Quote Originally Posted by Musashi
The shield into armor fix nerfs all missile troops Carl... Even with foot archers you generally try to flank because enfilade fire is the best kill rate of any attack type in the game... Making it so that archers can't do any better when flanking/rear firing makes them basically worthless (Which explains why you think the Scots are so good) whereas they're the best killers in the game without that kind of fix.

PS: I've stated this before but you seem not to believe it -- AP counts against shield as well as armor, so moving armor into shield doesn't make AP anything better.
Of course, I thought archers (at least English ones that I've played with a lot) were underpowered already even without making any fixes/changes to the EDU. I was running tests earlier and the computer marched (they never decided to run) pikemen at some Yeoman that I allowed to sit still and auto-fire at the pikes. They were highland pikemen, with stat_pri_armour 0, 3, 0, flesh. That is, 0 armour, 3 skill, 0 shield, which should mean zero rating against missile fire. I disabled skirmish too so they'd keep firing as the pikes approached. To my horror, ~1/3 of the pikes were still alive when they got to the yeoman. They took several volleys from close range (probably ~12 in total), including one from about 6 feet away, which while it almost entirely hit the front line of men, did NOT cause all of those men to fall over dead. In fact I would estimate that at least half of the arrow impacts did not directly cause deaths, from any given distance. I have no idea why this would/should be the case, but it really makes me wonder if archers stats are too low.

It may be necessary to balance archer stats up to the level of fixed shield units and 2h units, as the archers now appear to have far worse game effects than similarly costed dismounted knight units. For instance compare working armoured swordsmen with yeoman. They cost almost the same in recruitment and upkeep... but it's clear that the yeoman are not nearly as powerful. I don't know what exactly to propose for stats yet, but the balancing will probably be considerably more subjective than what I've previously been doing, which makes it touchy at best. I won't be surprised if a missile attack value of 13 or even more for yeoman is required to make them feel as useful as various dismounted knight units clearly are.

It should be noted too that this is an issue I feel has been present at least for English archers since the beginning and is not caused by any of my modding: The yeoman I tested are completely unmodified, while the pikes have only their swords taken away (the pike fix) which affects their ability to die from missile fire not at all. I would submit that yeoman that cost 650 and 150 upkeep should completely dismantle a 0-missile-defense unit like these highland pikemen before they ever get to melee range... especially since >75% of the last 3 volleys appeared to be registered as hits, yet men hit by 3 or more arrows sometimes still failed to fall over dead. This should not happen, especially with completely unarmoured troops...

As for Musashi's comment about the shield fix not making AP anything any better, I heartily agree, as my limited testing of it and battlefield experience have shown it true. Tests have borne out that the armour points protect as well as the shield ones do against AP missile fire, so people claiming the fixed units are weaker to AP missile fire b/c of having armour points instead of shield points will have to make a compelling case with data to support that conclusion.