Quote Originally Posted by caravel
It changes gameplay in that it makes the game less tactical. Archers should primarily be morale breakers and should assist in wearing down and enemy not simply units that decimate a chosen enemy unit.


Non armoured units may still have shields with which to catch incoming missiles, so they won't all drop dead under fantasy movie style arrow storm.


You increased lethality as I understand it? But the armour that keeps the Kataphraktoi alive vs regular missiles is still there. This is perhaps why your arrows had little effect, though Puzz3D would know more about this than I would. It's not just a case of altering one parameter as I understand it, but involves a careful balancing several.


Not from within my "box of thought" as you call it, but from within my own experience of the tests that I've run in the past and from reading the info available on this board. At the end of the day though it's up to you, I can only give an opinion which is what you asked for in your first post on this subject:




It may be challenging facing those new archers, as it is challenging facing Viking Huscarles, but as with the latter it's also far too easy when you're the one fielding these types of units. IMHO the kind of archer you're trying to develop reminds me too much of Javelin units, in that it will fire a volley at a particular unit, deal out massive casualties and rout that unit instantly. The slower morale damaging effect of shortbow archers, especially with increased ammo count, is a more effective and balanced model. Historically archery was used in this manner, in that it would keep an enemy unit pinned down and demoralised.

You make it sound like I have constructed a super archer that consumes the enemy on sight. About the only thing that is significantly different from before is that HA's are a little bit more effective, since they don't need 15 volleys (or such, I'm probably exaggerating wildly now) to damage defending screening cavalry. As to not cause additional confusion on this, the screening cavalry will probably be mounted sergeants, steppe cav, hobilars etc - not the heavily armoured chargers such as knights and kata (I made the mistake of calling all meele cav "heavy cav" in an earlier post). My main point was that it is too easy to neutralize HA's under vanilla stats by chasing them from the map. I feel there is need for clarification regarding this, since this point seems to get lost quite repeatedly. Now, the HA's are at least a threat, as it is possible to hurt light cavalry screeens with a couple of volleys.

The shields are really out of my control, as long as I don't edit them out of each unit. So, those units probably won't die especially either. As a matter of fact - they don't. So, again, I don't see how you can call this "fantasy movie arrow storm style" and such. It really (really!) isn't that bad!

I gladly accept that people don't like the idea of faster killing with arrows because they like the gameplay fine as it is. I just don't want you guys to get the wrong idea about what I've done, as I feel that you have. I just hoped someone would like the idea, beacuase... well, it's always nice when people like your ideas.

But I hear you, I hear you.