You don't even need to lead them, you can F6, ***IF*** the enemy doesn't have much infantry. If the enemy has a balanced force, the infantry will give lots of casualties to HAs. And if the enemy is all HAs, my Catas will eat 2-to-1, even though it takes longer to chase them all down.
Horse archers die to infantry if allowed to charge in on their own, but when given the follow order and the player circles the blob of infantry, they will not get entangled in melee.
But this is related to the 'laboratory', as well: the player is smart enough to do all this stuff, but the AI isn't. When the player comes in and uses his brain to note that arrows out-range spears, and is rewarded for it, that is a GOOD thing. There are more-optimal and less-optimal troop selection strategies, but the human can choose less optimal strategies and still win, with their actions, their gameplay. I call that fine.
Who gets a rewarding feeling from merely noting that arrows outrange spears and doing nothing else? To me, it seems incredibly obvious, and not rewarding at all.
I would like to be rewarded for needing to juggle many types of troops at once, and getting the best casualty ratio that way.
Not to be rewarded for noting that arrows outrange spears, parking my archers on a hill, and easily winning.
There's "the player outsmarting the AI and preventing lots of casualties because they are really smart at tactics" and then there's what the state of the game is now: "the player making extremely basic observations that work in nearly every single battle and preventing lots of casualties because they are able to make decisions even a preteen could understand."
That's not fine. That's repetitive and boring and immersion breaking and unchallenging. A good game is challenging and varied and immersive. That's why I want archers' easy domination of the battlefield fixed.
Now, if we want to talk about spears, double their thrust speed as a baseline; that's pretty fun.
I suggested a similar thing once (+50%) but someone pointed out that would give specific spears really high thrust speeds. Some sort of speed buff would be a good change though, spears need it.
Spears and pikes also belong to the best penetration group they suck ass compared to the rest of weapons, because their low damage (I think the lowest bow has around 30ish unmarked damage while the best polearm thrust is around 2
.
I have said before in this thread quite a few times that spears can and should be buffed.
Lowering bow damage would still accomplish your desired TTK
Well you said you think all base damage is too high, right? So if you lower both bow damage and other melee weapon damage, without touching armour penetration, aren't you going to just preserve the current problem of bows being better than melee weapons because they do the same thing but at range? And aren't melee weapons like swords going to deal too low damage with the amount of cut damage reduction that currently applies?
I'd be interested in seeing your ideal proposal for how much the base damage of most melee weapons should be lowered, and how much bows should be lowered.
Making bows deal cut damage would fix the balance problem but in a needlessly unrealistic way since they do pierce damage in real life -- I don't think that's a good solution at all compared to just reducing pierce damage as well as base damage a bit, which is a perfectly fine solution to the problem in my eyes.
Besides, your main concern with armor seems more on line to nerf archers, which if you are not careful enough ends up being like Warband, useless outside of sieges.
1: Archers in Warband were absolutely not "useless outside of sieges", Vaegir and Sarranid high tier archers were highly effective and Rhodok Sharpshooters in particular were a deadly menace, even in field battles.
2: sieges comprise a very big part of fighting in Warband. There is also lots of fighting on uneven terrain with massive randomly generated cliffs or steep hillsides, where archers excelled - and which are still present to a lesser degree in BL.
3: Again, being the only troop who can attack from range had a huge number of other benefits. Fighting looters? Your infantry might possibly get wounded but your archers can literally kill them without a scratch. Fighting a enemy who's holding position? Your infantry have to wait for them to show up, but your archers can damage them the whole time. Etc.
4: I'm not even asking for the same amount of protection against arrows as Warband had, anyway. Warband armour gave about 2x more protection against arrows, I am asking for 1.7x more protection against arrows. So if you think BL archers are too strong and WB archers are too weak, a midpoint should result in balance.