Archers are useless

[Medina]

In this game, archers are useless. Skirmishers aswell.

I see no point in recruiting any of them. I did before but the unit handling is awfull. That you need a perfect line in order to fire any arrows is actually very idiotic. You can clearly see that these are the limitations of the warscape engine, as in Empire, or just total laziness.

Anyway, you better of taking 4 more units of heavy cavalry then 4 units of archers... Archers firing off walls doesn't work that well either.

It's so difficult to create a game that actually works. Dont you think?

[vietanh797]

Archer useful in some cases but not all if you defend a walled city or attack it archer work better than slinger or javelineer. In open field battle, archer run faster than most infantry so they can run a while turn back and shot till your infantry all dead. I experienced that back in my last 2 defeat battles when I march my Spartan Hoplite to fight the Parthia Horde. The fire arrow can do serious damage to even royal spartan

[Medina]

I always have 14 units of heavy phalanx and 6 heavy cavalry. Takes out any archers you encounter

[Mangalore]

So archers can't fight heavily armored enemies... well, they couldn't. Aside from that heavy cav and heavy phalanx are expensive so if you can afford them they are certainly better, they are just not as cost effective when you just need to pepper a ton of lightly armed enemies. My archers and slingers can have pretty high kill rates against anything not heavily armored. If their only accomplishment is to get other light troops out of the way they already do their job.

And that archers need line of sight is also accurate since they need to have a reference of the distance they need to fire at. These aren't indirect fire artillery pieces with the mathematics of 1800.

[chris10]

I always have 14 units of heavy phalanx and 6 heavy cavalry. Takes out any archers you encounter

Noob army ?
I bet back in the days of RTW you were among those using armys of 14 praetorians/5 praetorian cavalry and brawling about how they are pulverizing everthing the AI was throwing at them...
Such a surprise...

[Whistler118]

What! Skirmishers are incredible. I have a line of them behind my cohorts and anything that comes into range gets destroyed by a hail of javelins! It seems like one of the few things that can punch through shields.

[rrgg]

Actually, if you watch skirmishers closely they actually are able to start throwing javelins before the entire unit has formed up. So it doesn't seem to be a problem with the engine.

[rrgg]

Also if i recall there is a partian shot trait that some units have which gives them a full 360 degree field of fire. I wonder if you can give it to infantry.

[Mahijsimo]

What about Royal Peltasts?? They use to throw spears right? All they do in my army is attack with a sword and literally kill anything easily.
No spears at all. other peltasts are almost "only" using spears..

[|Sith|Galvanized Iron]

You are unfortunatel wrong OP, archers kick ass, it is simply so that you do not notice the results for the first volleys because the first volleys need to take away the HP before they can start killing.

[Master.Mind]

You are unfortunatel wrong OP, archers kick ass, it is simply so that you do not notice the results for the first volleys because the first volleys need to take away the HP before they can start killing.

I still find it weird, that arrows seem completely ineffective and all of a sudden men are dying like flies

[Kinjo]

The elite Persian archers are very good and are better then low level infantry in melee. I can usually get 100 kills with them in land battle and 250+ in siege or city battles.

[Demetrios of Messene]

Archers and skirmishers are very cost effective units. If you do not care about money, sure go ahead and create an army of your most elite unit; isn't it obvious that they will be better warriors?...

[Dustindesrctin]

Archers are pretty awesome. They've won me a lot of close battles so far into my Pontus campaign.

[vietanh797]

heavy cavalry will be murdered when facing cataphract and their archer+ horse archer will murder your pikeman while your pikeman helplessly moving slowly forward in phalanx

[priam11]

The engine is not the problem as it was an issue in Empire but NTW solved it. Units began firing when they were in position facing the enemy before the rest of the unit joined them. It was kinda cool to watch.

[Neige]

The problem is the fact that the AI spams missile units like crazy but in battle as soon as they get engaged in melee, they rout immediately. And even worse is the fact that the AI is unable to keep its missiles out of melee... If you check out some of the mods for Medieval 2 (Broken Crescent is one perfect example) they have AI coding that retreats its archers immediately when you move your melee units anywhere near them and it's actually very difficult to charge them directly even with cavalry. They have an AI for a 7 year old game that is BETTER than the AI created by paid professionals with 40% larger budget in 2013... How crazy is this?

[Yoke]

I find archers great, I tend to have 2/3 of em in most my armies, they cut up enemy slingers/javelin throwers while you don't have to chase em down all the time in melee frays, esp when your cavalry is needed elsewhere or as usually does hits 1 loose spearmen at the back of a fight and stops the whole unit moving.

[[N2]Kami]

Use javelin man. Even a levy unit can secure ~100 kill each battle if choose position wisely.

[vietanh797]

Javelin only work best in defend siege battle