I've read the posts about the Billmen (give them 2 armor upgrades and they're not bad) and English knights on foot being underpowered on a head on fight, but has anyone noticed that the Longbowmen (mainly retinue) aren't much of an upgrade?
I thought the english were supposed to have the best archers in western europe? The crossbow men and their assorted elite counterparts have an attack of 12 and up, which is fine as they have a slow rate of fire. The Longbowmen don't have much of a faster rate of fire though with a fixed ranged attack of 8. The french have the Dismounted archers that have the same stats, including range,+1 charge of the Retinue Longbowmen for a slight increase of 40+ florins. Did the french even have mounted archers? I know they tried to use the longbow, but had little success as the men using them didn't have the tactics or the experience that the English/Welsh had. Pretty sure the English had some yeomen that had enough money for horses for transportation. I think I even remember a mention of them using them as horse archers in a skirmish where the french were holding a ford from the English. I saw it that Weapons that made britain or whatever it was called with that excitable English weapons/stuntman.I'm not complaining that type of unit is available to the french. Just that it's as good as the best english ranged unit. Then there's the scottish gaurds who have a ranged attack of 9.
The Scots Gaurds having high melee and high armor for archers is fine, but a higher ranged attack than retinue longbowmen? Give me a break. I doubt they would've trained with the longbow all their lives as the English/Welsh did. The only advantage the English have are the stakes which the AI (rightfully) seems to not even go near, and a higher recruit cost that is only around 200+ that of the Retinue (doesn't matter in the campaign anyways).
So basically the French have better cav, better archers (dismounted archers, aventurs, Scottish Gaurd), better inf (chivalric foot knights). Any point to playing the English other than RP values? Guess I'll have to wait for a mod to correct all of this. (end rant)
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