I'm pretty sure that isn't a bug. The AI is just told not to engage fast moving horsemen at long range because they miss 100% of the time and players were exploiting that to run them out of arrows.
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Units only charging nearby units is why archers are so OP in Bannerlord
- Thread starter DennyWiseau
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Philozoraptor
Sergeant
WTF? Why did TW apply this to units too? Its pretty easy to hit big formations from distance even if they move. Also If some of you know where it is in the code please point me there so we can remove this crap in RBM ASAP.
Helstrom
Recruit
We know that the horse archers are a hard counter everything, thanks to terrible AI.
The first video is of aaxed noble line Archer/frontline troop that is damn tough to get and level. If you have even 300 of any noble troop then your game is over, you have won.
The basic legionaries are displaying that gawd awful AI I was telling you about as well. Why are they throwing javelins at an Archer group? Seems like a terrible idea. Where is the shield line when they start to move? A smart AI would hunker down in a wall and let them run out of arrows. Also why are they one line? Why not tortoise? Why are they all taking fire in the open? Why not use part of you unit to draw fire and the other to flank and draw attention before the big push? Why? Because AI is crap.
If they fix AI then we have a reason to use multiple troop types troop rather than, 100 horse archers, or 100 Valandian knights, or 100 Battanian archers. This mono block garbage we keep seeing in videos is literly what is ruining the game. The only it does prove is just how basic b**** the AI is.
Yertyl
Veteran
I don't think it's necessarily due to AI. I've experimented quite a bit this afternoon with (mostly sturigan) infantry and archers in custom battles. The thing is: If a perfect line of infantry marches towards a perfect line of archers, and you time your shield wall/charge right, infantry will win.
But as soon as your formation is disturbed even a little bit, archers will win. I think a big reason for this is that infantry is by far the most reliable on positioning. If a ranged unit is far away from the enemy, it can just keep shooting. If a cavalry unit is far away from an enemy, it can charge. But an infantry unit that is not directly in front of an enemy is pointless.
You can use this e.g. in the following way: Split your archers into two groups, have them stand apart. Infantry will advance towards one of them. Have that one fall back while the other one flanks. If the infantry switches targets, switch the groups. With this you can win 20 v 60 battles. I guess to some degree this is abuse of AI, but the deeper problem is: One infantryman can cover himself, but as soon as 2 infantrymen want to attack 2 archers on different sides of the battlefield, it is basically impossible for them to avoid getting shot in the back by one of those. Ranged units would IMO need to be much more vulnerable in melee to make up for the huge tactical advantage this gives you on any larger battlefield.
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Helstrom
Recruit
You are talking the same language as me and not at the same time. Everything you have explained is juking, or playing the AI. By timing your shield wall you are using tactics that would have been used to defeat archers back in the day, and it works. The AI cannot replicate this right now. Arrows did come in barrages for maximum fear tactics. This could be played in your favor, just like you tested.
Maybe this will help clarify my opinion. Let's say they nerf archers into the dirt. Then what is next? Legionaries and other skirmishing troops will need to be nerfed as well. Too powerful are those projectiles on crap AI. So they nerf that. Now we are left with poorly controlled horse charges and front line brawls. Look to the current state of sieges to see how that plays out.
I am going to have to stand with they need to fixing the AI to make smarter plays. I fear this won't happen as I am hearing that they are dumbing down calculations for support crap consoles. Hopefully, we get a mod that can improve the AI exclusively, and that does not throw bandaids all over the units and turn it into a grinder with zero tactics. Once the AI is fixed I would like to see the unit balancing looked at. Units should have a reason to exist.
The tactics can be drastically improved. Total war does it way better, and the RTS mod for Bannerlord opens up visually the AI options that are currently implemented, and it allows for total war style. Through this mod alone we know they have the baseline programming implemented to make it happen. It is just terribly under utilized, most likely purposefully to include crap systems such as consoles.
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I assume because the people doing it were using units, not only their player character. That's the way I did it, moving heavy cav to about 120 and then riding from side to side while every arrow fell short or missed.
Everything in-game can be exploited if you try hard enough, even now there are dozens of ways to cheese during the fights but is it fun after one or two times? i think TW shouldn't make these kind of changes to try to force the behavior of certain players to not exploit the AI, only another human being can avoid cheese tactics for real.
Just to put this into context: it doesn't actually help archers to have them let fly at 100 meters against horse archers. They really do miss 100% in that case.
would be great is they had improved calculations for ranged accuracy then instead of making cavalry blind to them until in their faces
TW would need to revert the last two rounds of bow accuracy nerfs for it to work. Right now, even if the AI had perfect calculations (including target lead), most of the arrows would land wildly off-target just because their bows are pieces of ****. Not taking lead into account just means all of them miss.would be great is they had improved calculations for ranged accuracy then instead of making cavalry blind to them until in their faces
Every time I've been hit while circling archers, it has been a stray archer that I was actually galloping dead-on towards.
Pretty much. I really don't feel melee infantry have that much of a bigger advantage in melee than archers (or crossbowmen, which even have shields). Infantry-men don't have that much of a better AI in melee combat as to completely own the ranged. Sometimes the ranged even win. If I have a full party of high tier crossbowmen they will kill lots of units before they get close, then can even tell them to hold fire and charge, and thus the transition from ranged to melee is complete, and the enemy numbers have been thinned down. They should just give ranged units small daggers and ****ty swords, and very poor melee skills... It's just too much resources spent on a single unit to make sense. Why give a unit the most expensive ranged weaponry, decent armor, and good sword and shield... In medieval combat not everyone has swords, swords are not even that effective against armor. Most would have spears, or daggers etc... but in-game there are even archers with 2-handed swords, literally what. Also TW is acting like combat doesn't require intense training to actually be pulled off effectively... there should be a big difference between ranged units and melee when it comes to melee. Poorer armor, and poorer equipment and melee skills for ranged. Make them actually doomed when they approach melee combat, give them a weakness, a melee penalty. Melee penalty while having a bow/crossbow on your back would honestly solve the issue immediately imo. Like make them way poorer in melee combat, or lower their damage/halve it. The problem can definitely be solved, it's blatantly obvious that either ranged units need a nerf, or melee units need a buff.
kind of "send your HA behind enemy lines" tactic.
Yertyl
Veteran
This. Arrows should IMO do slashing damage. Sounds counter-intuitive, but I would say the penetrating power of an arrow is more akin to that of a sword strike than that of a sword stab. They should be bad against heavy armor, just to give non-shielded infantry some survivability, and give crossbows a more distinct niche.
Also, I would really really like it if there was a "charge just the archers" command.
In the interplay between cavalry and archers, there is currently a weird standstill where you can't really punish exposed archers, since with a charge, half your cav will often charge into infantry instead -- but at the same time, the cavalry that charges into a wall of shields and spears does not really get punished either, when they really should be. So you have no reliable way of taking down archers when they make a mistake, or take down cav. It's weird and annoying.
I was in the "charge to archers" camp too, but I do think now that a generalized option like "charge to formation" is the more robust solution, without artificially limiting tactical options.
Yeah this is another one of those mods that I just don't understand why Taleworlds hasn't implemented as just a standard feature. I also wish they would add something like the Epic Battle AI as a feature as well, you know something that actually causes the AI army to form up as an Army, actually make decisions to attack specific formations and otherwise attack/defend like an actually army oh and removes the ridiculous trickle in effect of reinforcements where you have fresh soldiers scattered all over the battlefield as the run in one by one to the main battle.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.
CrazyElf
Sergeant
Yep - a while back there was a mod that made arrows do cut rather than pierce damage.
It may be worth making that change in the main game.
Berzerker Jay
Why should archers be expensive? Historically they were fielded with the advantage that they were highly inexpensive. The yeoman archers are case in point.
A basic bow isn't that difficult to get hold of, and many primitive tribes around the world do so just fine. It tends to be a common weapon which many used to hunt. If the archer was without a bow, they could generally make and string a new one in short order.
If these are made expensive units in general, that will be simply nonsense.
A basic bow isn't that difficult to get hold of, and many primitive tribes around the world do so just fine. It tends to be a common weapon which many used to hunt. If the archer was without a bow, they could generally make and string a new one in short order.
If these are made expensive units in general, that will be simply nonsense.
Berzerker Jay
As to cut versus slash, this is complicated. For different types of arrows, I'd like this, but most arrows are piercing. As far as their interaction with armour, where damage type really matters, an arrow is not going to hit plate like a sword will. A sword will not generally cut plate at all. An arrow will shallowly pierce plate as long as it doesn't get deflected.
Now that said, there are arrowheads which would not pierce plate, and which would more cut and slice the target than pierce -- the complexity there is that it still would do some piercing, and so only hybrid damage will really resolve this. In lieu of hybrid damage, I think it might remain more realistic to have even broad arrowheads do piercing. It's just not a pure cut at all.
Now that said, there are arrowheads which would not pierce plate, and which would more cut and slice the target than pierce -- the complexity there is that it still would do some piercing, and so only hybrid damage will really resolve this. In lieu of hybrid damage, I think it might remain more realistic to have even broad arrowheads do piercing. It's just not a pure cut at all.
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