2h units are useless unless archers get nerfed

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During the crusades, the Arabs did not manage to pierce the European armor (mail+gambeson) with their curved bows.
Only hit in arms and legs were the armor was thinner have a CHANCE to pierce at CLOSE (less than 100m) range.
taking one archer and saying that therefor all archers where useless makes no sense, they had no longbows for example.
further more, the crusaders did not just stand there and absorb arrows, they held their shields up in a wall, why would they do this if they could not be hit by them?
there were low losses to archer fire on the crusaders side indeed, because of a combination of propper armor AND TACTICS.

Agincourt is about the terrain and weather. Arrows were still not able to pierce the armor.
arrows did pierce the armor because not all plate armor was made with high grade materials. also not everyone had plate armor at the time. propper made armor made of high quality metal was expensive. the archers did a lot of damage before the melee lines clashed, and even after that.

@Neat on the comment that one type will always be the best - the problem is that currently ranged weapons are absurdly powerful. Just try a custom battle 100 archer vs 100 infantry. Usually the infantry does not even reach the line, just runs away after losing 50-60 men. The worst thing is that the only infantry which performs OK in that situation is the Khuzait, but not because of their melee prowess, but because they have javis , which they start throwing from 70 yard...
that is more of an ai issue.
give 2 player those same groups of units and i assure you the human player with the shields will win, he will just tells his men to go into shieldwall untill the archers run out of ammo. sure he will take losses but not that many.
the ai does not use the formations needed.
 
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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.
 
"why are my heavy infantry without shields getting killed by archers
No. This post is "why my elite 2handers het destroyed by few pesants with hunting bows"
I gues you will say "BUTITSIBALANCE111". So i guess pesant with 2h axe from his farm should destroy elite infantry with a shields, right?
taking one archer and saying that therefor all archers where useless makes no sense, they had no longbows for example.
90% of archers dont use english longbows in this game. I even not sure there is an english longbow. Becouse all bows loooks like average or short cavalry bows.
But they still penetrate armor like a butter. Even second(?) best bow in the game -" noble bow" is a short cavalry bow.
 
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If they are dieing to low tier archer you are not using tactics in your battles. Again, no where in history are you going to see soldiers on foot, in heavy armor, without shields, going headlong into a volley of arrows, and not lose men.
 
If they are dieing to low tier archer you are not using tactics in your battles.
Do you even know that low tier archers are doing almost the same ammount of damage and have almost the same accuracy? It is not a warband where difference was really noticeble.(becouse better bow damage was multiplayed by power strike and difference between 100 and 200 skill was really noticeble)
 
As a two hander veteran, I think two hand is pretty well balanced; they kill well in close, you have to use terrain masking to get them close to the fight. If you are in an open field with no woods, hills, rocks or streams, they are best kept in reserve for the final charge. TW PLEASE DON SCREW UP THE GAME BALANCE because of people complaining! It's pretty darned good, and as you know, if you change one thing in a dynamic sim like this it will screw up ten others. It is close enough so good tactics can be used to great success with any unit. The crossbows have insane penetration at range, but they are a little slow and extremely vulnerable to cav. Sword and board, great protection, but not so much damage against heavy armor. 2H (especially axes) great shock troop, but vulnerable. Horse Archers, great skirmisher, but countered by strong archers and light cavalry (light in sense they can catch and lance them, they need some armor). Archers, nearly essential, but need to be protected and they do run out of arrows. Mounted lancers are prob strongest in game, but they tend to be elite units so fair enough. Skirmishers (javelins) wicked killing machines while they have javelins, but cant stand and fight in a battle line; also a great shock troop. The design is good enough so battles actually naturally evolve into tactics popular in the time period, that means TW must have got it pretty close.
 
that is more of an ai issue.
give 2 player those same groups of units and i assure you the human player with the shields will win, he will just tells his men to go into shieldwall untill the archers run out of ammo. sure he will take losses but not that many.
the ai does not use the formations needed.

I agree the AI not using shield wall is a major issue, but still the share firepower of ranged weapons is stupid. There is no way an archer could shoot aimed shots with a warbow from 100 meters in every 2 seconds. Javelins are even more weird, with their long range and pinpoint accuracy. Now, dont get me wrong, I still enjoy the game, but I would even more enjoy a more authentic medieval combat experience, with longer battles and more tactics instead of this shooting fiesta.

Also, on the matter of the theoretical player battle, I am not so sure about the victory of infantry. Yes they can use shield wall, but the archers will not just shoot them from the front, but split the try to flank the shield wall.
 
@Maximum997
You do realize that their range and accuracy are really bad, right? SO for your guys to be getting hit they must:
A) Be pacted together and close to them.
B) have no shield wall infront of them.
C) Been getting shot at for a while inorder to be killed reliably as it usually takes 2-3 arrows to down somone in heavy armor.

So yes, low tier damage may be the same, but your chance of having that damage dealt is much lower vs higher tier units.
 
I agree the AI not using shield wall is a major issue, but still the share firepower of ranged weapons is stupid. There is no way an archer could shoot aimed shots with a warbow from 100 meters in every 2 seconds. Javelins are even more weird, with their long range and pinpoint accuracy. Now, dont get me wrong, I still enjoy the game, but I would even more enjoy a more authentic medieval combat experience, with longer battles and more tactics instead of this shooting fiesta.

Also, on the matter of the theoretical player battle, I am not so sure about the victory of infantry. Yes they can use shield wall, but the archers will not just shoot them from the front, but split the try to flank the shield wall.
It's not like we can all get online and test these theories in multiplayer captain mode.

I presume Fiann will obliterate everyone because.. well they're excellent in both melee and ranged, but regular archers ? I'm not convinced.
 
Max i am going to assume you do not play much as you will find very quickly that low tier archers will not engage at long ranges in comparison to high tier archers. How is this determined you might ask?

Simple look at projectiles speeds, slow velocity less distance. AI will not aim more than 30* ish. Slower arrows also mean hitting moving targets is much harder. From what I can tell arrows also lose power over distance as the projectile slows so additionally they do less ranged damage depending on how far away you are.

So in short, sitting back and burning up their arrows will win the day over charging in like a bunch of want to be Aragons.
 
Max i am going to assume you do not play much as you will find very quickly that low tier archers will not engage at long ranges in comparison to high tier archers.
Like this 20 meters make a big difference.
Simple look at projectiles speeds, slow velocity less distance.
This difference is like 70 and 80 if i remember.
So in short, sitting back and burning up their arrows will win the day over charging in like a bunch of want to be Aragons.
My tactic was "spam the archers and derp around their troops" thats all. Becouse AI love to chase you with whole army. I won all battles even when enemies has 2-3 times more men.
 
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Its alot more than 20ms mate. High tier archers will fire nearly twice as far as tier 3 (tier 2 for some factions) archers.
 
It's not like we can all get online and test these theories in multiplayer captain mode.

Haha, I was not even aware that its a thing :smile: but I guess multiplayer is anyway a different ball game, and no one will show up with full infantry or full archer rooster. I would probably go for stg like 30% infantry 70% archer (assuming only infantry and archer is on the menu)
 
Just make a shieldwall in front of the 2h units?


you can already do that?
in the party screen select the unit you want in a different group than click the orange banner with the roman numeral in it.
(This image is resized so looks horrible, this is no representation of the games graphics)
yvL93HO.png
nice tip thanks!
 
90% of archers dont use english longbows in this game. I even not sure there is an english longbow. Becouse all bows loooks like average or short cavalry bows.
But they still penetrate armor like a butter. Even second(?) best bow in the game -" noble bow" is a short cavalry bow.
the point is that different bows/archers had different training/equipment and therefore their strength varies. again, if the arrows of the turkish bows would have been no treat to them they would not have set up a shieldwall to defect their arrows. the longbow was just an example.

there are longbows in the game, the item called longbow is a longbow, there is also something called a yeow bow i think, you can see it in multiplayer if you select the battanian fian and than chose the strong bow. i think that it is not implemented in sp yet (i have never seen it in sp at least), i am guessing there are still items missing from sp, i have never seen the battanian fian armor either (if anyone has seen either the armor or yeow longbow than please post it).
 
the point is that different bows/archers had different training/equipment and therefore their strength varies.
and again, if the arrows of the arab bows would have been no treat to them they would not have set up a shieldwall to defect their arrows. the longbow was just an example.

there are longbows in the game, the item called longbow is a longbow, there is also something called a yeow bow i think, you can see it in multiplayer if you select the battanian fian and than chose the strong bow. i think that it is not implemented in sp yet (i have never seen it in sp at least), i am guessing there are still items missing from sp, i have never seen the battanian fian armor either (if anyone has seen either the armor or yeow longbow than please post it).
 
if the arrows of the turkish bows would have been no treat to them they would not have set up a shieldwall to defect their arrows.
Greeks used a shieldwalls even against each others, and they almost never uses bows, even peltasts (guys with javs) were a rare support troops. Becouse surprise - shieldwall is really good in melee.And they didnt use 2handers at all, becouse 2 handers cant deal with shield wall. An there was a main reason to use it.

But i guess you learned history from RPG, and in your reality warriors used shield becouse they afraid arrows...
 
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