Archers to weak, Gunpowder to weak

[s_tabikha]

I say archers kill everything they hit thats un amoured!
and gunpowder kills everything it hits peroid!!

[Doug-Thompson]

Ah, but the secret is getting a hit.

[Rhyfelwyr]

I do agree archers should do a little more damage to unarmoured opponents. But then even very basic armour or a shield which any peasant could have would protect against weaker bows, so then you're in danger of overpowering archers. You'd think if archers fired anywhere around a 30 degree angle it would only really be soldiers in the front of the opposing unit that would take hits anyway.

As for gunpowder units, accuracy really should be their problem. I wish however they would be absolutedly devastating at really close range. I'd love to hold my men back from firing, then decimate an oncoming cavalry charge from 10 feet. Still they're worthwhile as it is simply because of their morale impact which I've recently discovered against the Aztecs.

[Husar]

My archer and crossbow units often get kills in the hundreds on huge unit size, I really don't see how they're too weak. Sometimes it feels like my other infantry is just there to protect my ranged units while they get all the kills and experience. I've seen crossbow militia kill 21 of 80 gendarmes in one salvo, if that is too weak then should they maybe instagib them?

[Goofball]

Agreed Husar. In my current game as the Portugese, I've got 5 units of 3 gold chevron crossbow militia in one city. France keeps beseiging the same city over and over, I keep sallying over and over. I'd be willing to bet that each one of those CM units has over 1500 kills.

They work fine for me...

[Benandorf]

My archer and crossbow units often get kills in the hundreds on huge unit size, I really don't see how they're too weak. Sometimes it feels like my other infantry is just there to protect my ranged units while they get all the kills and experience. I've seen crossbow militia kill 21 of 80 gendarmes in one salvo, if that is too weak then should they maybe instagib them?

Ah, Xbows are the exception. Good damage, and good accuracy, at least on a fairly flat plane.

However, I've had no problem with Archers killing things, except when shooting over walls, or at an angle above about 40 degrees. Musketeers are hit or miss, mostly because of that annoying "fire by rank" bit and how they have to move every time the enemy shifts a bit to one side, but Xbows and Archers are quite effective. In my experience, at least.

Go fight against some Yeomen archers, and tell me they're no good.

[joe4iz]

I say archers kill everything they hit thats un amoured!
and gunpowder kills everything it hits peroid!!

Early gunpowder units were notoriously inaccurate. The true advantage to it was there was no need to train those units, at least compared to a quality bowman. A good bowman would take years to train.

[s_tabikha]

huser thats because you mod all your xbows duh

and joe
ok even so if the few accurate shots did hit

shouldnt they kill what ever they hit?!?!?!?

[Husar]

huser thats because you mod all your xbows duh

Well no, I didn't.
It's just that crossbows have ap so the gendarmes' armour is reduced from 11 to 5 or 6 or maybe 5.5 and then those crossbows make some 9 damage. I found out that damage higher than the enemy's defense is quite deadly. That gendarmes have no shields doesn't really seem to help(though historically I thought shields were abandoned because advanced plate was better than older armour +shield ). And arquebusiers work quite well, just set them to volley fire in ranged fights, otherwise set them to skirmish, they will fire more individually and not switch ranks, but they're still deadly, won't change their facing and if you stretch them to two ranks you get all men firing at the enemy. Can sometimes be useful in shootouts as well because losses can confuse their rank rotation routine and make it slower. I also think they become more accurate when they gain experience.

[crpcarrot]

huser thats because you mod all your xbows duh

and joe
ok even so if the few accurate shots did hit

shouldnt they kill what ever they hit?!?!?!?

i was going to add my thought but then i saw this post lol

[rvg]

Archers are fine. Xbows are fine. Gunpowder troops *would* be fine if it wasn't or the file/rank salvo thingy.... that's why camel gunners are so good: they dont have to worry about formation and each gunner acts individually.

[ataribaby]

Musketeers (and to a lesser extent arquebusiers) are lethal. I don't know why you'd want them any more powerful without ruining the game's balance. Musketeers have an amazing range and accuracy even with no valour.

arquebusiers work quite well, just set them to volley fire in ranged fights, otherwise set them to skirmish, they will fire more individually and not switch ranks, but they're still deadly, won't change their facing and if you stretch them to two ranks you get all men firing at the enemy.

Thanks for that! I thought skirmish mode just affected whether or not the gunmen would run back when an enemy gets close. But you're right: it also affects the firing co-ordination between the gunners in the unit.

I just tested it in and in one case, with a two rank unit of musketeers on skirmish mode, the first rank would fire, then kneel to reload while the second rank would fire over them from behind; no swapping ranks or shuffling back and forth... Good to know. And you can have gunmen firing safely from behind the main line as long as you leave a sufficient gap (just like crossbows and archers).

Now I just need to work out the effects of guard mode and spearwall on pike units. That's a confusing world of pain.

[s_tabikha]

balanced?
B A L E N C E D?!!

this is gunpowder were talking about
the whole point is its not balenced!!!!!!!!

[WhiskeyGhost]

As for gunpowder units, accuracy really should be their problem. I wish however they would be absolutedly devastating at really close range.

i miss doing that in Shogun

[HoreTore]

shouldnt they kill what ever they hit?!?!?!?

Why...? It doesn't kill you to get hit by an arrow in the arm, nor does it necessarily make you incapable of fighting...

[Benandorf]

Why...? It doesn't kill you to get hit by an arrow in the arm, nor does it necessarily make you incapable of fighting...

And to build on that, the old gunpowder weapons killed the same way that bows and crossbows killed; by mostly the projectile. So it's not like modern weapons where there's such a huge amount of force that the kinetic energy does more damage than a bullet; you could fairly easily survive a bullet to the arm or leg back then. It would hurt (quite badly ), and you'd probably die later from infection, but you wouldn't die right then.

[GFX707]

Why...? It doesn't kill you to get hit by an arrow in the arm, nor does it necessarily make you incapable of fighting...

It's probably pretty hard to keep on fighting with a 4 foot barbed arrow that you can't pull out sticking out of your arm.

You can only snap the shaft and get it sorted later....

That's why in the game so many casualties of arrows heal after the battle....it represents the soldiers who were wounded and incapacitated by arrows but not killed.

[imnothere]

consider these facts:

Arrow wounds - hard to remove in battle. removal might agitate bleeding. arrows (especially british longbows ones) that was pegged to the ground increase chance of infection from contact with soil/manure.

Bullet wound - ditto, but can sometimes ignore depending on the adrenaline/fortitude of the wounded. but often get infection later on due to bits of armor/clothing/lead got driven into the wound and never removed.

I knew there will be argument that a close combat weapon will settle an "argument" quickly. but also consider how Goliath was bought down by the cheapest and cheesiest weapon - a slingshot.

it matter little on the actual destructiveness of the weapon, but alot on the application of it.

ps. i suck at being a cavalry commander, therefore in my games, my horsed units act as the cheerleaders and battlefield-sweepers.

[Miracle]

There are in fact lethality values in battle_config.xml intended to model the effect of projectiles piercing flesh but not killing the target:

	<!-- global combat balancing factors -->
	<combat-balancing>
		<missile-target-accuracy>
			<infantry>0.79</infantry>
			<cavalry>0.56</cavalry>
			<elephants>0.39</elephants>
		</missile-target-accuracy>

Note: The "accuracy" descriptor above is a misnomer and actually describes lethality.

That means that a normal projectile that has hit a target and penetrated its armour and shield will have a 79% chance of removing a hitpoint if it's an infantryman, 56% if it's a cavalryman and 39% if it's an elephant.

Javelins and artillery rounds seem to ignore these values and always have a lethality of 1, which would explain why they are so effective against elephants.

[Red Spot]

Now I just need to work out the effects of guard mode and spearwall on pike units. That's a confusing world of pain.

spearwall doesnt do a thing, its just a flag for pikemen to know they can do that special defence (kneel down etc)
leave them on guard untill charged than remove guard mode and they'll cut trhrough cav. like a hot knife through butter .... (dont leave them on guard after the initial charge as they dont kill a horse than ...)



G

[ReiseReise]

There is a huge difference between a sling and a slingshot.

[antisocialmunky]

Slings own, there's something to be said about rocks travelling 90 miles per hour smashing through low grade armour and negating penetration protection by crushing bone or rupturing organs underneath armor.

[s_tabikha]

WHAT!
I want to see you fight after a bullet rips threw your hand or foot
Id love to see it!
because you couldnt!
lets be realistic here! the only solution is to make all gun powder units 63 attack

[ReiseReise]

I hope I'm putting this to rest.

So you think gunpowder units should be able to annihilate entire units in 2 or 3 volleys, correct?

We're not looking at 18th or 19th century firearms, we're looking at 16th century here, a lot of improvements are made in 200 years, these are not the Brown Bess of the British Empire, although I will use it in best-case examples since it is well-documented.

Early gunpowder weapons were TERRIBLE compared to the modern "10 rounds per second in a mans chest at 200 yards" Hollywood ideal, or even by American Civil War "musket" standards. If you don't want to read all my ramblings, skip to the last 2 paragraphs.

They were very inaccurate. There were no modern manufacturing methods to make consistently smooth and straight barrels, and of course, there was no rifling.

Sorry I am a math geek so i use a lot of numbers in some of the examples.

The gunpowder and balls were inconsistent as well, every shot would be slightly different power, weight, trajectory. Even hitting a line of soldiers was difficult. Most shots were too high or too low. Even if they did manage to put a bullet at the right height, men do not march shoulder to shoulder, so a line of men is at least 50% empty space at chest height and even more at leg or head level. So even if you manage to "hit" your target (the formation as whole), you won't actually hit anyone a good portion of the time. A soldier wielding the Brown Bess could only hit a solid 6ft tall wall at 100 yds 50-75% of the time. If only 30% of a "wall" of men in formation is actual flesh (head to toe), you are looking at 20% accuracy at 100 yds. And remember this is 200 years later.

There was no smokeless powder. After firing the first few rounds it would be difficult to clearly see the enemy.

They were slow to reload:
3 rounds per minute was good, 4 was extraordinary, even with the much later Brown Bess. Lets say 20 seconds is a good reload time. 100 yards would be about the maximum effective distance of the early weapons. With an enemy approaching at the (rather slow for a charge) double-time march pace of 3 m/s, the gunners would only have 30 seconds to fire, reload, fire. Thats TWO SHOTS if they are lucky before being slaughtered.

Firearms of this period could defeat any armor, but that does not mean they necessarily would at any range, angle, etc. Any armor at all will decrease the chances of a bullet causing immediately incapacitating injuries. Talk to any Korean War veteran and he will tell you about Chinese soldiers in their thick winter clothing who took hit after hit from low-powered carbine rounds and stayed standing.

LAST TWO PARAGRAPHS

Even 200-300 years later with many times increased accuracy and hitting power, armies were still lining up a few hundred feet away from each other and blasting away, and NOT suffering 80-90% casualties as you would like to see.

So, after all this, my point is that even though the game does not directly model all these factors accurately, the overall effect is that by increasing some attributes (loading speed, etc) and decreasing others (hitting power, etc), gunpowder is balanced in terms of its effectiveness against period troops who are also modeled in the limited "rock-paper-scissors" terms of the game.

[edyzmedieval]

Archers on huge unit size are very effective. In Kingdoms, a unit of Livonian Auxiliaries massacred 390 Norse Axemen and Viking Raiders with 3 chevrons each.

[TheLastPrivate]

I'd be happy if gunpowder units could fire-by-rank without the whole unit shuffling around, getting stuck in my own lines.

[TevashSzat]

I'd be happy if gunpowder units could fire-by-rank without the whole unit shuffling around, getting stuck in my own lines.

That is a bug, turning off skirmish should help I think...

[imnothere]

ReiseReise - thankyou for replying in a concise and logical manner.

[CannonBall]

That is a bug, turning off skirmish should help I think...

You know what is missing, is perhaps a button or option for missle units to retreat to a prepared or pre-determined position in the rear. defence in layers.

[TheLastPrivate]

Turning off skirmish is Fire-by-rank, Skirmish mode is individual fire (only first 2 ranks will fire)

Although gunpowder shuffling was improved, the line has to face the enemy so they'll reform the WHOLE LINE in 30 degrees or more to face the target and fire. Of course by then theyre behind your other infantry and whatnot and simply not firing. Fire by rank, as of now, is stupid except for the last miunte volley under a roof of pikes.