Beta Patch Notes e1.8.0

[five bucks]

Archers should absolutely massacre infantry units running straight at them with no shields. I don't see a problem here.

No, they shouldn't. Armour was used in real life despite the great cost and the weight you had to lug around because it was effective at protecting you.

But even realism argument aside, archers are way too strong against too many troop types for good balance, as I said. Despite being cheap, they are strong against cavalry, against pike infantry, and against two-hander infantry. And they are even strong against shield infantry if they are distracted. Which means that an obvious best strategy (apart from horse archers) is just to spam archers with a small amount of distraction infantry to put enemy shields down, then let your archers pump arrows into them. It wins in every situation except against horse archers.

And because of the weakness of armour, horse archers are strong against EVERYTHING.

What archers should actually counter is horse archers. In real life, an archer on foot could fire and reload a more powerful bow/crossbow than a man on horseback, and more accurately. But in Bannerlord archers don't lead their shots against moving horse archers, and armour is too weak. So we end up with archers who counter multiple types of troop and have one counter; and horse archers who counter multiple types of troop and have no counter. It's a bad gameplay situation where no tactics or smart army planning is needed.

So there are two reasons armour needs to be fixed against arrows: realism and gameplay balance.

Infantry running around with 7 arrows in the chest and still fighting sounds really stupid.

They're wearing armour made of metal, dude. If anything, it's really stupid that a wooden shield can take 30+ arrows, but lamellar steel plate armour can take only 4.

I'm assuming you say "really stupid" because you think it's not realistic to take 7 arrows to armour. In fact, even more would be realistic. This is a great read on the topic: http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html

"During the 3rd Crusade, Bahā'al-Dīn, Saladin's biographer, wrote that the Norman crusaders were:
...drawn up in front of the cavalry, stood firm as a wall, and every foot-soldier wore a vest of thick felt and a coat of mail so dense and strong that our arrows made no impression on them... I saw some with from one to ten arrows sticking in them, and still advancing at their ordinary pace without leaving the ranks."

Plenty more examples of this in that text. The highest quality mail armour with padding beneath it was considered almost arrow-proof. I think it's very reasonable, considering that, and especially gameplay balance to make this game have some semblance of tactical variety, to ask for arrows to take more hits to kill.

I would like to build a balanced army and know that I'm not gimping myself compared to just spamming Fian Champions or Khan's Guard. Until armour is fixed, they will continue to be the best choice in the game by a long shot.

Thanks for the detailed information. Forwarded to the team!

Thank you!

 

[Consul_Kaiser]

Sure. Apologies for the terrible quality, I don't usually record videos.

Archers dealing too much damage to armour
Here is a video of archers massacring infantry before they can even reach melee range.


Tested again with different units, me commanding the infantry. Loose formation to present a harder target, and hold fire to reach melee range as quickly as possible. We did better than the AI, but still got murdered.


I also tested with other types of infantry such as Pikemen and got similar results.

Archers are strong against too many types of unit. Even their counter (shield infantry) can be quickly defeated by archers, if there is a small amount of infantry who make the shield infantry drop their shields.

The only thing archers cannot defeat with a tiny bit of assistance is horse archers, because archers do not understand how to lead their shots, and will shoot at where the horse archers were, rather than where they are about to be. This is not representative of real life (where massed archers was the answer to horse archers) and means horse archers effectively have no counter. I have tested battles of mixed T5 armies against just T5 horse archers, where the horse archers easily win with minimal casualties.

Therefore, massing either archers with a small number of distraction infantry, or massing just horse archers, is the obvious best army composition and strategy in Bannerlord that gives the best results in almost all situations and makes Bannerlord a boring solved game.

Two fixes are needed. 1: Make foot archers shoot at where a horse archer is likely to move rather than where it is, and 2:

The protection of armour against arrows should increase 1.5-2x, so that it takes an average of 7-8 chest shots for a T5 archer to kill a T5 unit.

Cavalry being unable to consistently land their attacks
Here is T5 cavalry not couching their lances, and not consistently landing attacks. Framerate is awful, but you get the idea. Similar results with different cavalry and different infantry, and in massed battles of mixed unit types cavalry is even more inaccurate for some reason.


I'll try and figure out what's making the fps bad and do a better video later, because I tested T6 Banner Knights and they were even worse than this, missing a lot of stab attempts as well as not couching, but the video was practically a slideshow.

Troops vibrate at high speed like Radical Larry when fighting at close quarters - I think this one has been D

Did you video capture this on a potato PC?

 

[lukkyb]

Plenty more examples of this in that text. The highest quality mail armour with padding beneath it was considered almost arrow-proof. I think it's very reasonable, considering that, and especially gameplay balance to make this game have some semblance of tactical variety, to ask for arrows to take more hits to kill.

I would like to build a balanced army and know that I'm not gimping myself compared to just spamming Fian Champions or Khan's Guard. Until armour is fixed, they will continue to be the best choice in the game by a long shot.

yeah unless the archers were all using needle bodkins (which i dont belive exist in game) then arrows agaisnt maille will do very little even agaisnt a simple gambeson/aketon an arrow may penertrate but not kill the guy behind.

what should be the case is that heavy armoured troops like seargants and heavy axemen should be able to take alot of punishmnet and deal it back as well while lighter troops should have the threat of archers still as they dont have that protection.

this would encoruage you to have some elite troops (which could be made more expensive due to them being tankier) and the rest of the army be lighter cheaper troops who are your bread and butter.

another thing to consider is that crossbows should be deadlyish as you could get really high poundage compared to a bow from one and they reqiured less training to use

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Sure. Apologies for the terrible quality, I don't usually record videos.

Archers dealing too much damage to armour
Here is a video of archers massacring infantry before they can even reach melee range.


Tested again with different units, me commanding the infantry. Loose formation to present a harder target, and hold fire to reach melee range as quickly as possible. We did better than the AI, but still got murdered.


I also tested with other types of infantry such as Pikemen and got similar results.

Archers are strong against too many types of unit. Even their counter (shield infantry) can be quickly defeated by archers, if there is a small amount of infantry who make the shield infantry drop their shields.

The only thing archers cannot defeat with a tiny bit of assistance is horse archers, because archers do not understand how to lead their shots, and will shoot at where the horse archers were, rather than where they are about to be. This is not representative of real life (where massed archers was the answer to horse archers) and means horse archers effectively have no counter. I have tested battles of mixed T5 armies against just T5 horse archers, where the horse archers easily win with minimal casualties.

Therefore, massing either archers with a small number of distraction infantry, or massing just horse archers, is the obvious best army composition and strategy in Bannerlord that gives the best results in almost all situations and makes Bannerlord a boring solved game.

Two fixes are needed. 1: Make foot archers shoot at where a horse archer is likely to move rather than where it is, and 2:

The protection of armour against arrows should increase 1.5-2x, so that it takes an average of 7-8 chest shots for a T5 archer to kill a T5 unit.

Cavalry being unable to consistently land their attacks
Here is T5 cavalry not couching their lances, and not consistently landing attacks. Framerate is awful, but you get the idea. Similar results with different cavalry and different infantry, and in massed battles of mixed unit types cavalry is even more inaccurate for some reason.


I'll try and figure out what's making the fps bad and do a better video later, because I tested T6 Banner Knights and they were even worse than this, missing a lot of stab attempts as well as not couching, but the video was practically a slideshow.

Troops vibrate at high speed like Radical Larry when fighting at close quarters - I think this one has been amply attested as others such as @Terco_Viejo have mentioned/posted proof:

But here's my video anyway. Despite the bad framerate, hopefully this is good enough proof that the problem still exists.

Another on wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQSpkPCY_us

Spears not being used in infantry combat -
Here you can see Sturgian Heavy Spearmen not using their spears to fight recruits. I redid this test with a number of differerent spearmen and enemy infantry, e.g. Vlandian Spearman vs Empire Trained Infantryman, Aserai Infantry vs Aserai Infantry; same result. Spear infantry will instantly unequip their spear and equip their sidearm if they are fighting infantry. Though they do use throwing weapons if they have them.

spear infantry not using spears for melee combat vs infantry

www.youtube.com

Spears are unrealistically slow, do only normal damage at medium range, and do terrible damage at close range. And even when the AI does use them, they don't understand how to use them properly - they let enemies get very close, and they accidentally hit allies on the backswing which interrupts their attack.

Well done, I warmly applaud you mate.

 

[MostBlunted]

Did you video capture this on a potato PC?

It´s just the Xbox One version

 

[Senko]

So there are two reasons armour needs to be fixed against arrows: realism and gameplay balance.

T5 Archer having to shoot a T5 Infantry 7-8 times would be awful balance. Espcially if they have a shield blocking most shots.
T3 Archer would have to shoot them 10-14 times, just stupid, sorry. They would be bullet sponges. Hard disagree.

There will be always mods to tweak the gameplay to your liking. I don't think Taleworlds will implement your ideas. At best archers will get nerfed a bit (rightfully so). I agree that Fians are still too strong.

 

[LuciusDomitiusAurelianus]

They're wearing armour made of metal, dude. If anything, it's really stupid that a wooden shield can take 30+ arrows, but lamellar steel plate armour can take only 4.

I largely agree with most things you wrote but wanted to highlight this snip for sure. Shields in Bannerlord feel way too powerful and the hitboxes are quite realistic. Where the logical hitbox can "catch" an arrow aimed clearly underneath it like on Vlandian / Imperial cavalary and other tear-drop shaped targes

But your last point really annoys me, you can absorb 50+ arrows with a shield as well as various strikes from high-damage two-handers and pretty much absorb all the damage unless it is a T1 militia (only if you have the right +40% damage perks). I'd like to see some hard-cap of arrows absorbed per shield and limited crush-through damage on shields even if that ends up being detrimental to survivability.

That said, if piercing damage for bypassing armor wasn't as skewed as it was, that would counteract that but I can also see complaints from the other side. If I'm playing an archer I'd be pretty annoying burning 5-8 arrows per target during a siege phase where I'm likely going to be combat ineffective after the engagement (~50% dead/incapacitated) as it is - it'll be that much more pronounced unless other things like proper usage of cover, better siege engine targeting mechanics, and more pronounced effects that the Engineering skill has on things like siege engine mobility and to stop the infantry AI from following far behind the engies and siegeworks and being pin cushions.

@MArdA TaleWorlds tangential to the above, I have various screenshots and larger reports to share. I've spent ~80 hours on 1.8.0 and have seen a lot of battlefield and siege behavior with Actors "jittering" and now they funnel up into, and subsequently get stuck within staircases and cavalry being trapped in infantry formations. This leads to more deaths and prolonged engagements which break the gameplay cycle where I now spend 15 minutes trying to kill 1 enemy Actor who is stuck in a staircase or tower and the AI's weapons are colliding with the environment too. It happens mostly in Aserai towns/castles but I've seen it elsewhere too.

 

[Grubbs008]

While using Harmony loaded above the Core Files (as required for 99.9% of mods) on 1.7.2 or 1.8, There are no campaign or blood decals at all. Blood On the ground, and Blood Spray from collision is non-existent with harmony loaded before Native.

Also, the siege icons on the map are also gone, There's also no tracks, no indicator that you clicked somewhere, no circle around objects you're hovering over, etc. No decals at all on the campaign map.

 

[Aramazon]

I've encountered some weird influence thing. I captured a town and gained 32 influence which was mentioned in the game, but actually gained around 80 and then when I click on the vote for who should get the town my influence dropped down to 4...weirdly enough when I loaded the save I made just before clicking on the vote button my influence was still at 4 even though it had been at 80 when I saved.
I'm a recent vassal of the Northern Empire and I'm not sure what's going on. No mods, just 1.8.

 

[five bucks]

Did you video capture this on a potato PC?

Well, it was considered a good PC in 2018 I think the issue is with the free program OBS I'm using to capture video, as I have no issues ingame.

yeah unless the archers were all using needle bodkins (which i dont belive exist in game) then arrows agaisnt maille will do very little even agaisnt a simple gambeson/aketon an arrow may penertrate but not kill the guy behind.

Perhaps some of the higher quality crossbow bolts/arrows could be needle bodkin heads.

Well done, I warmly applaud you mate.

Cheers

T5 Archer having to shoot a T5 Infantry 7-8 times would be awful balance.

What we have now is awful balance because armour is so weak.

Right now:
25% Archers, 25% Infantry, 25% Cavalry, 25% Horse Archers - High casualties against a balanced army.
75% Archers + 25% infantry - Low casualties against a balanced army.
100% Horse Archers - Barely any casualties against a balanced army.

You are always encouraged to stack ranged units instead of having a varied army.

Ranged units and melee units both take about 5 shots to kill someone in armour, but only melee units get their attacks blocked by melee weapons, and only ranged units can kill from a distance. The game will never be balanced while ranged units can do almost everything melee units can but better!

Espcially if they have a shield blocking most shots.

In the current state of the game, shield infantry's shields can block around 30 arrows, but the users die in just 5 arrows. So as soon as they enter combat and drop their shield they become yet another vulnerable target for archers, and horse archers can easily flank to shoot around the shield.

I would like to see a more realistic and balanced state of affairs where shields can block 15 arrows, and armour can block 8 arrows.

This would mean reducing the viability of the two best strategies of "mass archers/distraction infantry" or "massed horse archers," in favour of something more balanced. Archers would still have a role and even be able to destroy shields sometimes, but they would not murder everything without a shield or everything that temporarily dropped its shield.

T3 Archer would have to shoot them 10-14 times, just stupid, sorry. They would be bullet sponges. Hard disagree.

Yes, a T3 archer will have to shoot a T5 enemy lots of times to kill them - and that's a good thing! Higher tier units are meant to have a big advantage over units that are two tiers lower.

Did you miss out on playing Warband? Because armour was even more protective in that game, and it was good.

There will be always mods to tweak the gameplay to your liking. I don't think Taleworlds will implement your ideas. At best archers will get nerfed a bit (rightfully so). I agree that Fians are still too strong.

This is something that should be in the base game because it would be an easy change (just tweak the pierce damage absorption number) that benefits everyone's enjoyment by increasing realism and balance, and nobody has been able to give a good argument against it.

If you agree Fians are too strong, I will point out that other archers aren't that far behind them either for damage output - see link. The underlying problem behind all of them being OP is the weak armour. And all I'm proposing is that average hits to kill should increase by 3!

This leads to more deaths and prolonged engagements which break the gameplay cycle where I now spend 15 minutes trying to kill 1 enemy Actor who is stuck in a staircase or tower

Perhaps it would be good to make the last few infantry count as routed and disappear after a few minutes if you have killed/routed 99% of their army or something.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I've encountered some weird influence thing. I captured a town and gained 32 influence which was mentioned in the game, but actually gained around 80 and then when I click on the vote for who should get the town my influence dropped down to 4...weirdly enough when I loaded the save I made just before clicking on the vote button my influence was still at 4 even though it had been at 80 when I saved.
I'm a recent vassal of the Northern Empire and I'm not sure what's going on. No mods, just 1.8.

I got this: There is a bug where when you press escape you lose your recent influence gain. If you press the ... on the UI to open the menu to save and stuff it won't happen. I reported it. As for your influence gain, likely your clan mates stuffed all thier non-lord prisoners into the dungeon and got you influence. I think they can stuff everything in even if it goes over limit and you get influence, probably a bug that they can over fill them, but not sure. Obviously I can't know that you had clan parties though.

I'm wondering if there was some debug keys that were used by devs that got put in the beta by accident. This with ESC key and the smithing cheat with the enter key..... what could they be from?

 

[Ningauble]

I understand the comments about upgrading armour vs arrows etc

And for a game that rebalancing might be a good thing eg to have some tank heavy infantry that can make it to the archers ( but then again, Agincourt ? )

But it is instructive to observe the apparent historical tactical superiority of HAs, at Carrhae, Manzikert, Liegnitz, ......... maybe HAs are indeed the stand - out best tactical system ( highly mobile delivery of masses of missiles ), if you are lucky enough that your culture and geography facilitate their development. Maybe HA ascendancy in the game is reasonable "common sense".

Arrow cloud / storm tactics, from HAs, and tough foot archers, like at Crecy, intuitively should indeed be pretty successful, especially so if the opposition is enfiladed. I mean, that is just good tactics, right ?

 

[five bucks]

And for a game that rebalancing might be a good thing eg to have some tank heavy infantry that can make it to the archers ( but then again, Agincourt ? )

At Agincourt, the French men-at-arms travelled a kilometre under heavy arrow fire and still reached the English front lines, thanks to the protection from their armour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt#Main_French_assault They were actually mostly killed in melee, with the English archers taking up hammers, swords, hatchets, etc.

But it is instructive to observe the apparent historical tactical superiority of HAs, at Carrhae, Manzikert, Liegnitz, .........

Carrhae is so famous because it was a shocking exception to Rome's usual successes against horse archers. The Romans defeated the Parthian Empire's horse archers in many subsequent battles, and even destroyed their capital multiple times!
Normally, Romans would deal with horse archers by waiting behind shields until they ran out of their supply of arrows (which was usually limited to what the horse archers could carry, like in Bannerlord). But the Parthians had brought a huge supply of extra arrows, firing so many into the shields that they were useless. Heavy Parthian cataphracts also repeatedly charged the Roman lines. However, despite all of this, the Roman legions were not actually killed in battle - Crassus and his generals were accidentally killed during a parley with the Parthian generals, which caused the rest of the army to surrender.

Manzikert was simply a case of Romanos being deserted by his allies before the battle even began, which left him outnumbered; followed by a rival in the left wing deserting, which led to his right wing thinking the whole army was betrayed and proceeding to rout.

The Battle of Legnica (I'm assuming that's what you're referring to) was an evenly matched battle which could have gone either way, and Mongol casualties are unknown. The Mongols also tended to use heavy cavalry as at least a third of their forces; not solely horse archers. To say that horse archer tactics were superior, you would need to demonstrate them defeating superior armies through actual battle, or defeating equal armies with minimal casualties.

For some historical counter-examples that show that horse archer armies typically did not easily defeat equal or superior armies, I'll give you:
Battle of the Cicilian Gates - A Roman force with no horse archers defeats a Parthian/Roman force with numerous horse archers.
Battle of Amanus Pass - A Roman force defeats a Parthian force of horse archers/cataphracts.
Battle of Mount Gindarus - See above.
Battle of Artataxa - See above.
1105 Battle of Ramla - A force of 2500 men (supposedly) defeats a force of 15,000 men which included 1500 horse archers.
Battle of Dorylaeum - ~12,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry defeat 8,000 horse archers
1098 Battle of Antioch - ~20,000 infantry and cavalry defeat ~35,000 horse archers, cavalry and infantry
Skirmish of Shaizar - Horse archers fail to defeat an infantry and cavalry force which remains moving on the defensive.
Battle of Hab - Unknown number of horse archers attack and are defeated by infantry/cavalry army
1147 Battle of Bosra - An army of infantry, cavalry and archers marches for *twelve days* while under frequent attack from horse archers; both sides take light casualties
Battle of the Meander - A cavalry force defeats a horse archer force
1189 Siege of Acre - A cavalry/infantry/archer force of ~25,000 defeats an army of ~20,000 horse archers, cavalry, archers and infantry
Battle of Philomelion - An infantry/horse archer force of 10,000 is defeated by an infantry/cavalry force of 2,000
1190 Battle of Iconium - An infantry/cavalry force of ~15,000 defeats a larger force of horse archers
1192 Battle of Jaffa - infantry and archers defeat horse archers and light cavalry
Battle of Arsuf - 11,200 infantry, archers, and heavy cavalry decisively defeat 25,000 light cavalry, archers and horse archers

maybe HAs are indeed the stand - out best tactical system ( highly mobile delivery of masses of missiles ), if you are lucky enough that your culture and geography facilitate their development. Maybe HA ascendancy in the game is reasonable "common sense".

Common sense would be that if horse archers were as unstoppable in real life as they are in Bannerlord, then the nobility of all armies would have used them more, for example the knights of Western Europe would have been horse archers rather than heavy cavalry.

Horse archers were indeed strategically very powerful, as their mobility allowed them to take enemy armies by surprise unprepared, but tactically they were countered well by good armour, large shields, and massed ranged infantry such as archers, javelineers, crossbowmen etc.

Arrow cloud / storm tactics, from HAs, and tough foot archers, like at Crecy, intuitively should indeed be pretty successful, especially so if the opposition is enfiladed. I mean, that is just good tactics, right ?

Is it really good tactics to just have lots of archers and have them all shoot at once? Going back to the gameplay perspective, it's boring to have an obvious best strategy focused around ranged weapons.

I would much prefer it if the most effective way to play in Bannerlord was a varied army composition of shield infantry, shock infantry, pike infantry, melee cavalry, ranged cavalry and ranged infantry, which the player would have to use intelligently at the right times for the best results.

 

[MArdA TaleWorlds]

@MArdA TaleWorlds tangential to the above, I have various screenshots and larger reports to share. I've spent ~80 hours on 1.8.0 and have seen a lot of battlefield and siege behavior with Actors "jittering" and now they funnel up into, and subsequently get stuck within staircases and cavalry being trapped in infantry formations. This leads to more deaths and prolonged engagements which break the gameplay cycle where I now spend 15 minutes trying to kill 1 enemy Actor who is stuck in a staircase or tower and the AI's weapons are colliding with the environment too. It happens mostly in Aserai towns/castles but I've seen it elsewhere too.

It would be great if you can open a topic on the technical support board. https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?forums/mount-blade-ii-bannerlord.528/

 

[Ningauble]

At Agincourt, the French men-at-arms travelled a kilometre under heavy arrow fire and still reached the English front lines, thanks to the protection from their armour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt#Main_French_assault They were actually mostly killed in melee, with the English archers taking up hammers, swords, hatchets, etc.

Carrhae is so famous because it was a shocking exception to Rome's usual successes against horse archers. The Romans defeated the Parthian Empire's horse archers in many subsequent battles, and even destroyed their capital multiple times!
Normally, Romans would deal with horse archers by waiting behind shields until they ran out of their supply of arrows (which was usually limited to what the horse archers could carry, like in Bannerlord). But the Parthians had brought a huge supply of extra arrows, firing so many into the shields that they were useless. Heavy Parthian cataphracts also repeatedly charged the Roman lines. However, despite all of this, the Roman legions were not actually killed in battle - Crassus and his generals were accidentally killed during a parley with the Parthian generals, which caused the rest of the army to surrender.

Manzikert was simply a case of Romanos being deserted by his allies before the battle even began, which left him outnumbered; followed by a rival in the left wing deserting, which led to his right wing thinking the whole army was betrayed and proceeding to rout.

The Battle of Legnica (I'm assuming that's what you're referring to) was an evenly matched battle which could have gone either way, and Mongol casualties are unknown. The Mongols also tended to use heavy cavalry as at least a third of their forces; not solely horse archers. To say that horse archer tactics were superior, you would need to demonstrate them defeating superior armies through actual battle, or defeating equal armies with minimal casualties.

For some historical counter-examples that show that horse archer armies typically did not easily defeat equal or superior armies, I'll give you:
Battle of the Cicilian Gates - A Roman force with no horse archers defeats a Parthian/Roman force with numerous horse archers.
Battle of Amanus Pass - A Roman force defeats a Parthian force of horse archers/cataphracts.
Battle of Mount Gindarus - See above.
Battle of Artataxa - See above.
1105 Battle of Ramla - A force of 2500 men (supposedly) defeats a force of 15,000 men which included 1500 horse archers.
Battle of Dorylaeum - ~12,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry defeat 8,000 horse archers
1098 Battle of Antioch - ~20,000 infantry and cavalry defeat ~35,000 horse archers, cavalry and infantry
Skirmish of Shaizar - Horse archers fail to defeat an infantry and cavalry force which remains moving on the defensive.
Battle of Hab - Unknown number of horse archers attack and are defeated by infantry/cavalry army
1147 Battle of Bosra - An army of infantry, cavalry and archers marches for *twelve days* while under frequent attack from horse archers; both sides take light casualties
Battle of the Meander - A cavalry force defeats a horse archer force
1189 Siege of Acre - A cavalry/infantry/archer force of ~25,000 defeats an army of ~20,000 horse archers, cavalry, archers and infantry
Battle of Philomelion - An infantry/horse archer force of 10,000 is defeated by an infantry/cavalry force of 2,000
1190 Battle of Iconium - An infantry/cavalry force of ~15,000 defeats a larger force of horse archers
1192 Battle of Jaffa - infantry and archers defeat horse archers and light cavalry
Battle of Arsuf - 11,200 infantry, archers, and heavy cavalry decisively defeat 25,000 light cavalry, archers and horse archers

Common sense would be that if horse archers were as unstoppable in real life as they are in Bannerlord, then the nobility of all armies would have used them more, for example the knights of Western Europe would have been horse archers rather than heavy cavalry.

Horse archers were indeed strategically very powerful, as their mobility allowed them to take enemy armies by surprise unprepared, but tactically they were countered well by good armour, large shields, and massed ranged infantry such as archers, javelineers, crossbowmen etc.

Is it really good tactics to just have lots of archers and have them all shoot at once? Going back to the gameplay perspective, it's boring to have an obvious best strategy focused around ranged weapons.

I would much prefer it if the most effective way to play in Bannerlord was a varied army composition of shield infantry, shock infantry, pike infantry, melee cavalry, ranged cavalry and ranged infantry, which the player would have to use intelligently at the right times for the best results.

Nice reply. Thanks.

My point re Agincourt ( and Crecy ) you might have misinterpreted - " look what happened when heavy infantry did in fact make it through the arrow storm to fight hand to hand with tough archers ".

Liegnitz ( Liegnica ) seems to have been a pretty well perfectly executed HA arrow cloud, feigned flight, ambush, style of battle, text book Mongol tactics, and their casualties were likely to be thus pretty much "controlled "........... reading about it, it does not sound " evenly matched " to me.

When I think about horse archery I do include armoured HAs like Mongol heavy cavalry, and ghulams, mamluks, spahis, etc - all able to deliver masses of missiles from anywhere around the battlefield, quickly, and run rings around the opposition.This is a sophisticated tactical system we are talking about.

I do like your battle examples. You may make up a likewise list of HAs prevailing, which would indeed include Carrhae, Manzikert, Liegnitz ...... and in so many battles the influences on the result are multifactorial; issues of strategy, politics, supply, morale, weather, good or bad generalship, the disablement or death of a leader, defections, etc, can impact as much as " table - top " tactics, and equipment .......

And by " good tactics " I was meaning actually achieving the enfilade on the opposition.

Anyway, we all want the same thing - a better Bannerlord !

But some cultures do not seem to suit such a " well balanced " army approach as you prefer - Khuzaits ,with mostly HAs, should still be " able " to beat Empire type armies, as should Battanians with massed infantry archers .......... we need to be able to exercise effective generalship with the tools each prefers.

 

[five bucks]

@MArdA TaleWorlds one more video of cavalry failing to attack/hit target:



It seems that some cavalry AI have great difficulty hitting enemies who are moving forwards; they either whiff their attack or don't try and attack at all.

Nice reply. Thanks.

My point re Agincourt ( and Crecy ) you might have misinterpreted - " look what happened when heavy infantry did in fact make it through the arrow storm to fight hand to hand with tough archers ".

Liegnitz ( Liegnica ) seems to have been a pretty well perfectly executed HA arrow cloud, feigned flight, ambush, style of battle, text book Mongol tactics, and their casualties were likely to be thus pretty much "controlled "........... reading about it, it does not sound " evenly matched " to me.

When I think about horse archery I do include armoured HAs like Mongol heavy cavalry, and ghulams, mamluks, spahis, etc - all able to deliver masses of missiles from anywhere around the battlefield, quickly, and run rings around the opposition.This is a sophisticated tactical system we are talking about.

Mongolian heavy cavalry were lancers who attacked in a direct charge to finish off tougher enemies the regular horse archers weren't capable of dealing with. Some of them did have bows, of course.

I do like your battle examples. You may make up a likewise list of HAs prevailing, which would indeed include Carrhae, Manzikert, Liegnitz ...... and in so many battles the influences on the result are multifactorial; issues of strategy, politics, morale, weather, good or bad generalship, the disablement or death of a leader, defections, etc, can impact as much as " table - top " tactics, and equipment .......

Anyway, we all want the same thing - a better Bannerlord !

Agreed!

But some cultures do not seem to suit such a " well balanced " army approach as you prefer - Khuzaits ,with mostly HAs, should still be " able " to beat Empire type armies.

I would like to see every culture's troop trees designed so they all have one thing they specialize in, e.g. Empire would have the most pike infantry, Khuzaits the most horse archers (check), Sturgia the most shield infantry, Battania the most shock infantry, Aserai the most ranged infantry, and Vlandia the most melee cavalry (check).

In this way, the player would be able to build their army when fighting a certain culture to work to the weakness of that culture and defend against its specialty.

 

[nereid]

It seems that some cavalry AI have great difficulty hitting enemies who are moving forwards; they either whiff their attack or don't try and attack at all.

IMHO that may be on the same level as the bug that prevents archers from leading the shot. It seems the decision to attack an agent is based on the current position of said agent and not where the agent will be a second later.

 

[niekdegrijze]

would like to see every culture's troop trees designed so they all have one thing they specialize in, e.g. Empire would have the most pike infantry, Khuzaits the most horse archers (check), Sturgia the most shield infantry, Battania the most shock infantry, Aserai the most ranged infantry, and Vlandia the most melee cavalry (check).

This 100% this would force you to change up your party composition for every culture. This will make each new war fees fresh. I wouldn’t mind a roll back to before the snowball fix, where everyone got a lot of cavalry to even out the autocalc scores.

 

[fragonard]

Anyone seen this?

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord Coming To Consoles October 25

The medieval strategy RPG is headed to console players.

www.thegamer.com

Oct 25 release from EA?

 

[SolEquinox]

Anyone seen this?

Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord Coming To Consoles October 25

The medieval strategy RPG is headed to console players.

www.thegamer.com

Oct 25 release from EA?

Seems sketchy