Wait option and archery before battle.

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ArturusX

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Howdy everyone,

I have two suggestions, one rather simple, and one not quite as much so. First of all, I'd like to see a "Wait" option from the map. It's annoying to have to gallop around a battle so I can capture/save the losers. Perhaps waiting could be synonymous with camping and would provide a small boost to unit recovery. Lord knows I catch my breath a lot faster when I'm next to a campfire chowing down on smoked fish than when I'm galloping around a battlefield.

And now on to the more involved suggestion. I'm traveling along with a contingent of say... 50 Sharpshooters. I'm being followed by 50 River Pirates. The river pirates have a higher speed than my party, and will catch up eventually. You mean to tell me that 50 sharpshooters would just let the pirates catch up so they could be beaten/stabbed to death? I don't THINK so. The sharpshooters would send a hail of arrows at the approaching pirate hordes and take a good 10-20% of them out before they even got the CHANCE to fight. Seeing something along these lines would not only be more realistic, it would greatly improve the value of having ranged units in your party. And on the flip side of things, if an enemy party has ranged units, they should be able to do the same thing. That tiny party of Swadian Deserters that consists solely of crossbowmen wouldn't let you ride up their backside and let you replace their gray matter with the point of your lance would they? Nope. Some archery/crossbow action from the battlefield BEFORE battle would be a good thing to see as it makes a lot more sense than just letting the enemies charge up on you.

A few side-suggestions to this. Ranged units using bows would be MUCH more effective at this skill than ranged units with crossbows. An arrow's flight path makes it much more effective for this sort of thing than a bolt's. Surely most people here have seen medieval war movies with hails of arrows raining down on troops. Doesn't quite work well with crossbows, huh? Also, the chances of outright KILLING an enemy unit with the "Hail Mary" approach is quite low. Perhaps they could be wounded and removed from battle? (Hard to fight with an arrow lodged in your sword arm, no?) This could be the same as being unconscious (19/20 and such). Also, heavily armored units would be resistant to this technique. Needless to say, arrows falling from the sky would work a lot better on a band of River Pirates than they would on Dark Hunters. Lastly, if your party is FASTER than the approaching party, perhaps you could just stay out of range and pelt them with arrows? If they suffer great enough losses/injuries, it'd probably discourage them from following, no? It'd be an effective way of clearing a path for a caravan you were protecting as you wouldn't risk as many losses in hand-to-hand fighting.

Now for the difficult part, implementation. I think the easiest way to do this would be to show the screen that you get if you select "Order your soldiers to fight the enemy" BEFORE the battle begins (if you have ranged units) and have it say "The archers in your party fired a hail of arrows at the approaching enemy party" or something like that. Then show the wounded/killed totals. Then, the approaching party would get their shots and the screen would be shown again with YOUR losses.

These are just two ideas I'd like to see implemented as they'd improve both the gameplay experience and realism.

Thanks for listening,
Art
 
ArturusX said:
Howdy everyone,

First of all, I'd like to see a "Wait" option from the map. It's annoying to have to gallop around a battle so I can capture/save the losers.

Spacebar should do this.
 
I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at with your first suggestion, but as for the second, I don't quite see the point. Your archers already do get a chance to fire at the enemy before they close, because the enemy starts out the battle at a distance from your men. And clearly, your archers aren't going to have any luck with their volleys before the enemy closes to visual range.
 
Oh, excellent suggestion.

What he's saying is that -before- battle, you should get some kind of softening effect from the archers in your group.

maybe this should just be better played out in game...
 
Exactly, nox.

Before the enemy closes to within actual battle range, your archers would fire a volley. (You know... point their bows skyward and just let loose a few arrows. Not really aiming at anyone, just hoping something connects.) This was a common tactic in fact. The archers would line up behind shield bearers and let loose volley after volley on approaching enemies. Just aiming at say a 45 degree angle and letting fly. This was done WELL before the enemies could be hit with an actual aimed shot. It was basically to soften them up before they actually got into the fight. Hopefully this clears things up.
 
The first time I got knocked out before the battle started would be when I started looking for how to turn off this feature. :wink:
 
These are pretty good ideas. the camp thingy has been suggested already, but the volleys are new.
It would be good to have some such softening effect, cause the nature of the most used battlefields is often no good for archers(Too much hills, cliffs and mountains)
 
on the map, if you're 2 feet away from the other party, it's too far to shoot. It's not like you're really 2 feet away, more like a few miles.

When the battle starts (0 feet away on map) you're still a little too far away from eachother to shoot.

In other words, I think it's fine the way it is.

And you can always think of this: They are shooting! They're just not hitting anything, they can barely hit anything in range :wink:
 
Try to shoot in an upward angle ingame. The bows range doesn't reach from one edge of the battlefield to the other, let alone miles.
 
I think he's mainly suggesting that it occur at the beginning of a battle. When you have the option to fight, let your troops fight, leave, or whatever. However, either way this would be pretty open to abuse. What would keep you from hitting them with arrows and just "backing up" if you can outrun them. Not very realisic, and it would make a small company of archers (i.e. fast movement speed) almost invincible. Maybe if once you fired that volley you HAD to fight the battle like normal. Otherwise, it would just be too cheap.
 
ArturusX said:
Before the enemy closes to within actual battle range, your archers would fire a volley. (You know... point their bows skyward and just let loose a few arrows. Not really aiming at anyone, just hoping something connects.) This was a common tactic in fact. The archers would line up behind shield bearers and let loose volley after volley on approaching enemies. Just aiming at say a 45 degree angle and letting fly. This was done WELL before the enemies could be hit with an actual aimed shot. It was basically to soften them up before they actually got into the fight. Hopefully this clears things up.
This was an effective tactic when you had several hundred archers and an enemy army that was large enough to be effectively cordoned.

When you have 20 archers against 30 or 40 guys who have a wide range of movement, not so much.
 
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