Were horse archers intentionally made more dumb?

[Will Greaves]

The problem of one's own horse archers running into the enemy line is this: while they do attempt to circle the enemy, they pick a single enemy to circle (the one that they are shooting at). If that enemy is in the middle of a long line of enemies, then your horse archer's circle will eventually take him into the line of enemies, a fair distance to the side of his primary target, but in unnecessary melee with enemies nonetheless. If the enemy is on the right end (from the enemy's perspective) of their battle-line, then the undesirable intersection can happen with even a short battle-line.

Meanwhile, the main problem with enemy horse archers is a different one; Vilynis described it perfectly in post #17 of this thread.

They didn't behave this way back in older versions. Version by version, they've gotten more and more stupid, with each of the three problems (allowing their circle to intersect the enemy battle-line, repeatedly rushing & retreating from your firing line, and making that retreat very slowly) being introduced in a different version.

 

[khuzait haircut]

They didn't behave this way back in older versions. Version by version, they've gotten more and more stupid, with each of the three problems (allowing their circle to intersect the enemy battle-line, repeatedly rushing & retreating from your firing line, and making that retreat very slowly) being introduced in a different version.

They have slowed down because in one of the 1.4.x versions they enabled skills on troops so riding is now used to dictate speed. At least that's what it looks like to me.

 

[Will Greaves]

No, that definitely isn't it. They purposefully slow down solely during the retreat phase. That is, they reduce their speed only while retreating. The rest of the battle, they move at their full speed.

It doesn't always happen, and I'm having a hard time figuring out what conditions cause it. It may not be an intentional nerf, but instead a bug. Hard to tell without a dialogue with the responsible dev(s).

My latest theory is that it may be related to changes they've done to troops moving in formations. I've seen in patch notes that they've been trying to work on that. So what might be happening is that some of the HA are slowing down to try to let others catch up, but it isn't working properly and so the majority of them slow down, or even all of them.

 

[Sarissofoi]

Yeah something is bugged with formation movement for sure.

 

[Midnitewolf]

I think the main issue is the AI. Personally it sucks and the battles never feel like a real battle, especially the way reinforcement trickle in in small groups and singles throughout the battle. They never try to form up and anything resembling battle lines disappears.

What I want is something like this mod does:

Army Formations Made Easy - Caesar's Rome Edition​

https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/1531?tab=description

I haven't used it yet because I just came back and it looks like the mod hasn't been updated since October and probably won't work anymore but I have watched a ton of videos on youtube with people using this mod and battles actually look like battles and are amazing to watch.

Here is a video of a battle of someone using this mod that was just jaw dropping to me. This is a video of a guy working on a total conversion but he uses the AI formations mod I linked.


Here is another vid that shows up the capabilities of the mod in a more tutorial format.



The AI actually forms up and moves like an army. This is what Taleworld's should be shooting to add into the game and if they had something like this, maybe Horse Archers could act like Horse Archers again.