friendly fire

[~Isabella of Castile~]

is it just me or does it seem that your units get killed faster by friendly unit's missles than the enemy does? I've noticed something like this once or twice when the enemy decided to be funny and charge into another of my units, brining missle fire with them. I didn't take too much damage, it just seemed that my units were killed more easily.

[Doug-Thompson]

The likely explanation is that your supporting fire is going into your unit's back while the enemy troops have a shield to their front.

Proper support with foot archers is a surprisingly neglected topic in the forum. About the only guidence I can give is that I usually put my foot archers in a long, thin line if they are behind my melee infantry and get them closer. This seems to relieve much of the "undershoots" that cause friendly fire losses.

[alpaca]

Don't get too close though or it will alleviate the problem that your units are actually killing anything, too
The way to go usually is to either switch them off if you think you take too much damage through friendly fire, or to fire at units where the probability of hitting an enemy is much higher than that of hitting a friend.
Or get them around and shoot the enemy in the flanks (note that you risk a few archers when you do that, but it's often worth it).

[Caliburn]

Cheap archers can be used to break enemy cavalry charges (i.e. sacrifice them) so that the more expensive spear units survive longer and can wipe out the enemy, so sometimes it pays to place them right in front of the troops. Shooting the engaged enemy from the flanks is great as well, especially with gunpowder units or melee-capable archers (Aventurier, Venetian Archers, all those Turkish nasties and some of the spear-chucking fanatics, you name it).

[Budwise]

The likely explanation is that your supporting fire is going into your unit's back while the enemy troops have a shield to their front.

Proper support with foot archers is a surprisingly neglected topic in the forum. About the only guidence I can give is that I usually put my foot archers in a long, thin line if they are behind my melee infantry and get them closer. This seems to relieve much of the "undershoots" that cause friendly fire losses.

Not only that but your men are in front of your archers so if an arrow is going straight forward or coming down in a shallow angle, it would hit your man instead of the enemy. I think this is a good addition to the game and makes you have to use a different strategy when you fight.

I play England, I know.

[Foz]

Even if you can't get to an enfilade position, it's helpful to get your archers as far left or right of your own melee unit & the target as possible: the more to the side they are, the less of the undershoots will fall on your soldiers (since they're less often in the line of fire). Interestingly enough, getting further toward the side also gives you a deeper look at the enemy unit, meaning not only do less under-/over-shoots hit your men, but more will actually hit the enemy.

[sapi]

Something else to try is targeting the unit furtherest back in the enemy formation when your units are engaged in melee, causing the undershoots to land on their men, not yours

[Tamur]

...targeting the unit furtherest back...

...which coincidentally at times happens to be general's unit. This is a favourite tactic of mine, and friendly fire does seem to be far, far less when the battle line is static for a while.

[alpaca]

Even if you can't get to an enfilade position, it's helpful to get your archers as far left or right of your own melee unit & the target as possible: the more to the side they are, the less of the undershoots will fall on your soldiers (since they're less often in the line of fire). Interestingly enough, getting further toward the side also gives you a deeper look at the enemy unit, meaning not only do less under-/over-shoots hit your men, but more will actually hit the enemy.

Although arrows going to the side will more often hit your men then.
Vertical aberration seems to be more frequent though, so it's probably a good tip

[Fußball]

When playing HRE early on peasant archers are useless to me. I either use them as ram carriers or disband them. Peasant archers have simple hunting bows that could not hit the broadside of the smallest shack at 10m. And even if they had better bows the fact that they are untrained rabble would likely not remedy this. I usually crush or route the enemy before I can get my archers into a flanking or rear position anyway.

Although during playing a Russian campaign I used the archer militia to great effect in villages, shooting over buildings and such. And of course Kazak calvary which seem to know how properly to use this strange tool that is the bow. Basically the entire point of this post is peasant archers are tools, rusty tools, tools that have no real purpose and thus should probably not be referred to as such as they are of no use.

Tschüß!
Erich

[sapi]

Peasant archers can be useful - just stick them on fire arrows and watch their morale drop

[Fußball]

I am surprised the peasants do not set themselves on fire trying to light their own arrows. I have used peasant archers effectively from time to time but really early on they are just fodder or more mouths to feed. Best use is en mass on a wall but crossbows do that better anyway.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Furious Mental]

I generally get the archers to target the general while he mills around at the back of the army.