Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Not to vehemently rage over archers again........but......

Yes, before they were overpowered, but I took four squadrons, 20 of axe fighters, 20 lance carriers, 20 bowmen for support with 10 scouts in the final battle of TSK mission 4 against the enemys' last standing army after leaking out the towers with some militia.

Guess what, after a line approach, no army left, my army that is. I took out a lot of troops, but most of the enemy's casualties I count among my melee troops taking them out, not the archers. All they did was shoot glorified darts.





Maybe the archers are now under powered, especially the bowmen. Here's an idea, though, if you have to raise the archers power to their original power just so they have somewhat more strength than before, to be fair to multiplayer: keep the current strength constant for archers separate in multiplayer; raise it for single player.


Then again, perhaps I need 40 axe fighters, 20 lance carriers, 20 scouts and 35 bowmen for that last encounter. I can't say I had this much difficulty in TSK under the TPR engine simply because I don't have a record of a regularly played experience in that engine.

Thanks for bringing up the topic, I'd be interested to hear what other people think too.

I always found in the final battle of TSK 4 the enemy archers were the biggest problem, so I would have thought it would be easier now if anything. (but I haven't played it myself)

To be honest "20 of axe fighters, 20 lance carriers, 20 bowmen" sounds about right to me, I would have used that much back in the day (although I was less experienced then)
The archers are still supporting your melee units by damaging the enemy even if they aren't getting many kills purely from arrows. The enemy dies quicker with a combination of arrows and melee than with just melee. Next time take a save before the big battle and test the battle multiple times, with and without your archers. You'll find they are making a substantial difference.
We don't want to have different powers for archers in singleplayer and multiplayer, we want it to be consistent. As far as I've seen in multiplayer replays archers are still the most trained units, but now people make melee units too because archers no longer work on their own with little or no support.

We are aware that some campaign missions are almost impossible to win due to AI/archer differences, (TSK 8 is one example) we're sorting these issues out as they are reported to us. (usually slightly altering starting troop amounts)

I like how it is now. When facing crossbowmen, archers are completely useless; but in fair battles they are still very useful. You just need larger numbers than before. 10 archers won't make the difference anymore and I love it. You'll have to make a decision whether you need more archers or more melee troops, while in the past you'd just spam archers.
IF archers will be made stronger again, then please, just add a puny tiny little teeny weeny microscopic bit to their strength, and nothing more.

Balance is quite good. But what i can say from my expirience.

First, after bowman has became so weak i lost few interesting build orders. Because now if i build so i would really have small chance to win against popular build orders. That is much more fun and tacticly interesting when you can use different mix of forces with same/equal/near effectivness. Now bowman is really good only against militia.

The second moment , crossborrow in this balance of game are still very strong. Just if you look on whole game balance you can see that this unit in groups makes the biggest amount of damage compare to other. So if one player investing all iron in crossborrow + some tanks, and using leather meat shield he would have imba strategy specialy for long game. And there are lot more details i could explain but i dont really like to share this tactical secrets

So, i really want to suggest in this situation to make crosborrow weaker on 5-10 % if that is possible. I do really think it will make gameplay much more interesting. What is it doing with bows? This change will give a chance for bows to have a place in army, because another range unit (crosborrow) will be not 3 times better but maybe just 2,5.

I agree on Mulberry's point (and somewhat on Dark Lord's as well) - bowmen shouldn't be too powerful so they may stay as they are, but then crossbowmen should be nerfed. Now, making bowmen doesn't make sense, only xbows+leather infantry or xbows+horses. Even as a support for xbows, bowmen fail miserably IMO. Weaker xbowmen will change the balance much though, so it will really need to be tested thoroughly.

Although, aren't bowmen supposed to be just about the same attack rating as lances? I know any archer is weak on defense and hitpoints, of course now there is a mood point to make larger armies now of any leather troop to successfully combat a leather army the right way, but......

Realistically getting hit with a blunt arrow on a full knock, for example, is like getting hit with a bat; add a point to it and usually it really does do a bit of damage, as if a lance would.

If with the latest release of the Remake bowmen are now useless, why leave it that way? Why make a unit redundant?





On another note, could there be room for pierce armor ratings? No, that idea has been bashed down.....

Bowmen are far from useless as other people said. Try having battles without them. Even though they don't get quite as many kills as before, they still greatly weaken the enemy and make it much easier for your melee soldiers.
I'm not sure what you mean by that.

After reading the discussion here I've decided to make crossbowmen slightly less accurate, at least for the beta testing period. So hopefully during beta testing people can tell us how the balance feels with crossbowmen. It can always be reverted before release if it doesn't work well.

And I thought the decreasment of the attack value of crossbowmen was already bad enough, and now you plan to even furthur decrease the capacities if this unit?

I got one thing to add - I see an inconsistency while using the term "archer". Does it mean the same as "bowman", or it means "bowman and/or crossbowman"? Because some of the posts make me feel not everyone understands that term the same way. Bowmen are a useless unit before iron is depleted, because they are too easy to kill with xbows. Even when using a mixed army of bows+xbows against xbows only, first thing that happens is the death of bowmen. Because of that, I don't see a point in making bowmen at all, better to focus on other leather units (mainly lances spam). This is the only unit that doesn't seem useful at all in its current state. The fact that (as you said) they are useful against melee isn't important at all because usually the first thing you need to do after PT is to kill (or weaken) enemy xbows. For the reasons I wrote above, I agree with that decision Of course this may impact the gameplay much, balance against bowmen may be better but what if xbows are too weak against melee, then? ^^

I have got an idea. I was thinking about it long time ago. It may sound crazy, but what if you make bowman shoot faster? What is a time of 1 full action (shooting action) of bowman?

That would almost have the same effect as making them more powerful, so I don't really mind whether they are made more powerful or crossbowmen are made weaker. I do think crossbowmen are too strong compared to archers though. Yesterday I played a game and I tried not to make any crossbowmen, so my army consisted mainly of archers + pikemen, but they were no match for crossbowmen + lance carriers.

If you haven't caught it from the IRC, I'm making a test map with no defense aid on AI to test efficiency of both archer types of equal test groups. One pair will be one version of 40 versus 40 of the same unit, and one with 40 archers added to one group. I'm testing this among all "like" unit group battles with every troop at full condition. Currently I have three pairs of each, but I might attempt to add more to the innards of the map to allow for as many test pairs as possible. After I get the scenario complete, I'll take a full day to test 50 instances of leather troops, and another day for 50 instances of iron troops. Lewin's Map Editor is my choice of map editing as it streamlines both map setup and adjustment, especially modifying every group from leather to iron. I only check the map with the built in Remake editor so troops aren't too close.

Oh, every troop mass is 20 rows, and I'm opting to test the groups by picking the control groups, the player that absolutely has no archer support to attack so I can start a lot of battles at one time and after the dust clears take tallies.

Well, I have attempted to get random results from the automated map I created, but either ran in singleplayer or multiplayer, after the dust settles I know what test groups have what numbers. After getting the same results four games over, I can readily assume that the map is rigged. I'll provide the leather archer test map soon enough in a post with the iron archer test map with combined results and you can see for yourself. If you get different results, after I run the iron troops in their scenario, in either scenario than I, let me know. Also, run the test a few times.

You will need Open Office to open the spreadsheet, though.

When I run the figures on the iron troops, remember, this map is automated, just hit the "continue watching" and wait for the fighting to stop, then count them up. I'll give instructions on how to assign the groups after I do some tests with the iron troops, which I think will bring me the same results as the leather troops. I just wanted to let you know the testing results are too static on this onset.

Open this in a new window.
Archer_tests

I must say, one of the pikemen group failed to automatically protect its archers, and the first knight group without archers didn't finish off their enemy group.

The way to log your own results, if you want to compare results, is for militia, the first two groups of militia going down is the first group, and so on until the last group and the one in the next column is the third. The axe fighters and the sword fighters go from the left and the next row is the last group. The scouts and knights go down until the last group and the next column to the left are the last group. And the lance carriers and pikemen go right with the last group and the troops above are the last ones. Be sure to at least run three games for the redundant results. As you see in my log, the first leather troops have a different number listing for the first game as that one I ran without automation.

In the log, I was going to run 50 full games of this scenario and wanted to get results through automation, which is quickest. But someone coded the random equation variables from game time and apparently map location, not computer time.