Units only charging nearby units is why archers are so OP in Bannerlord

[DennyWiseau]

Not the only reason but still. Try attacking a caravan with mostly infantry, even though the enemy archer formation is nearby your infantry will still prioritize the skirmishing/charging cav when set to charge (because they are momentarily closer I guess).

Result is a slow and frustrating loss because the enemy archers are able to keep firing picking off your units throughout the battle.

I think a good solution would be the ability too do directional charges eq; infantry charge that way or the ability too command unit formations to prioritize/target certain unit types/formations.

Dont know if anyone else have an better idea/solution or if TW is already working on something, but I find the current implementation of charging very basic/poor.

 

[vonbalt]

divisions being able to charge specific enemy divisions plus armor not being made of paper would greatly reduce the deadliness of archers against higher tier troops, higher tier archers would still be dreadful and pack quite a punch but not so silly as it's now.

Once famous reference about this is the Saracen sources during the crusades saying how they harassed the crusader army and even then the heavily armored knights + footmen walked around like hedgehogs full of arrows in their mailles + gambesons.

 

[Yertyl]

I can at least say that it is pretty annoying to steer your cavalry ATM. What I would want is: Charge into archers, retreat, charge into archers again. What usually happens instead is: a significant portion charges into enemy infantry, no matter from which angle, and the rest sort of stands around until manually ordered to retreat.

 

[bbaydogdu]

This mod will solve your problem until devs add some proper command features to the game. If they ever do
RTS Camera Mod
After installing this mod, you can select a unit and click on the enemy formation you want to charge with middle mouse button.

 

[Bob Gnarly]

I can at least say that it is pretty annoying to steer your cavalry ATM. What I would want is: Charge into archers, retreat, charge into archers again. What usually happens instead is: a significant portion charges into enemy infantry, no matter from which angle, and the rest sort of stands around until manually ordered to retreat.

Being able to give more defined orders such as telling the your cavalry to charge the enemies archers or telling your horse archers to harass the flanks etc would make a world of difference.

 

[kweassa]

There's nothing OP about archers. The only reason archers are so prominent for the player, is because the player simply, always, has way more archers than the enemy.

There's a bit of a balancing problem, yes, but it's unrelated to the archers themselves.

 

[Helstrom]

This mod will solve your problem until devs add some proper command features to the game. If they ever do
RTS Camera Mod
After installing this mod, you can select a unit and click on the enemy formation you want to charge with middle mouse button.

Love this mod to pieces. It seems like something that belongs in the game.

 

[darksoulshin]

NEW WAR ORDERS system
CREATE BATTLE FORMATION AND TACTICAL ORDERS system
I had already written a threads about a faster and more comfortable ordering system and a review of certain orders. The link I placed above counts as the answer I would otherwise write here.
in relation to the relationship between archers and infantry I have written others that I will insert below.
Joint hurtboxes and armor hurtboxes: an armor system that provide a way to balance factions warfare and make more deep the combat system
NON-SPAMABLE DIRECTIONAL STEP-DODGE suggestion
[POLL] SHIELD + STUCKED PROJECTILE = ENCUMBRANCE
Clearly I try to balance the game, not to weaken one archetype of unity in favor of another. If you are interested in my other threads, I would be happy if you read them and if you voted where possible.

 

[menuisier100]

There's nothing OP about archers. The only reason archers are so prominent for the player, is because the player simply, always, has way more archers than the enemy.

There's a bit of a balancing problem, yes, but it's unrelated to the archers themselves.

Why does the player want more archers than other units?

 

[Helstrom]

Why does the player want more archers than other units?

Because the AI is gawd awful and we can exploit that. I setup archers in front and run a small band of infantry behind. Guess what, they turn to the infantry exposing their asses to archers. Or, they sit there eating arrows while I take no loses.. If they didn't do any of this and actually form a shield wall and pushed my squishy archers hard I would use a proper army. The name of the game is to take zero losses right?

 

[Yertyl]

Because the AI is gawd awful and we can exploit that. I setup archers in front and run a small band of infantry behind. Guess what, they turn to the infantry exposing their asses to archers. Or, they sit there eating arrows while I take no loses.. If they didn't do any of this and actually form a shield wall and pushed my squishy archers hard I would use a proper army. The name of the game is to take zero losses right?

Or because archers slaughter infantry even in a shield wall, just a bit slower (see here) and horse archers kill both regular cavalry (see here) and regular archers (here), meaning they effectively have no counter.

I think part of that is indeed that the AI is much more deadly with its arrow attacks than melee, and especially horse archers seem very accurate in their attacks compared to how hard it is to hit anything while riding as a player -- but I do no think you can compensate that purely by tactics. I am pretty sure an army of khan's guard would win with F6 against basically any combination of units and tactics.

 

[Apocal]

I think part of that is indeed that the AI is much more deadly with its arrow attacks than melee, and especially horse archers seem very accurate in their attacks compared to how hard it is to hit anything while riding as a player -- but I do no think you can compensate that purely by tactics. I am pretty sure an army of khan's guard would win with F6 against basically any combination of units and tactics.

You mislinked the shield wall vid, it is the same as the cavalry one.

Anyway, AI horse archers aren't as accurate as a player with decent Riding and Bow skills, along with a good bow. But that doesn't matter when the horse archers are firing at such a huge target as a packed-rank formation. If they miss to either side of their target, they still hit someone. If their arrow goes long or short, it still probably hits someone. That's why their effectiveness scales up with numbers and shield wall formation doesn't really work when troops are moving.

Just nerf archery damage across the board or else you're going to end up with a situation where it dominates everything else, and doubly so in the case of putting the archers on horses.

 

[AndrewArt]

Why does the player want more archers than other units?

Archers are easy mode. Try doing a playthrough with only infantry and no things like trading skills and other money-making skills. Pure combat playthrough. If you play with only infantry you will struggle quite a bit in comparison to archer playthrough. Archers don't die since they kill from ranged, and there are no shields for looters and other units = free farm. If you have a small band of even the highest tiered infantry you still lose them to more looters, armor doesn't really do much. If a unit gets overrun and his attack interrupted by the tiniest weapons then he's as good as dead. With archers you avoid all the disadvantages, can take on armies that are double your size easily and you don't even lose that much. They're also very easy to farm exp for since they get so many kills and they don't die, and you get them to max tier very easy...

And after they kill a bunch of troops from range, they also can melee not very badly, so for me there are no downsides to archers. A tier 5 archer/crossbowman will have better melee and armor than low tier melee units anyway, which is what the AI has most of.

I really see no reason to train melee units instead of archers, ever. I only do that if I want to suffer and have a "hardcore playthrough", and it is definitely way more fun to struggle to get somewhere (it feels way more realistic), but still, it can get frustrating after a big loss and you might regret not playing by the archer God's rules... playing with only melee infantry can break a man. But if they don't ever buff melee units or nerf archers, I will still do such playthroughs because getting too strong too fast can get really boring too.

 

[Yertyl]

You mislinked the shield wall vid, it is the same as the cavalry one.

Anyway, AI horse archers aren't as accurate as a player with decent Riding and Bow skills, along with a good bow. But that doesn't matter when the horse archers are firing at such a huge target as a packed-rank formation. If they miss to either side of their target, they still hit someone. If their arrow goes long or short, it still probably hits someone. That's why their effectiveness scales up with numbers and shield wall formation doesn't really work when troops are moving.

Just nerf archery damage across the board or else you're going to end up with a situation where it dominates everything else, and doubly so in the case of putting the archers on horses.

Thanks for the heads up, edited it. I actually just did a few tests myself in custom battle mode and listed the results in a new thread. The two main problems in my eyes:

1. Archers are almost as good as melee units in melee. Even when archer units kill only a few infantry units before they charge in, the melee brawl is almost even. Of course, this makes archers much better in general
2. From my test results, horse archers are just insanely OP atm, not only being a counter to every other unit type, but actually the best counter to every other unit type. They are better against archers than melee cav, and better against melee cav than spear infantry (which often lose to cavalry). It's insane. From my obervations, they seem to be more precise than a player would be, or at least have a wider angle of attack. They dish out roughly as much damage as regular archers while being far less vulnerable. It's pretty insane.

EDIT: In a 300 vs 300, Vlandian Hardened crossbowmen win against both vlandian knights and khuzait lancers, but clearly lose against khuzait horse archers, which I find pretty hilarious.
Another example: Crossbowmen on hold fire(!!!) win 298-- 131 against Sturgian spearmen. Pretty hilarious stuff.

 

[ratschbumm]

as I said many times, archers, horse archers and even heavy horses are not overpowered, in some situations they even underpowered. They just unbelievably accessible to roster. Archers was extremely rarely used in field as dedicated detachment in the early European medieval, except the case of great army, ie joined forces under King's banner. Heavy cavalry was even rarer than metal helmet on the head of the levy. Their equipment costed like little to medium village, sometimes. Imagine a game where you have as many knights as you have villages, and twice as much archers/x-bows with armor, cold-blooded in view of enemy's horses, able to stay and fight as seasoned infantry. And 3-4 hundreds of grunts, few of them with metal armor or javelins or light hunter bows. No swords for them of course, it's rubbish. In that case you will never use your cavalry or archers as main force and develop a strategy based mainly on them, it will be a tool should be used properly. But it will be very boring game for typical player. Like Viking Conquest with realistic difficulty.

If it easier to imagine, just think about 300 denars/day for archer not running from ANY attack of ANY enemy's unit and 700-1000 per heavy horseman with current Bannerlord prices and profits. I assure, in this game you will be complaining about horrendously weak archers and cavalry.


So my point is just make archers expensive, reducing ability to draft them.

 

[a_ver_est]

Don't get me wrong, I agree doing the AI smarter but giving a fine control to the player over his troops will feel a bit unrealistic, I mean it is a medieval battle, command and control of that era were very limited. So being able to give to your troops a lot of orders and have them execute them inmediatly will feel a bit odd in my opinion.

 

[ratschbumm]

Don't get me wrong, I agree doing the AI smarter but giving a fine control to the player over his troops will feel a bit unrealistic, I mean it is a medieval battle, command and control of that era were very limited. So being able to give to your troops a lot of orders and have them execute them inmediatly will feel a bit odd in my opinion.

If it was an answer to my post, you are right in the part of limited control. But it was virtually compensated by common sense of these times. Use enfilade fire if possible, see exposed archers - tear them apart, strike en masse, without scattering, not to attack spears with horses, move your asses not only by direct line, errrr do not go to opposite side of map from enemy if ordered to advance (saw it many times) and so on

Edit: I forgot to add the main rule: 'Steel keep your chest and neck behind your shield when you are attacking'

 

[a_ver_est]

If it was an answer to my post, you are right in the part of limited control. But it was virtually compensated by common sense of these times. Use enfilade fire if possible, see exposed archers - tear them apart, strike en masse, without scattering, not to attack spears with horses, move your asses not only by direct line, errrr do not go to opposite side of map from enemy if ordered to advance (saw it many times) and so on

it was a general answer not to a specific individual, anyway I agree with you... I think in that 'common sense' as the AI improvement that I said, overall it shouldn't do stupid things.

 

[Apocal]

Thanks for the heads up, edited it. I actually just did a few tests myself in custom battle mode and listed the results in a new thread. The two main problems in my eyes:

1. Archers are almost as good as melee units in melee. Even when archer units kill only a few infantry units before they charge in, the melee brawl is almost even. Of course, this makes archers much better in general
2. From my test results, horse archers are just insanely OP atm, not only being a counter to every other unit type, but actually the best counter to every other unit type. They are better against archers than melee cav, and better against melee cav than spear infantry (which often lose to cavalry). It's insane. From my obervations, they seem to be more precise than a player would be, or at least have a wider angle of attack. They dish out roughly as much damage as regular archers while being far less vulnerable. It's pretty insane.

EDIT: In a 300 vs 300, Vlandian Hardened crossbowmen win against both vlandian knights and khuzait lancers, but clearly lose against khuzait horse archers, which I find pretty hilarious.
Another example: Crossbowmen on hold fire(!!!) win 298-- 131 against Sturgian spearmen. Pretty hilarious stuff.

Yeah, people have noted this stuff for months now -- archery being OP, spears being objectively terrible, cavalry underperforming -- and they haven't really fixed any of it. There were some improvements though:

• Archers lost their Noble Bows and at least two types lost their second quiver,
• At least one type of horse archer was converted to javelin cavalry instead.
• Various archer and horse archer types received hefty Bow skill nerfs.
• Both archers and horse archers have lost a lot of their armor.
• There was a harsher accuracy penalty applied to bows.
• There was a mounted penalty introduced.
• A bug with cavalry not knowing how to aim on the Z-axis was fixed.
• A few cavalry types got better armor and none of them lost as much was taken from ranged troops, so they are relatively tankier than before.
• The horse archer AI was made a lot dumber, so they occasionally ride through formations of melee troops and can be killed that way.

Spears haven't gotten a damned thing though and most of the dev comments indicate they are only meant to be effective for anti-cavalry work, not as general purpose weapons. So expect them to remain absolute garbage for everything.

 

[Philozoraptor]

One of the problems with HA is that current archer AI is bugged. Archers do not react properly towards cavalry and HA unless they are 40-50 metres away, then they start shooring. If they are further away, archers will just stare at them, if you order them to charge, they will just run towards cav until they reach 40-50 metres range and then they will start shooting. This even aplies to player on horse aswell. This is clearly bug, because if you order your cav to dismount and mount again archers will react properly from longe (100-300 metres) range.