Archers need a nerf.

[kweassa]

Agree the problem isnt archers who should decimate un armoured troops
The problem is that archers are also decimating heavily armored troops
If armour was significantly improved you might find archers need a slight buff

We've literally spent the entire 12 page thread, reasoning, discussing, and showing evidence that the archers don't "decimate" anything. I've given the reasoning behind why the armor can't change, is due to balance issues, which nobody really refuted.

How much more do we need to just ignore the discussions and plethora of reasoning and results given in prior threads, and just go back to the myth of "archers are too OP"?

(1) Archers are not accurate at all at long ranges
(2) Archers are accurate in ranges they're supposed to be accurate
(3) Arrows significantly drop in damage with distance, as well as with armor
(4) Every time you feel the arrows are super powerful, is when you're hit at close ranges, probably targeted by multiple archers
(5) Archers don't "destroy" anything one-sidedly
(6) The effectiveness of ranged-centered armies in the game, is precisely because of the irregularly huge numbers of archers the players use
(7) Granting med~high grade armor the amount of realistic protection people want, will effectively trivialize ranged units in the game down to non-use, because a player can just freely spam something like 200-men T6 armies with armor impenetrable to arrow fire, and just futz up the entire game balance

Do we need to repeat more discussions on any of the above points?

 

[Apocal]

I think the Archer's vs Cav thing needs some kind of standard for experiments to have meaning. we are trying to figure out the max effectiveness rather than situational usefulness. there's a reason we aren't testing archers on lvl 3 walls vs dismounted cavs in sieges right?
archers need to be set up on high ground with loose formation. there should be little trees or uneven terrain. and cavs should spawn a good 300+m away. also the numbers of units really make a difference. once you get more archers their collective effectiveness increases, and the opposite is true for cavalry due to collision. so what's a good test? 1v1? 10v10? 100v100? 1000vs1000?

It is difficult to conceive of a scenario more generous to the archers than cavalry going uphill to meet them, on terrain utterly without cover from arrows and enough spacing so that each archer can shoot. They still lost that battle and it was not close.

While the numbers of units did matter in my tests, increasing the number of units in equal proportion improved the cavalry's performance, not the archers. The critical massing works both ways, but cavalry apparently get a lot more out of it. Perhaps because they can one-shot their targets whereas an archer might need as many as four or five hits to bring down a cavalryman (splitting between horse and rider, through armor)?

The factors that aided the archers were poor armor (both riders and horses), short spears/lances and unbroken lines of sight in every direction. The latter is important to note because it is a caution against putting your archers on the military crest of a hill (and possibly hilltops in general) because it allows the cavalry a line of attack that shields them from arrows until they can get much closer.

what about ease of access? i can get an army of 200 archers up n running in 20 days with armed trader and mercenary guard recuitments and whatnot. but good luck getting even 20 cavs in 20 days. truth is, you'll never face an army with that many archers or cavs. (the highest ratio i've seen is about 110 cavs led by derthert in his 550 men army)

Being easy to recruit is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.

 

[Apocal]

(5) Archers don't "destroy" anything one-sidedly

They do destroy infantry one-sidedly.

edit:

Mount & Blade II Bannerlord 2020.06.07 - 11.19.29.10

Watch "Mount & Blade II Bannerlord 2020.06.07 - 11.19.29.10" on Streamable.

streamable.com

Stock units.

 

[KingEroc1st]

They do destroy infantry one-sidedly.

surprisingly aside from using Battanian Fians, any infantry on shieldwall will afk crush equal number of archers. tested many times custom battles using all tier4 units. you can go try it yourself. the archers will shoot till they are out of arrows, run into melee one at a time and all die. while as much as 40% of the infantry will remain. basically make a shiled wall that's 3-4 layers and listen for the "rain" of arrows

Being easy to recruit is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.

i think the easiness for recruitment directly impacts the plausibility of an even numbered cavalry vs archers fight in this game. perhaps the match up was designed to be numerically unfaverable for the cavs? perhaps even by a large margin? i'm merely speculating as to what standard to hold these tests to so we can derive from them consistantly replicable results that's useful in game play rather than situational occurances that may never happen in our playthroughs.

for example, currently as i've experience in custom battles. empire only uses tier 2 archers, while all other untis are tier 4. empire, vlandia and aserai are using their noble cavalry, and battania using their noble archer, which are all considerable stronger than normal units. those will inevitably skew results. the positioning and terrain will all affect results. some are rng but some are almost default use conditions. for example i never start any field battle without my archers on high ground and my infantry in front. even if there's only a meter tiny anthill I'll find it and park some of my men on there. maybe we should be testing archers + infantry vs cav + infantry? idk if something is automatically considered not op if it is still bested in a 1v1 by it's hard counter.

It is difficult to conceive of a scenario more generous to the archers than cavalry going uphill to meet them

Castle walls during siege :"Am I a joke to you?"
I would argue any scenario with archers unsupported by infantry of somesort is already a massive advantage towards the cavalry. how would you use your archers? how would you fight against that kind of use of archers with cavalry?

 

[William7667]

We've literally spent the entire 12 page thread, reasoning, discussing, and showing evidence that the archers don't "decimate" anything. I've given the reasoning behind why the armor can't change, is due to balance issues, which nobody really refuted.

Buffing armor needs to come with overall reduction of troops in high quality armor. Those two cannot be separated.

Yes, the,archers are stronger and more proficient than real life. But at the same time, the numbers of troops with high quality armor are also padded way higher than in real life.

Armor can change you said it yourself on page 1

All you have to do is reduce the number of troops with high quality armour which I agree with actually, theres far too many troops with armour added in just because they are higher tier there should be disadvantages to heavy armour ( like lower rate of fire for archers who are armoured and lower attack and movement speed for armoured melee and cavalry ) as well as the obvious advantage of lower recieved damage. Not to mention cost heavily armoured troops are very inexpensive they should cost a lot more ( like 10k at least for the armour )

 

[Apocal]

surprisingly aside from using Battanian Fians, any infantry on shieldwall will afk crush equal number of archers. tested many times custom battles using all tier4 units. you can go try it yourself. the archers will shoot till they are out of arrows, run into melee one at a time and all die. while as much as 40% of the infantry will remain. basically make a shiled wall that's 3-4 layers and listen for the "rain" of arrows

This would only matter if the AI were capable of using shieldwall. As far as I can tell, it is not -- no disadvantages when you're only dealing with enemy archers and yet they only raise their shields at around 50 meters, then drop them at about 5 meters so archers can get one final devastating volley off.

Then losing in the melee somehow. (???)

Players can style all over archers, but if you just want to style over archers, might as well use a counter that doesn't lose half its numbers in the process.

 

[flavior flavius]

(1) Archers are not accurate at all at long ranges
(2) Archers are accurate in ranges they're supposed to be accurate
(3) Arrows significantly drop in damage with distance, as well as with armor
(4) Every time you feel the arrows are super powerful, is when you're hit at close ranges, probably targeted by multiple archers
(5) Archers don't "destroy" anything one-sidedly
(6) The effectiveness of ranged-centered armies in the game, is precisely because of the irregularly huge numbers of archers the players use
(7) Granting med~high grade armor the amount of realistic protection people want, will effectively trivialize ranged units in the game down to non-use, because a player can just freely spam something like 200-men T6 armies with armor impenetrable to arrow fire, and just futz up the entire game balance

1. Correct, as it should be.

3. Wrong. From my tests arrows do NOT have a significant drop in damage on distance, and because they are piercing damage they go through armor better than cutting weapons.

5.Right... here is a video of 500 Battanian heroes (tier 4) completely wrecking both 500 Khuzait Lancers (tier 5) and in a separate test 500 Vlandian swordsmen (tier 4)


6. It shouldn't matter. Bringing all archers should result in getting mowed down by cavalry and that just isn't the case atm.

7. Not if it is done right. Armor shouldn't completely negate arrow damage, but it should do a hell of a lot more then it does currently.

 

[Bronk the Raven]

This would only matter if the AI were capable of using shieldwall. As far as I can tell, it is not -- no disadvantages when you're only dealing with enemy archers and yet they only raise their shields at around 50 meters, then drop them at about 5 meters so archers can get one final devastating volley off.

Then losing in the melee somehow. (???)

Players can style all over archers, but if you just want to style over archers, might as well use a counter that doesn't lose half its numbers in the process.

.Right... here is a video of 500 Battanian heroes (tier 4) completely wrecking both 500 Khuzait Lancers (tier 5) and in a separate test 500 Vlandian swordsmen (tier 4)

A. I think for these tests to be definitive, they should be done in a range of quantity of troops. It's hard to really say who has a clear advantage when increasing numbers across the board. I think 15v15, 60v60, and 150v150 is a decent spread to see how numbers alone affect the results, all else equal.

B. Another variable that others have mentioned is the AI. There is little value in these tests unless they are done with AI archers vs player opponent (cav/inf) and then again with player archers vs AI opponent. A player wouldn't have sent infantry charging like that not in shieldwall in the video. And maybe the AI won't either... eventually.

C.

(7) Granting med~high grade armor the amount of realistic protection people want, will effectively trivialize ranged units in the game down to non-use, because a player can just freely spam something like 200-men T6 armies with armor impenetrable to arrow fire, and just futz up the entire game balance

C. I disagree. It can be done if it is implemented in the way I suggested: increase armor resistance to CUT damage only. To prevent player spamming of archers who use pierce arrows, the numbers can be tweaked so that cut arrows do more damage to unarmored dudes than pierce arrows, yet pierce arrows do much better against armor than cut. My reasoning for this is to improve the relationship of armor with all weapons in the game, not just archers.

I think there should also be, coupled with the armor change, a much slower improvement rate for units with a general bump in the gear of low level units (+shields and spears or two handed spears for all recruits, have peasants as a class below that only used in dire situations), possibly decreasing the armor of some mid tier units, adding a real population pool to recruit from that has a much higher max recruitment pool (which includes a variety of tiers in logarithmic quantities) and a much slower refresh rate. Within the scope of the game, it is ridiculous that you can train a peasant into some kind of battle-hardened veteran through experience alone in just a few days, maybe weeks/months, not to mention being able to upgrade a troop to have high tier gear for only a few denars in the middle of nowhere. For the sake of longer play throughs stretching across multiple player generations, I think this is needed, but at the current state of the game, I appreciate being able to speed through the game because clearly we are the beta testers, and we need to test as much as we can. Since my suggested change to armor would kind of require a decrease in experience gain to prevent players from spamming high level troops, this change should come later imo, after most of the features of the game are implemented and balanced. The armor change really is just a balancing tweak.

 

[flavior flavius]

A. I think for these tests to be definitive, they should be done in a range of quantity of troops. It's hard to really say who has a clear advantage when increasing numbers across the board. I think 15v15, 60v60, and 150v150 is a decent spread to see how numbers alone affect the results, all else equal.

Sure, but I would say that mass archers in large battles are DEFINITIVELY broken due to the video evidence just presented. Granted, we need a larger sample size to be certain to what extent, but in no way should 500 archers vs 500 cavalry be resulting in a victory to the LOWER TIER archers with only 50 casualties on flat, unobstructed terrain. Ever.

B. Another variable that others have mentioned is the AI. There is little value in these tests unless they are done with AI archers vs player opponent (cav/inf) and then again with player archers vs AI opponent. A player wouldn't have sent infantry charging like that not in shieldwall in the video. And maybe the AI won't either... eventually.

The tests are done for the current state of the game, not for an indeterminate future state. Mass archers are too strong in large battles currently and they need nerfs in that regard. If and when the AI learns how to do shieldwall we can re-evaluate.

 

[Bronk the Raven]

The tests are done for the current state of the game, not for an indeterminate future state. Mass archers are too strong in large battles currently and they need nerfs in that regard. If and when the AI learns how to do shieldwall we can re-evaluate.

Sure, I agree. But what are we actually testing? The balance of archers in the game? Or the balance of PLAYER-CONTROLLED archers? I think the first because the AI uses them too, and in the case of a player supporting an AI ally, the AI occasionally uses archers against other AI troops in SP.

My point is that no matter what unit the player uses, the player can use that unit more effectively than the AI (at least players who know what they're doing). So always testing the balance of archers vs other unit types with the player on one side and AI on the other is inherently introducing a bias of how effectively the AI uses whatever unit type the tester has them control.

 

[Bronk the Raven]

Sure, I agree. But what are we actually testing? The balance of archers in the game? Or the balance of PLAYER-CONTROLLED archers? I think the first because the AI uses them too, and in the case of a player supporting an AI ally, the AI occasionally uses archers against other AI troops in SP.

My point is that no matter what unit the player uses, the player can use that unit more effectively than the AI (at least players who know what they're doing). So always testing the balance of archers vs other unit types with the player on one side and AI on the other is inherently introducing a bias of how effectively the AI uses whatever unit type the tester has them control.

One option to remove player vs AI bias is to set the player controlled side to follow their sergeants (F6 or F7, I forget), but ideally we would be testing with more control over the battle conditions: terrain, elevation, formation, and kind of splitting the forces and other tactics, etc. Giving the AI both sides removes control and thus repeatability.

Ideally these tests would be done player vs player with specific testing conditions in mind.

 

[William7667]

I dont think everything should be balanced as equal in all situations I dont want every soldier to be balanced to the point that it doesn't matter whether I take archers cavalry or spearmen or it doesn't matter if I am empire vlandian or aeseri because they're all the same as one another, I want them all different. put simply yes some things should beat others, some archers should be better than other archers some cavalry should be better than other cavalry, every faction should shine in their own way .

So what if the empire has better footmen or battania has better archers or the aeseri has the best cavalry that is only an issue for multiplayer and the single player game shouldnt be balanced around multiplayer, balance the multiplayer seperately, I've seen loads of single player games ruined over the years by trying to balance them for multiplayer. Balancing for pvp ruins the pve experience balance them separtely.

Archers in general at a distance should beat unarmoured Heavy armour in general should beat arrows, and long spears ( the two handed kind) should in general beat cavalry . So what I would like to see is for single player only.

The rough guidlines I'd like to see are

Archers should massacre un armoured troops at a distance but should in turn be massacred once the distance is closed they are expert archers and shouldnt usually be expected to beat well trained soldiers in melee.
They should be cheap to equip but struggle to hurt anyone in heavy armour I'd give them more arrows if their light or un armoured ( two quivers full ) and a slightly faster rate of fire. If the archers were heavy armoured a lower rate of fire movement speed and one quiver to encourage the use of lightly armoured archers. High tier archers should also get a damage and aiming buff for close shots ( under 30 yards )

Heavy Armour should slow your movement and attack rate a bit but make you relatively immune to arrows and you should take reduced damage from swords.
Axes, hammers, maces and spears should be the main way to damage someone in heavy armour but it should be very expensive armour 10k per soldier

Heavy Cavalry should move fast and their charges should smash through all but long spears which need two hands to hold but they should be very expensive requiring a warhorse priced around 15k with armour around 20k for the horse and 10k for the cavalryman. Archers should struggle to hurt them. Walls of long spears should murder them if their daft enough to charge one and long spearmen although they wont usually kill a knight outright with one thrust (unless the knight was daft enough to run into him at full speed) should often be able to unhorse him leaving him to be beaten to death by axe and mace men. Heavily armoured men should move slower and should not be able to outrun a pack of mace wielding lightly armored men.

Un armoured or light armoured cavalry could still charge but might struggle to smash through as much and they should still be vulnerable to archers.

Now as to the issue of spamming 200 heavy cavalry, well peasants and normal recruits shouldnt be allowed to be heavily armoured cavalry the stuff costs a fortune, who would give some peasant farmer what amounts to a hundred years wages to ride around in, the first thing he would do would be to run off and sell it and retire to a life of luxury.

The mechanism is in the game already there are noble recruits, only they should be allowed to be heavy cavalry and they are already difficult to get in high numbers. The game could easily restrict the numbers so you would value and protect your limited number of expensive troops.

If you run your heavy cavalry into some spearmen and lose say twenty you'll have lost near a million and are you really going to send your thirty heavy cavalry worth over a million into a siege and possibly lose half of them when a seige engine collapses. Or would you keep them at the back and send in some cheap cannon fodder first that you can afford to lose.

So to sum it up yes heavy armour will make troops better especially v archers but it shouldnt be as commonplace as it is now as whole armies with heavy armour should be very expensive and require a large supply of noble recruits which are a rare and limited resource. Each army will probably be able to afford a small company of heavy armoured troops either melee or if their lucky and rich cavalry and there will be an increased role for long spearmen axes and maces.

 

[Bronk the Raven]

I dont think everything should be balanced as equal in all situations I dont want every soldier to be balanced to the point that it doesn't matter whether I take archers cavalry or spearmen or it doesn't matter if I am empire vlandian or aeseri because they're all the same as one another, I want them all different. put simply yes some things should beat others, some archers should be better than other archers some cavalry should be better than other cavalry, every faction should shine in their own way .

So what if the empire has better footmen or battania has better archers or the aeseri has the best cavalry that is only an issue for multiplayer and the single player game shouldnt be balanced around multiplayer, balance the multiplayer seperately, I've seen loads of single player games ruined over the years by trying to balance them for multiplayer. Balancing for pvp ruins the pve experience balance them separtely.

Archers in general at a distance should beat unarmoured Heavy armour in general should beat arrows, and long spears ( the two handed kind) should in general beat cavalry . So what I would like to see is for single player only.

The rough guidlines I'd like to see are

Archers should massacre un armoured troops at a distance but should in turn be massacred once the distance is closed they are expert archers and shouldnt usually be expected to beat well trained soldiers in melee.
They should be cheap to equip but struggle to hurt anyone in heavy armour I'd give them more arrows if their light or un armoured ( two quivers full ) and a slightly faster rate of fire. If the archers were heavy armoured a lower rate of fire movement speed and one quiver to encourage the use of lightly armoured archers. High tier archers should also get a damage and aiming buff for close shots ( under 30 yards )

Heavy Armour should slow your movement and attack rate a bit but make you relatively immune to arrows and you should take reduced damage from swords.
Axes, hammers, maces and spears should be the main way to damage someone in heavy armour but it should be very expensive armour 10k per soldier

Heavy Cavalry should move fast and their charges should smash through all but long spears which need two hands to hold but they should be very expensive requiring a warhorse priced around 15k with armour around 20k for the horse and 10k for the cavalryman. Archers should struggle to hurt them. Walls of long spears should murder them if their daft enough to charge one and long spearmen although they wont usually kill a knight outright with one thrust (unless the knight was daft enough to run into him at full speed) should often be able to unhorse him leaving him to be beaten to death by axe and mace men. Heavily armoured men should move slower and should not be able to outrun a pack of mace wielding lightly armored men.

Un armoured or light armoured cavalry could still charge but might struggle to smash through as much and they should still be vulnerable to archers.

Now as to the issue of spamming 200 heavy cavalry, well peasants and normal recruits shouldnt be allowed to be heavily armoured cavalry the stuff costs a fortune, who would give some peasant farmer what amounts to a hundred years wages to ride around in, the first thing he would do would be to run off and sell it and retire to a life of luxury.

The mechanism is in the game already there are noble recruits, only they should be allowed to be heavy cavalry and they are already difficult to get in high numbers. The game could easily restrict the numbers so you would value and protect your limited number of expensive troops.

If you run your heavy cavalry into some spearmen and lose say twenty you'll have lost near a million and are you really going to send your thirty heavy cavalry worth over a million into a siege and possibly lose half of them when a seige engine collapses. Or would you keep them at the back and send in some cheap cannon fodder first that you can afford to lose.

So to sum it up yes heavy armour will make troops better especially v archers but it shouldnt be as commonplace as it is now as whole armies with heavy armour should be very expensive and require a large supply of noble recruits which are a rare and limited resource. Each army will probably be able to afford a small company of heavy armoured troops either melee or if their lucky and rich cavalry and there will be an increased role for long spearmen axes and maces.

I agree with pretty much everything you say.

Imo though, the point of these tests of having only cavalry vs only archers of similar tier battle in equal numbers is that it is a conservative test of archers vs a hard counter to archers. If archers are scientifically proven (or as close as we can get) to beat their hard counter, they aren't balanced in the game, SP or MP. I totally agree that there should be counters to everything. Even if a unit (i.e. heavy cav) is balanced so that it beats everything 1v1, they can still be balanced within the SP experience by being hard to get in high numbers.

Look at Captain mode of MP: different troop types have different quantities based on how well they perform compared to everything else available. That makes sense, and the idea carries over to SP as well, for both balanced gameplay and historical realism. Sure it's possible the troop numbers given in MP's Captain mode take into account (to some unknown degree) the influence of a player being one, but I would imagine the main influence is the AI's ability to perform as one of those troops. I think most people would agree. So from that, it should be obvious that from a purely gameplay perspective, in most cases, a fewer number of cavalry should be equal in performance as a larger group of archers. Of course the idea of cavalry being a hard counter to archers is taken in context of an actual battle which pretty much always includes infantry in the mix.

 

[Apocal]

A. I think for these tests to be definitive, they should be done in a range of quantity of troops. It's hard to really say who has a clear advantage when increasing numbers across the board. I think 15v15, 60v60, and 150v150 is a decent spread to see how numbers alone affect the results, all else equal.

I did do that. It was under a spoiler tag and I couldn't record decent videos then but I went 50-100-150. Of course it was varied a bit but they were solid blowouts, not anything close enough that I needed to see it repeated ten times at every scale.

Spoiler: Spoiler due to large picture.

I dont think everything should be balanced as equal in all situations I dont want every soldier to be balanced to the point that it doesn't matter whether I take archers cavalry or spearmen or it doesn't matter if I am empire vlandian or aeseri because they're all the same as one another, I want them all different. put simply yes some things should beat others, some archers should be better than other archers some cavalry should be better than other cavalry, every faction should shine in their own way .

So what if the empire has better footmen or battania has better archers or the aeseri has the best cavalry that is only an issue for multiplayer and the single player game shouldnt be balanced around multiplayer, balance the multiplayer seperately, I've seen loads of single player games ruined over the years by trying to balance them for multiplayer. Balancing for pvp ruins the pve experience balance them separtely.

I don't think anyone has said this in the thread.

People are talking archers generally and only use Fian Champions as a reference point for being the best archers in the game. It is entirely plausible -- probable, even -- that any balance issues with archers (if they exist) are restricted primarily to Fian Champions but we're not discussing that. @Dabos37 is still getting exact opposite results in his tests and I don't think he is lying or doing anything that would affect the results.

There is very likely something screwy going on here and we just haven't found it yet.

 

[flavior flavius]

Sure, I agree. But what are we actually testing? The balance of archers in the game? Or the balance of PLAYER-CONTROLLED archers? I think the first because the AI uses them too, and in the case of a player supporting an AI ally, the AI occasionally uses archers against other AI troops in SP.

The video I posted only had the archers standing in a straight line on flat terrain and no tactics or movement. That's about as unbiased as you can get without handing control to the sergeants.

I did do that. It was under a spoiler tag and I couldn't record decent videos then but I went 50-100-150. Of course it was varied a bit but they were solid blowouts, not anything close enough that I needed to see it repeated ten times at every scale.

Are those your tests? No way in hell I believe that 150 cav fought 150 archers and only took 4 casualties without player interference, or biased terrain. The cav would take more casualties then that from the arrows on the charge before the initial clash, even if they immediately slaughtered all of the archers on contact.

@Dabos37 is still getting exact opposite results in his tests and I don't think he is lying or doing anything that would affect the results.

I am less sure. Once I see the entire battle recorded and his results repeated with no player interference then I will believe it. Only showing the ending scorecards makes it way too easy to potentially falsify.

 

[Maximum997]

we barely killed any and their infantry managed to kill us all because the cav was causing too much hassle and distraction.

Just use face direction to prevent arhers running in circles like morons.

It makes your archers like 5 times more effective

 

[Bannerman Man]

I'd be very careful about using custom battles as definitive proof of anything, as I don't think custom battles use the same combat AI and combat parameters as singleplayer campaign mode. I'm positive that was the case upon release, but they may have made some changes between then and now to make it a better representation of singleplayer. Unless someone can confirm that battle conditions in either mode are now identical I would hesitate to draw any conclusions from custom battle tests.

 

[Bronk the Raven]

Just use face direction to prevent arhers running in circles like morons.

It makes your archers like 5 times more effective

Little things like this are a good way of pointing out how the apparent effectiveness of a unit depends on more than just its damage potential in relation to other units, and why I'm not a fan of using the AI in testing. That is inherently testing with the added variable: how effective the AI commands.

I'd be very careful about using custom battles as definitive proof of anything, as I don't think custom battles use the same combat AI and combat parameters as singleplayer campaign mode. I'm positive that was the case upon release, but they may have made some changes between then and now to make it a better representation of singleplayer. Unless someone can confirm that battle conditions in either mode are now identical I would hesitate to draw any conclusions from custom battle tests.

Exactly.

Any definitive test purely on the balance of troops would be between two players commanding troops. I don't think it's useless to test with the AI though. It's just that if a clear winner emerges between cav vs archers, it may just be that the AI can more effectively use one over the other in its current state, and changing the AI behavior would then be the proper course of action rather than adjusting stats or gear of troops. Knowing this is a variable is important when making observations and drawing conclusions.

 

[Bannerman Man]

I don't think it's useless to test with the AI though.

It's not just the AI though. Damage calculations are different for custom battles as well. That's what I was told when I made the same mistake some weeks ago (see here and here). That was back in April though, and it's possible things may have changed since then (custom battles do feel different now), but unless someone can confirm that the modes are identical I wouldn't trust any custom battle results at face value.

 

[Bronk the Raven]

It's not just the AI though. Damage calculations are different for custom battles as well. That's what I was told when I made the same mistake some weeks ago (see here and here). That was back in April though, and it's possible things may have changed since then (custom battles do feel different now), but unless someone can confirm that the modes are identical I wouldn't trust any custom battle results.

Gotcha. I wish there was more consistency across the parallels. I don't understand why they would need something different for custom battles other than starting conditions for the AI.