Archer Accuracy Experiment

[ataribaby]

They invariably had misreable results and got only a couple of hits if any in the heavy rain at extreme range. I strongly suspect that the talk that I have heard on the forums about weather not affecting accuracy is also wrong.

I can definitely say that rain (heavy especially) has an adverse effect on archers. They seem to fire as many arrows at the enemy but more of the arrows seem to just disappear into the enemy unit without causing injury.

There's always been a hint of archery + rain = nerf in the unit descriptions, especially where composite bows are concerned (they're meant to disintegrate when the rain dissolves the glue aren't they?).

But it's only recently I've noticed the effects of weather when experimenting by choosing rainy battles. Sieges are definitely easier as fire arrows are less able to burn rams and towers. Archers firing flaming arrows seem to have even less effect in heavy rain (so it's good to siege assault at night in a storm when the AI has flaming arrows switched on). I've also noticed a distinct effect on visibility; the AI tends not to engage your troops until you get very close, which includes archers as their range is effectively reduced.

[Old Geezer]

To test artillery accuracy would it work to set up a custom battle where I assault a castle gate with ballista which have various experience levels? (I am not able to run any trials for a while.) Some gates on the larger cities or fortresses seem to be very hard to hit from a distance and I have had to move closer. I think this is because the gates are recessed so far that they present a smaller target.

[ataribaby]

To test artillery accuracy would it work to set up a custom battle where I assault a castle gate with ballista which have various experience levels? (I am not able to run any trials for a while.) Some gates on the larger cities or fortresses seem to be very hard to hit from a distance and I have had to move closer. I think this is because the gates are recessed so far that they present a smaller target.

I tried a test against towers before:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I was intrigued to find this out once and for all because I've had a tendency to hold on to costly-upkeep, experienced arty because of a superstitious belief that the hard-earned chevrons make them indispensible sniper units.

The test: England vs Mongols in a castle siege battle.

England are attacking with 4 units of ballistae - 2 triple-gold and the other 2 raw recruits; and a unit of town millitia as a general's unit.

Mongolia is defending with a unit of elephants. Because they are defending with one unit the AI will not move from the castle square unless physically provoked, leaving my arty to their dirty business.

Each arty unit is set the same distance away from a tower and given the order to fire. As ballistae only cause a couple of percent damage per hit to buildings it is easy to see the hit rate for each unit.

The result: each unit destroyed its target tower at very much the same rate as the others. Sometimes one unit would be in the lead by a couple of percent but there really was no difference in hit rate between experienced and non-experienced units.

The corollary: arty units don't gain accuracy with experience and can be disbanded when not needed without worrying. After all, they are expensive to maintain.


Postscript: The above battle ended when I had the ballistae fire their remaining bolts at the elephants, and when the elephants stampeded I sent the ballista crews chasing them with their butter knives in a bizarre, Benny-Hill style chase. Needless to say, the greenhorns would rout after one stomp, but the triple-gold guys were very persistent indeed.

Someone suggested that accuracy vs. troops is different for arty units, but I never managed to contrive a test battle where the enemy would stand still and get skewered under controlled conditions. Your strategy of being the defensive/skewered faction might just work though.

[ataribaby]

I just had a little mess around with a unit of ballistae vs. a unit of my own armoured sergeants; unit sizes on large; weather clear; morning; VH difficulty.

On Grassy Plain the enemy would always advance to point-blank after they'd reduced my unit to around 72 men. Those AI fellas love a bit of point-blank, gangland execution style huh?

So I thought by having a forded river in between sides, the ballistae wouldn't be able to advance. I used the River Jordan map and that worked well; the enemy stayed put throughout and allowed my lot to advance into range exhausting all of their ammo.

There is the question of how many ranks deep you deploy the defending unit, as projectiles always hit the central files and sometimes take out a whole file of men at a time. This means that early shots have more chance of greater damage as later shots are only fired at a single row of men. I suppose this effect would average itself out though across many tests.

Secondly, you have an effect where the defending unit creeps backwards gradually over time so you have to watch that you start off well within the ballistae range to avoid intervening by moving your men forward mid-test.

[Old Geezer]

Good suggestion for trials, Ataribaby!

Several days ago I tried running trials on huge city gates and on level 0 ballista it took between about 54 to 74 on three to knock down the gates. I then tried a level 0 and it took 94. I gave up.

With the human player controlling infantry and the AI the artillery, I think it would be best to set the men in 2 ranks and stop counting after somewhere around 10 volleys. (If nothing else you can run trials a lot faster.)