Khuzait horse archers less accurate now?

[FinnishViking1996]

Is it just me but are the khuzait horse archers way worse at aiming after the latest patch? I am not talking specifically khuzait horse archer -unit but I'm talking all the variants of the troop tree, all the way from tribal warrior to heavy horse archer. Before I could have around 20 of them , and they would just obliterate enemy forces way larger than mine. Now I'm fighting looters who are about the same party size as I am and it takes forever for them to dispose of them.

Is it only me?

 

[Apocal]

Are you on the beta?

I have not had the same experience as you, although if you're on the beta, then it might be the ranged penalty taking them under certain damage breakpoints?

 

[FinnishViking1996]

Are you on the beta?

I have not had the same experience as you, although if you're on the beta, then it might be the ranged penalty taking them under certain damage breakpoints?

Yes im on beta. This was my first guess as well, but I think the penalty shouldn't be that bad since now my heavy horse archers take honestly like 10min or so to kill a bunch of looters smh.

 

[Apocal]

Yes im on beta. This was my first guess as well, but I think the penalty shouldn't be that bad since now my heavy horse archers take honestly like 10min or so to kill a bunch of looters smh.

Well a hotfix just went out that apparently fixed ranged unit AI, so I guess I just wasn't noticing something was up.

 

[radioactiverhythm]

I’ve had similar issues with the Buccellarii; they don’t seem to be able to hit anything at all in the latest patch!

 

[caledoni]

So I tried a Khuzait playthrough for the first time since May.

I think the nerfs and rebalance to player controlled Horse Archery are good. It was way too OP before right from the start and now it is still possible to be good but just takes progression.

The AI horse archers are another matter however. They hit/kill pretty much nothing. Also on auto delegate they will charge right through tight enemy formations (like circles). I don't remember them doing this before but it has been a while. I have tried to lead them in a nice wide circle round the enemy but they still hit nothing.

 

[geala]

I find it much more annoying that my foot archers don't shoot at cavalry most of the time (1.5.6). Especially problematic against horse archers.

How horse archers perform depends on their stats, I bet. I never use them myself and did not fight Khuzaits lately, so I cannot judge, but I have some high tier bandit horse archers in my game from mods and they can absolutely wreck my much bigger party.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

I find it much more annoying that my foot archers don't shoot at cavalry most of the time (1.5.6). Especially problematic against horse archers.

Yeah it's very annoying that they are noticeably slower and selective about what they see and shoot at. Up against khuzaits about 1/4 of battles have some bug where my archers/HA just let them ride around without firing until it's too late, sometimes they both go melee on each other. They'll be about 1/10 of the ranged units firing so it's not a hold fire type problem. Even when they do shoot it's not as good as it used to be. I don't remember what version it changed but at one point if you put archers/ha to the left and faced direction at where enemy HA approach they would obliterate them (if you had enough ranged), now it's like they really really don't like shooting at anything but the massive infantry blobs. I've reported this and tried to show videos, but it's one of those thing I feel the devs may not address as I don't know if they play like I do. If they just f1-f3 and look at the results they're going to miss all this buggy nonsense that comes up when you actually try to make units do anything smart.

As for OP about t2-3 HA, their skill is now low enough that they suffer when moving and firing. This can be fixed by just placing them stationary and using them like archers, then moving them as enemy gets close. They have better accuracy when stationary. Also, having a massive amount and charging them is okay because there will be soo many shots going off that somebody will be getting hit. 3rdly, having a captain with Dead aim, Sagittarius and horse master perks. Horse master might require some husband shopping, but the other 2 are fairly obtainable.

 

[Antaeus]

Strange... I've just started a Khuzait campaign on Beta 1.5.7.

Compared to my last campaign with them 3 or 4 months back, I'm finding it more difficult (which I guess is good). Their horse archers just aren't having the same impact. Not only this, but thanks to factions now putting more effort into cavalry units, I'm going up against Empire factions with waves of bucellarii of their own. As per above, I've found it more effective to park my horse archers on the left where I know bucellarii are coming from and using them as mounted mobile infantry archers. It's almost like Khuzait's over reliance on low-mid tier horse archers is a hinderance now. At least until they level up. Which is great.

In response to this, I'm finding that unless I specifically micro my own archers into facing forwards, they start turning in circles shooting at bucellarii - turning their backs to the enemy infantry and wasting their arrows. It makes a great change from set-and-forget archers of previous iterations.