Improving vanilla archers

[Puzz3D]

I also feel archers are underpowered in MTW, though only vs lightly armoured and unarmoured units. Vs armoured units they are realistically less effective. The Samurai Archers in STW always seemed to do a lot more damage to me.

The shortbow and mounted archer stats in MTW are exactly the same as they were in STW. The effectiveness of a volley is exactly the same in both games against a target of the same armor level under the same conditions. There is a difference in how unused ammo is treated. In STW, unused ammo was retrieved from dead men in the unit. In MTW, the unused ammo of dead men is lost. That's why we increased the ammo for archers from 28 to 36 in Samurai Warlords. We also gave mounted archers the same bow as foot archers. The mounted unit will still loose a shootout with a foot archer because the horse is a larger target and therfore easier to hit.

I think the main reason archers seemed more effective in STW is that the average armor level was lower. It ranges from 1 to 5. The valuable WM and cheaper ND sword units only have armor = 1, there are no shields and even the spearmen are only armor = 3. Only two units, HC and NI, have armor = 5. Everything else is armor = 3 or less.

On a stationary, 60 man infantry unit of armor = 1, 60 archers will get 3.3 kills per volley. In 40 seconds they will reduce that unit to half strength, and still have more than half of their ammo. That will drop off to between 0.8 kills per volley on an armor = 5 infantry unit. Kills per volley on similarly armored cavalry units is somewhat higher, but I don't remember the numbers.

I often find that during battle I can find a good vantage point for my archers but rarely feel that they've done enough damage when their quivers are empty. I also feel that the AI archers are less than effective unless they're in ridiculous numbers. I can usually charge them down with light cavalry and take only a few losses from the volleys they let off. In reality cavalry charging straight at a unit of archers would take many more losses before closing with them, unless they were suitably well armoured.

The arrow's arc carries it over charging cavalry. This is actually a designed feature of the engine to contribute to combined arms gameplay. If the cavalry is made to retreat by a supporting unit, you'll see the archers get many kills on them as they move away. Killing AI archers with cav in STW or Samurai Wars isn't so easy because they are samurai and have some melee capability. That delay in their collapse gives the AI time to bring a spear unit into the melee, and since spear units are very effective vs cav, it's bad news for the cav which is very expensive compared to either archers or spears.

This is where the design decision in MTW to turn spears into defensive unit hurt the AI because the AI thinks that spears kill cav. I can see in Samurai Warlords that the AI is using spears exactly the same way it used them in STW. It's very prompt with sending them after cavalry that's within a certain range, and it does keep spears within a proximity close enough to protect archers. If you want the AI to play a stronger game, then change the spears so that they can dispatch cavalry in a more timely fashion.

Perhaps lethality could be increased slightly and the armour piercing decreased a bit?

Those would be the parameters to change because effectiveness is linearly related to them. It's much harder to get a predictable result by changing the accuracy.

Horse archers are worse. I have no idea why their "mounted longbow" has worse accuracy than the shortbow, when throughout history horse archers were some of the best archers ever. Also in this game they can only fire when stationary so it's not as if the lack of accuracy can be put down to them being on the move.

A hold over from STW. It's one thing we didn't keep in Samurai Wars, but we only ended up giving the mounted archers the shortbow after extensive testing.

I actually never noticed that the shortbow can't use high trajectory. This might be a mistake in the projectile stat, but it's not clear to me that it would be an advantage for them to use a high trajectory or if they would ever use it. They can already shoot over the heads of a unit with the low trajectory.