Archers and Slingers need tweaking

[Zatoichi]

Oh OK - my facts don't stand up to scrutiny! I'm sure there is a limit to the numbers of rows of archers/crossbows that can fire in MTW simultaneously though - although apparently it's more than 2...

Also, in certain situations, like firing in oblique lines etc, in previous games only certain archers from the unit would fire, whereas now all the archers will fire, again increasing the overall effect of a volley.

But yeah, the general speed increase can neutralise the added potency of archers - unless your trying to chase down an Egyptian army with a bunch of Sacred Band infantry... pincushion-tastic!

[ChaosLord]

I'd suggest trying the Total Combat mod ( http://www.twcenter.net/downloads/db/?mod=210 ) I've been playing with it in my latest Pontus campaign and it seems to work out pretty good. Archers/Slingers are only really effective versus unarmored/lightly armored targets. You'll only take out 1 or 2 per volley on heavily armored/shielded targets.

[Maltz]

Indeed. The AI needs some concept of dodging arrows as a whole. I wonder whether it is possible to add a concept of "enemy's arrow range" and try to stay out of it unless totally necessary.

For example, when defending a siege, AI just runs around on the street to become mobile targets of enemy archers outside. One time I had 6 regular archers in the army, and they shot down everything, including generals, that joined the parade behind the gate.

If AI knows to hide behind a tall building and wait till enemy rush in the gate, that will be more interesting. :)

[Medieval Assassin]

In Shogun archers were the best unit you could reallyl field, they were great.
In Medieval, The archers were firing blunts, I didn't like them.
In Rome, I'm really happy with standard Archers and Slingers.

For one, after playing Shogun for 2 years, I really like the archers in Rome.

[Satyr]

I don't really think that the problem is archers. I think the problem is the AI is incapable of dealing with archers if there are more that 1 or 2 of them. In MTW the AI would NOT split his forces up to chase archers unless he had cav to do it with. In RTW the AI will break his lines into many pieces to chase archers with units that can never catch them. This allows the archers to chew them up with ever being engaged. If you add in the ability to flank those broken up lines with cav and the AI completely fails to provide a battle at all!

I did have a nice surprise by the AI last night though. I was attacked by a vastly superior force of almost entirely infantry. I had 2 units of slingers and 4 cav against about 12 mostly heavy swordsmen. I ran around a lot and managed to break the AI up into many pieces. Then I could charge all my cav into a unit from different directions and wipe out a company while losing very few units. There were, what I assumed to be, 2 units chasing one of my slingers around and when I attempted to avoid the corner one of those turned out to have cut the corner and they were slingers too and just anialated my slingers. One of the only nice ploys I have seen the AI make, or maybe they just got lucky. Anyway, I did win that battle (barely).

[Red Harvest]

I agree about the missile attack being too high. It appears that we have two types of archers, ones with fairly ineffective simple bows and then the killer units with high missile attack values and long range that are compound bows. In this time period, archers should be fairly well nerfed. Instead, I find that all the high end archers can be very devastating, with something like 10% casualties per volley for the high end units. I've had no-armour units with small shields (like balearic slingers) take 15% casualties from elite archers on the first volley at full range! I've seen that happen consistently. The archers are less effective vs. armour but can still cause quite a bit of damage vs. hoplites and Roman heavy infantry.

I guess I need to try running a battery of tests to see what happens in a few situations. Right now, rank effects don't seem to work like MTW, and most men within a unit will fire even when perpendicular (sometimes ones at the extreme end are out of range and will not fire, although they draw back.)

The one negative for the elite ranged units is that they kill more of my own than the whole enemy army can kill combined, even though I micromanage them. I kill 1,000 enemy; they kill 20 of my men, my ranged units take out another 20 or so of their own brethren..

[NightStar]

Come on....if you got 80 archers shooting at mostly unarmored unit of course they are going to take plenty of casualties. I have often had my Cretian archers shoot at armored units and killing no one. I started to hate those heavy panzered hoplites (armored hoplites) cause they are almost invulnerable to arrows (but a flaming missile from an onager gets the everytime ) It makes me hate them so much that I'm going to play the Greeks next time around :)