Archer targeting

[Zakky]

@Anaris: If the recent update was about increasing the ratio of units to target the enemy on the front line before moving on to targets further back, I do not notice much difference.
In the most recent battle, the front line unit suffered only about 15 % casualties the first round...quite far from an overkill.

Maybe it's his way of saying time to grab infantry.

[Medron Pryde]

Interesting that you've notice no battle being fought too.

10K worth of Rogues just marched into the capital of Nothoi on Beluaterra, fought no battle, and immediately started a TO.

Fully defended city with both militia and noble regiments in house BTW.  And level 5 walls.

I think we've got a bug here...

[Zakky]

Interesting that you've notice no battle being fought too.

10K worth of Rogues just marched into the capital of Nothoi on Beluaterra, fought no battle, and immediately started a TO.

Fully defended city with both militia and noble regiments in house BTW.  And level 5 walls.

I think we've got a bug here...

Once that bug gets fixed you guys will be fighting those rogues without the wall XD

[Medron Pryde]

I've been wanting to trim out the militia a little bit.

Though I was hoping the general could just hand some of the larger units over to nobles for a bit better use.

Thinning them out this way was not the plan I had in mind...

[Schancke]

Maybe it's his way of saying time to grab infantry.

It should be done in a RP-event.
Like "All archer RCs on the Beluaterra are suffering from a contagious variant of Parkinsons disease"   :D

Not objecting against adjusting efficiency of archers, but I think we should try to keep as much realistic begaviour in battle as possible.

[Zakky]

It is very realistic. All archers aren't very good at shooting arrows.  ;)

[Schancke]

I am still annoyed by this issue. It leads to obviously unnatural behaviour in battle.

The aim of the implementation on new archer targeting was to cancel out the tactic applied in EC war with putting a single cannon fodder at front to preserve the rest, resulting in an overkill on that unit.

Now, front unit will only we dealt 10-20% damage before the archers pick targets further back. Archers will even advance and break the ranks to hit units further back, than to hold ground and attack enemies within range.

Also, if a small unit is deployed furthest down at the back of the enemies line, it will receive a massive overkill.  In this way, the changes implemented corrected one wrong by adding several.

If the aim of this targeting was to annul the tactics in EC war, I suggest the algorithm is revisited to reduce the unwanted effects.
If I am mistaken, and the aim was to reduce archers efficiency in general, a more generak nerf e.g. on damage dealt would be preferred by me.

[Zakky]

Since the whole battle code will be rewritten at some point (maybe in several years),  not sure changing the whole algorithm would be worth it.

Try to adapt this new system. This defintely makes ranged units less reliable so why not switch over to good old pure infantry army tactic of the old? Once you can close the gap, you can make a short work of enemy archers.

[Medron Pryde]

I have played this game for over ten years.

I've never seen any realm using only infantry.

I in fact have never LED an infantry unit.  I've used mostly archers since the beginning.  I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past.  But never infantry.  Why?  It didn't interest me, so I didn't.

The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry.  The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.

Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this.  Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event.  And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game.  So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle.  But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.

Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles.  But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used.  ;)

[Zakky]

I have played this game for over ten years.

I've never seen any realm using only infantry.

I in fact have never LED an infantry unit.  I've used mostly archers since the beginning.  I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past.  But never infantry.  Why?  It didn't interest me, so I didn't.

The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry.  The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.

Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this.  Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event.  And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game.  So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle.  But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.

Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles.  But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used.  ;)

You've missed a big portion of BM history man. There were few realms known for their infantry armies. Even until around 2013 it was still a thing.

[Chenier]

I have played this game for over ten years.

I've never seen any realm using only infantry.

I in fact have never LED an infantry unit.  I've used mostly archers since the beginning.  I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past.  But never infantry.  Why?  It didn't interest me, so I didn't.

The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry.  The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.

Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this.  Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event.  And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game.  So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle.  But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.

Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles.  But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used.  ;)

XD

Westgard has good RCs of every kind, but not really exceptional ones. Oh, maybe no cav centers. And maybe some really, really good melee ones.

But we've got like 24k cs split into two mobile armies of about 10k CS each (other 4k CS is mobile that doesn't tag along).

One army is 100% R5 SF.
The other army is 25% R5 SF and 75% R4 archers. (estimated, I'm not their marshal so I can't check).

I've not seen another realm as lopsided for ranged combat, but I've nonetheless seen a number of realms that are still very lopsided for it.

Westgard hard it worst of all, but in general, leading infantry sucks. You hit the front line in one battle, then your unit takes huge damage, and you have to go back to your capital right away. Sometimes, it gets destroyed without even reaching the front. But if your realm overwhelmingly won the battle, odds are all the archers are fresh. They can keep fighting. Again. And again. And again. And again. Also less chance of wounds and capture. As long as the army wins, you can keep on fighting until wear and tear or gold or morale becomes an issue.

And that's how Selena Chénier became a 33 year old character with 894 honour, while those who really tried hard to lead infantry did not (and eventually gave up on it).

I wouldn't mind if infantry got an additional armor bonus against archers on top of what they already got, if it meant archers could better target the front line.

Heck, could it work based on training? If the attacking archers average 100 training, then they have a high chance of shooting exactly as many arrows as needed on the front row before targeting the second, and the lower the training, the closer the odds of it being what it currently is? With the current tweaks, it's not too bad anymore, but it's still sometimes annoying against monster armies.

Alternatively... hmm... could we grant a tickbox to the marshals? "Should archers overkill the front row: yes/no"? Marshals who tick the box use the old system, where all ranged troops fire on the front row only. Those who don't use the new system. This would actually sound perfect to me. Give them choice. Then screen units are easy to bypass by using the new system, but it's an actual tactical choice, so maybe sometimes they'd want to expose themselves to that risk anyways.

[De-Legro]

I have played this game for over ten years.

I've never seen any realm using only infantry.

I in fact have never LED an infantry unit.  I've used mostly archers since the beginning.  I currently have some range 5 special forces, some range 3 mixed infantry, and have commanded cavalry numerous times in the past.  But never infantry.  Why?  It didn't interest me, so I didn't.

The point is, that I've never seen any realm rely purely on infantry.  The average I've seen is between one third and two thirds of a nation's army is infantry, the rest is archers, and then a few nobles messing around with the other possibilities.

Perdan and Astrum are two realms that partially break this.  Perdan has very powerful special forces recruiting centers, even after the admins erased the MOST powerful one during the Walls and Recruiting Center Destruction Portal Stone Event.  And Astrum has the best Mixed Infantry RCs in the game.  So both of those realms have a higher percentage of SF or MI in their lines of battle.  But even there I see plenty of standard infantry and archers walking around.

Yes, the infantry and the archers are the most basic force used by the vast majority of nobles.  But there's never been any time that I've played when only one of those was used.  ;)

Arcaea on FEI continent historically had rubbish archer centers, so while we did field archers we didn't expect much of them, and yes had to rely on massive amounts of infantry. It worked for us only because of an exceptional group of realm leaders that enabled us to have an extremely high character count.

[Medron Pryde]

Oh yes.

Some realms are known for their infantry.  And some are known for their archers.

I've never seen a realm myself that uses only one of them.

Though there is a note above that one is ranged SF and archers.  When you get someone capable of putting together SF centers that good.  Very expensive that is, and so are the SF themselves.  You're looking at a serious richman army there.  ;)

[Zakky]

Westgard isn't known for good RCs. They have lots of decent ones but none are considered exceptional like Chenier said.

Astrum once ran an army mostly made out of R5 SFs and MIs. 32k CS of moving doom. Grinded 300k CS of monsters in 10 days. 150k behind Eidulb and another 150k just outside of it. Lots of fun.

But this happened before the ranged nerf. Ranged units are still good I'd say. Their attack pattern doesn't make any logical sense but this is a game not a real world battle simulator. Balance > Logic here ma man.

[Medron Pryde]

I was part of that Monster Mash myself.  200 Mixed infantry with 100% armor and 95% weapons with range of 3.

I was part of the wall with the ranged 5 SF behind me.  I still have many of those men now on that character.

It is still scary to see that force in action when going up against monsters or undead, even after the archer nerf.  It's very hard for even monsters to actually KILL soldiers arrayed one hundred strong with 100% armor.