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Never quite understood why this is the case for Warhammer either. But there's a bunch of dumbed down things; friendly fire is harder (or impossible in many cases), crossbows being able to fire without line of sight, the crazy accuracy of bows from long distance...
not long distance but within 75% of their range since thats what calibration distance amounts to, the only small arms units that are actually that accurate at max range are WE , and HE units in paticular Way watchers , deep wood scouts and shadow walker/stalkers
I am fine with shooting on precise target for balance, but that picture you drew is indeed dumb. They should arc their shots barely over other units. They shouldn't be able to arc their shots over the walls and hit units behind them.
Slingers do the same which is even dumber.
Which is why I think there should be battle map Fog of War, where you need line of sight on a walled settlement to see what units are behind it; unless you have fliers or something.
No one should be able to shoot at a target they can't see. This enabled a cheese where a single bow unit could take an undefended castle by peppering the Samurai Retainers with close-accuracy, from the ground-level. Rome 2 introduced the battle map fog-of-war feature, probably the last time Total War actually innovated(everything else about that game was a massive leap into a cul-de-sac, which is why the game systems have hardly changed since and 'new mechanics' are basically: Randomly-Selected Noun > currency/progress-bar > outcome unrelated to the noun. Or CA brings back features they never explained why they removed, but their marketing geniuses pretend are new.
Bows should not have greater range than matchlocks, except from a much higher elevation. With the TW3 Engine introduced in Empire(2009) though, CA did away with elevation permitting arrows to travel further probably because most ranged weapons in Empire were guns. Instead the elevation bonus was a buff to the unit's Accuracy stat relative to the target. That sort of makes sense, for guns, where elevation wouldn't practically increase accuracy beyond granting a clearer line-of-sight, but that gives a shooter more information about the distance and movement of the target, meaning they can make more use of their accuracy than shooting across a plane allows.
Repeated testing though has exposed that bows in Shogun 2 are weak compared with matchlocks in like-for-like conditions. Matchlocks simply kill more most of the time. Why do I think they need a longer range then? Because accuracy drops-off at range; people should be engaging their brains and intuiting what should happen and the game design reward this by making what happens conform to the knowable realistic scenario. Nothing should happen just because 'a designer says so' and that includes nebulous and disingenuous terms like 'balance'. Sacrifices have to be made for the sake of gameplay, but that does not mean 'a designer says so' because it shouldn't be the default; there had better be a very good reason to steer away from what practical reality would say happens. Yes, even in a fantasy setting, as anyone who actually cares about that genre of fiction will already know.
In my ideal Shogun 2 update, it might be necessary to also give bows more strength to reflect how lethal they actually are at closer ranges, how heavy their collective weight clangs against armour and slows down an advance, how volleys compensate for loss of accuracy at distance and how that distance is increased by elevation. They could even have their own effective firing-drills; something I once suggested for Wood Elves, in place of the brain-dead 'fix' for their arrows being fired straight into trees; giving missiles no-clip for the first seconds of flight so they phased through trees like magic. This was the best CA could come up with after having almost three years to think about it.
Had they not gutted the gun functionality of the TW3 Engine and making 'guns' in Warhammer work like every other missile weapon, they could have had Wood Elf missile units using the same function to only fire when they have a direct-path to a target with no object or map geometry in-between, shooting through the gaps in the trees.
CA don't do ideas any more. I don't know what they actually do.
sad thing is tht range accuracy penalty is in the game, sad thing only one unit has it.... ratteling guns. although i still think it's to strong i do think they handled it's accuracy well giving it having the best damage and accuracy at 50% max range value
I am fine with shooting on precise target for balance, but that picture you drew is indeed dumb. They should arc their shots barely over other units. They shouldn't be able to arc their shots over the walls and hit units behind them.
Slingers do the same which is even dumber.
Genuine question. Why do you think it is good for balacne, it seems to be one of the main causes of ranged meta
It makes arc'd range units more OP, line of sight units less efficient, and overall range more powerful than it probably should be.
Taking gunpowder units is waaay less useful in most circumstances simply because they do not fire in an arc while units that an arc their shot are unnecessarily powerful in so many situations they generally end up being the better choice even when doing less damage and less AP , though there are so many that have both it feels a bit weird but that is mostly GW since CA is designing based on their rosters.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” Mark Twain
'Guns' in Warhammer use the same shooting system as other missile weapons, not the TW3 Engine functionality for guns.
As such, they do fire in an arc and it's noticeable among several other glaring differences from the way guns used to work in Total War. Most gun-line tactics no longer work because there are no 'gun-lines' in Warhammer.
Reminds me of the change in how projectiles work from old school xcom to the semi new reincarnation. Both that the old school was way better and more advanced. In the original, the projectile actually travelled along and could hit objects that were in the way. In the new, it’s just a dice roll and animation. The bullets go right through buildings even lol
Kind of off topic, but the way that ballistics worked in OG x-com was indeed different to the reboot, but had serious jank of its own. Yes, objects could get in the way of on-target shots and that was cool. Misses also scattered and that was cool. But the to-hit roll itself was a flat percentage *regardless of range*. This meant that other than in point-blank situations (where miss rolls might still land), there was no advantage in being close to the target, and most encounters could be trivialised with a high reaction 'spotter' scout and high aim units blasting away from the other side of the map.
Older doesn't necessarily mean better (or indeed worse), just different.
I keep seeing people say that crossbows shouldn't arc.
Crossbows do arc as much as bows do. Projectile arcing is a function of gravity and the forward momentum. While a crossbow is more powerful than a selfbow, a war bow and a corssbow will have a similar arc, because they release at similar speeds.
Now, that arc should be way flatter than in game. But this has been an issue since Empire, where gunpowder units could use the minimal arcing of their bullets to shoot over hills.
I think it unlikely that CA can address the insane arcing, as it seems to be a feature of the engine. But ranged units could definitely have reduced accuracy.
I keep seeing people say that crossbows shouldn't arc.
Crossbows do arc as much as bows do. Projectile arcing is a function of gravity and the forward momentum. While a crossbow is more powerful than a selfbow, a war bow and a corssbow will have a similar arc, because they release at similar speeds.
Now, that arc should be way flatter than in game. But this has been an issue since Empire, where gunpowder units could use the minimal arcing of their bullets to shoot over hills.
I think it unlikely that CA can address the insane arcing, as it seems to be a feature of the engine. But ranged units could definitely have reduced accuracy.
I have never seen any arcing on infantry and cavlary gunpowder weapons prior to the overhaul of the shooting system(2013). They all have appeared to clear the entire battle map in a straight line(not realistic as gun-shots do have drop-off IRL, but is true for the TW3 implementation of guns). The 'arcing over hills' seems to have applied only to Warhammer, the first game after the overhaul to feature 'guns'. I've tried combing youtube for a video showing otherwise.
The sheer amount of arc on gun-shots in WH is what makes it so obvious that the original TW3 system(or the TW2/Medieval 2 equivalent) isn't being used for them.
I am fine with shooting on precise target for balance, but that picture you drew is indeed dumb. They should arc their shots barely over other units. They shouldn't be able to arc their shots over the walls and hit units behind them.
Slingers do the same which is even dumber.
In the case of slingers, it actually makes a lot more sense, because rocks are so heavy, and hitting from a high angle wouldn't take as much force away as it would for an arrow.
Shooting over walls at units that shouldn't even be visible is dumb in either case, but arcing shots isn't necessarily dumb, especially at longer ranges.
I do think missile AP should suffer penalties based on range though. An arrow at 20m has a lot more power than an arrow at 100m.
I keep seeing people say that crossbows shouldn't arc.
Crossbows do arc as much as bows do. Projectile arcing is a function of gravity and the forward momentum. While a crossbow is more powerful than a selfbow, a war bow and a corssbow will have a similar arc, because they release at similar speeds.
Now, that arc should be way flatter than in game. But this has been an issue since Empire, where gunpowder units could use the minimal arcing of their bullets to shoot over hills.
I think it unlikely that CA can address the insane arcing, as it seems to be a feature of the engine. But ranged units could definitely have reduced accuracy.
One way of addressing it to some extent is just higher projectile speeds. All projectiles in TWW are rather slow.
After a quick search to confirm some numbers: Arrows typically should be launching at ~80-100m/s. Most bows in TWW are launching at 45m/s in game, so they're around half as fast as they "should" be.
Crossbow bolts have a much wider range, depending on the type, since draw weights were much more varied and the draw length was so short. Powerful crossbows that required tools to reload could be similar in projectile speed to bows, but hand-drawn crossbows could fire bolts at as low as around 50m/s. I think it'd be safe to assume they should be similar to bows in TWW in projectile velocity, as is currently the case.
Guns and cannons typically have a muzzle velocity of ~100-120m/s in TWW, again, this is extremely slow, at around 1/3 of what it "should" be in reference to real world examples. This is actually why projectile arcs are so significant in TWW even for firearms.
Projectile mass values are also a weirdly high in TWW, at ~3 for arrows, and often 5 or 6 for bullets. Given typical human mass values of 90-125 (for Cathay), those are some ridiculously heavy projectiles. Imagine firing a 5-6kg bullet out of a musket, or a minigun firing ~5kg projectiles. Note that a real cannonball can weigh less than 3kg, though for larger cannons, they could weigh up to ~16kg. *Obviously, mass values are set for gameplay purposes so they can stagger targets or knock them prone. This isn't actually relevant for projectile arcs or anything. It's just funny that projectiles are so heavy.
Archers in Shogun 2 were hit/miss one-shot and ridiculously powerful as a consequence. Rome 2 introduced hp and damage reduction systems and various ranged units have been overpowered or underpowered over the course of its patch history (I believe they started effectively doing negligible damage, could empty multiple units of ammunition pools into the rear of hoplites and not kill any).
In general I don't think the issue is that archers kill too quickly, it's that some other options don't generally kill quickly enough. Infantry and cavalry just don't kill things at an appreciable enough pace to make maneuvering feel rewarding.
Cavalry feels pretty good in 3K now though it started overpowered. Archers seem to be about similar to warhammer(worse at single entity sniping and some units have good options to be very resistant against them) and infantry feels fine.
French cavalry attack The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
What makes people think archers shouldn't be accuate? your assuming they would be aim for indivuals at say 100 meters? why? you have a MASSIVE infantry block. Lets say you have 1000 men and they each take up a 1 meter square of space you have a massive target. You wouldn't aim for a man that would be crazy difficult, you take the easiest shot. Which is always centre mass so thats where you would aim...if you don't hit the centre...doesn't matter you will hit something..unless your completely useless.
The fact most archers are supposed to be professionals...and some are supposed to be just plain better than humans...
Shields should be the answer to archers...at least when being shot head on.
French cavalry attack The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
That's why legendoftotalwar, which you can like or not, but it's probably the more knowledgeable person about this game considers that full archer army is the most efficient way to go. You just need to improve your game.
French cavalry attack The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
That's why legendoftotalwar, which you can like or not, but it's probably the more knowledgeable person about this game considers that full archer army is the most efficient way to go. You just need to improve your game.
French cavalry attack The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
That's why legendoftotalwar, which you can like or not, but it's probably the more knowledgeable person about this game considers that full archer army is the most efficient way to go. You just need to improve your game.
Try that in multiplayer
That's right, my bad, I supposed you were speaking about campaign. Anyways, the ciscumstances in Agincourt were very particular and almost impossible to replicate in the game, probably the closest thing would be a choke point battle.
The big problem, without been a multiplayer expert is that missiles and cavalry are both viable as it is while in single player missiles are OP, so there's no reason to buff them more.
French cavalry attack The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
That's why legendoftotalwar, which you can like or not, but it's probably the more knowledgeable person about this game considers that full archer army is the most efficient way to go. You just need to improve your game.
Try that in multiplayer
That's right, my bad, I supposed you were speaking about campaign. Anyways, the ciscumstances in Agincourt were very particular and almost impossible to replicate in the game, probably the closest thing would be a choke point battle.
The big problem, without been a multiplayer expert is that missiles and cavalry are both viable as it is while in single player missiles are OP, so there's no reason to buff them more.
They are not overpowered, they are hard countered by cavalry while the battle of agincourt shows mounts are very susceptible to archers
French cavalry attack The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
That's why legendoftotalwar, which you can like or not, but it's probably the more knowledgeable person about this game considers that full archer army is the most efficient way to go. You just need to improve your game.
Try that in multiplayer
That's right, my bad, I supposed you were speaking about campaign. Anyways, the ciscumstances in Agincourt were very particular and almost impossible to replicate in the game, probably the closest thing would be a choke point battle.
The big problem, without been a multiplayer expert is that missiles and cavalry are both viable as it is while in single player missiles are OP, so there's no reason to buff them more.
They are not overpowered, they are hard countered by cavalry while the battle of agincourt shows mounts are very susceptible to archers
Well, something has to hardcounter archers. And in singleplayer, if you're going to make a full stack of a single type of unit, missiles will be the most effective. That has been obvious for all the community for years. In the game, if you can protect your missiles they will kill anything. What happened in Agincourt is that the french charged at a very defensible position where they couldn't even reach the archers. You can't replicate that, unless it's a choke point, because even the AI is better commanding its army than the french nobles who just charged straight on.
French cavalry attack The French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
That's why legendoftotalwar, which you can like or not, but it's probably the more knowledgeable person about this game considers that full archer army is the most efficient way to go. You just need to improve your game.
What makes people think archers shouldn't be accuate? your assuming they would be aim for indivuals at say 100 meters? why? you have a MASSIVE infantry block. Lets say you have 1000 men and they each take up a 1 meter square of space you have a massive target. You wouldn't aim for a man that would be crazy difficult, you take the easiest shot. Which is always centre mass so thats where you would aim...if you don't hit the centre...doesn't matter you will hit something..unless your completely useless.
The fact most archers are supposed to be professionals...and some are supposed to be just plain better than humans...
Shields should be the answer to archers...at least when being shot head on.
Well shields are bad too to exacerbate the issue; even the best ones fail at blocking half the shots. Besides the main point here is not just their straight up accuracy, but also weirdo arcs, effectiveness against armor, not caring about ff and not needing line of sight etc. They all add up to make a braindead type of a unit class.
They are not overpowered, they are hard countered by cavalry while the battle of agincourt shows mounts are very susceptible to archers
Agincourt the archers were protected atop a long muddy slope with planted stakes and in forests to the sides while the French cavalry did not take the time to don their horses armour fully and charged with only about 2/3s of the cavalry deployed to suppress the English archers as the French cavalry had wisely elected NOT to charge the top of the ridge with the English archers safe behind trenches and stakes.
The English knew they had to force a battle and observing the the French cavalry, thinking they had time on their side had mostly dismounted and were milling around, some joining campfires to get warm, some taking their horses to water, and many removing the horses armor to rub them down, ran down off the top of the ridge and forward a couple of hundred yards, planted their stakes and let loose on the nearest French cavalry who promptly mounted and charged in disarray.
The English archers in the forsests to the side appear to have done most of the damage according to the chronicles we do have which report the horses were grieviously wounded on their unarmoured flanks and many threw their riders and ran way back down the slope trampling over the oncoming French men-at-arms.
Very few French cavalry were actually killed, most of the French losses came among the vanguard men-at-arms who were trapped between the English and the 2nd line of French men-at-arms who advanced behind them and pressed them tightly.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.” Mark Twain
While volley fire was probably used occasionally I do not think it was all that often and archers did aim. First, archers didn't carry that much arrows with them and making a good arrow took several people multiple hours of work. They likely had less arrows than a unit in WH2 for battles that took much longer.
And more importantly against many targets blindly shooting arrows at them does not work. Despite the myth of the longbow armor was quite effective against archers. To penetrate armor bows often could not be fired at maximum range like done in the game (Mongols for example tended to charge infantry and shoot their bows right into the face instead of skirmishing at long range). And when you arc a shot high you are sacrificing a lot of power up to the point you only have a pointy stick falling from the sky which hardly has the chance to seriously injure anyone. And heavy armor is pretty much immune against most bows so blindly shooting arrows at it won't work. You have to aim for the joints or open visors (which costs several nobles their lives). The same way an archer must aim at gaps in a shield wall instead of just lobbing arrows in the general direction.
As for archers being hardcountered by cavalry, the world is too complex for hardcounters.
Comments
that indeed needs a nerf
Edit to clarify calibration distance
#givemoreunitsforbrettonia, my bret dlc
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0 · 3Disagree Agree- Report
5 · Disagree 5Agree- Report
5 · Disagree 5Agree- Report
0 · 1Disagree Agree- Report
4 · Disagree 4AgreeLatter got the magic part removed to help WE against dwarf. And the former is not in game at all.
#givemoreunitsforbrettonia, my bret dlc
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0 · Disagree Agree- No one should be able to shoot at a target they can't see. This enabled a cheese where a single bow unit could take an undefended castle by peppering the Samurai Retainers with close-accuracy, from the ground-level. Rome 2 introduced the battle map fog-of-war feature, probably the last time Total War actually innovated(everything else about that game was a massive leap into a cul-de-sac, which is why the game systems have hardly changed since and 'new mechanics' are basically: Randomly-Selected Noun > currency/progress-bar > outcome unrelated to the noun. Or CA brings back features they never explained why they removed, but their marketing geniuses pretend are new.
- Bows should not have greater range than matchlocks, except from a much higher elevation. With the TW3 Engine introduced in Empire(2009) though, CA did away with elevation permitting arrows to travel further probably because most ranged weapons in Empire were guns. Instead the elevation bonus was a buff to the unit's Accuracy stat relative to the target. That sort of makes sense, for guns, where elevation wouldn't practically increase accuracy beyond granting a clearer line-of-sight, but that gives a shooter more information about the distance and movement of the target, meaning they can make more use of their accuracy than shooting across a plane allows.
Repeated testing though has exposed that bows in Shogun 2 are weak compared with matchlocks in like-for-like conditions. Matchlocks simply kill more most of the time. Why do I think they need a longer range then? Because accuracy drops-off at range; people should be engaging their brains and intuiting what should happen and the game design reward this by making what happens conform to the knowable realistic scenario. Nothing should happen just because 'a designer says so' and that includes nebulous and disingenuous terms like 'balance'. Sacrifices have to be made for the sake of gameplay, but that does not mean 'a designer says so' because it shouldn't be the default; there had better be a very good reason to steer away from what practical reality would say happens. Yes, even in a fantasy setting, as anyone who actually cares about that genre of fiction will already know.In my ideal Shogun 2 update, it might be necessary to also give bows more strength to reflect how lethal they actually are at closer ranges, how heavy their collective weight clangs against armour and slows down an advance, how volleys compensate for loss of accuracy at distance and how that distance is increased by elevation. They could even have their own effective firing-drills; something I once suggested for Wood Elves, in place of the brain-dead 'fix' for their arrows being fired straight into trees; giving missiles no-clip for the first seconds of flight so they phased through trees like magic. This was the best CA could come up with after having almost three years to think about it.
Had they not gutted the gun functionality of the TW3 Engine and making 'guns' in Warhammer work like every other missile weapon, they could have had Wood Elf missile units using the same function to only fire when they have a direct-path to a target with no object or map geometry in-between, shooting through the gaps in the trees.
CA don't do ideas any more. I don't know what they actually do.
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0 · Disagree AgreeTaking gunpowder units is waaay less useful in most circumstances simply because they do not fire in an arc while units that an arc their shot are unnecessarily powerful in so many situations they generally end up being the better choice even when doing less damage and less AP , though there are so many that have both it feels a bit weird but that is mostly GW since CA is designing based on their rosters.
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0 · 1Disagree AgreeAs such, they do fire in an arc and it's noticeable among several other glaring differences from the way guns used to work in Total War. Most gun-line tactics no longer work because there are no 'gun-lines' in Warhammer.
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3 · 3Disagree 3AgreeOlder doesn't necessarily mean better (or indeed worse), just different.
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1 · 1Disagree 1AgreeCrossbows do arc as much as bows do. Projectile arcing is a function of gravity and the forward momentum. While a crossbow is more powerful than a selfbow, a war bow and a corssbow will have a similar arc, because they release at similar speeds.
Now, that arc should be way flatter than in game. But this has been an issue since Empire, where gunpowder units could use the minimal arcing of their bullets to shoot over hills.
I think it unlikely that CA can address the insane arcing, as it seems to be a feature of the engine. But ranged units could definitely have reduced accuracy.
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1 · Disagree 1AgreeThe sheer amount of arc on gun-shots in WH is what makes it so obvious that the original TW3 system(or the TW2/Medieval 2 equivalent) isn't being used for them.
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1 · 2Disagree 1AgreeShooting over walls at units that shouldn't even be visible is dumb in either case, but arcing shots isn't necessarily dumb, especially at longer ranges.
I do think missile AP should suffer penalties based on range though. An arrow at 20m has a lot more power than an arrow at 100m. One way of addressing it to some extent is just higher projectile speeds. All projectiles in TWW are rather slow.
After a quick search to confirm some numbers:
Arrows typically should be launching at ~80-100m/s. Most bows in TWW are launching at 45m/s in game, so they're around half as fast as they "should" be.
Crossbow bolts have a much wider range, depending on the type, since draw weights were much more varied and the draw length was so short. Powerful crossbows that required tools to reload could be similar in projectile speed to bows, but hand-drawn crossbows could fire bolts at as low as around 50m/s. I think it'd be safe to assume they should be similar to bows in TWW in projectile velocity, as is currently the case.
Guns and cannons typically have a muzzle velocity of ~100-120m/s in TWW, again, this is extremely slow, at around 1/3 of what it "should" be in reference to real world examples. This is actually why projectile arcs are so significant in TWW even for firearms.
Projectile mass values are also a weirdly high in TWW, at ~3 for arrows, and often 5 or 6 for bullets. Given typical human mass values of 90-125 (for Cathay), those are some ridiculously heavy projectiles. Imagine firing a 5-6kg bullet out of a musket, or a minigun firing ~5kg projectiles. Note that a real cannonball can weigh less than 3kg, though for larger cannons, they could weigh up to ~16kg.
*Obviously, mass values are set for gameplay purposes so they can stagger targets or knock them prone. This isn't actually relevant for projectile arcs or anything. It's just funny that projectiles are so heavy.
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3 · 1Disagree 3AgreeIn general I don't think the issue is that archers kill too quickly, it's that some other options don't generally kill quickly enough. Infantry and cavalry just don't kill things at an appreciable enough pace to make maneuvering feel rewarding.
Cavalry feels pretty good in 3K now though it started overpowered. Archers seem to be about similar to warhammer(worse at single entity sniping and some units have good options to be very resistant against them) and infantry feels fine.
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0 · Disagree AgreeThe French cavalry, despite being disorganised and not at full numbers, charged towards the longbowmen. It was a disastrous attempt. The French knights were unable to outflank the longbowmen (because of the encroaching woodland) and unable to charge through the array of sharpened stakes that protected the archers. John Keegan argues that the longbows' main influence on the battle at this point was injuries to horses: armoured only on the head, many horses would have become dangerously out of control when struck in the back or flank from the high-elevation, long-range shots used as the charge started.[73] The mounted charge and subsequent retreat churned up the already muddy terrain between the French and the English. Juliet Barker quotes a contemporary account by a monk from St. Denis who reports how the wounded and panicking horses galloped through the advancing infantry, scattering them and trampling them down in their headlong flight from the battlefield.[74]
Yet in this game, unarmored cavalry has a field day against archers. Also, cavalry and large entities can move in woods unimpeded. The english army was 5/6 made of longbows. Try it in this game.
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1 · 4Disagree 1AgreeThe fact most archers are supposed to be professionals...and some are supposed to be just plain better than humans...
Shields should be the answer to archers...at least when being shot head on.
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1 · 2Disagree 1AgreeThe big problem, without been a multiplayer expert is that missiles and cavalry are both viable as it is while in single player missiles are OP, so there's no reason to buff them more.
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1 · 1Disagree 1AgreeThe English knew they had to force a battle and observing the the French cavalry, thinking they had time on their side had mostly dismounted and were milling around, some joining campfires to get warm, some taking their horses to water, and many removing the horses armor to rub them down, ran down off the top of the ridge and forward a couple of hundred yards, planted their stakes and let loose on the nearest French cavalry who promptly mounted and charged in disarray.
The English archers in the forsests to the side appear to have done most of the damage according to the chronicles we do have which report the horses were grieviously wounded on their unarmoured flanks and many threw their riders and ran way back down the slope trampling over the oncoming French men-at-arms.
Very few French cavalry were actually killed, most of the French losses came among the vanguard men-at-arms who were trapped between the English and the 2nd line of French men-at-arms who advanced behind them and pressed them tightly.
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2 · Disagree 2AgreeFirst, archers didn't carry that much arrows with them and making a good arrow took several people multiple hours of work. They likely had less arrows than a unit in WH2 for battles that took much longer.
And more importantly against many targets blindly shooting arrows at them does not work. Despite the myth of the longbow armor was quite effective against archers. To penetrate armor bows often could not be fired at maximum range like done in the game (Mongols for example tended to charge infantry and shoot their bows right into the face instead of skirmishing at long range). And when you arc a shot high you are sacrificing a lot of power up to the point you only have a pointy stick falling from the sky which hardly has the chance to seriously injure anyone.
And heavy armor is pretty much immune against most bows so blindly shooting arrows at it won't work. You have to aim for the joints or open visors (which costs several nobles their lives). The same way an archer must aim at gaps in a shield wall instead of just lobbing arrows in the general direction.
As for archers being hardcountered by cavalry, the world is too complex for hardcounters.
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