Defending archers do not do enough damage in siege.

Particularly elite archers such as Retinue Longbowmen, do not do enough damage in sieges.

It looks to me as the targetting mechanics is fuzzy on this one. The archers don't shoot what's RIGHT IN FRONT fo them but aim high and the massive arc makes the projectile impact much less devastating, it seems. I've been playing England, defensive at Antwerp, as everyone wants that town and it's a great place to slaughter HRE, Danes, French. Retinues do about 30 kills at maximum per siege battle. They also seem to have a hard time targetting units approaching the walls and gate, even though all they have to do is shoot straight. When they do actually shoot straight they obviously get more kills.

Of course I've been deploying them one rank deep etc, so no n00b tactics as far as I can see.

Imagine them being up there on the wall with a clear shot for 150 meters, a longbowman's dream.

IMO this needs official tweaking. I'm still trying to figure out how I can change it myself.

It seems like they cant get a direct line of fire - i.e. the wall itself is blocking them, and thus they fire in a 'parabolic' trajectory rather than a direct one - thus missing a lot more and doing less damage when they do actually hit.

People have documented archers on walls firing nearly straight up in order to hit enemy units close to the wall.

This is a fairly well known bug.

It is caused by the merlons of the battlements preventing a clear line of sight for many missile users on the walls. As a result they are forced to shoot either over them or through the tiny crenels.

The obvious solution is simply to shorten the height of the parapet to about waist-height.

Terminology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlement

Well with 1.2 missile units work much better on walls, with them actually shooting though the crenels, but archers still favour the high shot. But if you reduce the max angle for arrows to 45, most will shoot through the crenels whilst those behind fire at the max angle which still allows them to do a lot of damage.

Actually I found that they shoot better if you put them max ranks deep on the wall and clustered against one of the towers.

Thanks for the replies all. That explains everything. Where can I change the max angle to 45 ? Is it possible to mod the battlements so they no longer obstruct the archers' line of fire ?

FH when you deployed them that deep, were they shooting up or straight. When I deployed them 2 ranks deep, as a test, I found they did even less damage. I was assuming if I deployed them deeper still the damage would reduce porportionately.

It would be better if 2-3 groups of elite missile troops could do more damage in this defensive situation. They are protected by the battlements, supported by the towers, have nowhere to run to, they are elite marksmen.

BTW Sherwoods do better in siege.

Does anyone know how the unit's projectile accuracy is determined.

Thanks for the help.

Salute !

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Where can I change the max angle to 45 ?

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descr_projectiles.txt

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Is it possible to mod the battlements so they no longer obstruct the archers' line of fire ?

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Nope.

Thanks. blaaaaaaaaaarg!!!!! Official fix is required for this.

Well all it really needs is the projectile max angles bieng reduced, then missile units work like they should on walls. Only being able to shoot through crenels, but with archers and crossbows back ranks being able to fire over the battlements if they do not have a clear line of fire.

How does it affect battle performance ?

Well in field battles it just prevents the parabolic arc shot, in sieges it seems to improve things a bit.

I'm asking coz I don't want to mess up the archers in battles. they do just fine there. Does it have any negative impact on battles ? It does'nt I suppose ?

Well it just means archers wont fire at as high an angle, and will sometimes lead to the front rank of archers not firing if they are too close to the rear ranks of some of your units.

I suspect the developers were presented with a 'hobson's choice' over wall archers.

In theory, the battlements should not block the line of sight of missile troops on the walls, but if the battlements were dropped so that the wall archers could avoid using a 'parabolic' trajectory then I suspect that the archers of the assaulting army would also be able to target them using direct fire.

What is needed is some sort of recognition that the battlements are not an obstacle blocking vision but a shield protecting those behind it.

Incidently, I don't think crossbowmen are so badly affected by this problem. Certainly those in the rear ranks resort to 'parabolic fire' but I'm sure the ones in the front fire direct. That might be true of archers too but I just haven't noticed. I also trend to do the same as FactionHier and mass my archers in deep blocks on the walls so my results may be better anyway.

Hmm ok thanks. Will need to do some testing.

Perhaps a more sophisticated and permanent way CA can fix this is to have the archers load behind the merlons and then move in front of the crenels to shoot, moving back behind the merlons to reload.

Soldiers within a unit can alternate shooting and reloading a la musketeers.

It's extremely realistic and increases both firepower and survivability.

A solution from CA may be enabling shooting through the battlements from the inside but not from the outside. Might not be the best solution graphically, but if you want the best graphical solution, they'd have to get special animations for shhoting down from the top etc, which would be more work than anyone would put into a patch.:sweatdrop:

This thread, together with other bits I've read about the animation timing issue (bug?) brings up an interesting question for me: what is the relationship between the computer-modelled outcome of each combat volley (arrow volley, swing of the sword, etc.), and the graphic representation of the battle? I'd always assumed that the graphics were kind of eye-candy more-or-less illustrating the outcome of what the computer has already determined to be the mathematically calculated outcome of each combat interaction. These discussions make it appear as if the combat outcome is in fact determined (at least in part) by the graphic presentation. Comments?

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Originally Posted by Obadiah

These discussions make it appear as if the combat outcome is in fact determined (at least in part) by the graphic presentation.

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It's true. I believe it partly explains the 2H bug (which, IIRC, some people fixed by using alternate animations). I was surprised a while ago when Qwerty of the EB team said animations have a huge influence over combats in RTW. The stats alone don't tell the whole story.

I suspect the same was not true of melee combat in STW or MTW, perhaps because the animations were cruder or more uniform. (Not sure about missile combat).

I would say the two are related, and do not exclude each other, agreeing with you that both determine the result. Although I have no hard evidence on this. I'm sure others who know more about the mechanics do.

I read an interview with a CA bod somewhere that stated that they didnt do collision detections on models in order to determine hits and misses, but its pretty clear that the rates of attacks are determined by the model animations.

I'm guessing the code structure looks something like this:

Code:

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loop
    perform calculations to determine attack/defend hit/miss result (effectively instantaneous)
    play appropriate result animation (takes some time)
until (its time to do something else)

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Davey- That makes a lot of sense.

But then I'm confused about the archer-on-battlement situation. Does the computer make adjustments to archer hit rates based on such graphical issues as battlement wall height, and required angle of trajectory??? This obviously COULD be done, but it seems a pretty fine-tooth approach, especially considering other calcs, like giving spears depth of rank bonuses, have apparently been removed from the game.

I'd imagine that the computer does something for archers like (base unit type probability) +(adjustments for: topographical height differential, target armor, forests, nighttime)= probability. This would work for 95% of all situations, and avoids complications from attempting excessive situational precision. I thought the game would obviously include such "zero" factors as no shooting through castle walls, and would adjust animations to be internally consistent, but otherwise that's that.

Given the original poster's comments, this doesn't seem to be the situation. Rather, there's another adjustment for "angle of fire", which sounds simple enough on the face, but this would require the game to do a lot of fundamental geometry based on elevations, intervening obstacles (battlements) and maintain a much more sophisticated 3D locational database than I'd have ever imagined. Wow.

I should note that: (1) I agree that archers should in general do more damage to troops approaching the walls (or in the courtyard directly beneath them) than they do; and (2) I'm not a modder, and clearly don't really know how the game calculates anything!

cheers!

I'm of the view that the engine is considering most obstacles in the archer's line of fire.

I'm not 100% sure if this applies to smaller objects such as trees, but I've done some tests with Sherwood Forresters in ... a forest (remarkably), and outside in a less dense but still wooded area. I think it does apply to smaller objects too, like a big rock, a person etc.

The archers in the trees who had vegetation obstacles fired at a different angle than if they were out in the clearing. They got the most kills if they had a clean straight line of fire or when the trajectory was less than 25-30 degrees and hence they got more kills when there was no object (trees included) in front of them. Again I don't know for sure if they consider the tree to be there oir not. But it's clear that they do consider the embattlement to be there.

The game is doing the type of geometry you are talking about, whether it's graphical only or computational and graphical, someone else will have to answer that.

It's definetly an issue though.

Currently an archer will do more damage (i.e kills) on a flat field, than atop a wall, protected and with a brilliant clear shot directly in front of him, from equal distance. This kind of defeats the whole point of siege defence.

Cheers ! :)

IMO the siege defences are perfect for the attacker only. Once you capture the battlements you can have a free view at the defenders :)

True ! I always try to get the walls even though it can cost more manpower, but once you do. Killing range for the Longbows, specially those inner walls of fortresses overlooking the square.

The problem is that archers should move and rotate to get clear shots from the crenelles, not stand behind the merlons and shoot in the air.

Thanks for the wikipedia link!

I am happy since i never use siege equipment/spies, I just send 5 rams at the same time to the gate and usually one makes it. The losses are horrible even tho i use crappy units on the rams. If the enemy archers/xbows were any better i'd never make it past all 3 rings of a citadell

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Originally Posted by Gaius Terentius Varro

I am happy since i never use siege equipment/spies, I just send 5 rams at the same time to the gate and usually one makes it. The losses are horrible even tho i use crappy units on the rams. If the enemy archers/xbows were any better i'd never make it past all 3 rings of a citadell

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build at least one or two siege towers when possible, the tower and archer AI has a fetish for firing at them, and it makes it much more likely you rams will make it.

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build at least one or two siege towers when possible, the tower and archer AI has a fetish for firing at them, and it makes it much more likely you rams will make it

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using siege towers as decoys for your rams works well

Exactly. Besides, the most important thing is to take the outer wall, you can reach the inner ones from it.

And besides, a castle assault should be a risky and bloody venture. I´m certainly no expert, but I suppose the whole point to build a castle in the first place is to hold off a large number of enemies with rather few men.

If 1.2 addresses this in its final form, it's going to be one heck of a patch.

I usually build two seuge towers and two ladders. I find the ladders actually more effective than the seige towers in scaling the walls but I usually send the towers in first becuase they are slow and then run the ladders to the walls after they have dropped their ramps. So I get to choose points where the wall is poorly defended for my ladder assault, and usually run my crossbowmen onto the walls this way.

Once On the walls I capture the nearest gate to let the rest of the army in and then use the walls to gain access to the inner fortess.

Yeah, ladders are great - up until the point where castles become too big to use them. Catapults are my fave - it does slow your army down and thus means you might take more turns to get to the enemy castle, but if you have catapults it means you can attack the very same turn you get there without having to stop and build rams/towers/ladders.

And while a couple of catapults will take up 2 slots that might otherwise be allocated to infantry, they more than make up for this IMO by taking out large chunks of defending units when the walls collapse. Theyre also invaluable for that bit after you take the gatehouse in cities, where you sometimes have masses of enemy infantry marching down the street from the central square towards you. A couple of catapults with flaming ammo, firing straight down the street works wonders in that situation.

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Originally Posted by Obadiah

But then I'm confused about the archer-on-battlement situation. Does the computer make adjustments to archer hit rates based on such graphical issues as battlement wall height, and required angle of trajectory??? This obviously COULD be done, but it seems a pretty fine-tooth approach, especially considering other calcs, like giving spears depth of rank bonuses, have apparently been removed from the game.

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I imagine that things like battlements and forests (and shields and rocks) give fixed bonuses to any defenders - i.e. each arrow has a % chance to hit the battlements/trees instead of its target, as opposed to individually calculating the trajectory for each arrow and determining what it hit.

Probably for a flight of, say, 90 arrows, the game takes into account unit formations, locations, terrain, armour, accuracy etc etc etc etc and then works out how many of the arrows score 'wounding' hits (e.g. 20), how many score 'killing' hits (e.g. 10), and how many miss (60), then plays a load of arrow firing animations on the archers, then animates the arrows appropriately, then finally plays animations for the target unit - wounding animations on 20 soldiers, death animations on 10 soldiers, and 60 arrows hitting the ground.

So far I haven't seen any sign that CA is either aware of or cares about this bug. I wouldn't expect it in the final 1.2, or maybe even in the eventual 1.3.

DaveyBaby,

I'd be very surprised if CA went to all the work and effort of doing as you suggested. Were I the programmer, I'd just spawn the arrows going at a pre-defined angle with a pre-defined speed from each bow. Each arrow would have an "Affected by gravity" property which would simply be incremented every second. This would tell it by how much to deflect the arrow down. Then simple collision detection would ID who (if anyone) it hit and you can then do the “Did it hurt them” calculation when it hits.

That way you don’t have to worry about updating arrow paths as the target moves and it does explain why units besides the one you’ve targeted take casualties. Much easier than trying to figure this all out ahead of time then hope the player doesn’t do something to mess with your predetermined results.

If you tried pre-calculating the results, you’d have a nightmare of a time if you have more than one unit at the same location, let alone what would happen if the target gets hit by a cavalry charge before your arrows land. Much simpler to do it dynamically.

Believe me, the way i described is far less work for both programmers and the CPU/graphics card. And, there's nothing 'simple' about collision detection - particularly when you have thousands of models, thousands of arrows, and complex terrain to take into account.

Personally, I prefer the collision detection approach. I think its one of the strong points of CA's system that missiles in TW hit whatever they hit rather than merely act as eye candy to support a predetermined result.

There is definitly no pre-shot-calculating in Rome, and I haven't seen it in MTW2.
In Rome its easier to see:
Your General attacks spear-throwers. He retreats. They throw spears. What do you do? Moving ahaed and get hid by the spears? No, you make a turn and with a bit of luck NO spear hits your general - they all fall down far ahead of him (or left or right...).
In the same way your auto-fire rangeunits can kill your general just because you altered his target after the shot and he got in the way. :furious3:

My favourite trick was with STW bridge defence battles.

Placing musketmen along the river banks allowed you to fire at the enemy troops close to the river, but looking closely you could see men way back at the rear of the enemy army being hit by stray overshots. I much prefer this to some other games that pre-determine casualties on the target unit and allow you to fire without risk even in to swirling melee's.

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Originally Posted by Gaius Terentius Varro

I am happy since i never use siege equipment/spies, I just send 5 rams at the same time to the gate and usually one makes it. The losses are horrible even tho i use crappy units on the rams. If the enemy archers/xbows were any better i'd never make it past all 3 rings of a citadell

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This is a little off the topic of the thread, but I had to comment on this.

To each his own I guess and no offense intended, but I never understand statements like this. I know a lot of people distain the use of purchased seige equipment because they don't like hauling them around, and have had bad experiences with them in field battles, but why waste a 1000 florin's worth of men when a single 360 florin ballista will take down any gate of any of any size castle or city while your troops have a coffee break in relative safety.

Add to this the fact that many times after the gate is down the enemy will park one of its best units right behind the portal, so you can continue to make valuable kills because of the low trajectory of the weapon. I have actually taken out the enemy commander this way on more than one occasion.

I play with the timer off, so I have time to do this---besides sieges were not timed events in real life. (I am not taking the official siege association's sanctioned competion events into consideration here--their membership dues are just too damn high)

I also alway put a spy in a settlement that I am about to attack, but not so much as to open the gate, but for the intelligence of knowing what kind of troops are behind the walls. This helps me decide if I assault immediately, or waste a turn while I build towers. If it is made up of a few fluff troops, I barge ahead, but if the defending force is more substantial I am going to plan accordingly. If one is not in the Pope's good favor, waiting a turn while you build towers and rams can cause one to have to call off the assault when the Pope gives you a warning to stop between turns.

Even if I get the message that my spy has opened the gate, I blow them down anyway for the reason stated above plus having them permanently open is less of an impedance to my troops. Of course I always bring along the heavy stuff to take out towers and wall if they are a problem, but then I have alway thought it advantageous to bring a gun to a knife fight.

Cheers

I must admit I never go through the gate, not even when one of my spies leaves it open. As soon as a unit sets foot inside you can guarantee that the AI has some really nasty surprise lined up for it. The usual is a fast cavalry unit that just trashes it before it can deploy.

I prefer going over the walls, that way you can capture the gate intact, if it isn't already open and once the walls are clear running some archers or crossbows up using ladders measn that you get the chance to use the walls against the defenders and get your own back.

Likewise there is direct access from the wall to the inner courtyard of every castle so it avoids the needs to lay seige to the inner defences. In fact, if your quick you can actually beat the defenders to their own keep.

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Originally Posted by Didz

Likewise there is direct access from the wall to the inner courtyard of every castle ...

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OT, but I have not found that. For example, assaulting a fortress at Gaza (1.2 unofficial patch, there was no way to get my men from the outer wall to the inner wall, even though the walls were connected. If I clicked on the inner wall adjacent to my men (separated only by a tower/house thing), they just stood there: there was no move icon on the unit, as the target was inaccessible.

iirc it's not every castle, only those of [north/south/east?] european design...

I think the inner wall passage only works for the defenders? Not too sure on this.

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Originally Posted by econ21

OT, but I have not found that. For example, assaulting a fortress at Gaza (1.2 unofficial patch, there was no way to get my men from the outer wall to the inner wall, even though the walls were connected.

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I've not come across a castle yet where its not possible to pass men through from the outer to inner wall.

However, its normally only possible on one side. The fact that you mentioned a 'Town/House thingie' suggests to me that you were trying to wrong side as the side where it is possible only has a small tower set on the curtain wall facing the outer courtyard. The actual join between the inner and outer wall is just plain wall with no towers on buildings guarding it.

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Originally Posted by RickooClan

I think the inner wall passage only works for the defenders? Not too sure on this.

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The passage through the building might be accessible to defenders only, although I'm more inclined to beleive its just not accessible to anyone.

However, the access on the other side is unguarded as mentioned above.

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Originally Posted by sapi

iirc it's not every castle, only those of [north/south/east?] european design...

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Oh please don't tell me only europeans forget to lock the tower door :embarassed:? Will that explains why I could not move from wall to wall. I was trying to do it in the Holy land. :oops: Now I need to read the bug reports to find out if it is a bug that I can or can not move wall to wall. I vote for can not :thumbsdown: unless my spy opened the front gate too. Thanks for the Info. I would like the defending archers to do more till I am outside looking in. SadCat :book:

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Originally Posted by Didz

However, its normally only possible on one side. The fact that you mentioned a 'Town/House thingie' suggests to me that you were trying to wrong side as the side where it is possible only has a small tower set on the curtain wall facing the outer courtyard.

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I did try both sides - neither were accessible.

The unofficial 1.2 patch fixes this problem i believe.

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Originally Posted by Lusted

The unofficial 1.2 patch fixes this problem i believe.

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Please defined fixes? Thanks SadCat

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Originally Posted by Lusted

The unofficial 1.2 patch fixes this problem i believe.

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Ah!...That might explain the reason our experiences differ. I'm still playing 1.1.

BTW: I second SadCat's query 'Please defined fixes?'

e.g. have they redesigned the castles so the walls no longer meet, or is there now some magical force field that stops your men walking along them.

I played Egypt yesterday and got some Sudanese gunners. Used them in a siege on the walls and they are even worse than archers. Don't hit anything at all. Again same issue, they don't shoot straight in front of them.

Does anyone know how we can fix this ? Any ideas ?

It's fixed in the leaked 1.2 patch, with soldiers firing through the crenels now.

GREAT ! Thanks for the tip.

Uhh-ohh.

I got the 1.3 patch all right.

But archers just don't react to targets in front of the walls in Fire-at-will mode. When I desigante a target for them, most of the archers are firing in a high arc, mostly not hitting a thing.

Moreover, I have no such file as 'descr_projectiles.txt' where I would be able to reduce the max firing angle.

Do you have any tips to fix this?

Muchas gracias in advance!

They do fire through the crenels where they can, but mostly still fire in a long arc.
Projectiles file needs to be unpacked. Modding section for such type of questions. Its already been discussed there.

Also, please do not resurrect old threads like this.