the enemy forces. The thing with archers is that their effectiveness varies depending on the type of archer, type of troop they are attacking and the situation they are being used, this can be the difference between an inutile force and a killing machine. In my case, even against the heavily-armoured uruk-hai from Isengard, the archers worked quite well, taking down considerable part of the enemy army.

[Sitalkes]

Shouldn't this thread be on the TATW forum? If anything, archers are too effective and there is nothing to complain about. They can absolutely be relied upon to cause serious damage to their opponent and longbowmen can rout their opponents before they even get into contact. I haven't had to defend a city yet (best form of defence is attack) so I didn't know there was any problem with them on the walls. I have suffered myriads of casualties from archers shooting at me from city walls so I don't think there's anything to complain about there, either.

[Sar1n]

Archers are sometimes retarded in choosing a high trajectory in weird situations, but they're still powerful. I once had halfstack of top longbowmen, facing the halfstack of rebel troops, from crossbowmen and pikemen to knights and men-at-arms. Took them all out with only ten dead longbowmen. Another case, six units of longbowmen sallied from castle against twice the number of enemies sieging it, took them all down with little casualities.

So yea, they're still powerful, I found longbowmen most useful and practical of all ranged units of M2TW, including gunpowder ones.

[Double A]

Horse archers were better in Rome. Pretty much everything was better in Rome. This was done to make battles longer and more challenging I 'spose.

[Maklodes]

Horse archers were better in Rome. Pretty much everything was better in Rome. This was done to make battles longer and more challenging I 'spose.

How can everything be better? Aren't units' strengths measured in comparison to other units?

[lolIsuck]

Strange that I rely more on archers here then in RTW. Most RTW archers didn't do a lot of damage what I remember, lower tier in M2TW is crap too but the higher tier archers are very powerful.

If you want really powerful archers play the Elves in TATW and every argument of "archers are too weak" is invalid.

[Ferdiad]

Strange that I rely more on archers here then in RTW. Most RTW archers didn't do a lot of damage what I remember, lower tier in M2TW is crap too but the higher tier archers are very powerful.

If you want really powerful archers play the Elves in TATW and every argument of "archers are too weak" is invalid.

Are you serious? Archers in RTW were massively OP, especially the Cretans. M2TW don't even compare.

[The Despondent Mind]

Archers are retarded on the walls , they are retarded in the city , actually all units in MTW2 are retarded in siege's .And sometimes in normal battles.
I'm finding less and less reasons to use archers or crossbowmen to defend cities , they are useless they barely make any kind of damage . Infantry spam is the best way for me .

Then the issue with crossbowmen and balistas , i mean shouldn't they prepare they projectiles before firing , especially crossbowmen when being hiden after all you hide so you can surprises your enemy and attack him in a instant but no in MTW2 crossbowmen first loose they cover then they load ( which takes aeons ) and then they fire .
Balistas also have they same annoyance , instead for preparing the first projectile before firing , no they have to reload because it's totally surprising that they would actually use the balista in the battle .

[Double A]

Ok, peasants and half of the militia units were a lot worse. Happy now?

RTW's units are more diverse, and I'm actually comparing them to M2's units. They tend to have less armor, except for the Romans, who also have freakin' pillum. Hopolites were leagues better than spearmen, archers shot faster, horse archers were faster and had higher attack/rate of fire (the best ones broke the game), 2handers weren't as buggy and had better attack and typically AP axes (although usually less armor, but they're offensive so who cares), and most importantly, cataphracts, chariots, and especially elephants were the sex.

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

Archers were always effective, so long as you kept them on the enemies flanks/rear to avoid the shield bonus, and protected them with cavalry.

I'm suprised to see that ETW archers haven't been mentioned. If you march them up real close, they can beat line infantry easily due to their superior reload.

[MDCCLXXVI]

I agree..

Even from my first battle on M2TW, I could tell it was nerfed. Seeing those arrows deflect straight up into the air = broken.

Retinue Longbowmen vs. Forester Warband?

Forester warband, every day of the week no contest.

[Aeratus]

But the archers in RTW were really expensive. When cost is taken into account, the elite archers in RTW were very underpowered. That's why no Roman player used Archer Auxillia in online battles.

The Forester Warband was even more expensive than the Cataphract. Surely, I'd rather take the Cataphract over the Forester Warband, especially since cavalry was so overpowered in RTW.

In contrast, in M2, retinue longbowmen is only 2/3 the cost of the Qapukulu.