Archers Not Firing

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Alternating battles for me. One they won't fire at all. The net they will. No change in formation or commands given. When they fire though, rock throwers usually start throwing before archers even start firing. This is bogus.

I swear rock throwers just shoot from miles away no matter night/day vision no vision, my archers just starts shooting at point blank then i have to tell them to charge cuz enemies are too close.

It just seems random what their behaviour is gonna be, I've had clear vision on an open field map during the day and still they werent firing. Most of the time they don't fire is during night time though, but then again theres no difference with dusk/dawn? like am I recruiting blind archers here?
 
I have cycled the free fire/hold fire about 6-7 times at the beginning of a battle. Then I tell them to charge and then hold. I then change their formation to loose and place them to the side. In an open field engagement, its pretty damn low chance of them firing. The range is not the issue because the times when they actually fire is decent enough for range. Its pretty frustrating really and the fix has to be something other than keyboard mashing at the beginning of a battle. Devs need to address this asap.
 
I know there have been other threads but I figure I would make another thread with a video of the issue.



Due to the game being in early access and being buggy, the AI that is commanded by the player will randomly decide to not shoot the enemy unless they are nearly face to face. Unsure if this is related to the time of day or terrain, however low light does seem to affect it. Quite frustrating when half your force is ranged but they won't do anything so you lose the battle. As is obvious in the short clip (I could only record for 30 seconds) the AI would not shoot until brought point blank, I verified they were on fire at will, and when I brought them back the AI stopped shooting.
 
I have cycled the free fire/hold fire about 6-7 times at the beginning of a battle. Then I tell them to charge and then hold. I then change their formation to loose and place them to the side. In an open field engagement, its pretty damn low chance of them firing. The range is not the issue because the times when they actually fire is decent enough for range. Its pretty frustrating really and the fix has to be something other than keyboard mashing at the beginning of a battle. Devs need to address this asap.

Same. They are randomly firing. Same distances, upslope, no blockage. It is 100% a thing.
 
The solution was mentioned already; dont fight at night. Even some darkness before dawn or at like 9pm and ur guys will begin shooting at around 50 meters. If u fight at daytime the range is like 150 for archers and 170 ish for crossbowmen from what I have found. I think its a good feature, since if ur attacking castles etc and they have alot of archers u should attack at night.
 
I'm not refuting that daylight or nighttime are not affecting anything. But I can go to an auto save and restart a battle maybe 10 times and get differing results with the archers attacking or not. And when I tell the archers to attack, sometimes they'll just run in like an infantry man (and yes, they are set to free fire). Its pretty cool that devs considered time/weather. Perhaps a moments thought to archers actually shooting arrows sooner than the rocks hit them in the chest? Good observations though, Twezie.
 
I'm not refuting that daylight or nighttime are not affecting anything. But I can go to an auto save and restart a battle maybe 10 times and get differing results with the archers attacking or not. And when I tell the archers to attack, sometimes they'll just run in like an infantry man (and yes, they are set to free fire). Its pretty cool that devs considered time/weather. Perhaps a moments thought to archers actually shooting arrows sooner than the rocks hit them in the chest? Good observations though, Twezie.
That sucks, I had no issues like that myself. Lets hope that the devs keep up the patching like they have so far.
 
Okay just sharing my personal experience. I have been recording my encounters. I feel like it's totally random. But definetly at night or with low light they are not firing.

I kept the order of the encounters as they happened.

What do I do at the beginning: I start the encounter and just sit back and wait for the enemy. I select my archers and send just in front of the infantry to have clear vision in front of them.

I split the time of day into 4 fractions to be as accurate as I can, Day-Sundown-Night-Dusk.

Also to note that the enemy in all these encounters always fired if they had ranged weapons (especially the deadly professional potato throwers)

Archers firing Y/NType of fieldWeatherTime of day
NoOpen fieldSnowingSundown
NoOpen fieldClearDusk
NoOpen fieldClearSundown
YesWoodsClearSundown
YesWoodsClearDay
YesOpen fieldClearSundown
YesWoods+Cliff sideClearDay
YesOpen fieldClearDay
YesOpen fieldClearDay
NoWoodsClearNight
YesWoodsClearDusk
YesOpen fieldClearSundown
YesOpen fieldClearDay
YesOpen fieldSnowingSundown
NoWoodsSnowingNight
NoOpen fieldSnowingNight
YesOpen fieldSnowingDay
YesOpen fieldClearDay
YesOpen fieldSnowingSundown
YesOpen fieldSnowingSundown
YesWoodsSnowingNight
YesWoodsSnowingDay
YesWoods+Cliff sideClearDay
 
There is definitely an issue with archers firing. I was even fighting bandits where they had far greater range then my archers when they did finally start to shoot one time and I had elite palatine archers
 
Light being a factor is unnecessary. Its confusing and unbalanced; making what could be more than half your army usless just because of the time of day. I've savescummed many times where I lost battles I should have won just because my archers decided not to do their jobs that day. I remember riding up to where they were positioned to see, if in fact, they couldn't see the enemy only to find they had perfect visibility. It was just a bit dark.
 
I've run into this. I usually notice first that they don't respond to movement orders either and just kinda join the melee when the enemy gets close enough.
 
Same for me, sometimes archers fire and sometimes not. Sometimes changing formations will make them fire again sometimes not. Pretty weird..
 
Same here. I set them up on a hill, clear line of sight and they just twiddle their thumbs. Sometimes they'll fire but not all of them, some will just stand and do nothing.

I don't know how you mess up this simple fire-don't fire mechanic.
 
It's not the weather, it's not the range, it's a bug, when they are not bugged they shoot really far, i can't hit **** where my archers shoot, my bow is ****ty too i have to say i have 200k but still the first bow, still they shoot really far and then sometime you have to march them 10 meters from the enemy to shoot but this way they can only get one volley, tested on a defensive formation that would not attack me, i marched them right in front of them and nothing, it's not even the spacing, i tried to put them at a certain distance from my infantry, nothing change and still when they are not bugged they shoot over your infantry if they can so not that either.
It's just a really annoyus bug that need to be fixed, if you are not experiencing it it's okay, but don't come up with range, formation, weather, free line of sight cause i tried everything they just won't shoot until the enmey is in sight.
And from what i can tell the problem comes up when you draw their formation, if you just tell them to move without modify the facing then no problem.
 
This happened to me. My archers were in default formation in a field battle and literally face to face against enemy with like 15 meters between. There was nothing between enemy and my archers and the field was plain. I told them to fire a couple of times (i know f4 switches between fire at will/hold fire so i tested it in fire at will case a couple of times) but they didn't fire. I wish i have the screenshot.
Only orders i gave them were advance and move to position before reaching that point.
 
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