Quote Originally Posted by 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?
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.