why do my Archers suck?

[Navaros]

hi guys,

still playing the Almohads

i wanna know why my Archers suck, exactly

here's what ALWAYS happens.


i have 4 units of archers deployed atop a hill. the AI enemy charges my Hill. they break into loose formation. my archers fire


with one volley of arrows from 4 units of Archers - so really we're talking about 4 volleys here - all targeting the same exact enemy unit - i'll usually only kill 2 enemy soldiers per one round of those 4 volleys


instead of 133 men, that unit now has 131. that is ridiculous


so i'm wondering why 4 volleys of arrows will only take out 2 soldiers at best, and often not even that. often it takes it NO soldiers.


do all Archers suck, or just mine? by the time i've killed 30 or so soldiers of one unit, my Archers are always over taken (that's 80x4 Archers = 320 of my men only able to kill about 30 enemy men before becoming useless for the rest of the battle)

note: this happens to me in PERFECT WEATHER.

[Demon of Light]

First off, if you are using basic archers, then they will tend to suck. If they are firing on units with some degree of protection against arrows, they will suck even worse. If they are not facing their target directly, you will encounter more difficulties. If your archers are firing from behind any of your units, you will encounter still more difficulties. If your archers are more than 2 ranks deep, well, I think you get the idea.

[Kongamato]

Are you in 1.1? Archers are not particularly strong in that version of the game.

Are your archers in an orderly formation? Sometimes bunching them up makes less men fire their arrows.

You deployed on top of a hill, how high and steep is this hill? If you were on a huge hill and were firing on men marching up the hill, I think that your men might actually have less of a target to fire on. If this is the case, deploy at a lower altitude and fire some volleys on the enemy when they are marching on flat ground.

[Navaros]

i am using Viking Invasion 2.01

i usually just click on my archers to attack the first infantry unit to come into their range

if they are not in a good position to do this effectively then is there any way to make them AUTOMATICALLY get into that position before attacking?

right now i'm tempted to stop building archers at all unless some of you can tell me how specifically i can make them not suck so much. i am not always gonna have time to set them up to an ideal facing in the heat of a battle

right now they are a waste Archers are a complete waste my unit-slots and money.

[Demon of Light]

Archers are indeed a waste of resources if you don't want to spend the time to babysit them in battle. I think ctrl+Right click changes facing btw. If you intend to go without archers, you might want to consider getting fast cavalry to replace them as you will need a way to deal with enemy archers.

If you DO want to continue using archers, then always carry the best available (Crossbows and arbalesters), line them up 2 ranks deep facing their target and place infantry a little bit behind them to intercept enemies that try to rush them. Valor for the archers also helps.

[nightcrawlerblue]

Archers are rediculously underpowered in my opinion but they are still a critical unit. I use them to slowly eat away at the enemy's general unit/strongest unit. Archers will lower the morale of the enemy they are attacking so it helps for routing greatly.

[Bhruic]

Hmm, I've noticed a real trend in your posts to dimiss units as sucking. Without trying to cause offense, I'd like to point out that properly used, most of these units are fine. The important point is to make sure you are using them properly.

For example, with archers, if you shoot at a unit like spearmen, and they are facing you, they will be catching most of your arrows with their shields. Spearmen aren't really the best target for basic archers. Try instead to shoot a unit like urban militia. Or attack basic mounted units (hobilars, horse archers, etc). Arrows have a much greater effect on them.

When your archers are on a hill, they are also much better as anti-archers. They can shoot farther, and therefore hit sooner approaching archer units. As most basic archer types don't have armour/shields, you can do significant damage.

The trick with most units is finding out under what circumstances they are effective, and using them for that. Trying to use units in roles they aren't suited for might make them appear to suck, but it's not really the units that are at fault.

Bh

[Navaros]

Quote[/b] (Bhruic @ April 04 2004,19:18)]The trick with most units is finding out under what circumstances they are effective, and using them for that. Trying to use units in roles they aren't suited for might make them appear to suck, but it's not really the units that are at fault.

Bh
ok i can accept that.

however it is not MY fault either considering that the so-called TUTORIAL doesn't teach you jack all about why units APPEAR to suck in most situations so it's not like there is any easy way for me to KNOW about these things

i blame the Tutorial for being shoddy and incomplete, and not teaching you enough stuff

[ichi]

Bhruic and Demon both have made good suggestions - place your archer units 2 ranks deep and shoot at cav, other archers, and infantry without shields. Shooting into the rear or flank of a unit helps.

You can watch your archer unit and see which men in it are firing. If the unit is far away, or your unit is in trees, or in deep formation not all men will fire.

When I read the original post the main thing that I saw was that the archer units were being overtaken. The archers should be placed out in front only so far as they can be protected or can retreat if attacked. If archers are set to skirmish they should be able to stay away from most inf. When the enemy rushes hit Ctrl-M (this selects all missiles) and then Alt- left click in the center behind your infantry. This will cause all of your archers to retreat to behind your lines and become protected.

When an infantry unit is fighting AND taking missile fire the rate of death goes up, which means fewer soldiers and lower morale. Units also lose morale when taking missile fire, so shooting archers at enemy infantry units while they are fighting can cause them to rout,

which is nice

ichi

[Navaros]

but if i shoot over the heads of my own men whilst they are engaged with an enemy unit, won't my Archers be killing my own guys just as much as they kill the enemy (like in Braveheart?) if not, what is the RATIO for how many of my own men compared to how many enemy men die from Archers in that situation?

[Lord Ovaat]

If you can avoid it, never use plain vanilla archers. They aren't Armour piercing. Use crossbows, arbs, longbows, or recurves which have armour piercing ability (Janissaries, Bulgarian Brigands, etc.). On a regular field (no mountains or rivers) I always place my crossbows & arbs just in front of my heavies, in double line. Single spreads them out too far. Always have them on skirmish. If you select targets, which is often wise, you must watch them or they'll get flanked & hit by another unit. They will only skirmish with their assigned unit and are vulnerable. I keep them in front because of their flat trajectory. Regular bows I place just behind my heavies, since they can shoot over the line (mostly). Keep them on hold position or they won't stay put. At times you're better off to pick targets for them, else they'll waste ammo on peasants and such. Also be careful when targeting specific units because your own archers then become oblivious to any of your own troops who happen to get in the way. You need to watch them pretty closely if you can. They can be devastating when used well, and mounted archers can wreck horrific damage. I had a unit of Turcopolas (100 men) demolish a 100 man Svea Axeman unit tonight (Med Mod), just by letting them fire and retreat on skirmish as the Danes tried to catch them. When exhausted & wavering, I let them charge and routed them, capturing or killing the lot. Again, you must watch so they don't back themselves into the edge with no withdraw possible. Archers are really a lot of fun, but it takes time to learn their quirks. Sadly, once you learn most of the details of any game, it starts to get boring. I ain't there yet & have been playing for almost a year--just about daily. Lord, I keep finding out new stuff. I love it http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-smitten.gif

[Bhruic]

Well, I'm not sure that any tutorial in the world can completely explain all aspects of a game. Some things you just need to experience for yourself.

Yes, if you set your archers to fire at an enemy engaged with your troops, you can also hit your own men. Personally, I try and avoid that, although it's not necessarily as bad as it sounds. When attacking, I usually lead with my archers. If I can force the enemy to attack me, then I gain an advantage. If manually targetting, go for units with little armour and no shields (if any). Again, personally, I mostly leave it on fire at will. When defending, I put troops in front of my archers. I'm almost always on a hill, so the extra elevation will give me a shooting distance parity. And you don't want your archers to be caught by a surprise cavalry charge and be too slow to skirmish.

Bh

[PseRamesses]

In my opinion even the vanilla archers are fine used in the right way. Except the advice you already have got from the other guys I find them very good at stopping enemies that try to flank you, pound an advancing unit before you attack them. On early I mainly bring 6-8 units of archers into battle with 2-4 spears to protect them and 4-8 good fighting units to flank the enemy.
I always line up the archers in two row/ hold formation and hold position orders because that will keep them from running all over the place. The spears that protect them gets the same orders. The only yhing that will stop this set-up is an early cav rush. Sometimes you´re down to fighting the last battle against a king and all his heirs. Seriously outnumbered he sometimes rush you since it´s a kamikaze manouver it sometimes work and I´ve actually lost a couple of thoose. Otherwise you just have to be very active in targeting with your archers. Let every unit get a taste of a couple of volleys. Good luck

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Quote[/b] (Lord Ovaat @ April 04 2004,21:59)]If you can avoid it, never use plain vanilla archers. They aren't Armour piercing. Use crossbows, arbs, longbows, or recurves which have armour piercing ability (Janissaries, Bulgarian Brigands, etc.).
In vanilla MTW, there is only one archer unit with armour piercing capability: Longbows.

All other archers, including Bulgarian Brigands and Janissary Archers use sbow projectile (the same used by vanilla archers).

BTW, crossbows and arbalesters aren't archers... http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-wink.gif

[Axeknight]

Quote[/b] (PseRamesses @ April 05 2004,13:20)]Sometimes you´re down to fighting the last battle against a king and all his heirs. Seriously outnumbered he sometimes rush you since it´s a kamikaze manouver it sometimes work and I´ve actually lost a couple of thoose.
Yeah, those 'Royal armies' are tough.

IMHO, the best way to use archers is as 'edge blunters'. For example, the English used to keep the enemy at bay with their longbows, then charge the demoralised and weakened enemy line. Its best to put them forward, in front of the spear line, in my experience. As the enemy closes, retreat the archers and move your spears forwards. Instead of chewing up archers, the enemy now has to face your line. Then use the archers to skirmish and duel with the enemy missle troops, and fire on any unengaged enemy units.

[yonderboy]

Archers do, indeed, require a lot of skill/babysitting to use properly. Try a Muslim faction first to get used to them, as your opponents will have more peasants (a great archer target), and you can get used to the aspect of moving your archers around. As for the what units are these guys good against, etc. question, the historical rulers didn't have that advantage either. Just ask the Frenchies.

MTW does a fairly good job at representing how the units should be used. Some good reading, etc... also tells how to use units. These forums are a great example.

Good luck my friend.

[Big King Sanctaphrax]

The Only reason I keep vanilla archers around is to counter enemy horse archers. Other than that, I forget about them, use light cav to anti-archer (Usually hobilars, as the English are my favourite faction) and wait for either crossbows or my beloved longbows to show up-of course, I'm playing Medmod now, so I don't have to wait anymore...

[Lord Ovaat]

You're absolutely right, AYMAR, I forgot to include the Med Mod warning. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-embarassed.gif Lumped all arrow/bolt troop types together since a lot of folks just coming in might not know the difference. Wasn't trying to me misleading, though. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-yes.gif

[Accounting Troll]

Navaros, looking at the tactical situation in your original post, I think your archers started quite well in supporting the rest of your army. Archers will do more damage to an opposing unit if the men are in close formation, so the enemy spearmen decided to spread out to minimise their casualties. However men in an open formation are far more vunerable in hand to hand combat.

In your situation, I would have kept firing at those spearmen and sent my Almohad Urban Militia charging into them, and then got my archers to fire at someone else. AUMs can easily beat basic spearmen and urban militia, especially when charging downhill at an enemy in open formation.

[Court Jester]

IMHO, vanilla archers have only limited value after the early period -- they are too susceptible to being rushed without taking out many of the enemy. So I don't use more than a couple of them unless I have some extreme altitude advantages, and I'll almost never use them once I have x-bows/arbs.

However, one very useful purpose for vanilla archers when used on defence is to counter horse archer units. If you're faced with a HA-heavy enemy, vanilla archers are great for keeping them at bay.

Another place some vanilla archers are great is on offence against a static enemy who won't come down off their hill -- often a few archers will cause the AI to break their defensive formation and charge the archers.

[Doug-Thompson]

Seventy-five florins a turn is a lot of money for a unit as useless as regular archers, unless you don't have any other way to deal with horse archers.

Desert archers are fine -- fast enough to skirmish some, or to catch routing infantry.

[Gore]

Do not aim your two or more missle units to one enemy unit in the same time when they are marching.
Aim one,and second(third) after. It really -more kills-works because during reloading enemy change position.

[Mouzafphaerre]

-
Desert archers, yes. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-yes.gif You're Almos; don't need vanilla archers. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
_

[meravelha]

Trebzondine archers rule
They often form 50% of my Byz armies against the Muslims.
They are so handy to move about and, by co-operating with each other, take down anything that is sent against them.

I keep a General's unit of kataphraktoi and a couple of byzantine infantry just for insurance, but the rest of the army is plain vanilla spears. Tis the archers do the killing.

[SpencerH]

My only beef with archers, and I usually try to have 4-6 units out of 16, is that if you have them 2 ranks deep and order them to fire on a particular unit that is isnt directly in front of them they will change facing. Often this results in half the unit moving through or past the spear units in front of them where they become extremely vulnerable to any enemy units and rout when attacked by two old grannies with knitting needles.

[PseRamesses]

Quote[/b] (SpencerH @ April 20 2004,08:14)]My only beef with archers, and I usually try to have 4-6 units out of 16, is that if you have them 2 ranks deep and order them to fire on a particular unit that is isnt directly in front of them they will change facing. Often this results in half the unit moving through or past the spear units in front of them where they become extremely vulnerable to any enemy units and rout when attacked by two old grannies with knitting needles.
Put your archers on hold position and hold formation. That will make them stay in place as long as you don´t tell them to shoot at a target out of range. In this pos they will fire in-range 360 degrees around you.

[SpencerH]

Quote[/b] (PseRamesses @ April 20 2004,08:24)]Put your archers on hold position and hold formation. That will make them stay in place as long as you don´t tell them to shoot at a target out of range. In this pos they will fire in-range 360 degrees around you.
Aaah, thats what I missed. I always use them on hold formation but not hold position.

Thanks

[ScubaSteveDave]

I saw a television show called Conquest that was about archers. It said that most archers raised in medieval times (in Europe anyway) were poorly trained (basically peasant levees, no real training in shooting or hth), poorly equipped (quilted cloth armor, homemade bows), and were poorly paid, if at all. Since many units had shields, and men-at-arms, knights, and the wealthier infantry had armor, archers were usually worthless except as skirmishers before units closed to hand to hand fighting, although it stated that a well trained, well equipped unit of archers could be devastating, but that this rarely happened (there was also a stigma on killing from a safe distance). So MTW does a fairly accurate representation of them, IMHO. Although I do not see enough improvement in accuracy as range decreases (a unit of arquebusiers at point-blank still only kill a handful per volley).

[Xecthilor]

To an extent I guess it depends partially on the type of archers your using. And probably on the type of unit your firing at, your probably less likely to be striking down hordes of targets if your using generic archers firing at heavily armored soldiers.

[katank]

@ scuba steve,

I find distinctly different results from you. the very last volley the archers fire at point blank before melee is joined when they hold is veyr deadly.

point blank arqs are even better.

not only can they drop half the front rank, they inflict a nice morale penalty that spells instant rout for some low morale units.

naturally, the power of missile units increase exponentially and critical mass needs to be achieved which is around 6-8 units.

note: combination of generic and AP capable archers preferred to enable taking on of a mixed army which the enemy would likely send.

[son of spam]

I play with medmod, so this may cloud my opinion, but I think the best way to make archers useful is to lower their price to 125. And x-bows to 150.

Also, with archers, you can spam them from any prov and expect them to be just as effective as super special v14 archers from hell (or heaven? :/). Thus, it's quite feasible to field armies made up of around 4 good melee units and 12 archers, and out-attrit the enemy.

Moreover, if you are facing crap units (ie. feudal seargents, mounted seargents, militia seargents), It's quite possible to destroy half the units' strength by missile fire alone. 12 archers do a lot of damage.

Of course, don't use this tactic against RK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[katank]

yep, I love this tactic.

I often use 11-12 archers protected by 4-5 spear wall in staggered formation.

You will really be amazed at how much this slaughters of low morale forces.

they often make contact with my spear wall and then rout.

this works on any difficulty level. combat bonuses don't apply to immunity vs. arrows apparently http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Xecthilor]

The english armies dominated the french during the 100 years war. There was a good reason for that, its called the longbow. My first experience with longbows, I had one full size longbow unit and one half strength one on a hill side, and they were delayed in firing because of some trees concealing enemy movement, and even then they cut a 120 man unit in half before it even got close to my lines.

[ScubaSteveDave]

katank

Really? I'll have to play around with it some more. Hey, I was using default unit size at the time, maybe arquebusiers will be more effective now that I am using the second highest level.
Also, does fatigue have anything to do with accuracy? I know it slows reloading. Also, I have noticed that with all archer units, when they get tired many of the men don't fire, even if there is perfect visibility and clear line of fire. Has anyone else? And if so why?

[Puzz3D]

ScubaSteveDave,

I think short range killing is less than it should be, and the reason is that the game doesn't model true ballistics on the projectile. There is no drag due to air or acceleration due to gravity, so the kinetic energy of the projectile is a constant. This is preset by the lethality parameter for each weapon type in the projectiles.txt file. Lethality is modified by height above or below the target according to the Strategy Guide, and you can see when playing for instance that archers get more kills per volley on targets below them and less on targets above them. Range is also increased and decresed respectively.

The accuracy is also a preset parameter, but modified by a random number generator so that each projectile has a small error added to it's initial path. This works well because targets have a size so they are less likely to be hit when further away. For a stationary target, I think the average chance to hit it would be proportional to the solid angle from the shooter to the target. That angle isn't going to change much with distance until you get fairly close to the target. I don't know if the target's size is modified by the vertical angle of the projectile, but I doubt it. Also, horses and camels are larger than footmen so they are more likey to be hit. Of course, the man on the horse or camel is not more likely to be hit, but the rider isn't seperated from his mount in this game. Accuracy is also modified by things such as valor of the shooter, wet or dry conditions for archers and xbows and clear or partially obstructed line of sight. Shooting down very steep hills will cause archers to mostly overshoot their target.

Ranged units don't lead moving targets. They shoot where the target was at the moment the projectile was fired. For a slow speed projectile such as arrows fired from bows, that translates to very low accuracy at long range on moving targets with the exception of targets moving away from the archer. For some reason kills per volley are very good on targets which are moving away. I know the shield is removed as protection when moving away, but it seems to be more than that. At one time I thought it was due to archer overshoot being greater than their undershoot. However, a LAN test I ran on 9 units arranged in a 3x3 block showed in fact the overshoot and undershoot are equal with some kills on the units to either side as well (almost no kill in the 4 units at the corners of the block). As a moving target gets closer to an archer, the flight time of the projectile becomes less, and the chance of hitting moving targets improves. There is some strange thing that happens at very, very short trajectories with archers and javelins where the projectiles seem to all overshoot the target.


I can't find any statement that says fatigue lowers accuracy. It is very hard to get any kills at all with an exhausted shooter, but most of the men in an exhasted unit don't shoot because they can't reload their weapon. Fatigue is tracked on individual men and it can vary for men in units fighting in hold formation where only some of the men are actually fighting. What you see displayed as a fatigue state is the average for the whole unit. However, I don't see how there would be any difference in fatigue amoung men in a unit that was just shooting because the fatigue rate for each man would be the same since they are all reloading. I would guess that the chance of a man firing just becomes less as the unit becomes fatigued, and the random number generator is being utilized to statistically lessen the number of men that shoot during a volley.

Incidentally, I did measure the misfire rate of muskets in WE/MI v1.02, and I found that it was 25% misfires in dry weather. The rate of misfires did increase in rainy weather, but in MTW/VI guns can't shoot at all in rain so it doesn't matter for this game.