Early archers, rushing

[Alastair II]

I've recently played a 1v1 in early, and, thinking that archers in early were useless, brought only pumped melee. To my great surprise (since this was an AFAIK esteemed opponent vs my own little 4-week noob self who is still learning how to correctly move groups around), my opponent brought 4+ (forget how many) archers. I proceeded to win the battle because I had brought pumped Milit Sarges, Order Foot, and Feudal Foot, (as well as that I had won the cav battle to the side and flanked him). While I was in some shock at winning, my opponent messaged 'rush is shit' and quit the battle, and would not later respond to messages. This all confused me greatly, and led me to post the question:

Is there some taboo against armies without ranged units? Are they considered 'rushes,' like the monk rushes in STW I heard about (even though I didn't play MP then)?

I had assumed that since the early archers were so incredibly bad they would simply be ignored.

[Krasturak]

Your opponent is a fool.

There are some who believe the flow of play should obey some uwritten rules, with a long ho hum period of archers shooting at the start, following a predicatable sequence.

Forget about them.

There is only one rule:

Gah Cut heads off Gah

[Cheetah]

lol, Krast

The problem with vets that they dont like to be defeated by noobs (Alstair, hope you are not offended). Of course, any vet should know that an army with 5-6 archers is just a fun army, but some of the vets are convinced that they should be able to defeat noobs even with their fun armies

Of course, there are no rules, so if you feel like rush then just rush but beware, rushing will be boring after a while an you will soon start to experiment with funny armies loaded with tons of archers

[Kalle]

Hello Alastair and others.

Of course you can bring whatever army you want if not agreed on any rules before game, which i understand was not the case in this game.

So your opponent played and behaved bad.

But you are wrong in one thing i think. Early archers do not suck. Especially the trebizond archers are very good and when brought to the field at valour 4 they will give an unwary opponent a very nasty surprise in a melee.

I have had great help from these trebz, routing both cav and inf and of course they shoot good.

Other archers that are good for this are bulg. brigs. of course but their morale is much worse, and the later appearing longbowmen.

And if your opponent brought only ordinary archers then he should have more money to upgrade his inf and cav possibly beating you anyway, if it was high florin that doesnt help much though.

Ok, over and out

Kalle

[tgi01]

Well this should be 2 separate subjects I think :


1. Early archers :

Some of the muslim factions have good archers , to add to Kalles example if you use egyptians a combination of beefed up nizaris and mamluk horse archers works quite well.( specially on a desert map )

On the other hand the standard archers availiable for the chivalric factions are useless and anyone facing an opponent who uses one of these factions in early should expect a no archer army and prepare accordingly.

Im not discussing byz archers in early as the byz faction is too strong in early and banned from games hosted by tgi


2. Rushing

Some people will seriously expect everyone to bring archers pavs etc. and spend 15 -30 minutes of their lives shooting at each other. On certain kinds of maps specially those with a lot of wood you should be able to use the terrain and avoid enemy arrows, also when attacking upphill as you cannot expect to win an archery battle shooting upphill ( ...that damn Newton guy ) so why bring a lot of them ...

What I would considera a rush is a straight frontal attack using a faction that is stronger by design ( byz or lancer army , all cav lines etc.) ... and that is of course lame ...but this has been discussed before ..

And rush armies are not that difficult to beat ...

regards

tgi01

[Crandaeolon]

Anyone who plays in Early should prepare for the opponent(s) not picking archers. Currently, archers can't stop a rush, and the game engine doesn't allow realistic rush-stopping by missile units (bodies that would hamper movement etc.) Increasing archers' firepower to the point where they could stop a rush by killing the charging units would just lead to the game becoming a missile war.

Since there's no difference in firepower between the various foot archers (excluding longbowmen, and I'll break the kneecaps of anyone who _dares_ claim otherwise without _objectively_ testing it ), the different skirmisher units are clearly the best choice because of their ability in melee.

All archers should be improved somewhat in Viking Invasion, horse archers especially need a boost.

Now, the rushing part. Personally I don't like rushing in teamgames, but in duels it's ok. Rushing is almost always harder than defending against a rush if the defender can do basic stuff like proper unit matchups, good camera positioning and not letting himself get too "round". The all-cav cheese rush is the only rush type I'd object to, so far I've managed to defend against those even in tourneys but they always make me sweat...

[Swoosh So]

We all usually rush at some point in 4v4s so whats the problem

[Kalle]

Hello again

First i would like to say I agree with Cran. There are few so annoying things in this game as when one of your allies rushes first thing in a 3 vs 3 or 4 vs 4. Thereby he ruins and probably looses the game for the rest of his team. It could be good but then it needs to be a thought out plan before the battle starts agreed upon by all the allies.

Second i am no expert at the stats for the different units but i could almost bet my kneecaps that a reg of janissary archers (not janissary inf) would beat most other archers in a shootout. Not sure of this though.

One thing that im a little more sure of is that treb archers will win against longbowmen if they are aloowed to cost the same amount of money cause it means they will get some sort of upgrade. And if they loose the missilefight they will win the ensuing melee later. Tested that.

Third, bys being to powerful in early. Well i dont think so, they can be dealt with - of course it depends on the nnumber of florins involved in the game but even varangians can be routed. TGI is right though they are powerful but not to powerful i think and i think they stay powerful for the entire gamespan. Not saying you are wrong not to have them in your games TGI - thats of course up to you

Fourth - about the regular archers being a waste of money.

I think not. Their missiles will lower enemy morale. Even fighting uphill they do plenty good. If you bring more of then your enemy he will run out of arrows and you then can start lowering his other units morale. Its hard and even harder against good players but it can be done.

Ok, would be nice to read your thoughts of this.

Kalle

[tgi01]

1. Crandeolon has an excellent point :

Quote[/b] ]the game engine doesn't allow realistic rush-stopping by missile units (bodies that would hamper movement etc.)

... having bodies taken into consideration would make cavalry charging more difficult too as horse bodies would litter the battlefield.

Rushing in teamgames is extremely annoying unless the entire team agrees upon it ...

Rushing in 1 vs 1 is Ok , if the armies are close in strength then you can only win if you flank and use the extra number of units you get by not buying missile units, to hit your opponent in the back, and then you win becouse of the morale drop by flanking not becouse of the rush.

2.About byz in early, as long as I did not ban them we ended up with 4 people out of 6 using them and noone knew who was who , but lets not steal the topic .. I think Kalle needs a demonstration

Why isnt there a smiley beating up another smiley emoticon ???

regards

tgi01

[Knight_Yellow]

rushing is just a cheesey excuse that bad loosers make up.

u beat him he moaned and quit.

well done

[Kalle]

Hi again tgi and other interested of course.

Well again i agree they (bys) are powerful, but can be beaten - even in early. Perfect chance for that would be the situation you described when people dont know who is who

If you dont have missile troops you still wont have more units then "the rusher" so flankingpossibilites would come from a mistake from the rusher. Instead if you brought a few cheap archers your own inf and/or cav should be better then the enemies in terms of upgrade. Im not saying that I could pull a win like this off every time - maybe not even the majority of times but there sure are players who can.

It also depends on deployment of forces and what rush army consists of and so on. Perhaps if i made a rush the defender manages to bog down four of my units with 2 big spearunits. That suddenly put things in a different light even if he brought some, for melee no good, archers.

Point is archers are almost never useless allthough they are sometimes very hard to use well (not saying i am the one who knows best how to use them - far from it lol)

[LadyAnn]

Somebody doesn't like my Rush-On army?

Range war is boring... unless I win it, of course

Rushing is a good tactic in Early, very good exercise for newbies like me, because I can learn to move units quickly and read my allies' moves, as well as my opponent's move.

Ah, he is rushing, let me move myself out of the way, after you gentleman Your flank looks juicy...

Early is the only period where fanatics and archers could be used. Since there is no pav arb, you don't have to put your archers always in front...

Oops, Rush-On army is not available in Early, bummer. People of Novogrod is.

Noobly yours,

Annie
Beaten by noob is the highest honor Don't whine about it.

ps: off topics, now on again:
archers are not totally useless. It inflicts morale on enemy if use to shoot right, so always bring one. Certain factions can have good melee archers.

[Swoosh So]

Kalle i disagree in 4v4 it is customary to rush Myself and fearstrike and fearredleg and some uglies must have won 100 4v4s this way God help the player who sets up facing the wrong way in my 4v4s Even vs good players we used to rusha flank while our other 2 alles came behind us to protect ours defence or attack it made no difference

[Swoosh So]

The early rush for the woods of nagashima in 4v4 was one of the most exciting parts of shogun totalwar and required a skilled rush

Ps: Longbow men have great armour piercing abilities, great for killing any cav who are skirmishing with your arbalisters, Kocmoc uses longbowmen to good effect.

[bosdur]

I think I know who your opponent is .

There's nothing wrong with you rushing imo, except if the host rules that you must take range units and no rushing.

[LadyAnn]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

Annie is reserving the 500th post of this very important announcement:

ANNIE WILL GET MARRIED

Annie

back to the topic: *open opinion bracket*

What is rush and what is not? A good attack is by definition a rush: you don't want people to have time and think about how to defeat you, right?

When you play with teammates for a long time and he/she could read your play, sometimes you don't even need to tell, they simply move along, just so naturally, just so coherently, that a rush is not a rush any more but a well coordinated attack. (psst: screen width of more than 640 does help, preferably 1024. Small screen only means you barely see the width of your army, let alone anything else).

As a Turk general, I don't think you have the luxury of a range war, at any era. Agression is the norm. So, is that a rush or simply necessary agression?

So what kind of crapy rule that say you must bring archers and you cannot rush? What is the characteristics you can point out: this is a rush, this is not?

This doesn't mean Annie will rush all the time. Au contraire. I think rushing takes a lot of risks and it is much less risky to defend a rush (or an attack) than to do it. Defenders (the one wait for coming enemies) always have advantage in many situations. But I am only arguing against the notion that only newbie rushes. In my book, many very good veterans do win battles by "rushing".

Perhaps I can say this:
Noobs like me will rush without knowing why;
Pros rush only when see advantage to do so.

*close opinion bracket*




Annie just doesn't know when, how, who, where and what, but Annie just knows.

[Alastair II]

Annie, didn't you beat AMP, and do some other remarkable feat that I forget? And wouldn't that make you a non-noob? And wouldn't that mean that you're giving us all disinformation so you'll whomp us horribly in the next game we play with you?

Crand, have you tested bulg brigs vs others? B/c it seemed to me that they won missile duels a lot, but that could be b/c of armour or some other factor...

And I wasn't Turk, I was German (or some equivalent).

[DthB4Dishonor]

Hail Everyone,

I dont like rushes, however there is a distinction between rushes and attacks. I hate when in a 1v1 I get rushed and easily beat back the rush with minimal effort. I feel like I wasted my time picking army, deploying and playing. This is especially true when a person rushes in a team game without expressing his intention to do so.

He rushes has his flank naked because ally is not expecting it and is not in position to protect allies flank. Ally quickly is chain routed and your team is now 2v1 3v2 or 4v3 and will waste your next 20-30 minutes fighting a battle that was decided in first 3mins(because your to honorable to quit)Also most of these rushers quit after they have been chain routed.

In conclusion:

Rushes are a waste of computer generated lives and time.

Attacks when done properly are something beatiful to behold and I tip my hat to those who can succesfully execute it.

[Puzz3D]

LadyAn is the consummate team player, and apparently about to consummate a marriage as well. Will LadyAn's husband, fearing for her safety, relegate her to only defending castle5 with equal florins? Must we carry on without LaPucelle to lead us into battle? How will we ever stop the Mongol rush tactics of Orda's Horde in the open field without dynamic leadership?

Most battles come down to an all out attack at some point. Experienced players know that attacking with all units both maximizes the morale penalties on the enemy and minimizes the morale penalies suffered by their own troops, and gives the best chance for getting in some flank attacks if you manage your units well. Piecemeal attacks can be effective in drawing out enemy units where they can be ganged up on or flanked, but you'll never win using only piecemeal tactics unless your opponent makes some serious mistakes. At high florins such as 25k, use of reserve units for flanking and counterflankng becomes more important since outnumbered frontline units will stand and fight longer.

Early era strikes me as mostly a rush game, although, I did recently get 60 kills out of a futuwa in an early era battle which is quite decent. The discounts for upgrades on ranged units allows most of them to become quite good in hth combat if you have the florins to do the upgrades. I have fought some early era battles where archers played an important part in winning but these were 2v2 games and up which usually precludes an all hth player from rushing forward on his own because he'll get doubled, although, I have seen players do this and succeed. Of course, full fledged team rushes with all hth are going to be extremely strong. The bottom line, especially in 1v1 games, is that you must take an army that's capable of stopping a rush or at least holding long enough for allied assistance to arrive in 2v2 and up. One way to get archers used in these early era games and retain balance would be to have a minimum archer rule such as 4 min.

[Dionysus9]

All is fair in love and war...

...and you will often get bitched at in both.

Kick that guy in the arse a few more times for me.

[bosdur]

Quote[/b] (LadyAnn @ Mar. 12 2003,14:29)]IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

Annie is reserving the 500th post of this very important announcement:

ANNIE WILL GET MARRIED

Annie

I thought you are underage .

[Crandaeolon]

Kalle & tgi01, Some time ago I did a couple of archery tests online with Znake and Raichu, the tests involved 16 units of archers lining up and shooting 16 units of spearmen. First test had 8 normal archers and 8 trebizonds; normal archers inflicted more casualties. Second test had 8 normal archers and 8 turcoman foot soldiers; again normal archers killed more. (Go check the Turk units thread, first page, for result screenshots and replays.)

Mind you, normal archers won only because of statistical error, there is no difference in firepower in theory. Valour upgrades increase accuracy only by a small amount.

I haven't tested longbowmen against other archers, but it's possible that, for example, upgraded trebz _can_ win against longbows. That's because both normal archers and longbows have same accuracy (0.6) and lethality (0.63), longbows only have a greater range and are more effective against armour. Against armoured units like knights the longbows definitely do a better job.

[tgi01]

Crand :

What i ment by early muslim archers being good is their melee ability not the shooting , valour 2 nizaris will have 8 melee ( if i remember it well ). In a 15k army valour 2 armour 2 and valour 1 armour 3 nizaris are still affordable and using them in combination with mamluk horse archers ( valour 2 ) you have a missile army which is quite capable of melee ...

I was using this army in early desert games quite succesfully ....

regards

tgi01

[Crandaeolon]

Ah yes, yer right tgi. Only Kalle's kneecaps need breaking. My apologies... truly regrettable, this. Can't have my gorillas running around breaking random kneecaps, proper knee-joint smashing takes diligence and coordinated effort. I shall immediately direct the joint specialist to the right place.

"Sir Kalle, there's a mr. Garcia to see you..."

It takes a _lot_ of gaming experience to know that quote...

And about rushing... I heard that rushing is more profitable in STW, would some Shog vet (who also plays MTW) care to elaborate?

[Cheetah]

Dunno much about old STW, only about STW/MI patch 1.02 So, here it is: Basicaly 3 main meele unit types were used:

high honor no-dachi (h4 or higher)
high honor yari-ashigaru (h7 or higher, the much feared "super-ashi")
high honor yari-samurai (h5 or higher)

out of these units both the nodachi and the superashi are a kill-fast-die-fast type of unit, only the yarisams were the slow killing defensive type of units. Of course, occasionally you could see other unit types as well, such as monks (h3, rarely higher cos of high cost) or naginatas (h3-h4) but these units were not frequently used. Monks were considered to be inferior to high honor nodachi, and naginatas (altough capable of holding out for long) were considered to be too slow and unreliable (they could be easily chain-routed just as spears or byz inf in MTW). So, basically the common armies were either nodachi or superashi heavy armies. Which meant that they could be quickly defeated with a double even if attacked head-on. That is why the quick double on the front left player was so popular in 4v4 battles. If the front player deployed too forward then he could have been defetead even before his allies could get there. Also, team-rush in 4v4 games were a viable tactics (see Swoosh), rushing one side before the other can react was a sure way to gain victory.

In contrast with STW/MI units fight much longer in MTW, even sword units. If you double a sword unit head on it will fight for a long, long time allowing you or allies to react and flank the rusher. Obviously 100 strong spears or byz inf can fight even longer, which means that head-on rush, or even a head-on double is not a viable tactics in MTW, IMHO To succeed with the rush you have to gain the flanks, which was not necessary in STW/MI. In early game 4v4 imho it is almost impossible to gain the flanks unless some players made some big mistakes in deploying their armies. As a consequence it is almost never pays off to team-rush in a 4v4 game in MTW. I have seen only a few such rush and only 1 succeeded in which the defenders were quite unexperienced and one of the rushers were AMP with a byz army

[LadyAnn]

OK, next important announcement will come at... 1000th post.



About winning a few times against good players: that doesn't make me a good player. You see, excellent players win consistently. Throw that person in any situation, any rules, any faction, any era, and he will come out of the battle victorious most of the time. And that is the level AMP is (and the level of perhaps 50 other people in the community).

BTW, I hate Roger Wilco. Will never marry him.

Annie

[Puzz3D]

Well Cheetah you hit the nail on the head, and I think this is why many players say MTW is not as good as STW because what you describe is precicely the way STW was played. Despite the fact that ranged are weaker in MTW, MTW is less of a rush game than was STW. WE/MI v1.02 was an attempt to cut down on the rush game by leaving ranged weapons strong, but it failed in the sense that the musk was accidentally made to be too strong. Also, the whole game was speeded up by some kind of bug fixes to the network code. We slowed foot speed but all that did was make flanking and even less viable tactic than it was in STW because the speed of combat was not slowed. Cavalry was fast, so it could flank before the combat between the fighting units was resolved if you moved fast, but the cav could not charge musk units without routing and neither could the infantry for the most part.

In MTW, flanking is the main tactic for winning, but high morale along with the slow combat resolution is required so that units will fight long enough that you have time to execute flanking moves. This is why you see most games up around 15k or more. Fatigue tires the army faster in MTW than it did in STW, and this tends to work against the rush who's main objective is to resolve the combat before the opponent(s) has a chance to react. Several arbalesters, while not strong enough to stop a rush or resolve the battle by shooting all the men in the opposing army, do have to be countered because given enough time they can inflict heavy enough casualties to make the final assault and east win. It must be the difficulty in conducting a successful rush that is allowing players to take several arbs and get into a shooting phase.

[Skomatth]

keep in mind all this is talking 15k:

I think whether or not a rush is going to work or should be used depends on where your florins are (rush being attacking without skirmishing first).

It would be a waste to spend 1,500 on 4 pavs arbs with a3 and then rush. YOu could use it for a cav upgrade. ON that track taking pav arbs and then rushing is usually a waste too. A unit needs to repay itself to be worth while, and a pav arb in a rush situation usually gets like 4 kills, not worth it.

Facing a rush army with 4 arbs can be beaten, even if the enemy has all melee units, but it is difficult because you have to find the units that arent at what I call "optimum valour" and rout them first with units that cost less. It would be interesting to take only 12 units if you plan to rush, and have stronger units rather than wasting it on archers that wouldn't make a difference.

Another problem is that most people myself included sometimes take pav arbs but all they shoot at is other pavs. They need to kill more expensive units to be worth it.

The problem with taking more archers is that a person can rush you and kill your chance to make them worth it (duh ). I took 5 arbs for a while in my 1v1 armies, but the problem was that good players know how to stop u from getting at their melee units with the extra archers. I could get very close to winning but in the end that one extra unit they had made the difference (probably) because though I could spend a little more on my melee a flanked unit still dies. I have some replays if you want to see how close it was.

[Kongamato]

Archer fire is supposed to have a destructive effect on enemy formations. I have an idea on how to make it more destructive without making bows a superweapon.
I noticed in several games that when men die, they hit the ground fast and hard, perhaps unnaturally fast and hard. During the death animation, the dying man remains stationary and takes up space. This causes the men around him to be blocked temporarily from battle. With such quick death animations, the dying unit does not block his fellow troops long enough to disorganize the formation.
If death animations were slowed down, it would consequently take longer for a unit taking casualties from archer fire to reorganize itself. This could wreak havoc on advancing enemies, and would also give a slight advantage to having disciplined units in the front line. Also, angle of fire would play a key role in this, as non-crossbow units' rapid fire would absolutely ruin organized formations. Another tendency of Bow units, the capability of hitting not just the front of a formation, but the back and center, would actually give them an advantage when firing on advancing troops. These two attributes of Bow fire seem to be what the Longbow is missing in MTW, and to a degree what the shortbow lacks as well.

[Krasturak]

Quote[/b] (Swoosh So @ Mar. 12 2003,13:41)]The early rush for the woods of nagashima in 4v4 was one of the most exciting parts of shogun totalwar and required a skilled rush

Gah

Krast in complete agreement with Swooshy as usual.

Gah