Archer targeting

[Schancke]

Among the April changes were the altering of the archer targeting algorithm.

I assume this was a response to tactics in the stalemate war on East Continent.
It appears that archers now distribute randomly amont available targets, and I believe the game would benefit from further tweaking of this algorithm.
As a Lord of a heavily battered city on Beluaterra I daily see stupid and irrational archer behavior due to this change.

- Archers not shooting at units within range.
- Archers ignoring the huge enemy unit at the gates, and rather aiming for weak units further back - with the added the cost of reduced efficiency.

Is it worth considering making the archer targeting a little more intelligent?

[Anaris]

I intend to make the archer targeting a bit smarterâ€"I just haven't had the chance yet.

At the very least, I'm going to increase the ratio of archer hits to target CS before which archers stop targeting a given unit.

[Zakky]

Not just archers either. MIs are worse due to this change since their range is shorter. Rushing out by themselves only to get crushed XD

[GoldPanda]

Archers should potentially target all enemy units within range, with chance based on unit size, perhaps with a moderate preference for those within shorter distance. A large mass of peasant rabble or infantry is going to be a more tempting target than a small, charging cavalry unit, even if the latter might pose a greater threat to the archers.

I understand that the motivation is to stop us from sending on a small unit in front as a "pincushion" unit.

[Medron Pryde]

Ah yes.

The pincushion units that have changed warfare.

Another thing to consider is the code that has infantry leave the walls if the attackers don't have infantry.  I've seen nation attacks with ONLY archers so the infantry charge out into massed archer fire and get slaughtered.  Then send in the infantry attackers the following turn to swarm the walls and take the city without any infantry to fight them.  That seems to me to be like a similar...taking advantage of fighting code situation.  ;)

[Chenier]

Ah yes.

The pincushion units that have changed warfare.

Another thing to consider is the code that has infantry leave the walls if the attackers don't have infantry.  I've seen nation attacks with ONLY archers so the infantry charge out into massed archer fire and get slaughtered.  Then send in the infantry attackers the following turn to swarm the walls and take the city without any infantry to fight them.  That seems to me to be like a similar...taking advantage of fighting code situation.  ;)

Well... I mean, would you rather the infantry just sit idle behind the walls?

And then you leave your archers without support, which it might need. Doesn't really seem like a good tactic to me.

[Anaris]

It seems unlikely to me that that could work if they didn't have the force to take the walls attacking all together. You'd need a lot of archers for the infantry to get seriously slaughtered doing that, and then the most you're getting out of it is maybe lower attacker infantry casualties? At the cost of higher attacker archer casualties...

I suppose we could, perhaps, adjust the code so that if there are no attacking infantry, and no defending archers, the defending infantry just hunker down untargetable behind the walls, and it ends in a stalemate...but without also changing the code so that this would prevent the attacking archers from just walking past unmolested, I don't think it would actually make people happier than what there is now.

[Chenier]

I think this is just a situation of "if it's not broke..."

I mean, unless someone can give battle reports to show something truly egregious.

The closest I've seen is attackers relying heavily on R5 troops, against cities which lack any, allowing the attackers to win from out of reach. But I've never seen such battle reports, and I've only sparsely heard of it. And... I mean, honestly, sounds fairly legit. "attack the fortified location from out of range" seems like pretty basic siege tactics.

[feyeleanor]

I think this is just a situation of "if it's not broke..."

I mean, unless someone can give battle reports to show something truly egregious.

The closest I've seen is attackers relying heavily on R5 troops, against cities which lack any, allowing the attackers to win from out of reach. But I've never seen such battle reports, and I've only sparsely heard of it. And... I mean, honestly, sounds fairly legit. "attack the fortified location from out of range" seems like pretty basic siege tactics.

It's the tactic OT and co developed on the Colonies to deal with MT after a couple of years of our R4 SF basically slaughtering anything fielded against us. The battle reports were very dull with two or there successive turns of stalemate battles being common. I'd love to know how much they had to invest to get those R5 RCs :)

[Chenier]

That said, yes, I would like for archers to be closer to what they used to be than what they are now, at least for Westgard. XD I really disliked the screen units, though, so I'm happy of the direction of the change. But it'd be better if it was tweaked so that the archers still tried to kill the front row before shooting behind. Now it feels like 50-50 often, which gets the archers slaughtered in melee when really the front waves could have been killed every turn.

[Zakky]

It seems unlikely to me that that could work if they didn't have the force to take the walls attacking all together. You'd need a lot of archers for the infantry to get seriously slaughtered doing that, and then the most you're getting out of it is maybe lower attacker infantry casualties? At the cost of higher attacker archer casualties...

I suppose we could, perhaps, adjust the code so that if there are no attacking infantry, and no defending archers, the defending infantry just hunker down untargetable behind the walls, and it ends in a stalemate...but without also changing the code so that this would prevent the attacking archers from just walking past unmolested, I don't think it would actually make people happier than what there is now.

I used to work well when archers could do a lot of damage to infantry units. Since enemy archers will be doing only 1/4 damage due to the range damage reduction, you can pretty much ignore that and focus on taking out enemy infantry units. It works pretty well against militia units since once they are scattered or retreated, they need more time than players to rally their men. But you do have to attack right away after the battle though.

[Anaris]

I've pushed a very small change on testing that increases the ratio of hits to target combat strength that will trigger archers to stop firing on a given target by a factor of 5. Let's see if that makes a difference.

[Chenier]

Dwi's stable, it's hard to really see the difference in PvP because armies tend to be so archer-heavy anyways on both sides. But thanks. :P

[Vita`]

Dwi's stable, it's hard to really see the difference in PvP because armies tend to be so archer-heavy anyways on both sides. But thanks. :P

Dwilight is testing branch.

[Chenier]

Dwilight is testing branch.

My character page says otherwise.