Improving vanilla archers

[caravel]

To be honest, I'm not sure I would reduce *any* of their stats, period -- after all, they're not like Sumurai Archers, who (as Puzz just pointed out) at least possess a limited melee capability. Not that we want to make vanilla archers overpowered and turn them into a bunch of Legolas clones, but they should at least have a better kill rate against lower-grade troops than they do.

I'm not speaking of reducing any of the stats of vanilla archers here. Vanilla archers are the unit itself and their only stats are their melee one. The stats I'm referring to are the shortbow projectile stats. This is the actual missile that the archer "fires" at the target. Any edits to this projectile would effect all units using the shortbow, which are Genoese Sailors and vanilla Archers. These are the standard western european archers. Most other foot archer units are now using the compound bow which is much more deadly. The problem with the Vanilla Archers as I see it is that they are only moderately effective against unarmoured units and a waste of time against armoured ones unless you have three or four units all firing at the same unit in unison. My aim is to make them even more useless against armoured units forcing the use of basic crossbows which are now available in early, but the bane of unarmoured units. If possible I would like to tweak their lethality until they are quite devastating against armour level 1 units (no armour / light armour), but virtually worthless against well armoured units such as CMAA who would have walked through a storm of these taking few casualties due to their superior armour and shields. This would make the longbow much more worthwhile, and not merely an "uber unit".

Still, you should do what you think best, mate. I'm not really familiar with the armor/defense stats for spear/militia units (especially since I don't know what changes you may have made to them) and how they'd be affected by improved archers, so you know far better than I as to how to best tweak them.

All changes are documented in the summary. If you (or anyone) is not sure of the current Pocket Mod 1.0.6b stats of a unit, they can ask and I can post them up.

Well my understand is that most HA units used a smaller version than their foot-based counterparts, as full-sized bows were too cumbersome on horseback. I don't know that they would be less accurate, however. I *do* seem to recall reading they had lesser range (because of their bows' smaller size), but don't quote me on that.

I have heard this also, but I'm not sure as to whether the foot units used the same bow. I'm also unsure as to which used the compound and which used the recurve. The terms seem to be used interchangeably quite a lot but I'm sure that they weren't the same thing. I'm almost sure that the the eastern bows were usually composite recurve bows and not compound bows. I'm not sure where this term has crept in.

To be honest, I would say pretty much all of them should have compound bows. My impression is that just about every group that developed cavalry archers as a part of their battle tactics adopted the compound bow fairly quickly, less they be outclassed and defeated by their enemies. However, I'm definitely no historian in this respect.

That is what I'm thinking, but we really need to work on the various bow's stats to ensure that each is a reasonably accurate representation, and that they are balanced against each other.

I didn't realize there *was* a difference, to be honest. I'd always thought the main difference between the Mongols and other peoples with horse archers was that the Mongols were generally better at concentrating their fire (from their missile cav). I don't know.

A big difference, the Mongol recurve bow would be the best bow in the game IMHO, and arguably better than the English longbow, with a longer range. The Turks would also qualify to use this bow, as the Turkish bow was on a par if not better later on (certainly after the Il-Khanate had absorbed the Seljuks (yes there should be two Mongol factions in MTW, but it can't really be done - and have them both emerge. The only alternative would be to rename the Golden Horde as simply "The Mongol (Successor) Khanates")).

The way I see it, there probably need to be two types of composite/recurve bows. A standard one for most eastern factions that use them such as the Hungarians as well as for the Steppe cavalry units, Desert Archers/Horse Archers, Futuwwa, Nizari units and [Eastern] Archers, and a specific one for the Mongols and Turks.