Is it even worth it to be a Horse Archer?

[Deathwhisper]

Some archers are more suited to fighting heavily armored opponents than others. Vaegir marksmen and foreign longbowmen for example have slow but powerful bows, which are decent against armor (although still less effective than crossbows). Some are really bad though (recurve archers get a bow with cutting damage, but the bonus against shields can still make them very useful, especially in combination with other archers).

 

[cascinova]

Its not just bows, swords are also next to useless as well I noticed.  I mean against vanilla troops they work fine, but anything above tier 3, you need blunt or pierce to do almost any reasonable damage.  I run around with the celestial mace, and gave all my companions blunt weapons as well. 

 

[Service_Disconnect]

Its not just bows, swords are also next to useless as well I noticed.  I mean against vanilla troops they work fine, but anything above tier 3, you need blunt or pierce to do almost any reasonable damage.  I run around with the celestial mace, and gave all my companions blunt weapons as well.

Agreed, armor is so common that it doesn't make sense to use the one weapon which armor is best suited to protect against. You're better off with a mace or club. From what I know of history, medieval armies of this era would be a large force of lightly armored soldiers with a small amount of heavily armored elite troops. I'm guessing swords were so common because you would normally be fighting poorly equipped soldiers. In the game though the first few tiers are lightly armored but the bulk of the force will be fairly well equipped.

In this era, trained sword users would look for gaps in the enemies armor (joints, face, etc) to stab into since cutting was mostly ineffective against plate. In the game, this doesn't work so well though since sword thrust damage is almost universally substantially lower than cutting damage.

What I did in my game to change this was to increase the the thrust damage of all swords by 1.5 to 2 times it's original value (reasonably, depending on the sword). Against the AI, thrusting can be difficult because of the way they come at you, so you actually do have to back off and thrust at the right time to score a good hit. I don't consider it too imbalanced because the AI will also stab at you, and trust me it hurts. Maces and clubs are still viable, depending on how you want to play - I found I was more defensive with a sword and shield, blocking attacks and waiting for an opening to stab, whereas with a mace I could just go nuts and keep up a constant flurry of strikes.

I also changed the thrust animations for some 1h swords to the one 1h spears use because I thought it looked and functioned better.

 

[harlehus]

Its not just bows, swords are also next to useless as well I noticed.  I mean against vanilla troops they work fine, but anything above tier 3, you need blunt or pierce to do almost any reasonable damage.  I run around with the celestial mace, and gave all my companions blunt weapons as well.

Agreed, armor is so common that it doesn't make sense to use the one weapon which armor is best suited to protect against. You're better off with a mace or club. From what I know of history, medieval armies of this era would be a large force of lightly armored soldiers with a small amount of heavily armored elite troops. I'm guessing swords were so common because you would normally be fighting poorly equipped soldiers. In the game though the first few tiers are lightly armored but the bulk of the force will be fairly well equipped.

In this era, trained sword users would look for gaps in the enemies armor (joints, face, etc) to stab into since cutting was mostly ineffective against plate. In the game, this doesn't work so well though since sword thrust damage is almost universally substantially lower than cutting damage.

What I did in my game to change this was to increase the the thrust damage of all swords by 1.5 to 2 times it's original value (reasonably, depending on the sword). Against the AI, thrusting can be difficult because of the way they come at you, so you actually do have to back off and thrust at the right time to score a good hit. I don't consider it too imbalanced because the AI will also stab at you, and thrust me it hurts. Maces and clubs are still viable, depending on how you want to play - I found I was more defensive with a sword and shield, blocking attacks and waiting for an opening to stab, whereas with a mace I could just go nuts and keep up a constant flurry of strikes.

I also changed the thrust animations for some 1h swords to the one 1h spears use because I thought it looked and functioned better.

You're welcome

 

[Midnitewolf]

I still think the main issue is the ungodly skill levels of the troops.

As I mentioned in a earlier post I set my damage values to the following:

armor_reduction_factor_against_cut      = 1.75
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce    = 1.05
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt    = 1.25

Down from:

armor_reduction_factor_against_cut      = 2.75
armor_reduction_factor_against_pierce    = 2.05
armor_reduction_factor_against_blunt    = 2.25

The modified level of damage was perfect.  Swords and bows seemed to do decent but not overpowering damage and I was enjoying the game until as I mentioned above, I was part of a siege where the enemy had high level crossbowmen.  The problem I ran into was that these high level archers/crossbowmen have between 350-450 skill levels which meant they were nearing 90% accuracy with the vast majority of hits being headshots.  Without the massive soak values making it require 3-4 head shots to actually score a headshot kill, they were getting instant kills with near every shot which made short work of out of our defenders.  If these high level troops had lower values topping out at around 250, they would probably miss 75% of the their headshots and probably 30% of their body shots and they game would be way more balanced in terms of damage.

Hell if there was even a way to block or drastically reduce the AI making headshots, then the lower soak values would work very well too.  However, I am not skilled and/or motivated enough to modify all the troop skill levels and not even close to skilled enough to try to modify the game beyond simple stuff.

 

[harlehus]

I'm sorry i might not be paying too much attention but i have never experienced anything like this. I actually find the ranged units quite inaccurate most of the time. As if they too are affected by the never closing reticule, why wouldn't they be?


edit: gramma

 

[Midnitewolf]

All I know is that one siege, the crossbowmen cut down like 200 defenders in less than 5 mins.  I had saved immediately prior to the battle so re-ran the battle like 5 times with the same results.  The last time I retried the siege, I sat there and watch as the troops on my side were head shot with at least 90% accuracy if not more and because I had increased the damn, those shots were all instant kills.  Can't explain why but it happened and the only thing I could think of with the highly inflated skill scores in the 400+ range alot of high end troops have.

 

[harlehus]

Yearh that is most likely why, and i'm sure you are right that they have high proficiency because the armor soak values are so high. Didn't your units have shields? Maybe that doesn't work against headshots. 
Maybe adjust the pierce damage reduction value up just a bit.
Maybe get some crossbowmen of your own to defend your castles.
If it means a lot to you i'm pretty sure you can use Morgh's editor(included in the mod files) to change the units proficiency. It might take a long time i don't know but it doesn't seem too hard.

 

[Service_Disconnect]

You aren't able to change proficiency during a game, you'll have to start a new game for the changes to take effect. You can change their equipment though.

What I did with some units that I found to be a bit overpowered (Kolkar) was give them "dummy" weapons that were clones of their existing weapons except with reduced stats.

What were the troops that you had defending? Were you being attacked by a kings army with lots of high level troops? The only problem with crossbow units that I had were the Snipers (highlander I think) one shotting top tier troops with their nasty crossbows. They take forever to reload though, and they don't wear head armor.

 

[Taro8]

From what I know the game makes ranged weapons less accurate the higher the damage. To get around that andhave both accuracy and damage you could try changing the module.ini for arrow speed to damage conversion. I think this way the arrows will do more damage at lower speeds and bows can have lower damage thus have higher accuracy.

 

[Totentag]

Relax, men -- the mod is completely unbalanced.
What you actually need is just a good lance -- it will always deal descent amount of damage and XP. You need a shield and a 1h weapon. 4th slot is going to be saved for a strong 2-handed or polearm weapon. You don't need any ranged because you will run out of ammo very quickly. That's how you win in that mod.

Need is irrelevant. We WANT to be archers. Not everyone wants to Min-Max their way into a giant army and steamroll the map. Some of us actually enjoy playing a unique character.

 

[Wolfsblut]

You will never get the ranged stuff on the line, if you don't lower the high weapon-damage.
Warband isn't made for that.
A rangend weapon starts to get notciable inaccurate with 30+ power, very incaccurate with 40+ power.
That is, as far as i know, hardcoded.
So if you compansate this with ridiculus high skills you screw it up.
The best solution is to lower the damage to 20-max 75-80 (for crossbows) and then give every unit/ranged weapon in the top tier
an own kind of ammo.
Then regulate the damage of the units via the ammo, not the weapon itself.
You can balance the skill/accuracy/damage then, because you got full control over every aspect.

 

[Lord Westrum III]

Realistically, bows don't do **** to armor.

 

[Kimboz]

As someone else here before pointed out, troop skills are way too pumped up.

Try standing 50 mt in front of an archer and see hom many times he misses, now try hitting te same target yourself with the same bow.

It's like every little c__t in Calradia has tons of experience more than you do.

 

[Hapuga]

Bows are pretty terrible, fact. I had 400 bows, still sucked. You need around 600 to be allright. Same with thrown, thrown is arguably even worse. Not worth it, just go for lance/two/one handed.