So after 200-odd hours of play with the game, consistently raising archer armies, I have concluded that their place within the game is totally broken. This is a bit different than concluding that they're overpowered, and I'll explain.
Archer units' worst enemy isnt cavalry, its their own commanding AI
I don't know about others, but enemy archers in field battles simply don't matter to me. An obvious but important observation with archer units is that they only shoot when stationary. This is good, since they suffer a huge accuracy penalty firing on the move. The problem is that commanding AI is too dumb to take this into account. Formations will advance, wheel, etc, and this always make their archer units nearly useless by making their effective fire rate a fraction of what it should be.
Archers in sieges appear many times stronger as a result, because the commanding AI lets them be for the most part and doesn't neuter their fire rate. Another example how the commanding AI harms archer performance is with forest bandits. They advance, their formation breaks and loosens and develops some depth. The most important thing is, they all stop and shoot once they find something in range, and unleash a withering hail of fire that will put any AI army to shame almost regardless of relative size. The broken formation even plays to their advantage: while individual units will engage in melee, units in the back will keep shooting, making it very difficult to lock the entire party in melee even with a equally sized infantry company. This formation and behaviour is effective even against cavalry. Forest bandits are vastly more effective archers as individuals in a party than any archers as part of an army, with infantry and cavalry support, and controlled by an AI.
Suggested fix: Just make the AI use a loose square formation on archers. Ignore all wheeling commands. Move the archers less often.
Battania is all aboutarchers cavalry.
I'm certain others have noticed this as well, but Battania isn't so big on their archers after all. As with any faction, elite units are in short supply. The problem with Battania (and a couple others) is that ONLY their elite units fufill the role which they as a faction is supposed to dominate. Imperial factions don't suffer from this because their focus isn't so much heavy cavalry as it is heavy armor and survivability across all their units. Khuzaits have regular horse archers in addition to their noble horse archer line. Vlandia has commoner cavalry in addition to their banner knights... But for Battania it's like you'd get stoned to death for picking up a bow as a commoner.
There's two ways to fix this: either increase the availability of their noble line recruits, or add a regular archer branch in their main tree. I'd much prefer the latter as it is easy enough as is to raise an army of just Battanian nobles (I have like 50 of them in my army on realistic recruiting). Since players are not AI, these guys are stupidly effective under player command.
Shields are less effective compared to warband
Having been a big archer in both warband and now bannerlord as well, I can say with certainty that bannerlord shields are far less effective than warband shields for blocking projectiles. Arrows will actually hit thighs and heads in bannerlord, as opposed to being teleported to the nearest shield as in warband. I like this change since it feels less janky, but after getting used to arrow projectiles in bannerlord, I don't think archery in bannerlord have been similarly nerfed. The result is that once you amass enough volume of archers, shields don't matter much, especially if they're only carried by a portion of the advancing infantry. Unshielded recruits quickly die, and then shielded elite units get focused down.
Suggested Fix: Give all recruits and 2nd tier infantry shields. Looters have stones, so I don't think giving recruits crappy shields will suddenly make them too powerful. Can even add some veteran looters that upgrade into Vigla recruits. The other thing is to decrease the damage multiplier for legs, against arrows specifically if possible. Another way to do this is to buff the foot armor of all infantry units, which shouldn't affect melee combat much if at all. If they still die too quickly against arrows then make them raise their shields higher when taking arrow fire.
Thanks for reading if you did. Hope I made some sense.
Archer units' worst enemy isnt cavalry, its their own commanding AI
I don't know about others, but enemy archers in field battles simply don't matter to me. An obvious but important observation with archer units is that they only shoot when stationary. This is good, since they suffer a huge accuracy penalty firing on the move. The problem is that commanding AI is too dumb to take this into account. Formations will advance, wheel, etc, and this always make their archer units nearly useless by making their effective fire rate a fraction of what it should be.
Archers in sieges appear many times stronger as a result, because the commanding AI lets them be for the most part and doesn't neuter their fire rate. Another example how the commanding AI harms archer performance is with forest bandits. They advance, their formation breaks and loosens and develops some depth. The most important thing is, they all stop and shoot once they find something in range, and unleash a withering hail of fire that will put any AI army to shame almost regardless of relative size. The broken formation even plays to their advantage: while individual units will engage in melee, units in the back will keep shooting, making it very difficult to lock the entire party in melee even with a equally sized infantry company. This formation and behaviour is effective even against cavalry. Forest bandits are vastly more effective archers as individuals in a party than any archers as part of an army, with infantry and cavalry support, and controlled by an AI.
Suggested fix: Just make the AI use a loose square formation on archers. Ignore all wheeling commands. Move the archers less often.
Battania is all about
I'm certain others have noticed this as well, but Battania isn't so big on their archers after all. As with any faction, elite units are in short supply. The problem with Battania (and a couple others) is that ONLY their elite units fufill the role which they as a faction is supposed to dominate. Imperial factions don't suffer from this because their focus isn't so much heavy cavalry as it is heavy armor and survivability across all their units. Khuzaits have regular horse archers in addition to their noble horse archer line. Vlandia has commoner cavalry in addition to their banner knights... But for Battania it's like you'd get stoned to death for picking up a bow as a commoner.
There's two ways to fix this: either increase the availability of their noble line recruits, or add a regular archer branch in their main tree. I'd much prefer the latter as it is easy enough as is to raise an army of just Battanian nobles (I have like 50 of them in my army on realistic recruiting). Since players are not AI, these guys are stupidly effective under player command.
Shields are less effective compared to warband
Having been a big archer in both warband and now bannerlord as well, I can say with certainty that bannerlord shields are far less effective than warband shields for blocking projectiles. Arrows will actually hit thighs and heads in bannerlord, as opposed to being teleported to the nearest shield as in warband. I like this change since it feels less janky, but after getting used to arrow projectiles in bannerlord, I don't think archery in bannerlord have been similarly nerfed. The result is that once you amass enough volume of archers, shields don't matter much, especially if they're only carried by a portion of the advancing infantry. Unshielded recruits quickly die, and then shielded elite units get focused down.
Suggested Fix: Give all recruits and 2nd tier infantry shields. Looters have stones, so I don't think giving recruits crappy shields will suddenly make them too powerful. Can even add some veteran looters that upgrade into Vigla recruits. The other thing is to decrease the damage multiplier for legs, against arrows specifically if possible. Another way to do this is to buff the foot armor of all infantry units, which shouldn't affect melee combat much if at all. If they still die too quickly against arrows then make them raise their shields higher when taking arrow fire.
Thanks for reading if you did. Hope I made some sense.
