A discussion about archers and friendly fire

In previous TW games, I was always meticulous about trying to avoid friendly fire--probably even on many occasions when I needn't have worried about it. Often that meant turning off fire-at-will once the armies collided, and hurrying ranged units off to the side or far behind the line in search of a clear line of sight or just a safe place to wait it out.

Archers seem so important in this game, I find myself sometimes leaving them firing away once my melee troops have engaged. But I still haven't been able to figure out how much I'm chewing up my own troops with arrows when I do this.

How do you handle or prevent friendly fire? And do you have any tricks for using archers that I might be able to learn from?

I try to redirect fire to where the enemy is thickest and, consequently, where my forces are the thinnest. However I've not found a tried and true method of limiting friendly fire other than that. I have a feeling i'm doing a lot of harm to my own men by continuing to fire into melee, but that's just the 'feel' of battle.

Honestly not sure whether it does more harm than good.

I turn it off once the battle lines clash and pick targets individually; enemy archers or melee infantry not in melee yet. Because units are much more intertwined in melee (compared to EB phalanxes), I do not go for enfilade fire or shots in the back. I don't fire at routers too, since I risk shooting my units chasing in the neighbourhood.
There's an exception tough; I keep firing at monks and no dachi and usually send some yashigaru to the melee to "feed" them.

Since I tend to group my spears and bows together, I had to develop some specific army composition; most of my shooters are bow ashigaru and with a ctrl click, I can turn them off whatever the group they are into. "Exotic" archers are different; they (2-3 units) are always grouped together so I can access them anytime.

Lastly, I have three different formations for shooters
- front line: 3 man deep, skirmish on, and spread out, until they reach the third line.
- second line: 3 deep, skirmish off.
- flankers: roughly in a square so they can turn around faster. I don't know yet if the men in the back rows shoot or not, but those squares are so manoeuvrable that if I think it's worth a few arrows per volley.

Matchlocks are a different case, they are reserved for defensive battle (bridges, sieges, mountain passes) where I can position them to crossfire the opposition and bring out the most of them.


Some mods take out the arrows trails, for aesthetics and better performance. I've yet to decide if I want them out or not. The trails are useful to see where the shots lands.

One last observation, it seems naginata (with silver armor) are more vulnerable to missiles compared to STW 1, or am I seeing things ?

Moving this to the game mechanics discussion subforum as this seems like a worthy discussion for it.:bow:

Alright.

Due to the way how archer shoot and the arrows move in, apart from your general, the friendly fire is extremely low.
It depends only on accuracy and till a certain degree on the "speed" of the unit. If we speak about fighting units, there wont be much movement.

A test you can do yourself:

Get you a friend, host a battle and let him take 10 or 19 monks, make large unitsize.
Now you take yourself some archer, in the best case you get different archer with different accuracy.

Now setup the monks very close to each other and make also a bunch with 4-6 units, where you put the units above each other.
Now shoot with the bows and watch it.

I can already tell you the outcome:

1. Accuracy is the way to go, anything below 60 is not a good way, I personal only shot into my own men with accuracy above 80.

2. Distance. If you are too close, the angel of the arrows will be quite low. You need a bigger angel, to not shot into your own people. You want a very high peak and the arrows have to drop down with a high angel. This way the arrows fly above your people.


A Bowcav with accuracy of 80 is a good example, in a cav skirmish the bowcav will kill more enemy horses, than another cav (depends a bit).
The friendly fire wont be too high, actual its quite low with the high accuracy.


Summary.

Good archer seems to be hardcore sniper, they have very low misses and hardly hit different units/mens. To let good bows shot into fighting units is very good.