Archers need a nerf.

Arches OP?

  • Yes

    Votes: 82 27.9%
  • No

    Votes: 102 34.7%
  • Buff Armor instead

    Votes: 139 47.3%

  • Total voters
    294

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I'm playing with this mod right now: https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/129?tab=description and it pretty much fixes the problem with both piercing and blunt damage. The mod basically plays around with damage types to balance the weapons out, but armor tweaks against these types of damage should do the trick as well. Make it even configurable like the mod doeas and everyone will be happy..

Yeah, Armor Does Something -- and other armor buff mods -- came up early in the thread as a solution.

Most of it has just been back-and-forth because some posters were putting forth wildly different anecdotes about in-game archer (or counter-archer) effectiveness and everyone thought the other side was exaggerating.
 
The 13th century Mongols were approximately that close and even they used archery to provoke, disrupt, demoralize and goad their opponents into doing things that were dumb, as a part of a whole package tactical system. And their archery was considered exceptionally good, even among steppe peoples who were noted archers themselves. All of them had bows and knew how to use them, but there are no accounts of battles (again, to my knowledge) where Mongol archery alone sufficed to break their opponents the way we break ours in Bannerlord.

That's why for every three dedicated horse archers, the tumen had two men equipped with lances in addition to their bows, along with heavier armor, to close with and finish the enemy off.

Any weapon type was used to provoke, disrupt, demoralize and goad the opponent. Battles were not won by killing people, I have already posted statistics about that, that shows that during actual fighting about only 3-5% of men on each side were killed (on average, numbers could differ from battle to battle). Battles were won by making your enemy give up the fight, not by killing him.

That of course is not been realistically modeled in the Bannerlord, instead you win mostly by killing the enemy soldiers. There is very simplified morale implemented in the game, but even that works on friendly soldiers getting killed.

You need to keep that in mind when you compare killing effectiveness of archery in the game with the historical one. Which is why I keep repeating that all weapons in the game have much higher killing power then they had in reality.

You can't diminish killing power of archery in the game to realistic levels and not do the same with other weapons without distorting the overall balance of the game. But if you diminish killing power of all weapons to more historical levels, then you will get completely different game that would need total rework and would also likely attract very different players.

Of course. But in proportion to their historical abilities, they are way out of line, which leads to tactical distortions that make the game resemble a kind of funhouse mirror version of pike-and-shot. That's my main concern.

It is easy to fix: nerf the overall damage of arrows and/or increase the effectiveness of armor. Boom, done. Archers will still probably kill a lot of troops, especially at lower-tiers, but not utterly wipe the floor against anything approaching on foot and unshielded.

I don't find their abilities out of line. Players simply build ahistorical armies and then complain that they don't receive historical results. Even English at the peak of their archer use, when they were shooting whole French armies to bits as at the battle of Crecy did not had more then 1/3 of their armies as archers.

Debuffing archers will just make archers impotent in the field battles just like in the Warband. The last thing I want to see in the Bannerlord is the return of the Warband heavy cavalry spam. Bannerlord combined arms approach is much more pleasant to play and also much more historically accurate.

Buffing armor will make high tier units practically invulnerable to anything low tier. It already takes ages for a low tier unit to kill high tier one, and that includes low tier bows. And of course it would make player armies even more OP then they already are, because AI is restricted from building high tier armies.

So? They were hired as fighting men, for their abilities (or allegations thereof) on the battlefield. They were described as such in contemporary writing and given similar compensation (horsemen were paid more because horses cost more, obviously) to match. That nobles literally had better things to do with their time should be taken as an indication of two things:
1. That learning to ride well and use weapons effectively from horseback was just as much a lifelong skill as archery.
2. That cavalry was seen as the more decisive arm.

That also applies primarily to western and central Europe. Outside of that geographical region, in Eastern Rome, you weren't considered a complete warrior (as a noble) unless you could use a bow well, even from horseback while sending arrows in every direction. The Kievan Rus' boyars were (sorta) nobles and fielded as (mounted) archers.

Something can be seen both as useful and frowned upon at the same time. There is no contradiction there.

It didn't reflect the general attitude towards archery (or tournaments). That's why pretty much everyone ignored him on those matters and got away with it.

It did reflect general attitude. Tournaments were seen as a major problem and part of what is been in historiography called as "noble violence". And there were constant attempts to curb it eventually contributing to appearance of the Crusades, as they were seen as an effective instrument to direct destructive energies of early feudal Western European nobility to something constructive.

You need to remember that those early tournaments were not highly ritualized duels in to which they eventually evolved in later medieval eras. They were basically small battles often between teams of nobles and their retainers in the course of which participants were often killed and whole villages of bystanders burned down.
 
Any weapon type was used to provoke, disrupt, demoralize and goad the opponent. Battles were not won by killing people, I have already posted statistics about that, that shows that during actual fighting about only 3-5% of men on each side were killed (on average, numbers could differ from battle to battle). Battles were won by making your enemy give up the fight, not by killing him.

...

That of course is not been realistically modeled in the Bannerlord, instead you win mostly by killing the enemy soldiers. There is very simplified morale implemented in the game, but even that works on friendly soldiers getting killed.

You need to keep that in mind when you compare killing effectiveness of archery in the game with the historical one. Which is why I keep repeating that all weapons in the game have much higher killing power then they had in reality.

You can't diminish killing power of archery in the game to realistic levels and not do the same with other weapons without distorting the overall balance of the game. But if you diminish killing power of all weapons to more historical levels, then you will get completely different game that would need total rework and would also likely attract very different players.

I don't find their abilities out of line. Players simply build ahistorical armies and then complain that they don't receive historical results. Even English at the peak of their archer use, when they were shooting whole French armies to bits as at the battle of Crecy did not had more then 1/3 of their armies as archers.

I'm aware of that. That's why I went out of my way to say "break" or "broken" when referring to real life battles and armies. And yes, I agree players build ahistorical armies. I'm saying that is the game's fault for not getting medieval combined arms correct; players respond to incentives like winning. If they see stacking archers is 100% effective, they'll continue to stack archers.

It isn't my argument that Warband did this any better. It certainly was dominated by Swadian Knights (or if you happened to be fighting Swadia, Sarranid Mamelukes) and that also produced a particularly stale tactical interplay. Bannerlord at least improved in having more than one or two choices and most factions being able to get in on the action.

Debuffing archers will just make archers impotent in the field battles just like in the Warband. The last thing I want to see in the Bannerlord is the return of the Warband heavy cavalry spam. Bannerlord combined arms approach is much more pleasant to play and also much more historically accurate.

Buffing armor will make high tier units practically invulnerable to anything low tier. It already takes ages for a low tier unit to kill high tier one, and that includes low tier bows. And of course it would make player armies even more OP then they already are, because AI is restricted from building high tier armies.

This is scare-mongering. Armor Does Something doesn't make archers impotent or high-tier units invulnerable to low-tier units. It makes the high-tier units more survivable, yes. You can no longer expect your T2 infantry or archers to accomplish as much against T5 or T6 anything, since (almost) all the high-tier units wear heavy armor. But you'll still lose high-tier stuff, just because of how fantastically lethal the combat is, and if you manage to maneuver your archers in such a way they can pour arrows into the melee, then they'll have a noticeable effect regardless.

What it does (or did, I haven't used it in weeks) is ensure you want high-tier melee units, just because they have the big mother****er weapons that are effective against heavy armor. Also crossbows are a lot more favorable as well, which gives Vlandia a bigger niche in the ranged arena. The combat feels better and there are still situations where archery can dominate an opponent, it just isn't 100% of the time with contemptuous ease.

Of course, my pie-in-the-sky wish would be to introduce a better morale system that would allow for much more unstable morale, but also include frequent rallies, cascading morale failures and build-ups before charging. It would have the net effect of slowing battles down and allowing for more maneuver, along with giving reasons for some of the formations used in real life. But I'm not anymore optimistic than you are regarding fundamental changes at this point.
 
Im in 1.4.2, with a composition of 80 Battanian archers and vladian crossbowmen and 40 infantry. Battanian archers and vladian crossbowmen are the strongest archer foot units in the game and can hold up against infantry for a while. I have taken out armies twice my size with out 1 infantrymen making it to my infantry but 30 cav is all the ai needs smash trough my infantry and tie up my 80 archers long enough for their infantry to make me a brand new hole.

sure the AI takes a lost in cav unit cuz he just did a frontal charge but he timed it with his infantry.

If you are having problem commanding cav I suggest looking at guides or reloading the same battle multiple times to learn tactics.

The Ai is quite devastating when they time their cav charge with their infantry charge and you can do better if you make your cav flank and then time it with the infantry. Cav also has to be microed alot. When I am playing with a cav heavy army I order the cav to fallow me and skirmish the ennemie cav and order my infantry and archer to advance on the ennemie.

When you charge, Keep im mind the the cav will then charge what is nearest and will lose any mass that they had after the main charge. If you leave them like that they will be easy targets. as they spread out and start chasing anything and solo fighting 5 units with out charging.

After a charge, reform your cav outside the combat area so archers and infantry lose them as target and charge again.
 
Why is this thread back after so long? Archers don’t need a nerf tactics need a buff. Shield walls and testudos need fixed. If they do nerf archers just make them cost more. Making arrows for your army shouldn’t be free. Maybe force archers to pull arrowS from a pool of arrows in inventory separate from player used arrows. Or increase overall cost of archers maintenance.
 
I don't see a problem with archers, but I see a problem with the AI who sends cavalry way too in front of the main forces and of course they're getting shot at the first seconds of the battle. After that enemy army has no means to flank me and what first was a battle turns into a slaughter.
 
I did find archers a bit overpowered but only against armour when I first started the game
( I thought archery was slightly underpowered on unarmoured troops )
I haven't played without realistic battle mod for some time which seems to balance it just fine so I cant say if its changed

the other issue was not enough fall off over distance as far as I was aware most projectiles lose power over distance
(after their initial accelaration)
eg 50% less power after a hundred yards which might make little difference on an unarmoured target as it would still
pierce the body but could make the difference of piercing armour or not
arrows appeared to still pierce armour regardless of distance
 
I did find archers a bit overpowered but only against armour when I first started the game
( I thought archery was slightly underpowered on unarmoured troops )
I haven't played without realistic battle mod for some time which seems to balance it just fine so I cant say if its changed

the other issue was not enough fall off over distance as far as I was aware most projectiles lose power over distance
(after their initial accelaration)
eg 50% less power after a hundred yards which might make little difference on an unarmoured target as it would still
pierce the body but could make the difference of piercing armour or not
arrows appeared to still pierce armour regardless of distance
The damage will go down at extreme distances, but you're right I've never seen seen a zero hit. Lowest is about 25 or 1/4 of nomral damage and that's super far distance in a siege.
 
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