Horse archers are the worst.

[Duskmare]

They're clearly superior to almost every other unit. Maybe other cavalry stands a chance?

It's all about their annoying tactics. They just circle and run away while taking (seemingly infinite) pot-shots at you and your units. Even if you're on horseback yourself, you try to chance them and they run away, so you have to have a faster horse, not take too many arrows while catching up to one and then hit them about 5 times because the speed difference is so minute that you can't get any bonus damage on them.

You could use a party of 10 of these guys and wipe out armies of 60+ footmen, shields or not. Maybe 20-30 archers would stand a chance but because of their mobility I doubt the archers would even hit them consistently enough.

How would I balance these?

1. Make it so that their accuracy is almost useless when they're moving at any speed higher than a trot and actually useless when moving at or close to full speed. Make them slow right down for them to have any sort of accuracy. This will prevent them from running away while still firing and also make it easier for normal archers to return fire.
2. Give them an ammo limit. Maybe 10 arrows each. It's still going to be a hail of 100 arrows for just 10 units, so it's not like you're taking that much away from them. Since lords run around with upward of 60 units they're still going to have well over 600 arrows to destroy you with. Especially considering it takes about 3 arrows to kill a unit at the moment.

Those should be enough to bring them down to the same level as other units. It would certainly be a good first step.

 

[lysergicsid]

So far my best play-through has been a hun character that just has an army of Khuzait cavalry and horse archers Horse archers are basically like a mobile artillery unit with jet propulsion in this game lol

 

[Ichon]

Horse archers should NOT get limited ammo or not being able to fire while moving BUT I do think shots taken while moving should do 50% damage... so horse archers charging towards the lines and firing can still do 'normal' damage with the speed boost but when turning and running away they do far less damage shooting backwards/to the side.

Most archers can't draw a bow fully when galloping because they are gripping the horse with their legs/lower back which are the same muscles used in a full draw of a heavy warbow so yes- lower damage when in motion makes sense especially since the game has momentum damage physics that will give almost normal damage when charging directly forward.

Slightly reduced accuracy while moving might be fair as well but not a huge reduction. Horse archers don't have shields so any party with a decent amounts of ranged can usually demolish them. Shielded infantry can protect the ranged while they work but if your party lacks ranged and cavalry.... yeah horse archers should mince you.

 

[Duskmare]

Horse archers should NOT get limited ammo or not being able to fire while moving BUT I do think shots taken while moving should do 50% damage... so horse archers charging towards the lines and firing can still do 'normal' damage with the speed boost but when turning and running away they do far less damage shooting backwards/to the side.

Most archers can't draw a bow fully when galloping because they are gripping the horse with their legs/lower back which are the same muscles used in a full draw of a heavy warbow so yes- lower damage when in motion makes sense especially since the game has momentum damage physics that will give almost normal damage when charging directly forward.

Slightly reduced accuracy while moving might be fair as well but not a huge reduction. Horse archers don't have shields so any party with a decent amounts of ranged can usually demolish them. Shielded infantry can protect the ranged while they work but if your party lacks ranged and cavalry.... yeah horse archers should mince you.

I disagree. I think less damage would make far less sense. Horses bump as they move so aiming should be really hard. Besides that, having actually done archery myself I know that you use your shoulder muscles to pull a bow properly. Maybe it was a different type of bow but people on horses certainly aren't using "heavy warbow"s. Even the longbow is disallowed from being used on horseback in game due to it's size and difficulty to draw.

Additionally, less draw power means less accuracy. Arrows fly best when fired at high speed. So again, a loss of accuracy would be a far better option. Plus, firing into a crowd seems like a fair way to mitigate that accuracy loss, which is essentially what they did on ancient battlefields when they rained arrows down on enemy armies.

Plus, gameplay wise, if you're chasing after them and they're peppering you with arrows then damage doesn't really matter as much as accuracy. If they're accurate with 4 shots while you're unable to catch up and kill them then it's not much better than them being accurate with 2 shots before killing you...

 

[Ichon]

I disagree. I think less damage would make far less sense. Horses bump as they move so aiming should be really hard. Besides that, having actually done archery myself I know that you use your shoulder muscles to pull a bow properly. Maybe it was a different type of bow but people on horses certainly aren't using "heavy warbow"s. Even the longbow is disallowed from being used on horseback in game due to it's size and difficulty to draw.

Additionally, less draw power means less accuracy. Arrows fly best when fired at high speed. So again, a loss of accuracy would be a far better option. Plus, firing into a crowd seems like a fair way to mitigate that accuracy loss, which is essentially what they did on ancient battlefields when they rained arrows down on enemy armies.

Plus, gameplay wise, if you're chasing after them and they're peppering you with arrows then damage doesn't really matter as much as accuracy. If they're accurate with 4 shots while you're unable to catch up and kill them then it's not much better than them being accurate with 2 shots before killing you...

If you are only using your shoulders to pull your bow you are doing it wrong. Horse archers DID use warbows- usually of a slightly lower draw than a longbow but also more efficient in power so the speed the arrow left the bow was usually higher than a longbow that used slightly heavier/longer arrows so a longbow had more penetration power but less accuracy compared to a steppe recurve style warbow.

Horse archers made up for the lack of penetration by riding up way closer before losing their arrows if they needed to penetrate heavier armour. The higher velocity and greater accuracy mostly offset the lower penetration because they were loosing from 30-40 feet away. I am not against reduced accuracy from horse archers- just not to the degree you seem to be suggesting. I have ridden and done some archery... the archery skill is the far more important aspect but riding skill does matter especially for shooting while moving but still matter less than archery skill.

A good rider will rise up and grip the horse with their legs and release the arrow in between the bumps/moves of the horse, the timing becomes completely natural with practice. Leading the target, adjusting to the extra height from the horse, accuracy with a heavy draw bow... all those are way more important than the riding if you are at least a competent rider which most people can become in few 10s of hours of practice while bow mastery takes 100s of hours.

Longbows were usually trying to hit starting around 200 yards/600 feet and as the enemy got closer only the longbows at the front of the formation(angle too low for guys in the back) would be able to keep shooting and those guys were the best archers and with a big longbow with heavy arrows that last 100 feet an enemy had to cross was devastating... just that charging cavalry can cross 100 feet on open ground in a couple seconds so longbows would only get 1 shot at that range without barriers/rough terrain slowing the cavalry while horse archers could continually come close and then ride away if their enemy did not have archers or light cavalry of their own.

 

[Slithirius]

Horse archers were quite a plague in medieval times and it's difficult to have them in this game and not have them either overpowered or artificially nerfed.

I think it would be a nice compromise to give small nerfs to cavalry-compatible bows' damage and horse archers' armor and/or hp (making them more easily countered with foot archers). It would also be a great idea to weaken things like bows/arrows and thrown weapons against heavy armor (I mean, c'mon, one hand-thrown javelin has about as much ballistic force against a fully armored knight as a close-range rifle shot...). Change them to cutting damage maybe? Keep crossbows as piercing damage (they're crossbows after all, praised for their armor-penetrating ability), maybe let arrows provide some piercing bonus based on their quality.

 

[wrt]

I actually don't agree with any nerfs on this. There is a simple strategy to overcoming horse archers, just put your own archers in front of your infantry or even cavalry and they will mow them down, especially their horses as they seldom have horse armor. In case they pull big flanking maneuvers, just turn the line to face them. If they charge their cavalry towards your archers, just charge your infantry or your own cavalry at them. The horse archers usually get destroyed and even against the khergits I had no issues. A bit surprised to find this thread to be honest as I thought the horse archers are kind of easy to counter.

 

[FullbordadGames]

They're honestly more annoying than they are overpowered. You also need to remember that to get them to a higher tier you need war horses. If you're lucky you can get ONE war horse for around 600 ducats. More often than not they're more around 1000 ducats. IE 10 horse archers would at perfect conditions cost you around 7k ducats to get because you'll also need normal horses and pay the upgrade costs. In reality it's probably more like 10-15k to get 10 higher tier horse archers. Can't check right now but that would be around 50-70 fully upgraded archers?

"You could use a party of 10 of these guys and wipe out armies of 60+ footmen."
Well yeah. If you, or your allies/enemies, have no ranged troops whatsoever it's reasonable that horse archers will destroy you.

"Maybe 20-30 archers would stand a chance but because of their mobility I doubt the archers would even hit them consistently enough."
30 high tier archers would definitely win against 10 high tier horse archers. Even if they wont hit the archers themselves they sure will hit the horses enough times to make the fight archer vs archer.

"Make it so that their accuracy is almost useless when they're moving at any speed higher than a trot and actually useless when moving at or close to full speed. Make them slow right down for them to have any sort of accuracy. This will prevent them from running away while still firing and also make it easier for normal archers to return fire. "
That would nerf horse archers to oblivion making them completely useless.

"Give them an ammo limit."
Pretty sure they have one? Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[Duskmare]

They're honestly more annoying than they are overpowered. You also need to remember that to get them to a higher tier you need war horses. If you're lucky you can get ONE war horse for around 600 ducats. More often than not they're more around 1000 ducats. IE 10 horse archers would at perfect conditions cost you around 7k ducats to get because you'll also need normal horses and pay the upgrade costs. In reality it's probably more like 10-15k to get 10 higher tier horse archers. Can't check right now but that would be around 50-70 fully upgraded archers?

"You could use a party of 10 of these guys and wipe out armies of 60+ footmen."
Well yeah. If you, or your allies/enemies, have no ranged troops whatsoever it's reasonable that horse archers will destroy you.

"Maybe 20-30 archers would stand a chance but because of their mobility I doubt the archers would even hit them consistently enough."
30 high tier archers would definitely win against 10 high tier horse archers. Even if they wont hit the archers themselves they sure will hit the horses enough times to make the fight archer vs archer.

"Make it so that their accuracy is almost useless when they're moving at any speed higher than a trot and actually useless when moving at or close to full speed. Make them slow right down for them to have any sort of accuracy. This will prevent them from running away while still firing and also make it easier for normal archers to return fire. "
That would nerf horse archers to oblivion making them completely useless.

"Give them an ammo limit."
Pretty sure they have one? Correct me if I'm wrong.

1. They don't have to be high tier to be annoying and OP. The lowest tier Khuzait tribesmen or whatever still do massive amounts of damage. Even though they have almost no damage resistance that doesn't really matter if your units can't hit them anyway. They're constantly running away from other horsemen and constantly shooting. If nothing else, they take ages to chase down and it divides your army, usually leaving your infantry and archers scattered and easy to pick off. Maybe I've not explored the command system enough but it doesn't seem like there's a way to target specific enemy units. Even if you did though, you'd just be leaving the horse archer to take their potshots and destroy your army from the sidelines.

2. No, that's not reasonable. Maybe if you've got low tier troops with no shields and little armour. Otherwise they should run out of ammo long before they take down your actual army of shielded units, or they should only take out 20-30 of the armoured units that don't have shields. Being effective is fine. Being impossible to deal with is not. Especially when they can move faster on the world map than you since they're all on horses and you don't get to see the unit types until you're somewhat close. Essentially, if you head toward a group of 40 enemies with an army of 60 and they decide to fight you then you could end up against 40 horse archers instead of literally any other unit combination that would actually be manageable.
If they're worth more in a fight than any of the other unit types then that is the definition of over powered.

3. You don't always have high tier archers on hand. Especially toward the start of the game. Plus, it certainly didn't seem like my archers were all that effective at actually hitting them or their horses when I fought them.

4. No it wouldn't. It would simply give them a moment of vulnerability as they slowed down to shoot. It would make them less effective but that's kinda the point when suggesting fixes for OP unit types...

5. If they do have an ammo limit then it's ridiculously high. I chased them on a horse with my shield up for about 5-10 minutes and they still hadn't run out of ammo.

 

[FullbordadGames]

....

Right, I've played with both horse archers and without them since I've restarted a few times to try different builds etc.

First off, don't know if you play on it but realistic damage is ****ed right now. 2/3rd of damage is pretty much essential unless you want to lose half of the battles because of how ridicilously accurate archer/throwing AI is.

1. You don't chase horse archers, you use regular archers that are staying put.

2. I've never met any AI that has a full army of only horse archers except some smaller steppe bandit groups. I'd understand that meeting an army of purely 40 horse archers without any real archers in your army, would be horrible. I doubt that's something that happens all the time though.

3. Well if you don't have archers you don't have a counter tactic. I honestly don't see the problem here. I wouldn't charge an army of spear men with melee cavalry just because I lacked other troops to deal with them. In all my fights against horse archers, and I've done tons of 300+ army fights, I simply set up an archer line and wait for the horses to charge. At least 1/4 of them dies pretty much before they even get off a shot.

They've also never obliterated my shielded units as fast as you're saying they do. They get some lucky shots in but as long as I don't charge them they're pretty much just wasting arrows.

4. If they would have to slow down to shoot, your archers would completely destroy them. What you're saying would essentially just make them really bad archers that can move around fast.

5. I mean I just don't believe that because when I've both used, and fought with, horse archers they would go melee after around three minutes of fighting.

 

[Duskmare]

Right, I've played with both horse archers and without them since I've restarted a few times to try different builds etc.

First off, don't know if you play on it but realistic damage is ****ed right now. 2/3rd of damage is pretty much essential unless you want to lose half of the battles because of how ridicilously accurate archer/throwing AI is.

1. You don't chase horse archers, you use regular archers that are staying put.

2. I've never met any AI that has a full army of only horse archers except some smaller steppe bandit groups. I'd understand that meeting an army of purely 40 horse archers without any real archers in your army, would be horrible. I doubt that's something that happens all the time though.

3. Well if you don't have archers you don't have a counter tactic. I honestly don't see the problem here. I wouldn't charge an army of spear men with melee cavalry just because I lacked other troops to deal with them. In all my fights against horse archers, and I've done tons of 300+ army fights, I simply set up an archer line and wait for the horses to charge. At least 1/4 of them dies pretty much before they even get off a shot.

They've also never obliterated my shielded units as fast as you're saying they do. They get some lucky shots in but as long as I don't charge them they're pretty much just wasting arrows.

4. If they would have to slow down to shoot, your archers would completely destroy them. What you're saying would essentially just make them really bad archers that can move around fast.

5. I mean I just don't believe that because when I've both used, and fought with, horse archers they would go melee after around three minutes of fighting.

Hmm. Maybe I've just been unfortunate to only run into large groups of them at once then.
Before writing this thread I had just come across a castle with 60 units in it. I had 70 or so, so it seemed like an easy capture. Started capturing and they sallied out. I was thinking "great. I've got loads of horsemen. I'm going to destroy them."

Then it ended up being 40 horse archers and 15 infantry and 5 archers. You know that pikachu meme, with the surprised face? Yeah, that was pretty accurate for how I looked. Ended up losing the battle without killing more than 5 enemies I'm pretty sure. So they looked really really overpowered. I still think they are but because of the replies here I feel like I need to fight more of them to get a better understanding.

Oh, and I don't think realistic damage is messed up right now. Archers and throwers are too accurate right now though and maybe still deal too much damage.

 

[Duskmare]

Nope. Fought some horse archers again and they're still the worst. Was easily beating armies of 100 with less than 10 casualties (my army has 200) then horse archers rock up and suddenly I'm 50 men down and 50 more wounded.

There have also been a whole load of other threads that have popped up now to also complain about horse archers.

 

[Apocal]

5. If they do have an ammo limit then it's ridiculously high. I chased them on a horse with my shield up for about 5-10 minutes and they still hadn't run out of ammo.

Most of them have two quivers, so something like 40-50 arrows. The AI is pretty good about picking its shots though and large numbers of horse archers generally mask each others' ability to see the targets, so it takes them a long time to run out of compared to foot archers who are usually in a formation (or on a hill) that allows them to rain arrows as fast as they can nock and draw.

 

[wookdaddy]

The problem is that the Khergits (or whatever they're called in this game, I forget) have a million of them. A few is fine, but pitting a faction like them vs. Sturgia (their next door neighbor) just results in the Sturgians getting ANNIHILATED every time. Those battles aren't even close. Then again Sturgia just sucks in general.

 

[spacecaose]

Horse archers would of also been strong in warband, except that they had really bad ai and couldn't form a decent enough formation to do anything useful, also not to mention warband shield hit boxes where super broken, the only decent thing that had was they used faster horses so knights had a hard time catching up 2 them. Also they're not a problem as long as you have your own cav to counter them, i'm currently running 100 horse archers with about 60 elite cataphracts. I rarely win any fights which the ai has anything above 50 cav because my archers spend most their time focusing them, then infantry.

Plus horse archers have always been strong through out history.

 

[pmn1990]

As with All horses circle formation . Also heavy calvary HARD counters horse archers 10 elite cavalry can easily kill 20-30 horse archers by themselves with low casualties like 2 wounded low. Also high tier archers seem to counter them well.

 

[Mr.Kebab]

I think somehow if devs be able to manage only.tier4+ troops be able to make parthian shot "https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_shot" and low tier horse archers only be able to fire in very low angle range this would be fixed but at the moment even stupid light armor steppe warriors make superior accure shots like they are members of Attila's troops. In real, low tier troops should be less organised(less maneuverity and less morale) and less hit rate

 

[Duskmare]

As with All horses circle formation . Also heavy calvary HARD counters horse archers 10 elite cavalry can easily kill 20-30 horse archers by themselves with low casualties like 2 wounded low. Also high tier archers seem to counter them well.

No they don't.
My army was literally 40 heavy cavalry units, 70 archers and 90 infantry. The infantry got annihilated, despite being in a shield wall. The cavalry was wasted chasing horse archers they failed to kill. The archers were positioned well, on a hill with the shield wall at the bottom of the hill, and they didn't seem to kill any horse archers.

I've seen other people say that there's some issue where archers actually just won't shoot at horse archers. Not sure how accurate that is but it would explain my experience with them.

Either way, I'm seriously doubting whether you've actually fought a decent band of horse archers at the moment or if you're just talking theory out your backside.
Or maybe you have all rank 6 of the heaviest cavalry in the game and you were fighting the most basic horse archers?

 

[spacecaose]

No they don't.
My army was literally 40 heavy cavalry units, 70 archers and 90 infantry. The infantry got annihilated, despite being in a shield wall. The cavalry was wasted chasing horse archers they failed to kill. The archers were positioned well, on a hill with the shield wall at the bottom of the hill, and they didn't seem to kill any horse archers.

I've seen other people say that there's some issue where archers actually just won't shoot at horse archers. Not sure how accurate that is but it would explain my experience with them.

Either way, I'm seriously doubting whether you've actually fought a decent band of horse archers at the moment or if you're just talking theory out your backside.
Or maybe you have all rank 6 of the heaviest cavalry in the game and you were fighting the most basic horse archers?

The problem here is that infantry have always been trash tier in wardband and they're still trash tier in bannerlord, there is no point to having huge amounts of infantry when Elite heavy horse units have way better stats, and can ride on horse back also and if needed can dismount and act like infantry but are 100% time's better.(Also they nerfed the hit boxes on shields so more arrows go through unlike warband where shields had stupid hit boxes and could block any arrow from anywhere)

Like there isn't even a point in picking standard archer when you have the choice of picking horse archers, currently horse archers and normal archers have the same stats, except horse archer can ride, which allows them to out flank all the super slow infantry. Plus currently tier 5 horse arhcers also have decent melee stats as well. A lot of unit stat balancing needs to happen, cause a lot of them don't make sense.

Its normal for your army to get dismantled, when they're facing an army with way more manoverablity, you have cav advantage you're 80% more likely to win any fight. In this game, and in real life.

 

[phasic]

I try to have my cavalry on the left flank in a tight line to block and engage the horse archers. They seem to prefer left flank because they're all right handed, lol. I also move my own archers in front for their initial charge and I let the line rotate even though I hate when they do that. They usually bunch up into their charge so the archer line ends up "crossing the T" and they are usually cut down pretty quick. I also take advantage of any water/rocks/cliffs by keeping that at my left flank as well. Anything to disrupt their circling. Of course, I also spread out my troops as much as I can but it's pretty annoying there's only one default distance for the loose formation. I'm also a horse archer and I aim for their horses because they are easier targets and I usually get lucky hitting the riders. I have no problem with horse archers with these tactics. I definitely need an equal amount of archers or horse archers of my own to stand a chance.