Question about Hit Points and Archers.

**Caesar Vastator** · 12-07-2006, 11:58

Hi all and thanks for the hard work to EB team.

This mod is simple amazing but i have found some things that are strange.
1) All units i have seen have 1 hitpoints, including generals and elephant! So the elephant are very easy to kill by an arrow since thy have very weak defense (armoured only 6) and only one hitpoint.
2)The archers are too weak! They can kill easily elephant but with them it s very difficult to kill infranty since they have only 4 or 6 missile attack.
3) the pila of roman legionaries also are very weak (if i dont remember wrong have 4 of attack)! They have very low attack and are not able to kill many soldiers.

**Caesar Vastator** · 12-07-2006, 22:46

I want to know if this is a choose for a better gameplay that elephant have 6 in defence and 1 hit point (there is no problem to kill them) , that arrows and pila have same attack (that is a very weack attack, 4) or are some things that need to be fixed with a patch.

**blacksnail** · 12-07-2006, 23:33

Average archers are far less effective in EB than the "archer riflemen" found in Vanilla. There is an element of historicity involved that I won't get into here, but the debates and arguments have been had multiple times over the years. At this point think of it as a given of EB. Also, don't think that "all archers in EB are crappy," but that "there were a lot of crappy, ineffective archers during the period of EB."

What the lower attack value does is force you to use your archers effectively. It's no longer a valid tactic to use them to mow down armored, shielded troops who are prepped for your volleys.

Some of this comes down to knowing how the numbers work in the RTW engine. There are multiple defensive values that combine into a single number, but the ones you need to look at are armor, shield, and defense.

Armor is effective in all directions. Armor-piercing weapons can bypass armor.
Shields are effective to attacks from the front and to the left.
Defense is effective against attacks from the front and from the right. Missile weapons ignore defense.

In any quadrant it totals up all applicable values. If a unit has an armor of 4, a shield of 3, and a defense of 6, it would break down like this:

Front: 13 (4 + 3 + 6) vs melee, 7 (4 + 3) vs missile
Left: 7 (4 + 3) vs melee & missile
Right: 10 (4 + 6) vs melee, 4 vs missile
Back: 4 vs melee & missile

This means that an archer, even one with a low attack value, is very good against troops with little or no armor and no shields. Defense value is ignored, so the highest defense value on the planet won't matter when faced with a volley of arrows.

It also means that archers are incredibly effective when attacking a unit's right flank or rear, both of which will only provide the base armor value against an arrow. It means you should weight your archers on the left flank of your army if you plan to attack enemy infantry or cavalry.

The most effective target of archers are other skirmishing units. These are the units with high defense and low armor & shields. Also the main Celtiberian troops tend to rely on high defense, making them a prime target for archers.

The worst target for archers are phalanx units in formation. The arrows will bounce right off the shield wall and spears, making their volleys completely ineffective.

One thing you may want to consider over archers are slingers, who often have similar or longer ranges and armor-piercing sling stones. A slinger on the enemy's right flank can cause untold harm to units with a decent armor rating. Heavy armor can turn the blows, but light or no armor is a death wish around slingers.

**Demivrgvs** · 12-07-2006, 23:37

Elephants hit points and stats will be fixed,i've already asked the same question in a post... But for romans' pilum i don't know...anyway if you want to change it by yourself in the meanwhile it's really easy with some patience...it's only matter of changing values in the export_descr_unit.txt

**fallen851** · 12-08-2006, 00:31

It is important to note that EB's current system regarding archers exacerbates the archer bug problem in 1.5, where archers do not fire on heavily armored troops.

Maybe Snail will answer the other points? There seems to be a long standing tradition on this forum to only answer the first question or address the first point a person makes. Just look through the threads with multiple questions/points and you'll find many that do. Not trying to single out anyone, or offend anyone with what I just said, just trying to help people get answers to posts.

By the way, who is doing the EDU text for EB?

**blacksnail** · 12-08-2006, 02:28

Originally Posted by fallen851

There seems to be a long standing tradition on this forum to only answer the first question or address the first point a person makes.

I generally don't post here, so that's news to me. Beyond this, I can only answer what I know, and I haven't yet seen an elephant in 0.8, nor have I seen any Romani pila discussion anywhere ever beyond this thread. I'd say more if I knew more on the topic.

**Kralizec** · 12-08-2006, 03:07

Have you actually seen the Roman pila in action yet, or just looked at their stats? They might have the armour piercing atribute, so their low stats would be deceiving.