Bluko88
Sergeant
So the effectiveness of ranged weapons (specifically bows and crossbows) is something I've long mulled over. Before patch 1.8 it was pretty obvious that armor was lacking to say the least and that was the biggest problem. With the armor changes in patch 1.8 and beyond I feel melee combat is about right; heavier armor provides enough protection that you can actually expect to survive a few more hits from a typical long sword.
However ranged missile weapons don't seem to have been affected much. It became pretty glaring to me when I had a fairly decent tier 4 spear, stabbed an imperial cataphract on horseback did about 10 damage. Pretty low damage, but then again it's some of the heaviest armor in the game, so that's fair. But then I take out my tier 3 steppe bow with steppe arrows and a close range body shot does like 30 damage...
Ranged units just seem far too powerful in too many circumstances, even with cavalry having a lot more charge damage as of 1.9, archers are still quite effective against cavalry, when really cavalry should demolish archers. It's my earnest belief a modest damage reduction of 15-25% on all ranged missile weapons (again just bows/crossbows, throwing weapons are mostly fine as is) would do a lot to promote a more balanced battlefield.
And while speculation is great, the proof is in the pudding as they say. So I went ahead created my own archers with just bows (no melee weapons) and some test dummies (no weapons at all, just armor) to get a good grasp of what's happening. I also selected 3 short bows; the steppe bow (tier 2), the steppe recurve bow (tier 3), and the noble bow (tier 5) and reduced the thrust damage by them to varying degrees - ranging from 90% to 60% reduction of their original damage.
It quickly became apparent during my tests, that even with damage reductions, bows were still wildly effective.
Just to give an idea how absurd bows are in-game as is, I ran a mock siege (just ladders) of my archers armed with just said bows (no damage reduction) and their fists against an equal mix of imperial infantry. My archers won... Now obviously you expect the attackers to suffer casualties getting to the walls, climbing the ladders, but you know once the infantry are over the walls it should have been a slaughter - since the infantry have swords, shields, and menavliatons. But nope! And this was me letting the A.I. do all it's own thing, only taking over at the end since there were some pathing issues with the A.I.
My archers are basically just modified Highborn Warriors (tier 2), Battanian Heroes (tier 4), and Fian Champions (tier 6) using regular arrows.
And here are the dummies I used as "target practice". You got dummies with 0 armor, 12 armor, 37 armor, and 55 armor for all hit locations.
So I ran a series of tests with my bow armed only troops versus a bunch of unarmed dummies. Due note that even without weapons the A.I. will resort to fighting with their fists in melee combat. I felt this was the best to ensure results in melee combat were truly fair between both sides. I ran 10 Archers vs 10 Dummies to make up for misses, etc. Also larger sizes would really drag on and I wanted to keep things brief for my own sanity.
The idea of these tests is to get a good what would happen to melee units advancing on archers without a shield; so shock troops or potentially other archers out of ammunition. (Flawless Victory is where the archers suffer 0 causalities)
Now this is what I would like to see more or less:
Basically a nice gradient where low tier archers are good against weak armored foes, but pretty bad against high armor, and only high tier archers can really pull off flawless victories 100% of the time. Needless to say the actual results were quite interesting, even at a 40% damage reduction the results did not change a whole lot. Obviously there's quite a bit of RNG, and I only ran each scenario once, obviously you'd get better data from many tests. But I don't have that kind of patience.
(Also at the last minute I tested a different Dummy set with 25 armor all-around, since 37 armor is rather high in this game)
* denote results that probably could have wound up better/worse based on RNG
Pics or it didn't happen right? (sorry thought video would be too tedious, didn't want to do that much video editing)
My conclusions are basically this...
Taleworlds could reduce ranged missile damage by 15% and most would be none the wiser. The player might notice their damage reduced a bit, but honestly I have doubts it'd be noticeable in battle.
I think Taleworlds could and should reduce damage with missile weapons by 25% and the overall game experience would not be that negatively impacted. Ranged missile weapons as is are just way too strong, and this is pretty evident in a) how easily the player dies to missile fire and b) how easy it is to pick off troops yourself with a bow/crossbow whether it's looters or militia on wall.
That said I think going past a 25% damage reduction would be too much, even if the results don't seem to show much difference. I do believe missile fire should be dangerous, I just don't think it should reign supreme like it has for the past 2.5 years in Bannerlord.
However ranged missile weapons don't seem to have been affected much. It became pretty glaring to me when I had a fairly decent tier 4 spear, stabbed an imperial cataphract on horseback did about 10 damage. Pretty low damage, but then again it's some of the heaviest armor in the game, so that's fair. But then I take out my tier 3 steppe bow with steppe arrows and a close range body shot does like 30 damage...
Ranged units just seem far too powerful in too many circumstances, even with cavalry having a lot more charge damage as of 1.9, archers are still quite effective against cavalry, when really cavalry should demolish archers. It's my earnest belief a modest damage reduction of 15-25% on all ranged missile weapons (again just bows/crossbows, throwing weapons are mostly fine as is) would do a lot to promote a more balanced battlefield.
And while speculation is great, the proof is in the pudding as they say. So I went ahead created my own archers with just bows (no melee weapons) and some test dummies (no weapons at all, just armor) to get a good grasp of what's happening. I also selected 3 short bows; the steppe bow (tier 2), the steppe recurve bow (tier 3), and the noble bow (tier 5) and reduced the thrust damage by them to varying degrees - ranging from 90% to 60% reduction of their original damage.
It quickly became apparent during my tests, that even with damage reductions, bows were still wildly effective.
Just to give an idea how absurd bows are in-game as is, I ran a mock siege (just ladders) of my archers armed with just said bows (no damage reduction) and their fists against an equal mix of imperial infantry. My archers won... Now obviously you expect the attackers to suffer casualties getting to the walls, climbing the ladders, but you know once the infantry are over the walls it should have been a slaughter - since the infantry have swords, shields, and menavliatons. But nope! And this was me letting the A.I. do all it's own thing, only taking over at the end since there were some pathing issues with the A.I.
My archers are basically just modified Highborn Warriors (tier 2), Battanian Heroes (tier 4), and Fian Champions (tier 6) using regular arrows.
And here are the dummies I used as "target practice". You got dummies with 0 armor, 12 armor, 37 armor, and 55 armor for all hit locations.
So I ran a series of tests with my bow armed only troops versus a bunch of unarmed dummies. Due note that even without weapons the A.I. will resort to fighting with their fists in melee combat. I felt this was the best to ensure results in melee combat were truly fair between both sides. I ran 10 Archers vs 10 Dummies to make up for misses, etc. Also larger sizes would really drag on and I wanted to keep things brief for my own sanity.
The idea of these tests is to get a good what would happen to melee units advancing on archers without a shield; so shock troops or potentially other archers out of ammunition. (Flawless Victory is where the archers suffer 0 causalities)
Now this is what I would like to see more or less:
Basically a nice gradient where low tier archers are good against weak armored foes, but pretty bad against high armor, and only high tier archers can really pull off flawless victories 100% of the time. Needless to say the actual results were quite interesting, even at a 40% damage reduction the results did not change a whole lot. Obviously there's quite a bit of RNG, and I only ran each scenario once, obviously you'd get better data from many tests. But I don't have that kind of patience.
(Also at the last minute I tested a different Dummy set with 25 armor all-around, since 37 armor is rather high in this game)
* denote results that probably could have wound up better/worse based on RNG
Pics or it didn't happen right? (sorry thought video would be too tedious, didn't want to do that much video editing)
Low Tier Archers
Mid Tier Archers
Max Tier Archers
Mid Tier Archers
Max Tier Archers
Low Tier Archers
Mid Tier Archers
Max Tier Archers
Mid Tier Archers
Max Tier Archers
My conclusions are basically this...
Taleworlds could reduce ranged missile damage by 15% and most would be none the wiser. The player might notice their damage reduced a bit, but honestly I have doubts it'd be noticeable in battle.
I think Taleworlds could and should reduce damage with missile weapons by 25% and the overall game experience would not be that negatively impacted. Ranged missile weapons as is are just way too strong, and this is pretty evident in a) how easily the player dies to missile fire and b) how easy it is to pick off troops yourself with a bow/crossbow whether it's looters or militia on wall.
That said I think going past a 25% damage reduction would be too much, even if the results don't seem to show much difference. I do believe missile fire should be dangerous, I just don't think it should reign supreme like it has for the past 2.5 years in Bannerlord.