2h units are useless unless archers get nerfed

[Maximum997]

if the arrows of the turkish bows would have been no treat

Arrow can still hit you in the eye, or in the neck. Or even in the arm. It is not a mortal wound, but you are not a warrior for a few weeks.

But in this game even worst hunting bows with hunting arrows can penetrate scale armor from 200 meters wich is just stupid.

 

[Dialectic]

A loose formation of untrained rabble archers should not be able to unflinchingly stand with 100% accuracy against a heavy cavalry charge, eat the charge, and then continue to shoot at all the mounted troops as those troops have to stand around and slowly cut each archer down.

I'm no professional expert historian, but I'm pretty sure there is at least *something* wrong here. It's either archer morale, archer accuracy, archer damage, archer speed, unit movement speed, or lack of unit collision and charge damage, or some combination thereof. I can't speak to the efficacy of one short bow vs another against every type of armor imaginable, but I can tell you from a human stand point that almost no one can keep their formation as a light rabble of forest bandit archers against a charge of medium to heavy cavalry.

 

[Maximum997]

A loose formation of untrained rabble archers should not be able to unflinchingly stand with 100% accuracy against a heavy cavalry charge, eat the charge, and then continue to shoot at all the mounted troops as those troops have to stand around and slowly cut each archer down.

I'm no professional expert historian, but I'm pretty sure there is at least *something* wrong here. It's either archer morale, archer accuracy, archer damage, archer speed, unit movement speed, or lack of unit collision and charge damage, or some combination thereof. I can't speak to the efficacy of one short bow vs another against every type of armor imaginable, but I can tell you from a human stand point that almost no one can keep their formation as a light rabble of forest bandit archers against a charge of medium to heavy cavalry.

Charge in this game is a joke.

I got smashed by 500 kg of meat and steel at speed 40 km\h. 1 damage...
I know for balance reasons they need to be not as deadly, but 1 damage? cmon.

 

[Soulcharger]

Few things @Dialectic is that cavalry has not been given its knockdown effect across the board like in warband. There are some mounted units that still do in Bannerlords but it appears its not active on the large populace. Mounted units chew up archers right now better then spear men but thats because the AI are really dumb right now and will not kill the unit charging them rather they sit and swivel.

Troop moral should be effected low tier units and standing their ground but this means also that mounted units should be alot harder to maintain or obtain to justify such a huge buff. Sadly this may be a feature we need to wait for.

Ultimately archers are the easiest thing to script and program in games, they are not complex and thus what your seeing is they are more functional right now then normal troops.

For the few mounts that do charge damage and knock down, i can tell you right now it does some damage. Got run over by enemy lord that had lance off of otherside killing another soldier, With medium armor i lost half my hp even through shield block, and thrown about 5-8 feet onto my face. Yes my guy fell into the charge not onto his back but thats more of a animation fail.

 

[Midnitewolf]

Best tactic is send archers little bit cross of your units and take high ground. Make infantry shieldwall and stay or make them charge with shields on. When your infantry confront with enemy, flank their archers and kill them all with everybody.if you are few just make shield wall and wait if you dont have archers just make circle and wait.etc.

I think this is the problem with any game like that, most people should always be able to be the AI when it comes to tactics. I actually use Mongol-like tactics to start off every battle. I place my infantry in the front in shield wall, then I put archers far enough behind that they don't run forward with swords at first contact. I set my cavalry off to the side far enough that they don't normally get engaged and then have my stout contingent of horse archers follow me to where the enemy is.

From there I pepper and harass the enemy with archer fire. Eventually they decide they are taking too many casualties (which usually they aren't) from my horse archer and charge. Sometimes it is just the cavalry that charges first. If that happens I just lead them over to my Cavalry and tell my Cavalry to charge which usually makes short work of there Cavalry. Then I go back and pepper the rest their army until it charges. The finale is shooting most of them down with arrows as they charge, followed by ordering my Cavalry and Horse Archers to charge from the flanks. They usually run at this point but if they are stubborn, I just have the infantry charge and finish it.

What the enemy should do to counter me is form a circle and hold a shield wall, wait until I run out of arrows. Then advance in shield wall formation. If they did that my archer fire would lose about 60-70% effectiveness. Surprisingly, the AI for the Cavalry is almost good. Occassionally they do something stupid like run out front and die easily but often as not they will just engage other Cavalry and do a decent job of disrupting my hammer and anvil and/or horse archer harassment. The problem they have though is that always split their cavalry to each flank so it is generally easy to defeat them in detail. It would be much harder if they actually concentrated all their cavalry. On the negative side, I never see their cavalry really try to flank. They usually just charge straight at the shieldwall.

 

[MrCookie]

CHANGING TO ANOTHER FORMATION DOESN'T WORK. It keeps resetting with every reload, so it's not a solution.

 

[Experimental]

A simple fix is when you order infantry to form a shield wall, give priority on the front row to people who actually have a shield, instead of mixing shield infantry with unshielded ones.

Funnily enough, the old Diplomacy mod for Warband actually did this. xD

 

[Maximum997]

Simple look at projectiles speeds, slow velocity less distance.

Now to that:


Huntig bow, the cheapest bow in the game. 68 speed
Noble longbow - the most expensive and powerful bow in the game 85 speed. Yep, twice like you said

You do realize that their range and accuracy are really bad, right?

Now lets talk about REALLY BAD ACCURACY!!!



The cheapest bow in the game. 30 bow skill. No perks. Yep, accuracy is really bad. You can hit a thing only from 10 meters.

 

[Soulcharger]

Lol, i love your arguments, but I stand by my statements, as I do my testing in practice not theory crafting based on charecter stats. and weapons, but on how the AI behave with said equipment and teir.

 

[brognar]

Not necessarily a nerf, but arrow/bolt damage should drop off steeply with distance. In reality bows/crossbows could only penetrate armour at closer ranges.

The game already records shot distances so I don't think it'd be hard to implement

 

[High chief Kieran]

Arrow can still hit you in the eye, or in the neck. Or even in the arm. It is not a mortal wound, but you are not a warrior for a few weeks.

But in this game even worst hunting bows with hunting arrows can penetrate scale armor from 200 meters wich is just stupid.

the problem with scale armor was exposed body parts, while it is true that it offered better general protection than mail armor it did have a few disadvantaged, it was less flexible, was vulnurable to an upward trust and like i said had more exposedbody parts.
furthermore scale armor was invented before mail armor, it was only the later scale armor that had better protection, the earlier scale armor was not as good as later scale armor. so something being called scale armor does not necessarily make it beter than mail.
unless you want them to remake the engine so they can make certain parts of the body (like armpits for example) uncovered while the rest is covered by armor this is really the best we will get in terms of reallity of arrow damage vs armor (not calculating distance).

The game already records shot distances so I don't think it'd be hard to implement

true, this would be a good sollution, did not consider it already had shot distance records.

 

[Maximum997]

Not necessarily a nerf, but arrow/bolt damage should drop off steeply with distance. In reality bows/crossbows could only penetrate armour at closer ranges.

They drop

80 damage
Speed 90
Distance 4,4m

60 damage
Speed 79
Distance 85m

There is a difference but really not that huge.
From 150 meters it will be may be a 40, but i am too bored to test it.

Lol, i love your arguments

Becouse there are argumets. Not just a words "My AI is doing like that"

Or you tell me that AI accuracy and damage doesnt depend on skills and equipment? Ah of course your AI doesnt...

 

[Nikomakkos]

If archers can't kill shieldless infantry then they are absolutely useless. Archers are a hard counter to them. If you want to use shieldless infantry you have to protect it from enemy archers and not ask the developers to make an entire class of units redundant.

 

[Maximum997]

If archers can't kill shieldless infantry then they are absolutely useless.

Look at warband and Pendor. Archers doesnt thwoshot elite 2handers, but they are still very useful. Especialy elite ones.

But ofcourse in Pendor balance was bad, becouse trash bowman cant kill elite pikeman in two shots.

 

[Soulcharger]

Well it seems the argument is no longer archer vs 2 handers but archers vs armor. In this case, Shields = Survive, no shield = dead. Armor will only enable you to take more arrows.

 

[Nikomakkos]

Look at warband and Pendor.

What is your point?

 

[Maximum997]

What is your point?

That in previous MnB balance "ranged\melee" was far far better. And i dont know why they changed it.
Elite arhers and crossbowmen just wrecked 2handers, but trash archers cant do thing against them.

If you are telling me. that in this game it is good and okay, so it means in PoP and warband it was bad, and ranged troops was useless.

 

[Roaring Mouse]

That in previous MnB balance "ranged\melee" was far far better. And i dont know why they changed it.

Elite arhers and crossbowmen just wrecked 2handers, but trash archers cant do thing against them.

Pendor has hugely inflated HP. That's why I never gave it much of an chance.

 

[Maximum997]

Pendor has hugely inflated HP. That's why I never gave it much of an chance.

It was the same as in Warband. 100 HP had only few most elite melee warriors.In PoP 100 hp have only Gladiators.

That's why I never gave it much of an chance.

So you jsut didnt see good MnB. Okay. No more questions.

 

[Roaring Mouse]

It was the same as in Warband.

God no, the supposed difficulty if Pedor was because of inflated stats. I remember having to repeatedly couch a chieftain to best him in early game. Pendor was a little over the top. I had fun with it later, but it always had an over the top crazy stupid feel to me.