Not disagreeing with this point, only in reference to the rock>paper>scissors example and how archers don't necessarily 'follow' that pattern (given they can be >2 types) is that a more effective armor on those types of shield-less troops can counterbalance that.But should they really? In real life good quality armour, even just mail and not plate, was certainly good enough to get you across a field under arrow fire without dying, or even necessarily being seriously injured.
Just because troops don't have a shield doesn't mean archers should be OP to them. It should just mean that archers can wound them as they charge into melee range, and once they get into melee, the full-health archer who is worse at close combat can have a roughly even chance of winning the fight against the injured soldier who is better at close combat.
As they should be, but archers as they are currently (foot or HA) are just a bit too 'easy' to take advantage with in comparison to melee at the moment.My stance is that archers should be powerful during sieges, when positioned on a hard to reach area like a cliff, when properly protected by infantry, or having an advantage fighting against horse archers; but they should otherwise go 50/50 with most other troop types in a straight fight (usually wounding them enough to have a good chance to beat them in melee), and be weak against shield infantry.
Ie. In a 'balanced' party of cavalry (+HA), archers, and infantry, it's only the infantry that needs constant replenishing. Which may be true realistically but, for a game, it's only by the player's own intentional 'handicap' (whether for roleplay or otherwise) if they use a party of 100 infantry vs 100 archers (80:20 ratio, etc...). I know it's SP and all that, but IMO, archers still need to be nerfed a bit; however that comes about, for now, we can only discuss until actual tweaks/adjustments do happen.
Agree fire-rate needs to be reduced, quiver quantity is just another 'fine-tuning' element to give a wider range of variety between troop tiers. I have to partially disagree on the point on accuracy; agree that lower tier archers shouldn't be nerfed but Fian champions (or players) should not have the accuracy that they do. I think the main issue with horse archers has more to do with the AI targeting than equipment balancing (same as we have with cavalry in close combat 'wonkiness'); but also the fact that there's only ~4-5 bows to template off of for all faction horse+/archers currently limits any variety between them.Hmm, I like the first one obviously, the second one might not be necessary except on troops who have 2 quivers, and the third one I would disagree. Accuracy is already in a decent place, some horse archers and lower tier archers can be ridiculously inaccurate (unable to hit a stationary target at 30 meters in many shots). Hop into custom battle yourself against a low tier archer and see. When I was testing hits to kill it could be annoying waiting for militia archers to roll good enough RNG to actually kill me. Accuracy doesn't need to be lower, otherwise militia archers would never hit anything.
However, fire rate could stand to be lower and more realistic, as some have said in this thread.
But it feels ridiculous when I'm getting sniped easily through those arrow-loops from an archer ~150 meters away; or that I can reliably and easily headshot troops on battlements ~150 meters. Either the top-tier bow accuracy needs to be toned down slightly a point or two or the AI 'targeting' calculations need adjusting.