Archery in M2 - Analysis from in-game testing

[Carl]

@SMZ: I'm basing my opinion off Agincourt, where you pretty much HAVE to use your longbow men in CC on occasion to tip the balance. Sure they don't do well, but it's not that bad when all your trying to do is tip the balance in your favour in a drawn out combat. Basically what I’m saying is that in a longbow heavy army, I’d expect to not have anything else I COULD flank with because all my non-longbow units would be tied up in head to head fights keeping the surviving enemy infantry line locked in place.

Of course you could pull them back then run them forward as you suggest. However that leaves your infantry fighting the enemy infantry for some time while you run them back to the fight. In the end though I doubt you would be engaging in archery duels anyway.

The big point here however is that this was a test, it needs to be scientifically done if it’s to actually have any meaning. In other words you have to apply the same conditions to everyone under test. A much fairer test would have been to take a BIG tough infantry unit, put them somewhere where they can’t move from (or somehow make them just stand their). Then let the Longbow men and crossbowmen shoot at them until their arrows are exhausted. I bet the crossbows would win by a clear margin then.

[Carl]

Once this is fixed, I expect a unit of crossbowmen will very rarely use anything approaching their full complement of bolts.

That depends on how long the battle lasts and what sort of battle it is. A Long Siege battle might see them exhaust their bolts. Of course, since all my experience is demo related I can't say anything for sure ATM. After Christmas of course is another matter~:D.

[SMZ]

It is a scientific test however. Both units have this same condition: time.

EDIT: ahhhhhhh, I see - well wordems, I'm thinking from a campaign perspective - seen, and understood where you're coming from in that case

[dopp]

The test were conducted in response to the other thread's OP claim that longbows always lose to pavise crossbowmen in a shooting match. The results indicate that longbows are actually slightly better in a head-to-head match, even when the crossbowmen are allowed to shoot off all their ammo. The test seems to be fair, given the questions it was trying to answer. Comparing kills against a stationary target is something else altogether.

As for how gimped the English are in the campaign game... I dunno. Billmen are broken for now but that may change, English knights are okay, Longbows are pretty good when used enmasse with stakes out. A nice secure starting position (although not as secure as MTW), good ships, naval bonuses, trade routes, shortest distance to the Americas, decent tech tree, plenty of opportunity to infere on the continent... is there really something wrong with them?

[Carl]

@Dopp, fair enough, that longbow thread has drifted so far off the initial topic now that I’d forgot what it was initially about. So I was looking at it more as a pure "Which kills more overall".

@SMZ: No sweat, good point about time, as I said, I was looking at a more max kill test scheme which threw things off heavily. In that situation it's really better to let both sides shoot all their ammo off. In an archery duel competition time IS actually a better measure IMHO

[Horatius]

My Longbowmen are my ultimate units, English simply lack the ultimates of others in the game, so when I have my Longbows they should OWN ANY Militia, especially if they are retunue Longbowmen.

Winning a battle against a militia pavise crowsbowmen with 2/3 of my retinue longbows dead is as historically innacurate (English Longbowmen simply laughed at Genoese Crossbowmen during the great battles of the hundred years war) as it is imbalanced.

I am able to win as the English, but we conquered everyone we faced, we literally owned 25% of the worlds population, why should playing as English be especially difficult?

[Reapz]

My Longbowmen are my ultimate units, English simply lack the ultimates of others in the game, so when I have my Longbows they should OWN ANY Militia, especially if they are retunue Longbowmen.

Winning a battle against a militia pavise crowsbowmen with 2/3 of my retinue longbows dead is as historically innacurate (English Longbowmen simply laughed at Genoese Crossbowmen during the great battles of the hundred years war) as it is imbalanced.

I am able to win as the English, but we conquered everyone we faced, we literally owned 25% of the worlds population, why should playing as English be especially difficult?

Horatius your post is exactly the kind of post I meant when I said
"... if people are getting poor results against AI missile units in campaign perhaps they need to think more about how they are playing the game."
and
"I wish ... less people said nerf this and fix that without really thinking about what they are saying, checking their facts"

I didn't post any statistics on Retinue Longbowmen vs. Milita Crossbowmen so I am assuming that your reference to "a battle against a militia pavise crowsbowmen with 2/3 of my retinue longbows dead" is about an experience you had in the campaign or in MP?

However here are the statistics:

Testing Scenario:

Single unit of each type, grassy plain, AI set to default (Medium)
Tests conducted until unit under testing depletes all missiles.
Figures represent the number of troops left alive at that time.

Took default Retinue Longbowmen and varied experience plus 5 points

Repeated each test 5 times

Test Units:

Retinue Longbowmen
Missile Attack 8
Defence 14 (Armor 5, Def skill 6, Shield 3)

Pavise Crossbow Militia (Mail Armor and Pavise)
Missile Attack 12
Defence 14

Results

RL - Retinue Longbowmen
PXBM - Pavise Crossbow Militia
+5 is added 5 experience points
+0 is added 0 experience points
Red = loss
Blue = win
numbers are Longbowmen/Crossbowmen alive after missile exchange

---------RL +0 vs PXBM +0-----------RL +5 vs PXBM +0
test #
1--------------38/32-----------------------48/14
2--------------46/30-----------------------50/15
3--------------40/26-----------------------47/9
4--------------42/38-----------------------48/18
5--------------40/29-----------------------50/26

Average-------41/31----------------------49/16

% alive-------67%/51%------------------80%/26%

So the stats don't match your experience. As you can see base Retinue Longbowmen are usually at 2/3 strength. However if you use trained units you should have 80% of your archers survive, win every engagement, and reduce enemy strength to about 1/4. If you had a different experience in game you must have done something differently, perhaps used inexperienced archers against experienced crossbowmen. When people fight hundreds of campaign battles how hard is it to train your units up a little? The idea that newly recruited longbowmen with no combat experience are supposed to own every militia unit regardless of that unit's combat experience, armor, crossbow weapon type, is just ludicrous.

Your other points:

"I am able to win as the English, but we conquered everyone we faced, we literally owned 25% of the worlds population, why should playing as English be especially difficult?"

Um so the Dev's should basically write the game code so that England wins easily?

I don't know where you learned history but get your money back.

- The "English" as of the start point of this game have just had their butts kicked by a bunch of French knights descended from vikings who have sailed over the channel and taken over the entire country sending the English out to tend farms etc. while they party it up in the Castles. Many of them didn't bother to learn to speak English.
- The English couldn't subdue Scotland in this game era let alone own 25% of the world's population.
- While the English fought a few limited campaigns in France with some memorable battles the English basically spent this game era losing all their possessions in France
- The English fall into obscurity on the world stage compared to the Mongols and their descendants - they would be perhaps the only nation that could claim to "own 25% of the world's population" during the era of this game.- Maybe you are referring to later British success during the colonial era? If so longbows were not part of that success.

[Kobal2fr]

I am able to win as the English, but we conquered everyone we faced, we literally owned 25% of the worlds population, why should playing as English be especially difficult?

Hahaha, this one I really, really like. Let alone the fact (already picked on by Reapz) that you're talking about the British Empire, not the English Kingdom you play in M2... But do you really, actually believe the building of said British Empire was EASY ?

[Shahed]

That one almost had me losing my voice, I was laughing so hard.

I love LBs, I did a lot of custom battles with them.
Awesome steel rain, I love it !

[Mandos]

On a side note, most people seem to ignore longbow units that aren't English. If you want to see a rediculously good missile unit use French Scots Guard, a powerful longbowman in plate-mail, who is also skilled in melee. In every test I've run myself SG have beaten every (non-gunpowder) missile unit in the game, including ret. longbowmen and Aventurier, supposedly the most offensively powerful xbow unit. The only really close duel was with sherwood archers, where both units always ran out of arrows, and the SG won in melee. Besides these unit vs unit tests, playing with the French quite a bit in the field has made me realize a far superior tactical value in the SG lonbowman over the Aventurier, and I rarely use just the xbow anymore.

My $.02

[CeltiberoMordred]

Reapz, did you manage the LB while AI always controlled crossbowmen in everytest?

[Reapz]

Reapz, did you manage the LB while AI always controlled crossbowmen in everytest?

I tried it both ways at the beginning. It made no real difference to the casualty numbers. So after a while I managed all the LB and let AI manage the XB

[CeltiberoMordred]

I tried it both ways at the beginning. It made no real difference to the casualty numbers. So after a while I managed all the LB and let AI manage the XB

In my custom battle tests, I always get more kills than AI when I face same units in a missile duel. In addition...

Some time ago I tried peasant crossbows Vs peasant archers.

When I managed crossbows, crossbows got more kills than archers.
When I managed archers, archers got more kills than crossbows.

I don't do anything special, just let them fire at will (in loose formation, because AI do it too) and wait for all their ammo being expent.

Regards.

[dopp]

On a side note, most people seem to ignore longbow units that aren't English. If you want to see a rediculously good missile unit use French Scots Guard, a powerful longbowman in plate-mail, who is also skilled in melee.

My $.02

Okay, so the most powerful longbow unit in the game isn't even English, it's French? Maybe rets need a boost after all. Then again, how many Scots Guard can you have and how easily, compared to longbowmen of all stripes? It might actually be okay play balance if the French get the best longbow unit but the English get more.

I'm not very sure about the history on this... were the Scots famous archers? I know they were good spearmen, but I always thought the Welsh (and later the English) were better at the shooting bit.

[Darkmoor_Dragon]

dont start the history again

[dopp]

dont start the history bollocks again ffs

Too late, it started about 5 posts back.

[Kobal2fr]

Okay, so the most powerful longbow unit in the game isn't even English, it's French? Maybe rets need a boost after all. Then again, how many Scots Guard can you have and how easily, compared to longbowmen of all stripes? It might actually be okay play balance if the French get the best longbow unit but the English get more.

I'm not very sure about the history on this... were the Scots famous archers? I know they were good spearmen, but I always thought the Welsh (and later the English) were better at the shooting bit.

They're better archers all other things being equal (in the game I mean, don't know how true to history they are at all), but they're more expensive (both buying price and upkeep - city unit), and by the time the French get them, the English will almost certainly have at least a Master Woodsmen Guild, so they'll be able to crank out valour 2 retinue longbowmen, and of course they will also have been using and exping+retraining longbow units for much longer. Retinue'd have the same armor as the scots too, if the armor system worked properly.
Think the SG pool size and refill rate is quite low too, but I've never played my French campaigns that far TBH, so that much may be way off.

In MP, well, the English will be able to field 12 pure longbow units + 4 Sherwoods before hitting any unit cap, the French only 4 SGs.
Plus, and that's a big plus, SG's don't have stakes.

[andrewt]

I'm puzzled by both the SG and the French archers as well. Shouldn't the eastern factions (Egyptians, Russians, Turkish, Timurids, Mongols, maybe Byzantines as well) get the best hybrid archers in the game? The Turks' late-game missile cav selection is pretty disappointing to me.