What is the obsession with archers?

[QuintusSertorius]

I don't think a week goes by without someone complaining about how archers are "underpowered", no doubt coming straight from vanilla with the killer Cretan archers.

In the period we are concerned with, and especially in the west, bows weren't very powerful. They were especially weak against armoured targets and shields. Guess what - nearly everyone uses a shield. Lots of units also wear armour. Archers are skirmishers, light troops, which means their job is to drive off other light troops, and perhaps act as flankers when the lines are engaged, and they're out of ammunition.

If you want dangerous, get slingers. They're not as long-ranged, but they punch right through armour. They're even better at killing other skirmishers. Slinging is a forgotten art, but they were lethal, especially with bullets rather than stones.

Get with the program.

[||Lz3||]

throwing rocks isnt as fun as watching a rain of arrows fall into the enemy formation...

[The Persian Cataphract]

Actually, due to the fact that we have statted archery in this manner, Eastern foot-archery does feel somewhat under-powered (This is ultimately because in gameplay mechanics, all archers are more or less the same). Greeks mainly used archery as a part of their psiloi; In the East, archery along with the shock of the horse were the two most important instruments in deciding the battle. In other words, two different paradigms. We hope to solve this issue in EB2.

[||Lz3||]

why dont you just raise the attack and lethality of eastern archers?

[Korlon]

why dont you just raise the attack and lethality of eastern archers?

I don't think lethality could be changed for ranged weapons, or maybe that's just for javelins.

[The Persian Cataphract]

No, I do not think lethality applies to missile weapons; I do know that there is the AP attribute, but that's not what we are looking for. We are looking at tactics, discipline, cohesion of fire and rate of fire. Raising attack is not going to change anything to the favour of our goals.

We are currently looking at how we could possibly tweak rate of fire and possibly add a certain tactical feature of eastern archery; The datâbam formation, which could in theory provide sustained barrages of arrows.

[Ibrahim]

is that a way of firing by ranks that databwhatever formation (sorry I'm not good at persian )

[Elmetiacos]

Actually, due to the fact that we have statted archery in this manner, Eastern foot-archery does feel somewhat under-powered (This is ultimately because in gameplay mechanics, all archers are more or less the same). Greeks mainly used archery as a part of their psiloi; In the East, archery along with the shock of the horse were the two most important instruments in deciding the battle. In other words, two different paradigms. We hope to solve this issue in EB2.

You're kidding! I've played a couple of games as Baktria and one of the most effective ways of winning battles is to get lots of Subeshi Archers and shoot the enemy to pieces before they can even touch me. It doesn't work as well on heavy units, but there are other ways to deal with those.

[The Persian Cataphract]

The Subeshi archers are different in an important sense; We made them awesome for one reason only, and that was their superior equipment (The Subeshi bow for instance was one of the most advanced bows of its time, and the arrows used by them may according to some analysis on arrows in Pazyryk have exceeded some 80cm, or two feet and nine-ten inches), allowing them to out-range horse-archers, as foot-archers with their ground platform, as opposed to the horse-back, always had the advantage of stationary precision, as well as the greater capacity of storing the energy, the Subeshi bow dwarfens the Western-Scythian model. If the Subeshi archers rock, then it is intended for it

However what they have in punch, they lack in versatility. I'd almost compare it to the Iberian solifera and the its tactical usage by Iberian warriors to the pila used by the Romans. The soliferum is absolutely devastating, but the pilum is not the baby's javelin toy either. The Medean-Achaemenian archer formations, with shield-walls, spears and continuous hails, with newly introduced Western-Scythian bows and a greater influx of the Parthian-style gorytoi... If we sacrifice slightly on the nasty punch of the proto-Hunnic bows of the Subeshi and Qum-Darya, but add safety-measures such as light but large and tough pavises, some padded armour and a big stick to discourage light horse, along with a tried and tested archer tactic, and I think it sums up versatility in a nutshell.

Unfortunately on the RTW engine, options are limited, but with M2TW and the "stakes" feature, which I hope can be tweaked for our pursposes, I think we've got better prospects ahead of us.

[The General]

Am I alone to think that this cavalryman's helmet looks awfully (Greek/Etruscan/)Roman in style? And the shoulder-'pads' awfully... Greek?

(Hawt picture btw, prettyprettypretty. And yeash, I 'stole' from the site TPC linked to. Gonna check it out in detail when I've got the time. )

[Watchman]

AFAIK that pattern of "tube-and-yoke" corselet originated in Egypt, what with the developement of the linothorax-type textile cuirass (likely) from the old New Kingdom infantry soft-armours during the Saïtic period. Both the Greeks and Persians (who were nothing if not willing to pick up armaments and tactics they found effective from foreigners) knew a good thing when they saw one and cheerfully adopted it on a wide scale - encrusting the thing with metal scales was a similarly universal means of augmenting its defensive value, provided the warrior was willing to deal with the extra expense, weight and whatnot.

[Ibrahim]

I don't think a week goes by without someone complaining about how archers are "underpowered", no doubt coming straight from vanilla with the killer Cretan archers.

In the period we are concerned with, and especially in the west, bows weren't very powerful. They were especially weak against armoured targets and shields. Guess what - nearly everyone uses a shield. Lots of units also wear armour. Archers are skirmishers, light troops, which means their job is to drive off other light troops, and perhaps act as flankers when the lines are engaged, and they're out of ammunition.

If you want dangerous, get slingers. They're not as long-ranged, but they punch right through armour. They're even better at killing other skirmishers. Slinging is a forgotten art, but they were lethal, especially with bullets rather than stones.

Get with the program.

I read in Xenophon's work that the rodioi had very good range compared to what is equivalent to the toxotai..but Arab slingers are the best