Knights and Merchants.net Forum

George Stain PMed me asked for the attack values of archers. I thought others might be interested so I'll post my reply here.

There are 3 important factors:
1. Chance that the arrow will miss:
For bowmen: Chance to miss = 0.26+(2*target_speed)
For crossbowmen: Chance to miss = 0.29+(2*target_speed)

For a still target target_soeed = 0. For a walking target speed = 0.1. Horses are nearly twice that, storm attack is about 0.15.

If Chance to miss >= 1, it has 100% chance of missing. 0.5 it has 50% chance, 0 it no chance (will hit).

2. Target units chance direction so the arrows can miss anyway. This isn't something you can calculate but keep it in mind, there will be more misses because units change direction and the arrow was still aiming at where they would have been if they kept walking straight.

3. Chance to injure (if arrow has hit):
Armour values:
No armour = 1
Leather = 2
Iron = 3

Attack values:
Bowmen = 60
Crossbowmen = 120

Chance to injure = (attack / targets_armour)%
So a bowmen against iron has a (60/3)% = 10% chance of injuring. Crossbowmen have a 20% chance.

Direction the target is facing makes no difference unlike melee.

Maybe people will be interested for balance discussions in the future, who knows

Why did you post this? More mathwars between me and siegfried.
But don't you think bowmen are crap then?

So archers have a small percentage of a hit?

and only 10%? thats insane.

Well it's about a 50% chance to miss a walking unit.

Yes only a 10% chance to injure, but remember that 3 hits kills a swordsman/pikemen because they only have 3hp.

Maybe crossbowmen shouldn't be twice as good as archers, that is indeed a lot better and makes archers fairly useless comparatively.

Means that average swordsman gets killed after 30 arrows on average, but it could take from 3 to infinity depending on chance. Maybe we should plot the curve to see the distribution of 100 cases.

60:3 equals 20 for me Then 20% for bowmen and 40% for xbowmen?

yes it is 20% and 40% no? and archer is not so crap how it looks. Bowman firing rate is about 50% faster than xbow firing rate. so in real you can imagine it like 30% and 40% chance to hit.

Crossbowman is slightly deadlier, but at cost of slower reloading and iron materials. Looks fine to me.

Crossbowmen firing/reload sequence takes 2.8 seconds, then we add between 0.8 and 1.6 seconds of random delay. So that adds up to 4 seconds between each arrow on average.
For bowmen it's 1.8 seconds, so 3 seconds between each arrow.

Still, crossbowmen are effectively twice as likely to injure with each bolt, that's a really big difference. Swordfighters are not nearly twice as likely as axemen (35 vs 55), pikemen are not twice as good as lance carriers (35 vs 25).

I still feel like crossbowmen are the only sensible choice for ranged units in multiplayer, and that's a shame.

Yes, archers should be more powerful again. Combined with a bonus for units with shields it should be okay. If only archers were made more powerful sword fighters would be even more useless.

Please take into account also production speed and resource availability. Would not it be possible that by the end of PT equally strong opponents have 30xbow vs. 50bowmen?

I noticed that archers are actualy good to kill enemy xbow, since they shoot so randomly.
But I agree, they should be more powerful. They were always my favourite unit.

I don't think so Krom, 50 archers need 50 bows --> 100 timber. That's a lot if you want to keep developing your town. It's almost impossible without the marketplace.

50 archers within 60 min pt on the beta isn't possible i think. Highest amount of lancers i managed to make was 30-40 (same cost ). 30 xbows however is achievable.

I agree with TDL, bows are not really easier to make than crossbows.