How to make bowmen more useful

[Nissarin]

Increase bowmen accuracy
- Lewin: IMO it makes more sense for bowmen/crossbowmen to have similar accuracy.

I disagree.

I think a well trained bowman has better accuracy than a well train xbowman. I think that's because with a normal bow, you have full control over your weapon. With xbows, it's just placing a bolt and pulling the trigger.. It's way harder to aim that way, since it will always be shot with the same speed. That's why I think the bowmen should have better accuracy.

And that's precisely why crossbow is far more accurate than bow, just draw, aim and pull the trigger.

In real live (speaking about past) crossbow is more powerful, more accurate but have very small rate of fire. With exception of longbow you have very little chance to penetrate armor unless in very close range, well the range itself maybe be a bit better but still crossbow was considered superior. Generally messing with unit range might be a bad idea (for reasons stated above), it's a game after all, not simulator.

Overall I think that changing the rate of fire might be a good idea, maybe even completely remove the delay in exchange for less accuracy - think that way: the bigger unit attacking you, the higher the change to hit someone..
Also, there is something no one proposed before (I think), so how about making bowman slightly more mobile (i.e. faster than crossbowman) ?

[Jeronimo]

Lewin knows my answer to this: Having Archers shooting 33% faster than Crossbowmen (while now it is 25%).
It may not sound like a super change, but at least will be less frustating (like the slight change to wine restorations to 30%).

[Bo_]

Reason why wine is good is +10% AND only 9 tiles per wineyard.
So +8% speed may not be enough, I liked my idea more.

[The Dark Lord]

Yesterday I was playing Paradise Island and I was fighting against someone who had a location with iron, so at a certain moment we had a bowmen/crossbowmen fight. My formation was wider, more units could shoot at once, but in the first seconds of that fight I lost about 7 units in one second, he lost about 2. I'm not really into the fighting system, but from my experience it seems that crossbowmen have a great chance to kill bowmen in one shot, while bowmen probably need ~4 shots. They would also become stronger versus other units again, because now they just do nothing (maybe a bit damage, but who cares, I want to KILL the enemy and not just HURT them, and when facing an army supported by crossbowmen your melee units will DIE before being able to deal a decisive blow).

I think all in all xbows should of course be stronger than bows simply because they're iron units. That is why everybody will use xbows as long as you will have iron on some maps.

Of course crossbowmen should be stronger... But look at the numbers I posted... I lost 7, he lost 2. 7 axe fighters would kill 2 sword fighters easily. Hell, even 7 militia would win vs 2 sword fighters...

[Into_The_Battle]

I believe that the archer DO needs to shoot faster, for balance and realistic purposes, and it would also be nice if archers caused a bit more damage to structures, making it a more useful unit in the game, specialy for taking down towers. I think that any kind of change concerning movement speed in ANY unit would cause an issue with the game balance, because every tile must be considered when moving troops and halting them in formation. And, when it comes to crossbowmen vs. archers in face-to-face combat (a very commom scenario in a map like Paradise Island) I think its just plain wrong to use archers vs. crossbowmen, its like using cavalry against pikemen. Right now, archers have the same use as crossbowmen, however they are much weaker (and cheaper) then crossbowmen. If, by any means, the archers serve another role in the game, (such as being more effective against structures, increasing its sight-range so it can spot crossbowmen before crossbowmen spot the archers) then it would become a viable unit option, even with iron available. But, thats just my shitty opinion =P.

[Thomas]

Yesterday I was playing Paradise Island and I was fighting against someone who had a location with iron, so at a certain moment we had a bowmen/crossbowmen fight. My formation was wider, more units could shoot at once, but in the first seconds of that fight I lost about 7 units in one second, he lost about 2. I'm not really into the fighting system, but from my experience it seems that crossbowmen have a great chance to kill bowmen in one shot, while bowmen probably need ~4 shots. They would also become stronger versus other units again, because now they just do nothing (maybe a bit damage, but who cares, I want to KILL the enemy and not just HURT them, and when facing an army supported by crossbowmen your melee units will DIE before being able to deal a decisive blow).

I think all in all xbows should of course be stronger than bows simply because they're iron units. That is why everybody will use xbows as long as you will have iron on some maps.

Of course crossbowmen should be stronger... But look at the numbers I posted... I lost 7, he lost 2. 7 axe fighters would kill 2 sword fighters easily. Hell, even 7 militia would win vs 2 sword fighters...

Ok, I see the point now and you're right, even 7 militia would win vs 2 sword fighters So that means crossbowmen are too strong actually (as also said before in this discussion that they have the highest attack value of all units!!!). So I think it's better to try to reduce their attack value and also increase the fire rate of bowmen.

[Lewin]

@The Dark Lord: How many bowmen did you have shooting and how many crossbowmen did he have? Saying "7 axefighters could beat 2 swordfighters" is the wrong question since those are your losses, not the number of men you each had. Losses are naturally distorted by the snowball effect as I'll discuss below. But lets say you had 10 bowmen shooting and he had 7 crossbowmen shooting. In that case imagine 7 swordfighters attacking 10 axefighters. The swordfighters would probably win, and losing 7 axefighters in the time he lost just 2 swordfighters would be expected results IMO. Of course I think bowmen need a bit of a boost, but in a "bowmen vs crossbowmen" shoot-off crossbowmen are always going to be considerably better, in the same way that swordfighters will have a significant advantage against axefighters.

Also note in KaM battles tend to snowball, once one side loses a few casualties they get crushed because the enemy surrounds them. In the case of archers this means they are shooting less than the opponent because the opponent has more men left. That's why casualties tend to be higher than you might expect if you only look at casualties. Once one side has lost a lot more men than the opponent they are somewhat doomed because they lose their ability to fight back, and thus the remaining men are killed quickly and easily. IMO this is one of the things that makes KaM battles great, since if you make a bad decision you can lose a lot of men while the opponent doesn't lose so many. It's far more interesting (and probably more realistic) than games like Age of Empires, Dawn of War, etc. where snowballing isn't so significant due to the different combat/HP system.

I've tested decreasing the aiming delay, it seems to work well. Previously in r3392, r4001, etc. for every 10 arrows the bowmen fires, the crossbowmen would shoot 8. Now when the bowmen shoots 10 arrows the crossbowmen only has time to shoot 6. (note that all these numbers are the average case, there are random elements) It's hard to tell whether this is too much or not, so I simply suggest we test it at the same time as testing the shields patch. It will probably take many iterations to get all this stuff right.

it would also be nice if archers caused a bit more damage to structures, making it a more useful unit in the game, specialy for taking down towers

That will naturally happen with a decreased aiming delay. Each arrow does a fixed amount of damage against buildings (all ranged weapons are the same) so if bowmen shoot more quickly than crossbowmen they will be better against buildings. In fact they already are in r3392/r4001/etc. since bowmen shoot a bit faster already.

We won't be changing the speed of units in the game because it will look bad with the fixed animations. Also Stronghold had this and I really didn't like it, I didn't find it a fun game mechanic that my swordfighters took twice as long to get somewhere as my militia did.

@PAKER: If you want to make a new topic about archers having longer range on hills Krom and I will explain in more depth why we won't be implementing that. This isn't the right topic.

@Bo: A while ago we tried range effecting accuracy/damage, and I personally didn't think it was a fun mechanic. I was constantly worrying about what distance my archers were from the enemy to make them as effective as possible. And it's unintuitive to the player, you can't tell what's going on if somebody hasn't told you about it.

[The Dark Lord]

Okay, well even after watching the replay twice I wasn't able to fully unravel what happened there. It seems like I lost 5 archers and a scout vs 2 crossbowmen of my enemy (the scout died when he was about 3 tiles into crossbowmen's range, but a lot of crossbowmen were firing at him so it seems fair...) The loss of all those archers seems a bit unlucky as most died in one hit. But what really seems unfair is that 5 archers fired at the same target and - it - did - not - die. How on earth can those archer-crossbowmen face-offs be fair if I need to hit crossbowmen 6 times or more often and I die in 1 hit every time? I don't know if it's due to archer accuracy or they being just painfully weak, but increasing their fire rate won't solve this when they keep dying in one hit.

[Thomas]

But what really seems unfair is that 5 archers fired at the same target and - it - did - not - die. How on earth can those archer-crossbowmen face-offs be fair if I need to hit crossbowmen 6 times or more often and I die in 1 hit every time? I don't know if it's due to archer accuracy or they being just painfully weak, but increasing their fire rate won't solve this when they keep dying in one hit.

That is why I said IMO it's better to increase the fire rate of bowmen and also reduce the attack value of crossbowmen a bit, as they already are the most powerful units by far (solution no. 4 from Lewin in first post).

[The Dark Lord]

I've been thinking about that too, but if we want shielded units to become more resistant against arrows by giving them a bonus they will be overpowered. So I prefer increasing archer attack and a bonus for shielded units.

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

I think bowmen are useful enough now. My xbows got completely owned by bowmen

[pawel95]

I think bowmen are useful enough now. My xbows got completely owned by bowmen

lol yeah, but this was a 4vs2 match at the end,wasnt it?

[Jeronimo]

I've tested decreasing the aiming delay, it seems to work well. Previously in r3392, r4001, etc. for every 10 arrows the bowmen fires, the crossbowmen would shoot 8. Now when the bowmen shoots 10 arrows the crossbowmen only has time to shoot 6. (note that all these numbers are the average case, there are random elements) It's hard to tell whether this is too much or not, so I simply suggest we test it at the same time as testing the shields patch. It will probably take many iterations to get all this stuff right.

I think the solution is allright... small changes are often more than enough when an army has big proportions.
Dealing with shields should require other melee specialist troops, so I wouldn't complicate with extra damage for archers.

[T*AnTi-V!RuZz]

I think bowmen are useful enough now. My xbows got completely owned by bowmen

lol yeah, but this was a 4vs2 match at the end,wasnt it?

Yeah so? Doesn't change the fact my xbows got owned by bows.

[Krom]

Increasing bowmen attack rate brings one undesired side effect - then become ever more powerful against houses .. I don't like that, it does not feels "KaM realistic" to me.