archers who needs them :)

[Zatoichi]

Yeah, I never leave home without 'em! I usually have at least 2 units of archers when going on an expedition - yes they require some micromanagement to avoid too many friendly fire casualties, but it's generally worth the effort. Another added bonus if you get the micromanagement wrong and they get accidentally mown down by enemy cavalry or shot to bits by the enemy archers (surely, that doesn't just happen to me?), they tend to be the most prolific healers after the battle, so the losses are never as bad as other infantry. They're also a must when defending cities, of course.

[Boudicca]

Archers are of high value on the side of the defender in a siege. I have conquered Bruttium and have a city with stonewalls and seven archer units on the walls...It rarely happen that the enemy ladders reach my wall. The only thing they don´t usually stop are the siege towers.

(Playing Realism mod 2.2 at highest difficulty)

[Sinner]

Another added bonus if you get the micromanagement wrong and they get accidentally mown down by enemy cavalry or shot to bits by the enemy archers (surely, that doesn't just happen to me?), they tend to be the most prolific healers after the battle, so the losses are never as bad as other infantry.

Apparently losses to missile fire and cavalry are more likely to be wounded casualties rather then actual dead compared to losses from infantry. Try getting your archers to melee with infantry and you'll see far fewer recover than what you've seen so far.

[*Ringo*]

Try getting your archers to melee with infantry and you'll see far fewer recover than what you've seen so far.

I only send archer to melee as a punishment. After shooting my General in the back from 200 yards, my archer tend to find themselves charging the nearest heavy cavalry unit... they don't make the same mistake again!!!

*Ringo*

[Servius]

jesus I NEED archers. Archers + dumb AI = I win.

Archers decide bridge battles. Archers are huge in city battles too, especially for clearing the area around the breaks in the wall and wiping out city-square guards without losing any of your own guys (cause the AI just sits there and dies).

They are decisive in open-field battles too, especially defensive ones (at least they were in MTW where the terrain actually allowed you to bunker atop a hill in the corner somewhere).

[Red Harvest]

I'm convinced that most of the high end archer units (you know, the ones you face most of the time) are overpowered. Why? Because in large armies I only need two or so to dictate the battle (in SP.) Same for when they are in the enemy's camp.

I can't just march up and endure the fire. In this time period I should be able to march through it with reasonably small losses (having effective units when I reach the enemy line.) Standing around in it would be stupid, but if I can close, I should not suffer. That is not the way it plays in my experience. (Suppose it would if I had desert axemen...grrr.)

[BDC]

Creten archers vs Madcedonian armies, with some hoplite anti-cav. They win, the enemy simply cannot get near to you without breaking. I have massacred thousands of Macedonians for almost no losses.

[Beirut]

Archers are great!

I like to up the quality of the enemy's armour and weapons, then fight outnumbered (1.5 to 1 perhaps )with a few units of phalanxes, archers to the rear, and a few cav units for mobility.

Win some, lose some. But always good meatgrinder fun.

[Red Harvest]

I just had a nice army and faction leader massacred by a small besieging army. It had no family member, but it did have 3 units of chosen archers mixed with a few scraps of falxmen. I sallied out to break the siege. My two phalanx units could not get into range without being cut to pieces...and my cav could not break them because of the falxmen mixed with them. It was on very hard, but it illustrates the silliness of archery in RTW. Those units should have been dead meat.

[TheDuck]

I'm convinced that most of the high end archer units (you know, the ones you face most of the time) are overpowered. Why? Because in large armies I only need two or so to dictate the battle (in SP.) Same for when they are in the enemy's camp.

I can't just march up and endure the fire. In this time period I should be able to march through it with reasonably small losses (having effective units when I reach the enemy line.) Standing around in it would be stupid, but if I can close, I should not suffer. That is not the way it plays in my experience. (Suppose it would if I had desert axemen...grrr.)

Aren't you playing on VH battles?? Which might have a slight in influence on the outcome??

[Red Harvest]

Aren't you playing on VH battles?? Which might have a slight in influence on the outcome??

It must be awfully slight... My own archers are deadly, yet my side is the one taking the penalties on VH. To my way of thinking that shoots down the difficulty level as being the culprit (pun intended.) A single unit of my own archers causes grievous damage in only a few volleys--usually enough that the targeted unit is no longer a melee threat (so I swap and decimate the next unit.) I have not heard if missile attack is given a +7--it sounds as if it is only applied to base melee attack/charge values. Even if the battle line marches straight for mine, I can usually destroy the melee effectiveness of 2 enemy infantry units per archer unit deployed. The depleted enemy infantry units usually rout as they meet my line or shortly thereafter. From what I have gathered, archers were not that effective during this time frame.

Blaming it on VH fails for the same reason as it does when cav are discussed. My own light cav are still decidedly lethal despite VH, and like archer volleys, they tear up infantry. Infantry...now they suffer on VH, especially the smaller phalanx units.

I don't think the base level archers are all that powerful, but the many, many special units get range and missile attack boosts that often result in 10% casualties per volley at range (I've seen 15% before with equal sized units.) Want to place any bets on how likely that was in the RTW time period? If it had been so, armies would have rapidly converted to a heavy reliance on archery and been successful. Afterall, who would want to stand in a dense packed infantry formation so that archers could mow them down, while they could do nothing in return? No, archery must have been much less effective.

[hoof]

IMO, the AI in MTW did a much better job of dealing with human armies with archers than in RTW (on the offense). I have many vivid memories of the AI forming up en masse outside of archer range before charging me. I have yet to see that done effectively by the AI in RTW.

The frustrating thing is that it would be so much more effective in RTW due to the friendly fire issues. In MTW, it was very safe to have a wall of spearmen with your archers *behind* them (until the enemy mass hit your line). In RTW, placing archers behind another unit is a sure way of killing a bunch of your men except in very specific situations. This forces you to put your archers in front of your front line. If the AI did the "form up outside of arrow range then charge" maneuver from MTW, you would get only a couple volleys before being forced to retreat your archers behind your front line. The mass would then hit your front line, and you'd have a bunch of useless archer units for the rest of the battle.

In my experience, RTW AI armies tend to attack much more piecemeal, which allows you to tear them up. They'll charge a few units at your archer line, you pull them back, kill those exposed enemy units, rinse, repeat. Half the time, the lured enemy unit is the enemy General, which makes it even worse for the AI (apparantly the General unit gets so fixated on the archer unit they ignore the mass of spears that the archers just ran behind).

Of course, this is only on defence. On offence, I can pick apart the AI with archers just like in MTW. Actually, I find the AI in RTW tends to send cavalry after your archers quite nicely (one of the few good ways to minimize this tactic). Now if only it would figure out when the archers have reached safety and turn the cavalry around ...

[TheDuck]

It must be awfully slight... My own archers are deadly, yet my side is the one taking the penalties on VH. To my way of thinking that shoots down the difficulty level as being the culprit (pun intended.) A single unit of my own archers causes grievous damage in only a few volleys--usually enough that the targeted unit is no longer a melee threat (so I swap and decimate the next unit.) I have not heard if missile attack is given a +7--it sounds as if it is only applied to base melee attack/charge values. Even if the battle line marches straight for mine, I can usually destroy the melee effectiveness of 2 enemy infantry units per archer unit deployed. The depleted enemy infantry units usually rout as they meet my line or shortly thereafter. From what I have gathered, archers were not that effective during this time frame.

Blaming it on VH fails for the same reason as it does when cav are discussed. My own light cav are still decidedly lethal despite VH, and like archer volleys, they tear up infantry. Infantry...now they suffer on VH, especially the smaller phalanx units.

I don't think the base level archers are all that powerful, but the many, many special units get range and missile attack boosts that often result in 10% casualties per volley at range (I've seen 15% before with equal sized units.) Want to place any bets on how likely that was in the RTW time period? If it had been so, armies would have rapidly converted to a heavy reliance on archery and been successful. Afterall, who would want to stand in a dense packed infantry formation so that archers could mow them down, while they could do nothing in return? No, archery must have been much less effective.

Ahh.. somehow I got it that your units were being wasted by the AIs... my bad.

On the 'archery units were more effective'.. maybe...

A few points obfuscate...

The Parthians at the time (as modeled in RTW) made great use of horse archers and were very difficult to deal with in ancient battles. Descriptions of these battles indicate that the Parthians were very good with bows on horseback.. so this argues that bows were effective tools overall. The issue may be with armor piercing power. That I could believe..

Another point is just a general observation made by many military historians: Hannibal on a few occasions demonstrated the effectiveness of cavalry when used correctly against infantry based tactics, and this did not push the Romans to highly develop their cavalry wing. That didn't happen until 350ish AD under more intense pressure from groups who proved to the Romans beyond a shadow of a doubt that well used cavalry can trump well used infantry.

There is also tradition to consider. Just as our current military has an understanding of warfare based on past experience, so did the Romans. If they didn't make big use of archers, it could just mean that they were successful enough without scads of them. Agincourt is proof that they can be mighty effective though.. (and yes, I know the British longbow is quite a development from Roman times.. but it is a bow!).

Finally, it is also possible that the use of the pilum delayed development of archery until later. Javelin and pila attacks were know to be quite effective and frightening. And given the standard 'engage with pila' then charge tactic used by Roman legions, I can believe they had that part down to a fine art. It is also important to note that many Roman enemies used javelins rather than bows. So a legionarre that understood the employment of javelins could pick up thrown ones from the enemy and easily use the enemy's javelins with proficiency. That may have something to do with it also.

[Quillan]

Another added bonus if you get the micromanagement wrong and they get accidentally mown down by enemy cavalry or shot to bits by the enemy archers (surely, that doesn't just happen to me?), they tend to be the most prolific healers after the battle, so the losses are never as bad as other infantry.

Heh, tell me about it. I made an oops in a battle earlier today. I was playing the Gauls, and was in a big battle against the Scipiones. I tried to sneak an archer unit around to the right where there was this big cornfield, and it got ridden down by a unit of Cav Auxiliae. I lost the entire unit of 80 right there. 78 of them healed after the battle...

[BDC]

A solid wall of 6 pikemen, then 6 archers (preferably Creten), and then the rest cavalry and maybe one or two sword-armed mercs. This Macedonian army will beat anyone.

Except in MP against Onagers. But in SP it will.

[katar]

archers in RTW are really good, the basic ones do an ok job and the Cretan archers are nice to work with.

i started off by using three archer units per army but now i`ve switched to using one archer and a couple of scorpions.

i`m playing Brutii at the moment and the long range of the scorpions can really whittle down those Macedonian phalanxs and armoured hoplites on their approach to my lines. long range fire is so cool.

i have seen them throwing bodies into the units behind and causing even more casulties, bit of an eye opener when i saw that the first time!

[Sin Qua Non]

Every time I play a faction without archers, I end up missing them 5 turns into the game. I just attribute it to my severe case of Agincourt syndrome.

[A.Saturnus]

I did a little test with archers. How they fare against well armoured infantry. So I gave the AI two units of bowmen (large unit size - makes 120 per unit) against one unit of Principes on my side (82 men - makes a ratio of 3 to 1). Well, the bowmen eliminated the principes, but they took rather long. Usually when the ammo was down, there were about 5 to 10 principes left, which had to be taken on in melee. Considered the ratio, I wouldn´t say that´s an overly good result but certainly also not outragously bad. It depends on what you expect from archers.
Anecdote: in one trial, I didn´t select the right map (flatland) but had one with a few hills. So the bowmen had to go around a hill. This caused the two units to overlap each other. Result: they lost half of their number. By friendly fire. One guy even managed to shoot his general in the head from just behind him

[The Hun]

Yes archers are so good they even can kill themselves

[Sword]

Every time I play a faction without archers, I end up missing them 5 turns into the game. I just attribute it to my severe case of Agincourt syndrome.

Yep, then after those 5 turns, I always find one of my generals on a boat heading to crete.


I've attacked an all Phalanx Macedonian army of around 15 units. They just sat there while 2 units of Cretain archers reduced each and every one of those 15 units to less than 10 men, one unit at a time.

For some reason, the Macedonians chose this moment to run to my lines, got half way, turned round and routed off.

and there was me, a bit nervouse as to wheather i'd win or not when the battle started.

[Spino]

Archers? Sure, especially if you're controlling a faction that lacks well armored, decent infantry and/or cavalry. It's obvious CA incorporated these ridiculously overpowered elite archer units to offset the heavy infantry of Roman, Greek and Carthaginian cultural factions.

On the whole I think archer units are overpowered in RTW. In fact, they are so overpowered that I find it hard to resist using them even when I don't need them! I am getting surprising if not crazy kill ratios with basic archer units in RTW, a stark contrast to the kill ratios I got with the average archer unit in MTW. Not that you couldn't have archers wreak havoc on the enemy in MTW but the results could vary wildly between battles and depended heavily on the types of archer units involved. It also doesn't help that the tactical AI in RTW has a tendency to do nothing when being rained on by your missile troops for an extended period of time. At least in MTW the AI would try to prevent attrition losses caused by missiles by closing the distance and rushing your main line.