Archers????

[joeblow1]

Hello!

First off, congratulations on an awesome mod (newbie for this mod, veteran for Total War). It is one of the best I've seen.

At any rate, i've started a few campaigns. It seems (for me at least) that archers of all kinds (horse, foot, etc.) have proven totally useless. Even crossbowmen (Jerusalem, Turks, etc). It makes it difficult for the factions which start with many horse archer units, because it is quite hard to take cities when you can't kill anything. I have looked at unit stats at the end of many battles, and a whole stack of mostly archers (foot, horse, whatever) will kill almost nothing, even sitting there firing at stuff for the entire length of the battle until they are out of arrows. Note that I'm chiefly talking about taking cities here, since that is what one must do as swiftly as possible at the start of any campaign. Perhaps I'd have better success with archers if I wasn't attacking cities, but I'm not at the point yet in any campaign where I'm fighting battles out in the open.

My question is whether I am doing something wrong, and if so, what is the solution (are archers just totally ineffective firing into cities? are there large defensive bonuses for units in cities?) If I'm not doing something wrong, then what is the recommendation... to just disband starting archers of all types and raise foot troops?

Any help is appreciated, and again, congrats on a great mod. I'm definitely looking forward to version 3.

Thanks.

[k/t]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=557675

[joeblow1]

Thanks - read the post.

We share some concerns, but there are differences. For instance, he complained that all archers have the same arrow attack across the board. I take no position on that. He complained that his archers can't kill heavily armored units. I actually AGREE that archers shouldn't be able to kill heavily armored units (at least not easily), otherwise what good is armor and shield? But by the same token, what good is a bow and arrow if it can't kill anything?

My issue is that I can literally kill NOTHING, NOTHING with archers. I mean a full stack of horse archers firing at lightly or nominally armored units will kill 5 or 6 guys.

Initially I had assumed that perhaps units sitting in a city had incredibly high defense ratios or something like that. But after reading that post, it seems that the issue exists no matter where the units are.

I wouldn't necessarily have a big problem with it if archers were considered 'minor' or 'joke' units, but there are powerful factions (mongols, etc) built around horse archers. How were these factions so powerful if their main military units couldn't kill anything? Why are there so many horse archer units depicted in the game - many in prominent roles like cataphract archers - if they are by design supposed to be 'crap' units?

So what's the solution? What's standard for folks playing horse archer factions? Just disband starting horse archer units, don't build any of them in game, and focus on building infantry?

[Mamertine]

Thanks - read the post.

We share some concerns, but there are differences. For instance, he complained that all archers have the same arrow attack across the board. I take no position on that. He complained that his archers can't kill heavily armored units. I actually AGREE that archers shouldn't be able to kill heavily armored units (at least not easily), otherwise what good is armor and shield? But by the same token, what good is a bow and arrow if it can't kill anything?

My issue is that I can literally kill NOTHING, NOTHING with archers. I mean a full stack of horse archers firing at lightly or nominally armored units will kill 5 or 6 guys.

Initially I had assumed that perhaps units sitting in a city had incredibly high defense ratios or something like that. But after reading that post, it seems that the issue exists no matter where the units are.

I wouldn't necessarily have a big problem with it if archers were considered 'minor' or 'joke' units, but there are powerful factions (mongols, etc) built around horse archers. How were these factions so powerful if their main military units couldn't kill anything? Why are there so many horse archer units depicted in the game - many in prominent roles like cataphract archers - if they are by design supposed to be 'crap' units?

So what's the solution? What's standard for folks playing horse archer factions? Just disband starting horse archer units, don't build any of them in game, and focus on building infantry?

The trick is to skirmish and retreat. When I played as KoJ I always had a half stack of turk horse archers attacking my enemies on their land. A half stack can kill up to 5 enemy units, more or less. Use 1 unit to distract a unit and follow you, have two of your units circle behind and fire. This can be done against almost any unit, except super strong cav and light lancers. Casualties for me were almost always 0.

This technique is used best to pick off those couple of units going to meet up with a larger stack or defending a border. Also on the strat map they can be used to kite a stack away from a city you want to siege and you will never get caught unless you corner yourself.

As a main horse archer faction you will have full armies of just horse archers. Use them to attack armies and when you run out of arrows retreat (white flag) from the battle entirely, take the "loss" and do it again. It is not that hard, but you do have to micro manage, which is why I like standing armies with the ability to recruit horse archers. This is historically accurate, btw. It is called the feigned retreat.

But the common thought here is that foot archers are virtually useless, which I sort of agree. Like most I edit the amount of arrows they have, but I usually have one or two in a stack. Foot archer are great for kiting a unit, much better than horse archers. Enemy units will stop giving chase and regroup when the horse archers run away because they can't be caught. And crossbowmen are very important when storming a city and there is a unit or three of heavy cavalry sitting in the town center. Line them up in the road and fire away when they are line of sight. Make sure that there are some spearmen behind the crossbowmen, though, or you'll lose them fast.

People playing BC need to understand that horse archers are not, nor ever were, used for direct fighting like what was the norm in Europe. It's all feigned attacks, skirmishes, and ambushes. This is a nice change of pace and fun.

Also, BC is much more realistic than Vanilla or most other mods when representing horse archers. You can be Russia and destroy whole stacks with Dvor Cavalry in Vanilla, not the case here or in RL. Thinking about being the Seljuks of Rum next game, they seem fun and challenging.

[joeblow1]

As a main horse archer faction you will have full armies of just horse archers. Use them to attack armies and when you run out of arrows retreat (white flag) from the battle entirely, take the "loss" and do it again.

Already tried it, but a full stack of horse archers will literally only kill 5 or 6 guys (not 5 or 6 UNITS, 5 or 6 GUYS in a unit) after firing at them for 30 minutes. I just don't want to take 50 turns retreating and coming back again just to take 1 city, it's ridiculous and I don't have the patience for that kind of thing.

People playing BC need to understand that horse archers are not, nor ever were, used for direct fighting like what was the norm in Europe. It's all feigned attacks, skirmishes, and ambushes.

I don't mind non-direct attacks, skirmishes, etc. I do mind a full stack of horse archers literally not being able to kill anything. I really highly doubt this is historically accurate. I understand that horse archer factions would attack at range, keep their distance from the enemy, kite, etc. That's all fine. But they could actually kill stuff. I just don't see Ghengis Khan with an anemic army that was so flaccid it had to retreat and come again 50 times just to kill all the guys in a single unit.

Thinking about being the Seljuks of Rum next game, they seem fun and challenging.

Played them as well as the Kwarzmenians (don't know how to spell it). Full stacks of horse archers can't kill anything. I had to disband all of them and build foot troops, which made me wonder why horse archer factions are in the game if I can't actually use horse archers to kill anything.

I don't get it? I'm playing as the Ottoman Turks now and use full Horse Archer stack armies and can destroy armies almost twice my size.

Certainly not my experience.

Try doing what I do and switch off "Fire at will" then select all your archers to fire on one enemy unit at a time which results in what they used to call shower shooting, it kills a lot enemies a lot quicker than random "Fire at will" shooting.

Yup, I already do that. I always turn off fire at will, and I always focus all horse archers on a single enemy unit. One unit of swordsmen or axemen will kill way more than all the horse archer units combined when I look at the stats.

[Ansar Warrior]

I don't get it? I'm playing as the Ottoman Turks now and use full Horse Archer stack armies and can destroy armies almost twice my size.

Try doing what I do and switch off "Fire at will" then select all your archers to fire on one enemy unit at a time which results in what they used to call shower shooting, it kills a lot enemies a lot quicker than random "Fire at will" shooting.

I can destroy heavy armoured horsemen relatively easily this way as well, they charge into my ranks while the Horse Archers use skirmish to keep their distance then they are enveloped and surrounded and just get hammered with hundreds of arrows.

[Ansar Warrior]

Hmmm sounds like there's a an issue or problem because I start killing soldiers straight away.

What version are you playing?

If your only killing 5-6 men when using all your Horse Archers on a single unit that is certainly not right.

[joeblow1]

Using latest version.

Yup, my full stacks of archers can only kill a handful of guys. Most archer units will have 0 kills. Some will have 1 kill. One or two will have 2 or 3 kills after a battle.

I switched to a Byzantine campaign and will be going strictly foot troops and kataphracts. Too bad, I wouldn't have minded playing out a Turkic or Kypchak or whatever.

[Ansar Warrior]

I'm using 2.02 for certain reasons and it works fine, you could try posting this in the technical issues forum above, maybe a Mod can help you out?

[gamegeek2]

A lot of it has to do with the loose formations of BC troops, which are kind of ridiculous in my opinion. Assuming one in-game unit equals one meter, there is no way that swordsmen would space themselves two meters apart in a battle formation; I've shrunk standard spacing for infantry units significantly in my EDU, which has the pleasant side-effect of increasing infantry resistance to frontal cavalry charges.

At the same time, I've found that with these new formations, the "balanced" value for standard arrow attacks is 2 (javelin attacks, for comparison, range from 8 to 12). This is based on multiplayer testing (I'm looking for volunteers who would be willing to test my new EDU on Hamachi, btw).

[Ichon]

What is Hamachi?

[k/t]

Network program.