Seiges: Proof that fire arrows do work.

[Shahed]

HAHAHA ! Well spotted. Call CA and join quality control !!!

[Shahed]

You and Sinan bring up a good point. I seem to recall that there were some mechanics in RTW that specifically scaled with unit sizes, garrison value being a specific one. It could very well be that the probability for siege equipment ignition is coded up to account for different unit sizes and for projectile output. /shrug

Did anyone hear a BANG ? Excellent point, Whacker!!!

[Foz]

I seem to remember a certain Foz lecturing people about not discussing strategy in the game at all if they have modded the time scale because their game play would be fundamentally different than everyone else's.

Haha. I haven't been hypocritical just yet, Smith. Shooting a ram with fiery arrows hardly counts as strategy!

Seriously though, I don't think the changes to accuracy can change the ability of a fire arrow to light siege equipment on fire or not do so. It may change the rate that it happens for me, which would make it easier for me to demonstrate that it is a working feature, but it can't govern whether or not arrows can set equipment on fire. It's rather like if you wanted to see if a bullet in the head would kill a man. You take a gun and give it to your next door neighbor Joe the Plummer, and let him shoot at some guy 100 meters down a shooting range, until he scores a hit and presumably kills the guy (say it takes Joe 75 tries, he is a poor shot). I, instead, hand that gun to a world champion marksman, who nails the target guy on the first shot. My guy finds out on the first try that bullets in the head kill people... but the choice of how accurate the shooter will be bears no relevance to the lethality of the headshot, it only makes it more convenient to see it in action. It should be exactly the same with fire arrows.

In fact theoretically you should be able to get a great idea of how the fire arrows work by setting your archers to have a flat 100% accuracy (I think a 0 goes in the file, it says accuracy but seems to actually use a variable that says how much the shot will miss). When your archers bullseye the ram every single shot, it shouldn't be hard to tell if they can or cannot light it on fire.

That leads to yet another observation though: my bet is that archers are just so inaccurate typically that not enough hits are scored on the ram to have a statistically decent chance of success, which is why it seems impossible to do in vanilla. It also may be required that the arrows score a statistical hit on the ram's armor, whatever the game has decided that value is. So it isn't even necessarily the case that every arrow that appears to hit the ram actually scores a hit, it could only be a small percentage. Just watch arrows hit men in a normal battle if you don't believe they can miss while physically hitting. Of those that score statistical hits, they may have to pass a check to light the ram on fire. A tiered system like that could make it a VERY unlikely occurrence: you'd have to hit the physical ram, hit the statistical ram, and make the fire check. If we assume 5% chance of any of those 3 things happening, a given arrow would do it 1 in 8,000 times. That could be a lot of hoops to jump through, and some long odds.

I guess the biggest implication of all that is my speculation that archer attack value may in fact matter, if the game doesn't just assume any arrow intersecting the ram is capable of harming it (as is the case with men, they shrug many arrows off).

[Agent Smith]

Haha. I haven't been hypocritical just yet, Smith. Shooting a ram with fiery arrows hardly counts as strategy!

You may have won this battle, Foz!

That leads to yet another observation though: my bet is that archers are just so inaccurate typically that not enough hits are scored on the ram to have a statistically decent chance of success, which is why it seems impossible to do in vanilla. It also may be required that the arrows score a statistical hit on the ram's armor, whatever the game has decided that value is. So it isn't even necessarily the case that every arrow that appears to hit the ram actually scores a hit, it could only be a small percentage. Just watch arrows hit men in a normal battle if you don't believe they can miss while physically hitting. Of those that score statistical hits, they may have to pass a check to light the ram on fire. A tiered system like that could make it a VERY unlikely occurrence: you'd have to hit the physical ram, hit the statistical ram, and make the fire check. If we assume 5% chance of any of those 3 things happening, a given arrow would do it 1 in 8,000 times. That could be a lot of hoops to jump through, and some long odds.

I guess the biggest implication of all that is my speculation that archer attack value may in fact matter, if the game doesn't just assume any arrow intersecting the ram is capable of harming it (as is the case with men, they shrug many arrows off).

I was thinking the same thing during a recent siege. I think it can be partly blamed on the whole rampart issue where archers have trouble firing while on top of walls and instead shoot in high arcs. The effect is that the vast majority of arrows miss the mark completely, making them even less accurate than usual. Even with one rank deep on a wall, once the ram gets at a small enough angle, a good deal of the archers will start firing at a high arc over the archers to their side.

The next time I have a siege battle with Dismounted Dvor on my walls, I'll see if I can do anything spectacular. Their long range arrows and greater arrow damage should mean a longer sustained, straight line barrage of arrow fire.

[Shahed]

In 1.20 have they fixed the embattlement "bug" where archers were not shooting guys right in front of them ahead of the walls. ?

[WhiskeyGhost]

I've been using the 1.2 patch, and so far, it seems they still do that, but why bother when you can dominate them on the walls to make up for it?

see picture for what i mean


picture link


and yes, i do know its cheesy, but i figure it makes up for them not being able to shoot down =)

[Didz]

One thing I have learnt not to do is post my archers next to the gatehouse.

If you do that they stop firing at the ram once it gets too close to the gate for them to get a bead on it. In fact, worse than that, becuase if you have ordered them to fire at the ram they will continue to go through the loading and firing animation but not actually fire any arrows.

So, now I place crossbowmen next to the gatehouse on 'Fire at will' and place my archer units further down the wall. Preferably, on sections of wall which are angled to give a line of sight across the gate.

In the second of my opening screen shots you can see the units of Desert Archers to the left of the gatehouse sandwiched between two units of crossbowmen with one unit between it and the gatehouse itself. This is still not a very good location as the wall in question actually angles away form the gate (poor castle design). The wall to the right of the gate is angled to give a much better line of sight across the gate and if you look you can see the hail of fire arrows rising from that section of wall where I placed the remainder of my Desert Archers.

[Lupiscanis]

Just watch arrows hit men in a normal battle if you don't believe they can miss while physically hitting.

I've seen this a lot - I assumed from the physical appearance of the solider appearing 'bloodied' that each arrow inflicts a certain amount of damage unless its an immediate fatal blow.

Am I an ass for assuming? =p

[Didz]

@Lupiscanis
Well you can certainly see arrows strike enemy troops and cause them to flinch, producing a nice spray of blood in the process. You can also hear the 'plink, plink' of arrows hitting and glancing off armour if you move the camera over the unit under fire.

Under heavy fire units actually get driven backwards by the constant impact of striking crossbow bolts etc.

We also know that the game does include a Hit Point system, because we are told that certain traits and retinue figures increase the HP of our general's.

In STW the history of every man in a unit was seperately maintained so for example a unit of Yari might have some men still wearing out of date armor whilst the rest were wearing the latest kit, and you could look at the data file and see which of the soldiers in the unit had killed the most enemies etc. So, assuming that approach has been carried forward throughout the series it would be pretty simple to include individual HP per man in the unit data file. The only way to be sure would be to look but I'm not aware of any utility that lets you do that with MTW2.

[crpcarrot]

I've seen this a lot - I assumed from the physical appearance of the solider appearing 'bloodied' that each arrow inflicts a certain amount of damage unless its an immediate fatal blow.

Am I an ass for assuming? =p

AFAIK in TW being bloddied just shows a sucessfull hit that missed. most units have ony one hit point so even if they were "hit" multiple times and survived, the survivability of the next hit is the same.

i dont know if M2/ or rome itroduced a factor where each missed hit/"wounding" increased the chances of a subsequent hit getting through the defences but if not no matter how bloodied a unit looks all other factors being the same it is equally hard to kill as a fresh unit.

ive seen units being hit bu sucessive arrows (staggering animation, puffs of blood) bt still not dying like any respectable soldier lol

it would be interesting if each defended hit would make the unit lose 20% of its stamina or something like that?? just thinking...

[Shahed]

Indeed. Noticed those soldiers who take 30 arrows or more to kill, they are too frequent. KENSAI !!! all over the place. Some impact on would add further depth to an already great engine.

[Kobal2fr]

One thing I have learnt not to do is post my archers next to the gatehouse.

If you do that they stop firing at the ram once it gets too close to the gate for them to get a bead on it. In fact, worse than that, becuase if you have ordered them to fire at the ram they will continue to go through the loading and firing animation but not actually fire any arrows.

So, now I place crossbowmen next to the gatehouse on 'Fire at will' and place my archer units further down the wall. Preferably, on sections of wall which are angled to give a line of sight across the gate.

In the second of my opening screen shots you can see the units of Desert Archers to the left of the gatehouse sandwiched between two units of crossbowmen with one unit between it and the gatehouse itself. This is still not a very good location as the wall in question actually angles away form the gate (poor castle design). The wall to the right of the gate is angled to give a much better line of sight across the gate and if you look you can see the hail of fire arrows rising from that section of wall where I placed the remainder of my Desert Archers.

Well, I may be wrong, but I suspect last night I set a ram on fire using crossbows.

I was defending a wooden castle with only 1 unit of Xbow mercs and some spears. I put the crossbows on a spot that would overlook the gate and allow them to fire at the ramming team while they were working and bunched up, plus the ladder team next to it would also get enfilade fire.

As the ram was moving forward the towers fired at it and missed, it reached the gate, the towers stopped shooting at it... I braced myself for the inevitable... and then somehow it lit up when the gate was 80% down, saving my bacon. It was a campaign game so no replay possible. I really would like to know what destroyed that ram :/

[Whacker]

As the ram was moving forward the towers fired at it and missed, it reached the gate, the towers stopped shooting at it... I braced myself for the inevitable... and then somehow it lit up when the gate was 80% down, saving my bacon. It was a campaign game so no replay possible. I really would like to know what destroyed that ram :/

Spontaneous combustion.

That or ze holy grail yu hafv een ze castel-ah!

[Shahed]

Replays are possible in campaign.

Le clicky for ze linkage.

[Kobal2fr]

Sanques veri mouche, freeandz.

Too late for that peculiar battle, but will keep it in mind.

Oh, and I was playing the HRE against excom Milanese, so might very well have been an act of God. I had kissed our Holy imperial banner and everything, too.