Archers too weak?

[Broyston]

Is it me or have archers been downgraded in BI? I used to have 4 or 5 archer units in each army in RTW and they were pretty useful, but in BI you can stand there and fire at 1 enemy unit and you might have caused 2 casualties before they close on your melee troops.
The worst case was when I had 10 horse archers units (Eastern Romans, used as a rebel clearance force) firing at 1 rebel bosporan merc unit and it took about 20 volleys to cause the unit to rout, thats over 5000 arrows by my reckoning. Have the game designers never heard of Agincourt(later period I know, but proof that arrows are pretty deadly)? :hmmm:

[Soccer1993]

yeah but Agincourt was because of the success of the LONGBOW (in BI they had mostly composite bows) and the fact that the french knights got bogged down in the mud. were u attacking the boshphorans with hippo-toxotai? they aren't the best unit anyways...and like well archer werent SUPPOSED to be as powerful as they were in RTW, they werent virtually a lawmower in a backyard. and besides Boshphorans are pretty tough good armoured spearmen.

and the Longbow was invented after the BI era anyways. by the Welsh in er...1*** yeah...
some where in the 1000's.

[13ig_VV]

yea soccer is right. agincourt cannot be compared with the game because of the advancment in technology. If you're gonna use archers in BI i would only recommend it for the flaming arrows on morale and rams. otherwise they don't have much of an affect, not because of their attack (which only goes up to 9 unless you use cavalry archers) but because of the added defense levels in the game. Almost all the units in BI have increased defense compared to units in original RTW. This is probably because of improvements in armor during the BI time (better chainmail and invention of plate armor).

[augustusingreen]

soccer has a point, but if u do get hit by an arrow ure prbly going down. u may not b dead but ure prbly a casualty. but i think hes right about arrows being downgraded in BI. i had 5 full units of horse archers firing at the roxalani king, and after 4 vollies they had only killed 2! i know its their king, but thats kinda unreasonable. if ure hit by an arrow, ure not just gonna stay there on ure horse and fight to ure full potential.

[The Black Reaper]

soccer has a point, but if u do get hit by an arrow ure prbly going down. u may not b dead but ure prbly a casualty. but i think hes right about arrows being downgraded in BI. i had 5 full units of horse archers firing at the roxalani king, and after 4 vollies they had only killed 2! i know its their king, but thats kinda unreasonable. if ure hit by an arrow, ure not just gonna stay there on ure horse and fight to ure full potential.

but youd still fight wouldnt you??? youd do all you can to protect your king from dieing so you have to stay on your horse when your hit by an arrow

[Ramsing]

soccer has a point, but if u do get hit by an arrow ure prbly going down. u may not b dead but ure prbly a casualty. but i think hes right about arrows being downgraded in BI. i had 5 full units of horse archers firing at the roxalani king, and after 4 vollies they had only killed 2! i know its their king, but thats kinda unreasonable. if ure hit by an arrow, ure not just gonna stay there on ure horse and fight to ure full potential.

Yeah, I remember I had 5 units of archers firing at a opposing general of about 30 men (fire arrows) and it musta taken 10 volleys min. to kill him...my units were 81 in size so you'd think 4000+ arrows wouldn't be necessary to kill only 30 men...After all, if you did that in real life i think 100 arrows would be all that would be necessary especially considering the general didn't move...

[Trajan]

Moved to the Barbarian Invasion: General discussion sub-forum.

[The Black Reaper]

if you guys have a problem just raise the damage the archers give in the export_descr_unit.txt... its pretty easy...

[Mesamedasu]

Archers are most effective when shooting in the back of an enemy. Isolating units and surrounding them with horse archers is fairly easy. AI will gladly coöperate. This is hard to do with foot archers, but AI will often try to chase them away with some infantry units charging at them. You can make them chase one unit, while another targets them. If they decide to get back to their main line, their backs are left unprotected and they will take heavy casualties.

M

[Virridovix]

To expand on Mesmadasu's good advice - while shooting at armored and shielded units from the front can be ineffective the computer allows an advantage to arrows coming from the non-shield side. So even if you can't manuver foot archers to the rear or the enemy, you can load your left with archers to heighten the odds of damage.

This practice also can galvanize part of the enemy army into action and expose a formerly solid line to all sorts of vulnerability. You can also load your left with archers and send some cavalry to threaten the the opposite flank. units which turn to front the cavalry now expose their rear to your archers. Your are likely to create some back and forth movement (at least against the AI) and its this period of jockeying for position when your archers will create most of their havoc. To the extent that you can - flood one target with all available missile fire - but don't do that without making sure the target is vulnerable. The worse thing you can do is manually pick a target and slam it with all availble arrows when the target is facing you and well protected. You only get "X" arrows to spend in an engagement. Trying to pincushion a single unit which is well protected is worse than just letting your boys fire at will. When that arrows run out you don't want them all sticking in the ground around a mostly unscathed armored unit.

A straightforward skirmish line of archers to front can often end up with the limited results the original poster described if facing armored and shielded opponents.

[augustusingreen]

flip, messing with data messes up my game. and i dont care i u wanna protect ure king. u got 400 arrows coming at u u cant protect ure king

[Hader]

flip, messing with data messes up my game. and i dont care i u wanna protect ure king. u got 400 arrows coming at u u cant protect ure king

Messsing with data only messes with your game if you do something wrong. If you know what your doing and you do it right then you can change anything that isnt hardcoded. Oh, and to save anyone from all those arrows just move them away or toward the source! If away they arent getting hit, if towards they might make the archers run if they aere in skirmish mode. :wink:

[andym]

i have found when faced by archer units that a quick charge by some cavalry will make them upsticks and move away,thus exposing their backs to your archers.I am currently playing The Saxons.I usually have 4 or 5 infantry units,chosen axemen or Hearth troops,then 4 or 5 cavalry units inc the leader,then the rest are all archers.This seems to work quite well so far,even against Heffalumps.I have been faced with nearly a whole mounted army,it was a close run thing but i got them in the end.

[augustusingreen]

i personally think archers r 2 weak in the original game also

[Scorch]

Archers were ownage in the original game. I saw archers in the enemy's lineup and went "oh crap". There's a reason you needed the second tier archery building to get them. In BI they're cheaper and easier to get, it makes sense they'd be less effective than the RTW archers.

Also, as everyone else says, use them right and they'll be invaluable.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

How dare you say that about our Imperator!

[Scorch]

What do you mean? Oo

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Archer is too weak? He's extremely strong!





OK, lame joke. Go ahead.

[Holger Danske]

If archers are Soooo effective as some peps here state, then why in the world didn't every army back then use archer armies?

[removeduser_426582376423734]

If archers are Soooo effective as some peps here state, then why in the world didn't every army back then use archer armies?

Not hard to pick up a shield and sword and fight, very hard to learn how to shoot.