Archers and experience.

[CaptainSolo]

I have many units of archers in my current English campaign with more than one chevron of experience and i have noticed that it increases their melee attack rating rather than their missile one,this i find a little strange as the experience was gained through ranged combat.
The English yeoman are pretty handy in melee too which is pretty realistic for the time but i presume this is the case for all archers.What do you lads think,would you prefer it to add to their missile attack (all archers)?

[peri]

Experience should probably increase their rate of fire but I doubt that is possible within the confines of the game.

[professorspatula]

You'd think highly experienced archers would improve their archery skills. But then again, you have to consider for say longbowmen - they've been training for years already. A few battles aren't going to make much difference. However, training and battle situations are two different kettles of fish, so I think there should be some benefits to archery skills for an experienced unit, even if it's only small. I'd actually go for increased rate of fire than chance to hit. Experienced archers would probably be less nervous after several battles and more assured of a chance to hit a moving foe, so this could be expressed in faster fire rate. If only by a small fraction.

At the moment, archers gain melee skills even if they don't use them. Which doesn't make experienced archers much more useful than raw recruits unless you need to engage in a bit of hand to hand.






Hmm. I really ought to install M2TW some day. It's sitting by on desk for days waiting for me to clear up some disk space. So many things I could test...

[CaptainSolo]

To be honest i dont know what the missile rating represents be it kill chance or whatever but i'd presume an archer unit gaining in experience would increase it's chances of killing with it's primary weapon.Undoubtedly having an archer unit with good melee skills is a bonus but as it stands thats not it's primary finction on the battlefield.Thanks for the replies.

[magnum]

While increasing exp does not increase ranged attack rating, has anyone looked/tested to see if perhaps it increases accuracy? Long shot hope, but I'd hate for exp to mean nothing to archers. Of course exp doesn't mean near as much as it used to for any type of unit.

[Sheogorath]

I beleive that, as magnum says, more exp = more accuracy.
Have you tested a unit no no-exp archers vs. a unit of full-exp archers? Try it. Have them shoot fire-arrows at units of peasants or other unarmoured units spaced fairly far apart and note how quickly the full-exp guys whittle the opposing unit down.

[econ21]

I haven't done a test, but I suspect experience does not increase the ranged potency of archers. Or at least does so in a less dramatic way than if the missile attack stat was raises.

I think it's a reaction to RTW, where experience would quickly lead missiles to be much more powerful than they should have been (mod teams like RTR and EB noted this where slingers with very low attack stats could become uber after a dozen battles - IIRC, there was even a proposal to start them off with negative experience or attack to try to compensate for this). The reason is both the missile stat and the armour stat are rather small numbers - a +3 to a longbow's missile attack of 6 is a really big deal. By contrast, it may have a relatively modest effect in melee, when defence stats can reach 21.

Note that experience itself is toned down in M2TW - you get a maximum +3 benefit from having 9 experience.

I suspect both things are SP balancing moves, to try to keep the late game challenging (as is the making the Aztec armies ahistorically powerful).

[Kobal2fr]

Frankly, missile units are already powerful enough as is. Regular archers butcher anything without a large shield and/or chainmail, longbows and crossbows make mincemeat of anything and anyone not clad in half-plate or better, and guns are terrifying at close range against everything.

Besides, it would be (and was in Rome) greatly imbalanced, since the missile survivability of exp'd units never increases (arrow kills check for armor and shield, not defense stat).

[KARTLOS]

this is a nice feature for horse archers though, as you gradually teun them into more effective cavalry

[CaptainSolo]

I can understand where your'e coming from in regard to unit balance and i accept that that has to be the main concern in games such as this but theres something that dosent quite sit right.
It's a bit like the French Gendarme cavalry's missile skill going up when they gain experience.

[CaptainSolo]

Just out of interest i did a quick test before sleep time.

Map - grassy plain.
Difficulty - very hard.

I did a quick test on retinue longbowmen V Scottish pikemen and checked the casualties inflicted after 5 full volleys from the longbowmen.The longbows were deployed in a wide line 2 men deep directly opposite the Scots Pikemen and were left on fire at will with no other action from me.

Retinues with no experience after five full volleys - 29 casualties inflicted.

Retinues with 3 gold chevrons under the same conditions - 61 casualties inflicted.

Even though this simple test is hardly under laboratory conditions it clearly shows that there are other forces at work with the additional experience other than the missile attack rating.

My mind is put at ease.CA how could i ever have doubted you.

[Whoz'onE]

Thanks for that CaptainSolo - food for thought, and some reassurance that it's worth continuing to try to keep my units alive in battle.

[CaptainSolo]

Sorry for the double post put i thought i'd compare the Retinues against the Genoese crossbowmen V highland pikemen also.Thought of this just after.

Test done under the same conditions on the same map.


Genoese with no xp - casualties inflicted - 45

Genoese with 3 gold chevrons - casualties inflicted - 106


Rate of fire was slower obviously as the Genoese 5th volley was almost at point blank range but each volley even at max range was higher than the retinues.Maybe they should be milans unique unit

[CaptainSolo]

Sorry for yet another post on this but i can't edit yet.

I did a quick test regarding rate of fire.
The Retinues were by my calculation firing just over two volleys V the Genoese' 1.

By the time the Highland pikemen had reached the Genoese (5 volleys) the retinues had fired an additional 5/6 volleys inflicting 123 casualties on the highland pikemen by the time they had reached the same position.Using ammo like it was going out of fashion it has to be said.

All in all it seems pretty balanced to me on reflection.Undoubtedly the crossbows retain their longetivity bonus from MTW where as the longbows with less ammo seem to kill the quickest.

Sorry for rambling on about this i was just curious to see how it all played out.

[Kraxis]

Accuracybonus it seems...

That was there in STW and MTW (though in MTW it was highly nerfed). Honour 4 Samurai Archers were killers from afar, while honour 0 SA were not really anything to be impressed about.

[CBR]

I did some missile tests a few months back in BI and each experience upgrade seemed to increase kills by a constant of 10%. The actual missile attack rating was more like some exponential function, which meant that attack rating had to be within a rather small range or they would turn into gatling guns.


CBR

[Doug-Thompson]

Just a little adding on to the pile here. Mamaluk Archers with no experience left 51 Scottish Noble Pikemen alive. The same unit, maxed out on experience, in the same weather conditions on the same terrain left 36 alive.

[CaptainSolo]

I suppose your theory would explain quite a lot CBR as i cant see their system changing that much over the years.Now i have sat and done a few tests i could see how the archers would become overpowered,especially for the English.The fact that they were would do nothing for unit balance.

I'm not sure if it is an accuracy bonus to be honest Kraxis.I think it could simply be a matter of rate of fire.If you watch units like the longbows firing at a single unit many arrows fall short where as the crossbow bolts flying on a flat trajectory seem to have more bolts per volley that hit the actual unit.
Like i said it feels pretty balanced between those two units.

Thanks for the replies btw everyone.I feel happier now that i know experience is not wasted on the archer units.

[CaptainSolo]

Thats interesting Doug-Thompson thanks a lot.I'll check out there stats and have a play around with them and some other units

[Kraxis]

I'm not sure if it is an accuracy bonus to be honest Kraxis.I think it could simply be a matter of rate of fire.If you watch units like the longbows firing at a single unit many arrows fall short where as the crossbow bolts flying on a flat trajectory seem to have more bolts per volley that hit the actual unit.
Like i said it feels pretty balanced between those two units.

I meant an accuracybonus for valour...

The higher valour the better chances of hits.
Of course crossbows tend to get more hits due to the flatter trajectory, but that doesn't explain why both they and archers get more kills when at higher level experience, while at teh same time their ranged attack doesn't get better (more lethal individual strikes).

[Kobal2fr]

That would be it. The listed "missile attack" probably relates only to the killing power of a hit, not the probability of said hit. I do notice that my newbie longbowen often fall way short even in the best of conditions. Arcing shots from outside towns into the city square are godawful too... arrows scattering all over the place except into anything fleshy :)

[CaptainSolo]

I meant an accuracybonus for valour...
The higher valour the better chances of hits.

Ok i see what you mean now,apologies for misreading your first post.I suppose i'm just trying to get my head around the effects of the missile attack rating.It looks like the crossbows have a higher rating to compensate for their lack of rate of fire.With that in mind longbows with a considerably higher missile attack rating coupled with their rate of fire would unbalance the game.

arrows scattering all over the place except into anything fleshy :)

Yes i think you may be right Kobal2Fr.That last line just made me laugh for some reason