View Full Version : Seiges: Proof that fire arrows do work.
I thought I'd lost these images but, thanks to Sinan, I just rediscovered them hiding in my /tgas folder.
They document the victory of flaming arrows over wooden seige equipment. Contrary to the claims made by some members it proves they do work.
The First Wave: Swiss Guard in the service of the pope.
https://img120.imageshack.us/img120/1579/seige1df4.jpg (https://imageshack.us)
Don't worry lads those fire arrows are useless - never hit a thing.
https://img293.imageshack.us/img293/7717/seige2ur4.jpg (https://imageshack.us)
Tell that to Hugo - damned polyester uniforms.
https://img120.imageshack.us/img120/6829/seige3za8.jpg (https://imageshack.us)
Damn! now thats not supposed to happen. I knew I should have volunteered for the ladder corps.
https://img293.imageshack.us/img293/4716/seige4mn8.jpg (https://imageshack.us)
There goes the Papal seige tower. That'll teach them to use oil based paint.
https://img175.imageshack.us/img175/7649/seige5oy3.jpg (https://imageshack.us)
And they think its all over - well it is now - The last Papal ram joins the rest of the charcoal at the foot of my walls.
As you can see acheived with three units of Desert Archers plus the arrows from the towers. The Mercenary Crossbow men obvously didn't contribute as they can't use fire arrows.
Glad they work for someone. I never use flaming arrows these days. I almost religiously use crossbows as my wall's missile units. They work better for taking out more people anyway, flaming arrows are hit or miss it seems.
Tschüß!
Erich
Well as you can see I've adopted the 'belt & braces' approach and using both. But in my case three out three isn't bad odds.
Vladimir
05-15-2007, 17:03
I tried to assault the Welsh castle with two rams, both were torched half way to the gates.
Didz, I hate to rain on your parade here... but those screenshots are in no way shape or form 'proof' that fire arrows did the work. If anything, given the proximity of the rams to your walls, I don't think your archers could have caused them to burn at all due to the angle, so it most likely WAS your wall towers. If you are really dead set on proving this, mod your game and remove flaming arrows from your wall towers.
Silverhawk
05-15-2007, 17:22
Since installing the official 1.2 patch I've seen far more siege engines burning, both mine and my enemy's engines. I like it, it makes me *want* to take a couple extra towers just in case!
Oh, yeah, first post. I figure it's about time I registered after lurking for years. :yes:
Empirate
05-15-2007, 17:26
Fire arrows never seem to work for me, only against me...
I've seen a lot of siege equipment burning both in 1.1 and 1.2, but I never seem to manage to torch anything with fire arrows if I REALLY need to. :furious3: :furious3: :furious3: :furious3:
I love the shots, LOL! the captions are HILARIOUS !
We still need a definitive conclusion to if fire arrows work or not.
As long as we have fire arrows and towers both shooting we cannot determine who dealt the destruction.
The best way is to temporarily disable towers and then try a series of test battles, about 5 should suffice. Then we can rest this case.
Volunteers ?
Don't say me because I'm loaded till the next 30 hours...
FactionHeir
05-15-2007, 18:50
Fire arrows do work, but are very ineffective.
Just have a few archers with fire arrows on standby near the enemy's spare rams and wait for his main ram to burn. The AI will then come by with a unit to pick up the spare ram which is quite far out of the range of your towers and you can watch it burn.
Fire arrows do work, but are very ineffective.
Just have a few archers with fire arrows on standby near the enemy's spare rams and wait for his main ram to burn. The AI will then come by with a unit to pick up the spare ram which is quite far out of the range of your towers and you can watch it burn.
I agree. I had an enemy ram crew assault a low-level settlement (just picket fence walls that archers fire over almost flat) that had a U shaped approach to the gate. The ram made it up to the gate, but got stalled there as the fire-arrow-shooting peasant archers I had deployed on the sides of the U continuously burned the ram crew (it was really hilarious, just when they'd be ready to swing the ram again, the archers would immolate 3+ more guys and replacements would saunter forward). It went on like that for a while, but eventually the ram did catch on fire. This may be noteworthy because it looked like those low-level towers couldn't have been shooting the ram while it was at the gate, and the next closest 2 were decidedly out of range and possibly even unmanned. I don't remember what the towers' max angle of fire looks like (though I know I read it in the files at some point), but I'm guessing ~45 degrees, which would definitely have ruled them out if it is the case. The ram was basically at the base of the towers, more like a 75 or 80 degree downward shot.
But yeah, my experience basically says the fire arrows do work, though it's very poorly on anything except men (which isn't all that bad: I find it joyful to watch animated men catching on fire, for some reason).
Doug-Thompson
05-15-2007, 22:34
Oh, yeah, first post. I figure it's about time I registered after lurking for years. :yes:
Greetings!
On the subject, it's notable that Desert Archers were used here. Desert Archers are pretty good, with a base attack of 7 compared to an archer militia attack of 5.
I assume that a unit with a high base attack has a high fire arrow attack.
[Edited P.S.] Desert archers also have longer ranget than militia types.
Didz, I hate to rain on your parade here... but those screenshots are in no way shape or form 'proof' that fire arrows did the work. If anything, given the proximity of the rams to your walls, I don't think your archers could have caused them to burn at all due to the angle, so it most likely WAS your wall towers. If you are really dead set on proving this, mod your game and remove flaming arrows from your wall towers.
Well to be honest it was never my intention to exclude the fire arrows fired by the towers from the equation. After all if you are defending a settlement the towers will be firing fire arrows.
And personally I can't see much point in using fire arrows other than for destroying seige equipment. Except of course to conserve ammunition which I so sometimes do.
Agent Smith
05-15-2007, 23:17
Greetings!
On the subject, it's notable that Desert Archers were used here. Desert Archers are pretty good, with a base attack of 7 compared to an archer militia attack of 5.
I assume that a unit with a high base attack has a high fire arrow attack.
I was just going to ask that question. I'm curious as to whether or not missile damage has any effect on the % chance of catching siege equipment on fire.
Also, I'll just add that I have intentionally burned catapults and trebuchets all the time with fire arrows. I know it's not the same, but it still is further evidence that these things are supposed to happen :yes:
@ Didz & Agent Smith
Perhaps I should rephrase my comments earlier. I don't think anyone here will disagree that fire arrows do light up enemy siege equipment from time to time. The point of contention is how effective they really are vs. tower fire arrows. Thus was my suggestion for modding the game and removing flaming arrows from the towers, and trying to gauge how effective fire archery units would be.
FactionHeir
05-15-2007, 23:33
I think the distance to target and number of arrows hitting is more important than damage itself.
There also seems a minimum threshold that needs to be reached for fire arrows to burn equipment (or say a catapult), not only a fixed low chance.
They are much less effective than tower flames though, which can cause a ram/tower to burn at the first hit.
Kobal2fr
05-16-2007, 03:14
I think the main problem is that you can't target the siege engine itself (or maybe that's just me ? Also, I haven't tried burning towers, only rams). Your archers really target the men lugging it around, not the engine itself, meaning only a bunch of stray arrows do hit whatever contraption you wanna cook up.
I think the main problem is that you can't target the siege engine itself (or maybe that's just me ? Also, I haven't tried burning towers, only rams). Your archers really target the men lugging it around, not the engine itself, meaning only a bunch of stray arrows do hit whatever contraption you wanna cook up.
I dunno about that. I seem to be able to click the ram itself just fine to target it. It's impossible to tell whether the archers target the 6 or so men that are lugging it around or are targeting the actual ram, but certainly they are not firing at the center of the entire unit attached to the ram, as their usual practice would be if they just targeted the unit as a whole. In my example above about burning a ram while it was at the gate, whole flights of arrows were landing directly on and around the exact spot the ram was on.
BTW I'm not sure right now what exactly you mean by targeting the "men lugging it around" though I've interpreted that as the entire associated unit, since you describe only strays hitting the actual ram. With that in mind, I hope my explanation and understanding is sufficient.
It's possible what you're seeing is separate arrow-targeting issues. If you're firing grouped archers or have your archers set to fire at will, they will often not target what you actually click on. Grouped archers seem to love to each select the closest enemy unit to them as a target instead of whatever I indicate, and archers on fire at will seem to be prone to similar target selection, just on a per-unit level (i.e. even if you only have one selected they can decide to shoot a different target than you indicate). At least, that's been my experience, so if I intend to designate targets (almost always) then my archers receive orders one unit at a time, and never have their fire-at-will mode on. It's also possible (nay, I vote it likely) that those targeting routines do not include siege equipment as potential targets, in which case even if you order them to attack the ram as a group or with fire-at-will on, you'll probably never even get them to accidentally shoot it as the closest target.
I hope that solves it for you.
I think the main problem is that you can't target the siege engine itself (or maybe that's just me ?
No, you can target the ram itself, though someone suggested that you should not do this but should target the unit pushing it as it increases the number of hits acheived.
Personally, I've tried both, but the inaccuracy of fire arrows means it doesn't make a lot of difference as far as I can see. It does make a difference with seige towers though, and I always target the tower not the men pushing it. That way the archers fire at the top and sides of the tower rather than its foot.
I've not noticed much difference but I've not gotten that result either, most of the time.
I will perhaps try to test it once I get some time.
Anyone have a quick link to disable towers, or a a quick code snippet ?
FactionHeir
05-16-2007, 12:53
You can simply edit the descr_projectile file for that. Remove the fiery arrows from the towers.
Kobal2fr
05-16-2007, 13:43
@Foz : nah, I never group anyone up when I'm defending a city, so that can't be it, although I do keep them on fire at will most of the time. But since you all say targetting the ram separately is possible, I guess I didn't try hard enough. Hovering the mouse over both the ram and the unit (and yes, btw, by "the men lugging it around", I meant the whole unit) showed me the same tooltip, so I assumed it counted as the same target... I'll have to try again.
But back on topic, after my last assault on that castle north of Scotland, I'd say fire arrows do work.
I had a tower set ablaze that I had made doubly sure was in a dead angle from the nearby towers (plus they were both busy shooting juicy peasants deployed right in front of them for their personnal enjoyment), but there was one unit of peasant archers volleying it. They finally managed to set it on fire just as my own Norse Archers were starting to unload sedately (since, you know, you lads had me convinced they weren't in any real danger :sweatdrop: ), but thankfully most of them made it to the relative safety of the unmanned rempart before the tower crumbled...only to rout immediately afterwards... right through a bunch of Highlanders. :wall:
What's weird is that the peasants hit my tower a whole lot, but the damage was still 0%, and then one hit set it to 20something% and burning fairly quick. It's like "safe...safe...perfectly safe...BROKEN, ROW FOR YOUR LIIIIIVES !" :sweatdrop:. Which is perhaps why you guys doubt they work ? I'd wager everyhit has a chance to work, but that chance is really, really low to give the sieger a sporting chance.
No, you can target the ram itself, though someone suggested that you should not do this but should target the unit pushing it as it increases the number of hits acheived.
Personally, I've tried both and not noticed much difference, the inaccuracy of fire arrows means it doesn't make a lot of difference as far as I can see. It does make a difference with seige towers though, and I always target the tower not the men pushing it. That way the archers fire at the top and sides of the tower rather than its foot.
True. I probably should've noted that I was (and am) using Lusted's LTC 2.3 projectile files, which make arrows (presumably fire included) considerably more accurate. That's probably why I can actually tell that my guys are shooting at the ram instead of the unit.
True. I probably should've noted that I was (and am) using Lusted's LTC 2.3 projectile files, which make arrows (presumably fire included) considerably more accurate. That's probably why I can actually tell that my guys are shooting at the ram instead of the unit.
Ah! well this is always the problem with discussions on this forum. There are so many mods around its impossible to establish whether we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.
Reminds me of the guy who was complaining that his city had just been overrun by two units of uber-peasants, only to admit later that he had been fiddling with his combat settings to try and improve historical accuracy on the battlefield.
One thing I noticed was that the OP had used large unit sizes (archer unit has 120 soldiers). I usually use the standard size (60 archers per unit). So, could it be that the size of the units used plays a big factor here. In my case, it would be 3 x 60 archers shooting at the ram (using the same army setup), whereas in OP's case it's 3 x 120archers shooting at the very same ram... Twice as many arrows should burn the ram with higher probability.
On unrelated note, using casual obervation, I have had more luck burnign seige equipment using "fire at will" rather than trying to target anything in particular.
Agent Smith
05-16-2007, 15:36
True. I probably should've noted that I was (and am) using Lusted's LTC 2.3 projectile files, which make arrows (presumably fire included) considerably more accurate. That's probably why I can actually tell that my guys are shooting at the ram instead of the unit.
I seem to remember a certain Foz lecturing people about not discussing strategy in the game at all if they have modded the time scale because their game play would be fundamentally different than everyone else's. :clown:
Mods are the only way to with M2:TW.
It is truly inconceivable to play the vanilla for me. Didz once you go black you never go back... or so they say. Sure held true for me, as far as M2:TW is concerned. If you need some recommendations, instructions or assistance I'll be glad to help. You'll never play vanilla again, that's for sure. Mods are doing for M2:TW what water does for life. You guys don't know what you are missing. With the level of GFX M2:TW has achieved there are a lot of simple GFX mods whihc make the game unbeatable. It is not only about GFX, you can mod the game so easily for the most part, you can even give every nation a strategic profile, mods only deepen the game. Just look at Broken Crescent, 120 new units, hundreds of ancillarys, traits, triggers, completely new map, all the way to DELHI. There's so much much improved.
Can you find this in vanilla:
Look at the detail on the Frank, check the Fleur de Lis. Look at the Islanders in the background, look at the horse barding.
https://img126.imageshack.us/img126/7202/0032jx9.gif
Look at the armor on these guys.
https://img250.imageshack.us/img250/5879/00171lk.gif
https://img126.imageshack.us/img126/5058/0036pk1.gif
Vanilla Pikemen compared to these.. not for me.
https://img150.imageshack.us/img150/7471/b23ep0.gif
Before and after, any comparison. Nope.
https://img212.imageshack.us/img212/4906/0016mb5.gif
Those are very simple images of a very basic mod: Burrek's Europeans.
The vanilla game is just awful, in comparison. No offence guys, that's my opinion. Hope you can respect it, as I respect yours; that vanilla is great. I do not share it though but I appreciate that this is your view. I'm not dissing it either, I'm attempting to show another aspect.
I will do my tests in vanilla 1.20 for community value, when I actually get through all the rest I have to do.
I've had 5 Retiunues fail to burn a single ram on many occasions. There is no doubt that they do work, but to what degree ? How many Archers are enough ?
I'd recommend that someone just do it if they have the time.
It will settle the issue and we will have a concrete quantitative conclusion, along these lines (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1754725&postcount=20)(<-link)
One thing I noticed was that the OP had used large unit sizes (archer unit has 120 soldiers). I usually use the standard size (60 archers per unit).
Thats a very good point. I always play with 'Huge Units' set becuase I like my armies to look as much like armies as I can. But it does make a lot of difference not just to the effectiveness of 'fire arrows'. The ram is just one ram even with Huge set but its now getting pelted with twice as many arrows from the same number of units.
It is truly inconceivable to play the vanilla for me. Didz once you go black you never go back... or so they say.
I have considered it on several occassions but I don't have any real issues with the vanilla version so its never seemed worth the hassle.
If anything the problems some people had with 1.2 have made me even more cautious, my upgrade went without a hitch.
BTW: Nifty, trick with the hidden images how did you achevie that? (is it a standard control feature somewhere)
FactionHeir
05-16-2007, 17:25
its spoiler tags. use with [spoil]
Thats a very good point. I always play with 'Huge Units' set becuase I like my armies to look as much like armies as I can. But it does make a lot of difference not just to the effectiveness of 'fire arrows'. The ram is just one ram even with Huge set but its now getting pelted with twice as many arrows from the same number of units.
You and Sinan bring up a good point. I seem to recall that there were some mechanics in RTW that specifically scaled with unit sizes, garrison value being a specific one. It could very well be that the probability for siege equipment ignition is coded up to account for different unit sizes and for projectile output. /shrug
Vladimir
05-16-2007, 17:29
Mods are the only way to with M2:TW.
It is truly inconceivable to play the vanilla for me. Didz once you go black you never go back... or so they say. Sure held true for me, as far as M2:TW is concerned. If you need some recommendations, instructions or assistance I'll be glad to help. You'll never play vanilla again, that's for sure. Mods are doing for M2:TW what water does for life. You guys don't know what you are missing. With the level of GFX M2:TW has achieved there are a lot of simple GFX mods whihc make the game unbeatable. It is not only about GFX, you can mod the game so easily for the most part, you can even give every nation a strategic profile, mods only deepen the game. Just look at Broken Crescent, 120 new units, hundreds of ancillarys, traits, triggers, completely new map, all the way to DELHI. There's so much much improved.
Can you find this in vanilla:
Look at the detail on the Frank, check the Fleur de Lis. Look at the Islanders in the background, look at the horse barding.
https://img126.imageshack.us/img126/7202/0032jx9.gif
Look at the armor on these guys.
https://img250.imageshack.us/img250/5879/00171lk.gif
https://img126.imageshack.us/img126/5058/0036pk1.gif
Vanilla Pikemen compared to these.. not for me.
https://img150.imageshack.us/img150/7471/b23ep0.gif
Before and after, any comparison. Nope.
https://img212.imageshack.us/img212/4906/0016mb5.gif
Those are very simple images of a very basic mod: Burrek's Europeans.
The vanilla game is just awful, in comparison. No offence guys, that's my opinion. Hope you can respect it, as I respect yours; that vanilla is great. I do not share it though but I appreciate that this is your view. I'm not dissing it either, I'm attempting to show another aspect.
I will do my tests in vanilla 1.20 for community value, when I actually get through all the rest I have to do.
I've had 5 Retiunues fail to burn a single ram on many occasions. There is no doubt that they do work, but to what degree ? How many Archers are enough ?
I'd recommend that someone just do it if they have the time.
It will settle the issue and we will have a concrete quantitative conclusion, along these lines (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showpost.php?p=1754725&postcount=20)(<-link)
Look at the...what the? Phantom horses!!! (no legs or lower body?)
HAHAHA ! Well spotted. Call CA and join quality control !!!
You and Sinan bring up a good point. I seem to recall that there were some mechanics in RTW that specifically scaled with unit sizes, garrison value being a specific one. It could very well be that the probability for siege equipment ignition is coded up to account for different unit sizes and for projectile output. /shrug
Did anyone hear a BANG ? Excellent point, Whacker!!!
I seem to remember a certain Foz lecturing people about not discussing strategy in the game at all if they have modded the time scale because their game play would be fundamentally different than everyone else's. :clown:
Haha. I haven't been hypocritical just yet, Smith. Shooting a ram with fiery arrows hardly counts as strategy! :smile:
Seriously though, I don't think the changes to accuracy can change the ability of a fire arrow to light siege equipment on fire or not do so. It may change the rate that it happens for me, which would make it easier for me to demonstrate that it is a working feature, but it can't govern whether or not arrows can set equipment on fire. It's rather like if you wanted to see if a bullet in the head would kill a man. You take a gun and give it to your next door neighbor Joe the Plummer, and let him shoot at some guy 100 meters down a shooting range, until he scores a hit and presumably kills the guy (say it takes Joe 75 tries, he is a poor shot). I, instead, hand that gun to a world champion marksman, who nails the target guy on the first shot. My guy finds out on the first try that bullets in the head kill people... but the choice of how accurate the shooter will be bears no relevance to the lethality of the headshot, it only makes it more convenient to see it in action. It should be exactly the same with fire arrows.
In fact theoretically you should be able to get a great idea of how the fire arrows work by setting your archers to have a flat 100% accuracy (I think a 0 goes in the file, it says accuracy but seems to actually use a variable that says how much the shot will miss). When your archers bullseye the ram every single shot, it shouldn't be hard to tell if they can or cannot light it on fire.
That leads to yet another observation though: my bet is that archers are just so inaccurate typically that not enough hits are scored on the ram to have a statistically decent chance of success, which is why it seems impossible to do in vanilla. It also may be required that the arrows score a statistical hit on the ram's armor, whatever the game has decided that value is. So it isn't even necessarily the case that every arrow that appears to hit the ram actually scores a hit, it could only be a small percentage. Just watch arrows hit men in a normal battle if you don't believe they can miss while physically hitting. Of those that score statistical hits, they may have to pass a check to light the ram on fire. A tiered system like that could make it a VERY unlikely occurrence: you'd have to hit the physical ram, hit the statistical ram, and make the fire check. If we assume 5% chance of any of those 3 things happening, a given arrow would do it 1 in 8,000 times. That could be a lot of hoops to jump through, and some long odds.
I guess the biggest implication of all that is my speculation that archer attack value may in fact matter, if the game doesn't just assume any arrow intersecting the ram is capable of harming it (as is the case with men, they shrug many arrows off).
Agent Smith
05-17-2007, 02:37
Haha. I haven't been hypocritical just yet, Smith. Shooting a ram with fiery arrows hardly counts as strategy! :smile:
You may have won this battle, Foz!
That leads to yet another observation though: my bet is that archers are just so inaccurate typically that not enough hits are scored on the ram to have a statistically decent chance of success, which is why it seems impossible to do in vanilla. It also may be required that the arrows score a statistical hit on the ram's armor, whatever the game has decided that value is. So it isn't even necessarily the case that every arrow that appears to hit the ram actually scores a hit, it could only be a small percentage. Just watch arrows hit men in a normal battle if you don't believe they can miss while physically hitting. Of those that score statistical hits, they may have to pass a check to light the ram on fire. A tiered system like that could make it a VERY unlikely occurrence: you'd have to hit the physical ram, hit the statistical ram, and make the fire check. If we assume 5% chance of any of those 3 things happening, a given arrow would do it 1 in 8,000 times. That could be a lot of hoops to jump through, and some long odds.
I guess the biggest implication of all that is my speculation that archer attack value may in fact matter, if the game doesn't just assume any arrow intersecting the ram is capable of harming it (as is the case with men, they shrug many arrows off).
I was thinking the same thing during a recent siege. I think it can be partly blamed on the whole rampart issue where archers have trouble firing while on top of walls and instead shoot in high arcs. The effect is that the vast majority of arrows miss the mark completely, making them even less accurate than usual. Even with one rank deep on a wall, once the ram gets at a small enough angle, a good deal of the archers will start firing at a high arc over the archers to their side.
The next time I have a siege battle with Dismounted Dvor on my walls, I'll see if I can do anything spectacular. Their long range arrows and greater arrow damage should mean a longer sustained, straight line barrage of arrow fire.
In 1.20 have they fixed the embattlement "bug" where archers were not shooting guys right in front of them ahead of the walls. ?
WhiskeyGhost
05-17-2007, 05:52
I've been using the 1.2 patch, and so far, it seems they still do that, but why bother when you can dominate them on the walls to make up for it?
see picture for what i mean
picture link (https://img219.imageshack.us/my.php?image=onthewallszu5.jpg)
and yes, i do know its cheesy, but i figure it makes up for them not being able to shoot down =)
One thing I have learnt not to do is post my archers next to the gatehouse.
If you do that they stop firing at the ram once it gets too close to the gate for them to get a bead on it. In fact, worse than that, becuase if you have ordered them to fire at the ram they will continue to go through the loading and firing animation but not actually fire any arrows.
So, now I place crossbowmen next to the gatehouse on 'Fire at will' and place my archer units further down the wall. Preferably, on sections of wall which are angled to give a line of sight across the gate.
In the second of my opening screen shots you can see the units of Desert Archers to the left of the gatehouse sandwiched between two units of crossbowmen with one unit between it and the gatehouse itself. This is still not a very good location as the wall in question actually angles away form the gate (poor castle design). The wall to the right of the gate is angled to give a much better line of sight across the gate and if you look you can see the hail of fire arrows rising from that section of wall where I placed the remainder of my Desert Archers.
Lupiscanis
05-18-2007, 13:18
Just watch arrows hit men in a normal battle if you don't believe they can miss while physically hitting.
I've seen this a lot - I assumed from the physical appearance of the solider appearing 'bloodied' that each arrow inflicts a certain amount of damage unless its an immediate fatal blow.
Am I an ass for assuming? =p
@Lupiscanis
Well you can certainly see arrows strike enemy troops and cause them to flinch, producing a nice spray of blood in the process. You can also hear the 'plink, plink' of arrows hitting and glancing off armour if you move the camera over the unit under fire.
Under heavy fire units actually get driven backwards by the constant impact of striking crossbow bolts etc.
We also know that the game does include a Hit Point system, because we are told that certain traits and retinue figures increase the HP of our general's.
In STW the history of every man in a unit was seperately maintained so for example a unit of Yari might have some men still wearing out of date armor whilst the rest were wearing the latest kit, and you could look at the data file and see which of the soldiers in the unit had killed the most enemies etc. So, assuming that approach has been carried forward throughout the series it would be pretty simple to include individual HP per man in the unit data file. The only way to be sure would be to look but I'm not aware of any utility that lets you do that with MTW2.
crpcarrot
05-18-2007, 16:02
I've seen this a lot - I assumed from the physical appearance of the solider appearing 'bloodied' that each arrow inflicts a certain amount of damage unless its an immediate fatal blow.
Am I an ass for assuming? =p
AFAIK in TW being bloddied just shows a sucessfull hit that missed. most units have ony one hit point so even if they were "hit" multiple times and survived, the survivability of the next hit is the same.
i dont know if M2/ or rome itroduced a factor where each missed hit/"wounding" increased the chances of a subsequent hit getting through the defences but if not no matter how bloodied a unit looks all other factors being the same it is equally hard to kill as a fresh unit.
ive seen units being hit bu sucessive arrows (staggering animation, puffs of blood) bt still not dying like any respectable soldier lol
it would be interesting if each defended hit would make the unit lose 20% of its stamina or something like that?? just thinking...
Indeed. Noticed those soldiers who take 30 arrows or more to kill, they are too frequent. KENSAI !!! all over the place. Some impact on would add further depth to an already great engine.
Kobal2fr
05-18-2007, 16:59
One thing I have learnt not to do is post my archers next to the gatehouse.
If you do that they stop firing at the ram once it gets too close to the gate for them to get a bead on it. In fact, worse than that, becuase if you have ordered them to fire at the ram they will continue to go through the loading and firing animation but not actually fire any arrows.
So, now I place crossbowmen next to the gatehouse on 'Fire at will' and place my archer units further down the wall. Preferably, on sections of wall which are angled to give a line of sight across the gate.
In the second of my opening screen shots you can see the units of Desert Archers to the left of the gatehouse sandwiched between two units of crossbowmen with one unit between it and the gatehouse itself. This is still not a very good location as the wall in question actually angles away form the gate (poor castle design). The wall to the right of the gate is angled to give a much better line of sight across the gate and if you look you can see the hail of fire arrows rising from that section of wall where I placed the remainder of my Desert Archers.
Well, I may be wrong, but I suspect last night I set a ram on fire using crossbows.
I was defending a wooden castle with only 1 unit of Xbow mercs and some spears. I put the crossbows on a spot that would overlook the gate and allow them to fire at the ramming team while they were working and bunched up, plus the ladder team next to it would also get enfilade fire.
As the ram was moving forward the towers fired at it and missed, it reached the gate, the towers stopped shooting at it... I braced myself for the inevitable... and then somehow it lit up when the gate was 80% down, saving my bacon. It was a campaign game so no replay possible. I really would like to know what destroyed that ram :/
As the ram was moving forward the towers fired at it and missed, it reached the gate, the towers stopped shooting at it... I braced myself for the inevitable... and then somehow it lit up when the gate was 80% down, saving my bacon. It was a campaign game so no replay possible. I really would like to know what destroyed that ram :/
Spontaneous combustion.
That or ze holy grail yu hafv een ze castel-ah!
Replays are possible in campaign. (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=74818&highlight=replays)
Le clicky for ze linkage.
Kobal2fr
05-18-2007, 19:48
Sanques veri mouche, freeandz. :laugh4:
Too late for that peculiar battle, but will keep it in mind.
Oh, and I was playing the HRE against excom Milanese, so might very well have been an act of God. I had kissed our Holy imperial banner and everything, too.
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