Were horse archers intentionally made more dumb?

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Adrivan

Sergeant at Arms
Sorry if it was already asked, I come to the game after a long break.
Last time I played, I remember running around with a bunch of Khuzait horse archers, which would circle around the enemy and decimate their infantry. It was really strong.

Today, I tried the same thing. Had a group of 20 (t3) khuzait horse archers and ordered a charge against a group of basic looters. They killed 4 of my horse archers in open plains.... wtf? The archers went straight through their line instead of circling around.... Is this change intentional to balance the horse archers, or is it a bug?
 
Yes I guess they made them charge with melee for no reason and they just die

Now horse archers are best used stationary like normal archers, then you move them away from enemy troops... weird stuff
 
I'd agree they do see seem to enjoy riding into rather than around people more now. Would be great to get them back to the older style as HA AI was probably the best they had done and the closest to realistic and they could have focused on improving other troop types instead of trying to drag HA AI down to meet them.
 
I'd agree they do see seem to enjoy riding into rather than around people more now. Would be great to get them back to the older style as HA AI was probably the best they had done and the closest to realistic and they could have focused on improving other troop types instead of trying to drag HA AI down to meet them.
exactly... agreed... or at least reduce their damage/accuracy/arrow stacks, but let them have proper AI and do what they were intended to do...
 
I held out hope and still do. However, at the start of the game, combai a.i seemed much more difficult. As others have said, they should have improved all a.i instead of nerfing everything.

They catered to crap players for whatever reason. Now people just blob the infantry and kite while swinging left/right and running in a straight line. Epic
 
That's unfortunate. It seems like a possible workaround would be to have the horse archers following me and guide them myself around the enemy. But I'd prefer to be able to focus on commanding the whole battle and not just babysit my horse archers... Not to mention that their horses are expensive to replace in the beginning.
 
Problem was never that horse archers was too strong ( they was strong in medival times and ofc schould be that in the game aswell) its just the AI that dont have any logic defending against a kite strategy.
If you cant beat them by running at them then turtle up like the romans did and shields UP and not just up but UP to also cover the heads so arrows is much less likely to hit them. Then use that strategy to outlast their arrows (They got like 60 arrows each?) And wait for them to charge in, which again has no logic if you do it solo - but they could rewrite their strategy so they join the melee cavalery when out of arrows

If AI breaks formation like the circle and also dont keep their shields high its just logic that you will get hit by arrows - Which they do if player arent commanding the forces cause player got knocked down/killed etc.

imo the game needs better/more formation strategy and also options to keeping the player engaged (aka strategy commands, companion playable etc.)
 
I noticed this, too, when going from 1.5.5 to 1.5.6. They also started moving slower when retreating away from me (they didn't do that in 1.5.5) after their skirmish attempt failed.

For my own horse archers, I use two workarounds, both already mentioned in this thread: versus an enemy without serious range, I have my horse archers stationary behind my infantry. Versus an enemy with serious archers of their own, I lead my horse archers in a circle around the enemy. The latter isn't ideal, since I'm a lancer, but at least me not actually fighting means I can pay more attention to commanding, I guess.
 
Yeah they've done multiple things to change there behavior form 'okay' to NOOOOOOOOOO! Can't have nice things.
1st they changed how they circle so they don't go a wide and are more likely to get too close or end up riding backwards into an enemy.
2nd they have a greater range for switching to melee, so they do so more often, which is basically always bad. Only the khans guard line have weapons that they can actually hit with, but in general it's always better for them to avoid and shoot till all out of arrows. They basically just archers that move faster now, charging is not very attractive. They did other changes to their skills too which would be fine but ultimately doesn't matter because enemy AI still lets any ranged shoot them to death anyways.

They also somehow made stationary ranged units (including HA) worse at shooting approaching horse archers. My guess is they made them ignore mounted units till a certain range to create an effect "Cav doesn't sucks, SEE" but it carries over to letting HA formation just waltz by 150 archers no problem. And of course Cav still miss their attacks and ride strait into archer fire and SW(and through SW...) so it didn't help anything.

SO, they managed to make less useful and more annoying to fight.

TW, make CAVALRY hit things and kill them and NOT DIE so fast. Make infantry not bob it's shield up and down getting shot! Put HA back the way they were and leave them alone!
 
well mine still circle unless terrain is small and then they dont, cause they cant...if terrain is big they do it..normally they charge its beacause they run out of arrows..that what normally should happen no?
 
well mine still circle unless terrain is small and then they dont, cause they cant...if terrain is big they do it..normally they charge its beacause they run out of arrows..that what normally should happen no?
Sure, but it was an open field and the battle was quick (it was against looters). I ordered charge and a few of the horse archers got caught inside the looter line, and they got killed.... they had plenty of arrows
 
Instead of charge try using F6 for AI delegation. They will enter skirmish mode and not charge in (unless the AI makes them charge).

If TW is reading: it would be great to have a skirmish order.

EDIT:

This video was made with 1.5.7 I use follow, and delegate to draw out infantry and kill them.



EDIT:

Also one thing to remember. Riding skill now removes a penalty to speed and damage when using weapons on a mount. The penalty goes away at riding 100. So you need tier 4+ mounted archers to really be effective.
 
While the posts above cover the issue with player controlled HA's, the AI ones have gotten just as bad lately. They always charge up the left flank at the start of the battle, fire off a few shots, then slowly retreat back to their lines as my cav just slaughters them. I mean like a slow trot at best. It is even more obviously bad when the enemy decides to be defensive with the rest of their troops as the HA's will just do this over and over again until they are all killed off. It is a great way to lure the rest of the enemy into attacking, but I cant imagine anyone thinks its a good idea to throw away an entire unit stack for little to no gain.

Were HA's annoying to deal with before? Yes. Should they be? YES. TW please stop catering to the lowest common denominator's every time you make a balancing decision. Battles against proper enemies should be hard as a baseline then scale with the players chosen settings. Even people looking for the "casual" experience will notice that this feels wrong and the enjoyment just dies.
 
Sorry if it was already asked, I come to the game after a long break.
Last time I played, I remember running around with a bunch of Khuzait horse archers, which would circle around the enemy and decimate their infantry. It was really strong.

Today, I tried the same thing. Had a group of 20 (t3) khuzait horse archers and ordered a charge against a group of basic looters. They killed 4 of my horse archers in open plains.... wtf? The archers went straight through their line instead of circling around.... Is this change intentional to balance the horse archers, or is it a bug?
They did what you asked for. Foot archer do the same, they shoot a couple of arrow and get in melee, I think they should need a different command for harassing the enemy since you can't always use the follow me command.
 
They did what you asked for. Foot archer do the same, they shoot a couple of arrow and get in melee, I think they should need a different command for harassing the enemy since you can't always use the follow me command.

But from what i remember it was the charge command that made them do the circling movement in the past...
 
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