SP - Battles & Sieges Make Horse Archers Circle WIDE until out of ammo, like they used to!

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

It's been requested before but you didn't do it (in fact it may be worse).
When I the human player press CHARGE on HA I want them to circle safely and use all thier ammo. I'm fed up with seeing "t5 HA killed by recruit" in the kill feed, it happens a lot because you purposefully made the AI sometimes decide to try and attack anything close up and have made no progress on balancing troops so ANY troop can land a speed boosted hit and kill any mounted troop! Please put them back to the way they were many versions ago where they would circle more widely and stay out of trouble. If want them to melee I will f1 f1 them onto what I want them to attack, I don't want the AI doing things I don't tell them to do.

Feels like a year now I have to just use them like archers because they're so stupid. Sometimes I want to use them as actual horse archers and not just archer that give map speed.

 

[Iberian Wolf]

Absolutely. I remember the HA battle from E3 2017, it was so impressive. I think they nerfed it as it was OP.
It would be nice to have them encircling the enemy on open fields, and go for close combat in a heavily forested area for instance, but not sure if the AI is capable of telling the difference?

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

Absolutely. I remember the HA battle from E3 2017, it was so impressive. I think they nerfed it as it was OP.
It would be nice to have them encircling the enemy on open fields, and go for close combat in a heavily forested area for instance, but not sure if the AI is capable of telling the difference?

Yes, they have been altered several times since EA too. One change makes the AI choose to close in and attack in melee more often and another change has them fixate on an enemy and circle so they will often ride butt out into other enemies. Although I agree there need balancing I would rather it came from enhancement of other troops first. Such as making other ranged units a bit better at leading circling horse archers and making cavalry better at catching and killing them. And of course changes to armor and damage calculations balance, but just having them be stupid and die in stupid way is frustrating to the player.

 

[guiskj]

It is indeed abysmal when you see TW downgrading the few things they have done right instead of elevating what is weak.

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

The stupidity of making their cool AI dumber to nerf horse archers instead of just... reducing arrow damage is ****ed.

Seriously, all you need to do to horse archers is reduce the damage their arrows can do. And then they're perfectly fine.

I'd rather my boys feel like badasses that don't do too much damage, than for them to do a lot of damage but have sh*t for brains.

 

[Julio-Claudian]

Yeah Horse Archers at the beginning of EA were great. Although many complained about them being OP, that was largely to do with the lack of proper armour protection etc.

Now they just feel like cannon fodder when they're yours and no threat when they're the enemy's.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

Taleworlds has persisted in maintaining a joke of a damage/protection calculation formula to the detriment of an AI. The sad thing is that at the agent/bot level, "the system" is so much more... I mean, in Realistic Battle in the AI module we see bots with a much higher "intelligence" than the native.

If we had a 1 to 10 button-o-meter in front of us, Taleworlds has the ability to max out "the system" and due to questionable design decisions they are not doing it... We have seen it in the topic discussed here and how patch by patch the ai has been idiotized being unable to hit a moving target (both for ranged and melee).

​

Remember also Petmonster's mention when he commented that they decided to make infantry act more foolishly...

Petmonster said: About infantry vs Cav. We are still trying to find the right balance. We did have -at one- point unbreakable wall of spears and quickly decided to make the infantry act more foolish. Otherwise Cav vs Inf is not fun at all. In real life no Cav formation charges directly to the infantry. They did get into charge numerous times just to turn back at the last moment. It was a battle of nerves. The infantry "died" many times before finally that last cav charge is real this time. (The cav charge becomes real when the cav commander decides the inf formation has lost its nerve and about to break.) since we cannot simulate this in the game it is somewhat OK to make inf act a bit goofy. (source)

That plus a whole bunch of other decisions that are nothing more than the result of not tackling the fundamental problem of damage/protection calculation. If Taleworlds were to provide a solution to that, I'm referring especially (like you guys have commented) to lowering projectile damage (speed damage colateral effect) and consistently tiering armour and weapon items, I have no doubt that the AI could be given a boost to act much more intelligently and move away from the clumsiness that currently governs the native game.

 

[niekdegrijze]

Taleworlds has persisted in maintaining a joke of a damage/protection calculation formula to the detriment of an AI. The sad thing is that at the agent/bot level, "the system" is so much more... I mean, in Realistic Battle in the AI module we see bots with a much higher "intelligence" than the native.

If we had a 1 to 10 button-o-meter in front of us, Taleworlds has the ability to max out "the system" and due to questionable design decisions they are not doing it... We have seen it in the topic discussed here and how patch by patch the ai has been idiotized being unable to hit a moving target (both for ranged and melee).

​

Remember also Petmonster's mention when he commented that they decided to make infantry act more foolishly...



That plus a whole bunch of other decisions that are nothing more than the result of not tackling the fundamental problem of damage/protection calculation. If Taleworlds were to provide a solution to that, I'm referring especially (like you guys have commented) to lowering projectile damage (speed damage colateral effect) and consistently tiering armour and weapon items, I have no doubt that the AI could be given a boost to act much more intelligently and move away from the clumsiness that currently governs the native game.

the dumbing down of the AI is indeed not the solution to the underlying problems with the damage/protection calculations.
I liked the horse-archer AI from the early EA. It is silly to have troops/formations behave out of character.

I don't think the effectiveness of the horse archers was the only reason for dialing back the AI. I thought I read somewhere that simplifying the AI also helped with optimizing the frame rate (not 100% sure). My fear is that optimizing the code for a future console release is one of the reasons for dumbing down the AI.

was there not a questionable change in the beginning of EA that changed the effectiveness of a unit? high level troops where a lot more dangerous in the beginning. I believe this was also a result of optimization

 

[Taveren]

Horse archers set up is also completely unbalanced. If you look at the load out for the different units, you find (as an example) that Imperial Buccellari (tier 5 HA) have level 1 arrows and are on un-armored horses, yet Aserai Mameluke archers (tier 4 HA) have level 4 arrows and chainmail protection for the horses.
Now, I would think the EMPIRE would be able to afford a better arrow, horse armor setup than a scattered band of nomadic desert dwellers...

 

[niekdegrijze]

Horse archers set up is also completely unbalanced. If you look at the load out for the different units, you find (as an example) that Imperial Buccellari (tier 5 HA) have level 1 arrows and are on un-armored horses, yet Aserai Mameluke archers (tier 4 HA) have level 4 arrows and chainmail protection for the horses.
Now, I would think the EMPIRE would be able to afford a better arrow, horse armor setup than a scattered band of nomadic desert dwellers...

this sort of item inconsistencies should be fixed after 2 years of EA!