Solution to weak missile units!

[AgentBif]

Quote Originally posted by Earl of Sweden:
Because then you can use another troop to punish the remains of his archer-decimated.
[/QUOTE]

So then your two guys take out one of his, what does he do with his second guy?

bif

[Protoman]

Quote Originally posted by AgentBif:
So then your two guys take out one of his, what does he do with his second guy?

bif[/QUOTE]

Exactly. Sure a 1, 2 combo of archers and melee could take out ONE melee. But TWO melees could have taken them out just as easily. Why hassle with the archers in that case?
At least with TWO melees half your force won't be spent after one encounter.

By the way. I went and tried using those hinishians (However you spell them) and even with fully upgraded armor/attack/morale/general in MP I only killed 4 byzantine infantry before I was overrun and killed!

That is ridiculous for such an insanely expensive unit! For their price (and stacked full of upgrades) you would EXPECT at least 6 kills a volley. They are all suppose to be uber leet marksmen aren't they? I sure as hell didn't pay 8000 something florians (after upgrades) just so they can hide and die the moment they pop up.

[Soapyfrog]

You'll take less losses with the archer/melee combo...

OTOH if he has the same number of units as you, ick... hope you're defending on a hill.

[Tuidjy]

Archers were never cheap. As a matter of
fact, the unit that should take the longest
to train would have been longbowmen.
As for knights, you simply should not be
able to train them, period. Every province
with a lord, castle and the prerequisit
infrastructure should pop a few knights
every now and then, and that's it.

But back to archers. Archers were extremely
hard to train, because using a bow is much
harder, and requires much more strength and
coordination than, for example, a spear.
Furthermore, an awful lot of archers would
cripple themselves or develop strain injuries

Why did people use them at all? Well, a
couple or reasons. Not because they could
decimate heavy infantry, that is for sure.
A large, iron-bound shield of ply wood would
sneer at arrows. Not so armour, though.
Not only were armoured units extremely rare,
but the most widespread type of armour,
chainmail pretty much worthless again bodkin
and similar arrows. And in addition to this,
most shields were not particularly good
against arrows either - the ironbound/plywood
ones are heavy.

The reason that archers were used is that
in the early years, the mass of troups were
not armoured, that people without a
shield (i.e. two-handed spearmen) were
dead meat, and that horses could not be
armoured heavily enough. The reason that
archers were not heavily used is that they
were hard to train, that manufacturing good
bows and arrows was surprisingly hard and
expensive (do not ask me why, I read it,
but cannot explain it either)

And of course, in the end, gunpowder kicked
armour's ass... there was one famous battle
where the French cannon drowned the
'invincible' Swiss pikemen in blood.
But in order to make the game relistic, a
few things would have to be introduced.

1. Different armour for hand to hand,
arrows/bolts, and buttle. No armour save
against boulders/cannonballs.

2. Some units will not be trainable, but
instead generated as time goes by (nobles
producing knights for the liege)

3. Armoured/upgraded units would be very
expensive. Higher level upgrades only at
iron deposits.

4. Extended training times for hard to train
units, i.e. longbowmen, pikemen, etc...

All together, a different game, I'm afraid.
Oh yeah, and cavalry should have higher
charge bonuses, and a rider+horse should
count for 1.5, or 2 men for moral
computations, and frontal charges against pikes and spears should carry a chance to
impale the rider... And yada, yada, yada...
all Warhammer has been doing for years, and
then some.

[Protoman]

I agree with above mostly.

With all M:TW's greatness the one thing it fails to simulate is the variance between training, displine, and skill.

Even the lowliest of spearmen come out of the barracks fully trained in moving as a unit and displined.

THAT is why calvary charges were TRUELY used is because well displined troops were not that common because of the fuedal vassel/patron system.

It wasn't until the governments because more centralized that armies could be funded and universally trained by the state.

For M:TW to be a proper sim they would have to tack on a lot of building and make it take effort to earn the right to build centralized armies. That is another game altogether of course because they would have to rework everything to fit with a fuedal type supply system.

So what can they do in the expansion pack instead?
I would say that they can implement a kind system of "training level" whereby units are more realistic in the time it takes to train. You can lowe the training level to produce inferior troops though... as time goes and you upgrade buildings you should be given access to higher levels of training so that players wont be picking the highest level training in the early ages.

[JRock]

Quote Originally posted by Soapyfrog:
So, JRock, why is there such a strong discrepancy between your test's and Gil's?

Gil managed to kill @42 Order Foot from 70 yards with Nizari's on a flat map, you claim you got negligible kills.

What's going on here?[/QUOTE]

First of all, there aren't. I didn't do tests, I used actual gameplay experience.

Second, as I've said several times already, I'm talking about multiplayer uselessness, not singleplayer. It's easy to make archers somewhat effective in singleplayer because the AI can be taken advantage of. That doesn't change the fact that archers are too weak for their price in mp.

[This message has been edited by JRock (edited 10-11-2002).]

[FasT]

Archers Suc.......Cav A 2..........They should kill more.A waste of florins for the price........AgreeD!

[Hakonarson]

IMO the problem isn't that archers suck - it's that players (and hence their units) can react far too quickly to them.

The command and control system for MTW allows instant changes of orders - even for troops that are out of sight of hte gneral and hundreds of yards away - he (you and I) can see whatthey see and react in a flash.

That's not realistic.

What to do about it is another matter and probably deserving of another thread and lots of longs posts that I don't have time for right now....