v68 Archery, Sieges, and Bandits feel unbalanced

[Warmblood]

I've enjoyed v68 quite well, up to a point. Research has become rather challenging, but it certainly encourages specialization and dealing with trade offs. My gripes are with archery, sieges, and bandits.

1. From previous experience, I knew archery was a little wonky, but it feels frankly broken now. The rate of fire is extremely low, the archers will often just stand and not fire despite fire at will orders, and their interaction with fortifications (i.e., forming up on top of them, is often quite poor. Friendly fire appears to still be a frequent problem as well (although I can accept it as a skill issue). I built a Tilapi city and it was painful trying to get much of any use out of even skilled and well equipped archers in battle.

2. I am really struggling to complete a siege. I am not sure exactly what combination of factors changed, but it does not feel good now. For one, I'm finding it takes a very long time to supply an army, and then it seems like rations are often not fully supplied to the army even when 1000s are available in the city, the military depots are (over) staffed, and the right warehouses have been assigned (I don't feel the new depot system is an improvement over the old, either). So my army ends up with say 12 days of rations instead of the maximum. I've had 3 games where my otherwise very militarily weak neighbor has level 3 walls. I'm not sure if I'm missing something but I just can't siege these down in reasonable time with my 1st army - I run out of rations first, or a bandit attacks during the siege.

3. And then there's the bandits. I don't completely hate the system, but it can be quite harsh, and when they attack while your army is doing some incredibly long siege it just sucks. With the new research system as demanding as it is, there is no way I can maintain both a field army and a militia good enough to counter raiders before getting that first conquered province. While in theory just paying them off is an option, their demands are quite painful and taking slaves especially destabilizes the city.

[VanditKing]

Yes, compared to V67, supplying military goods has become more difficult. The newly designed supply transportation buildings seem to work less efficiently than before.

To mitigate this, I built those buildings at their maximum size by pressing the "+" button (for a 1,000-strong army, I needed three max-sized supply buildings, each dedicated to food, alcohol, and clothing), employed the maximum number of workers (32!), turned off worker automation, disabled patches, and only used the pull command to draw supplies from storage and import warehouses. This approach made the situation somewhat better.

Since prolonged supply times lead to desertions during resupply, I had to reduce research manpower and focus on sending supplies all at once right after forming or reinforcing a unit.

As for sieges, it seems to take a year regardless of the size of the army I bring. I initially thought bringing more troops would speed up the siege, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Instead, a larger force tends to make the enemy avoid field battles and retreat into a defensive siege. However, given how supply management is such a headache, it's essential to find the right balance in the size of your forces.

When engaging the enemy with just the right number of troops, the defending forces from the city sometimes sortie to join the battle. If you win in this situation, the city’s defensive garrison temporarily drops to zero. At this point, if you have an additional army or reinforce the besieging army with all the troops from your city, you can initiate a siege before the defending garrison is replenished (it typically takes 4–5 days for them to recover, so very fast action is required). With this strategy, you can capture the city quickly with minimal sacrifice.

[Trick]

Man the tilapa archer nerf is so sad. I have 50 of them 100% trained losing to 150 bugs with only armor. I have to kite until my archers fall from exhaustion and still lose.

[skudger]

i'm glad i'm not the only one with absolutely broken archers. I thought I remembered reading that they got fixed at some point, but they currently seem more broken than ever. When I realized this was the case I just stopped playing my tilapia city.

[fabfab]

are you guys 100% shure you had ammo and enough bows stocket in depot ect? ive been playing only tilapi since release and my 10% 150 tilapi archers mowed downevrything
yes sometimes they have friendly fire but you always have that one idiot in the army that ♥♥♥♥♥ up for evryone also dont forget supply a thousand man army cost also alot of transport thats an extra challenge look some video about acient rome building camps and how they did it the soldier alone is only a small part of the army

[littleplayer]

Originally posted by fabfab:

are you guys 100% shure you had ammo and enough bows stocket in depot ect? ive been playing only tilapi since release and my 10% 150 tilapi archers mowed downevrything
yes sometimes they have friendly fire but you always have that one idiot in the army that ♥♥♥♥♥ up for evryone also dont forget supply a thousand man army cost also alot of transport thats an extra challenge look some video about acient rome building camps and how they did it the soldier alone is only a small part of the army

Where do you have ammo from ? Is there any building for it ?

[Hippopwnamus]

I've found that archers are pretty dependent on enemy equipment. If you're shooting a bunch of unarmored cretonians, it's going to be significantly different than hitting a squad of dondorians equipped with plate and shields. Also, once anything gets into melee with your archers, they're going to be in a losing battle unless you've also prepared them for melee which is a significant time and resource sink.

I usually just leave them off to the sides of big battles and let them mow down enemies while the other army tries to desperately reach my guys before being shot down.

Also, I just stuck a couple of the smallest army depots next to my ration production buildings. Seems to work out well enough for an army of a thousand so far so long as I set them to only rations.

[Trick]

Originally posted by fabfab:

are you guys 100% shure you had ammo and enough bows stocket in depot ect? ive been playing only tilapi since release and my 10% 150 tilapi archers mowed downevrything
yes sometimes they have friendly fire but you always have that one idiot in the army that ♥♥♥♥♥ up for evryone also dont forget supply a thousand man army cost also alot of transport thats an extra challenge look some video about acient rome building camps and how they did it the soldier alone is only a small part of the army

I mean i send them out with the required amount of bows. Is there a different requirement for ammo?

[fabfab]

no sorry i ment bows yea thats the ammo

[Warmblood]

The changes since my original post have helped with the bandit difficulty and research difficulty. I think bandit difficulty is reasonable enough now. With army/sieges/supplies, I think it is highly advisable to have 1 supply depot dedicated to only rations, just to make sure you can supply the army quickly and completely. I'm not sure why exactly, but when a depot tries to pick up too large a variety of items, the overall throughput really seems to drop. Also, I learned I needed to just really use a lot of workers in the depots during the army spin up phase. As someone else said, sieges just seem to take a year regardless of walls, so just make sure your army is FULLY stocked with rations.

I still feel archery is off. Slow and awkward to actually get them to shoot (especially from walls). My reasonable trained and equipped Tilapi barely ever got a single volley off before the enemy closed the distance.

[Xilr]

I just searched archery to see if it was bugged. I found this thread. I was wondering WTF you were supposed to do to defend yourself when a bandit comes knocking. Apparently, in the early game as Tilapi, you just die? Yes, yes, I could invest in whole new production lines, train them in swords, set up smelters and smithys, training facilities, and all that....But EARLY game? In the early game you lack a diverse fighting force. I had played humans and donorians and been fine, but Tilapi (using archers) seems a death sentence. 6 drunks with billy clubs can come claim the capital!

[fabfab]

tilapi aurochs farm bowmaker and leather maker carpenter train 10-20 soldiers at a time to 10% then 20 and 30 then build some more force they will wipe it goodluck

[Wintersend]

The trick with archers is to set them behind and off to the side of a melee group set to be as defensive as possible. The fire rate is low but damage seems to get higher at short range. So you have your melee group get charged and tank, even with just some armor or shields they can hold out for quite a while against most AI forces. Move the archers around to the side and let them shoot into the flank. Casualties will be high each volley and they enemy breaks in short order. I have used this to win fights with 120 guys vs nearly 400 that includes a few Argonosh.