ATTENTION CA: A reasonable suggestion to fix Friendly Fire!!

**King Azzole** · 10-09-2004, 18:44

Ok so we have all heard how annoying it is to be shot in the back by your own archers, but here is a small solution to alleviate a small part of it. How about allowing missile troops to have multiple settings of minimum range where they do not engage anything when set to fire at will? For instance, you may have your archers set to fire at will behind your main battle line, you can then click and drag a circle or line that shows the minimum distance to start shooting. Anything behind that line or inside that circle they will not fire at. I think this could be done and will be a big improvement for the friendly fire issue!

edit: I think a line that you could "bend" would be best to set so they wont even hit the troops on the far flanks outside of a "circle" area.

**Kraellin** · 10-09-2004, 18:51

i would think a simple fix also would be to stagger the lines of archers, or are they staggered already? or maybe just set them to 'loose formation'? does that help them any? or maybe just make the lines further apart from each other? actually, you might be able to change one or more of those things in the files ourselves. earlier TW games had a way to change how close each man was to each other in the formation.

K.

**King Azzole** · 10-09-2004, 18:53

Thats not the problem. The problem is when you have them behind your main line, and the enemy gets in close they will simply throw a volley into the back of your main battle line instead of targeting farther troops or stop shooting alltogether. It becomes a micro managing nightmare to handle this when you have several units of archers and even artillary.

**Kraellin** · 10-09-2004, 18:57

lol. ok, that's a bit of a problem then. turn your infantry on your archers and have them beat a few senseless and see if that improves their aim ;) i take it this only does this on the 'fire at will' setting? if you actually target an enemy unit with them does it then work ok?

K.

**King Azzole** · 10-09-2004, 19:07

Originally Posted by Kraellin

lol. ok, that's a bit of a problem then. turn your infantry on your archers and have them beat a few senseless and see if that improves their aim ;) i take it this only does this on the 'fire at will' setting? if you actually target an enemy unit with them does it then work ok?

K.

Well thats another problem. I dont want to have to hit pause every 2 seconds when the battle starts raging to micromange the archers and artillary. I want to enjoy it alittle. And since I cant even save my damn replay in single player... Plus im sure this would help the multiplayer crowd alot who cant even pause it.

Also, this is a step down from MTW, I remember in MTW if your archers saw friendly units near the enemy they wouldnt target those enemys. Or if they launched a volley and caused friendlys they would target something else. In RTW they are simply mindless turrets that kill anything they want too.

**Oaty** · 10-09-2004, 22:21

Personally I think Shogun had the smartest archers, if you wanted archers in shogun to target engaged units you actually had to tell them to even if they were at fire at will. If I remember correctly once the enemy was completely engaged they would quit firing(been so long since I played it) even if they had ammo left. So correct me if I'm wrong since its been so long. Usually it is'nt too bad for engaged units where a big problem is is when they route. oh yayyyyyy lets target where they currently are and when the arrows come down they will hit our own guys........ they dis us anyways for killing the enemy at a distance and call us cowards and all ......... so we'll show them.

Where it needs to be toned down is missle units need to stop INSTANTLY (not even firing that round that was about ready to go) when a unit routes.

I know historically the most deaths happened when units route but was'nt it the routers who got killed and not the pursuars

The other part that needs to end is if the arrow/ javelin is in the upward flight it should not be able to kill your units,(I could even live with it if it did'nt kill enemy units in the upflight as long as there is an enemy intended for its downflight) as units may not have had good aim knowing exactly where it was going for the down flight but I'm sure if someones big fat head was in there way they would either side step or wait for them to get ahead of them.

Now I have had some good results and bad ones on engaged units. But they definately need to tone down the friendly fire as most captains in charge of the unit would make a good decision when it is good to fire and when not to. Unfortanetely the A.I. cant figure out when is a good time and when not to.

The other problem is this game is toned down on army sizes(not so much unit sizes if you play on large) And when there were huge armies engaging in combat there was a dense enough formation that they could hit men that were a bit away from the melee that was ensuing.

I think the best solution would be to decrease there lethality on friendly units by about 1 tenth.

**Akka** · 10-09-2004, 19:05

I agree. It's awfully annoying to have your archers shooting without distinction in the mélée, or not even considering that there is units blocking their view and shooting through them.

I just had a river battle. Put a wall of phalanx on my end of the bridge, with five units of archers on the hill slope. The enemies coming were utterly massacred by the wall of spears and the rain of arrows. But these cretins take the closest units as target, while they are fighting hand-to-spear my phalanx, and not the units a bit beyond, who are clear of any friendly units.

Result : the enemy was crushed, and only inflicted me 23 casualties.
My own archers inflicted me 210.

Yeah...

**Dark_Magician** · 10-11-2004, 08:25

Originally Posted by Akka

Result : the enemy was crushed, and only inflicted me 23 casualties.
My own archers inflicted me 210.

Yeah...

And what are numbers for desert war?

This is called realism

**The_Emperor** · 10-11-2004, 09:33

I find that the main issue with archers is that they fire in a lower arc than in medieval, so positioning troops in front of them is a bad move.

Really though the best troops to have behind your main line are skirmishers. Archers deserve to be out front or on the flanks peppering the enemy as they advance, that is their role in this era. (it can also be argued that bows in this era are not as accurate)

I am also pleased that friendly fire is now much more of an issue. In Medieval you could win a battle just by positioning some spearmen in front of your archers and shooting away til your content... It was a little too easy.

Even in medieval it was best to manually target archers to get the best results, so I see no reason to change it. (and yes I have played as Parthia, Britannia and Egypt)

**troymclure** · 10-11-2004, 10:00

i can definitely confirm that Horse Archer;s will hit their own units, i had three units on a hill once just acting like normal archers (facing up a hill, twas in a city ok) and by the end of the battle i'd lost 25% of them thing is, noone came near them and he had no archer units. It was also a wooden palisade city so no archer tower fire to explain it either :(
ps:- i've said it before and i'll say it again. HA's rock in this game, they're everything the goldon horde from medieval shoulda been
pps:- ditto about the desert warfare/friendly fire/collatarol damage thing

**Orda Khan** · 10-09-2004, 19:06

It is not as simple as that either. I have seen my horse archers shoot one of their own when chasing off routers. One guy in rear of unit shooting his mate a few yards in front!!!!!!! This has to be mad. Shooting into melee and killing your own will always be a bit iffy and I would expect friendly kills. Whenever possible archers should target approaching units only on FAW, when there is h2h in front of them they should consider dropping back to cover flanks, with FAW off now of course

......Orda